The big day is nearly here. Tomorrow, barring really bad weather, we will be heading out for our continuing 
adventure. We have truly found our place here at Bass Lake, but we are also ready to go traveling once more. We plan to start early tomorrow and travel to Wichita, KS for our first stop. That is a much longer trip 
than we usually make in one day, but the route is one that we have traveled so many times that we usually just make a longer day of it and get it behind us. It will be a bit longer this year as we are now about an hour more travel away from there, but even so it is our plan.
The past week has been a flurry of work as we had lived in the RV for long enough to have nearly forgotten the job that packing up for an extended trip can be! This has been the very first time for our motorhome to be emptied out in 11 years. At this point we have a significant amount less to carry since we expect to be back before cold weather and so will take no winter wear, and we leave behind many things which in the past were along because we use them occasionally, and a host of other reasons. I suspect that we will be traveling with at least 500# less cargo than in the past. Another benefit of this is the extra space that we have in our storage. For the first time we can see everything that is in all of our storage spaces!
We are somewhat more excited than in recent years as this will be the first time in a very long time that we leave a location with definite plance to return. Our roses have even given a burst of blooms to send us off!
We pretty much completed the volunteer work on the pool house for the home nearby and I guess that is a good thing since 
we will be hitting the road at the end of this week. The project turned out to be rather more than we expected, but it has been a lot of fun and I learned a few new skills as well. I have now laid ceramic tile, and learned a bunch of new tricks for taping sheetrock, which I found very helpfull. There are still a few small things to be completed in the kitchen but my partner in the project will be finishing those before he too heads out in his RV for the summer.
Most of Texas has been in a very bad drought and although we have had some rains around the state of late, many parts were still in serious trouble. Our area had received several small rains that were enough to help, but we were still far behind what is usually the case here and about all that we had received since early in the year were very fast, brief showers. Last night that changed and perhaps the drought has broken! It began to rain at about 7 pm and it continued all night in a nice, steady rain and at a moderate rate. Getting up this morning I find the sky clearing and the world smiling! Checking our rain gauge I find that we had almost exactly two inches!
What was really great as well is that there was no serious threat of dangerous weather with this storm and very little wind or lightning. This was exactly the type of rain that we had all been asking for! I am taking credit for helping to get things started as I ran my lawn sprinkler most of the day, just to prime the system............
After church we drove to Royse City to meet our son & grandchildren for dinner. It was a rather unusual restaurant, as it is actually several miles out on the county road from town and in a very rural setting. There us a long drive back to the building, which is set in a small valley with a medium sized pond just outside of the patio dining area. The side of the building toward the pond is made up of a series of garage doors with glass panels so that they can be rolled up to make the entire restaurant open to the outside. Done along the pond there is a nice decked area with small fishing poles provided for the children. The pond is teaming with small sunfish that seem to like French-fries as their favorite food. Children are encouraged to stay and fish for a while and we took the grandchildren down to give it a try. While they both had a great time watching the swarms of small fish attacking each fry (the fish seemed to ignore fishing worms!) most of there were small enough that they just nibbled away at the bait. Even so, one of the larger fish managed to get our grandson's hook into his mouth and was caught! It was great fun for everyone.
The last major project of our new home is now complete, at least for this 
year! The entry to our RV port had never been paved and so with the paving crew here to do some street repairs it was an opportune time to take care of that as well. There were three of us here who had no pavement between our structures and the street that took advantage of the crew's presence to get this taken care of at somewhat less cost. Even though it was still far from free, we decided that it would be worth the extra cost and less work than doing gravel as we had originally planned. The crew did a nice job and with them on site it probably saved us about 30% or so. It does make our driveway much nicer and no more mud on rainy days!
One of the new things that I have begun to learn since arriving here is to pitch horseshoes. Several of the residents 
enjoy the sport and so I have been introduced to it and have been trying my hand. Like most beginners, I have thrown some pretty ugly turns, but even a beginner gets lucky on occasion. In a game with one of the best participants here I had my very best score to day. I was pitching second, so Gary made his two shoes first, with one ringer. But wait! The novice has his day, pitching the red shoes with two near perfect pitches. It may well be a long time before that one happens again so I had to take a picture to prove that it did happen!
volunteer work for parks and wildlife refuges as we have and there are also many who belong to groups of RV folks who travel and volunteer for worthy causes. The group called SOWERS has the most members living here, probably because they helped in the early stages of construction of the total community. There are also many who are members of "Campers on Mission" and of NOMADS. In addition many of our neighbors are involved in volunteer projects in the local community. As one who does not sit and loaf very well, I found the local involvement to be one of the attractions here. In January I joined a group from the community who have been constructing a "pool house" at the swimming pool of a nearby home for unwed mothers. With all of the bad weather this winter we are a bit behind schedule, but the project is now nearly complete. With any luck at all, we should be able to wrap it up before we hit the road in about three weeks.
Everyone here has been praying for rain so I suppose that we should all be very grateful. We have been very dry here and while we have not suffered the major fires of other parts of Texas, we have been building up the conditions to get one. The area is mostly forested so when things get dry we get nervous and this has been a very dry spring with the area about 7" behind what it should be in rain. But last night that began to change, or at least improved.
Texas has had the lower edge of several of the major storms that have plagued the eastern half of the country, but all of the storms have missed this area of the state, even though some have been effected. Yesterday that all changed with our first warnings coming out about 3pm and by 6pm our skies were black and it was hailing here. We had 10 or 15 minutes of hail, mostly about marble size and with most homes here having steel roofs and nearly all vehicles under cover, that did no damage other then a few tree leaves. After a brief pause, we began to hear reports of a tornado on the ground about 15 miles to our southwest. The main threat then traveled in our direction, passing pretty much directly over us. By 8pm we had received 1.5 inches of rain and the main storm was past. We picked up about another 1/4 inch of rain by morning and by 10am today the skies had cleared and it is a beautiful day!