Two new rules

September 16 , 2009
Carlyle Lake U.S. Army Corp of Engineers campground

Sandy and I decided on two rules today.

Rule #1. If we walk into a local restaurant at 12:20 for lunch and only one table is occupied then we are to turn around and walk out. More later.

Rule #2. Take the camera with. If we don't, we are sure to miss a photo opportunity.

Even though we are on a permanent vacation, we still have to do such necessary stuff
like grocery shopping. So we got out the trusty Garmin (we call him Jack). Yes! sometimes he doesn't know Jack _ _ _ _! So we got Jack to take us into the closest town for groceries.

On the way there we saw a farm stand selling corn, so we figured we'd stop there on the way back. More later.

I told Sandy that I'd buy lunch and we saw this little place next to the village hall and went inside. At first I was impressed because they had real linen table cloths. That was the best part. End of story.

I also had to make a stop at a hardware store and bought a small brass nut for .22 cents. When we were driving yesterday we heard a flapping noise (like something loose) coming from the roof. The guy from Direct TV who visited us in Cary to connect us to a dish about 2 months ago, opened the dome over the roof-mounted Track Star system and did not tighten the bolts after he was done looking around. The vibration of driving loosened the bolts even more and the nut holding one bolt came loose. The 22 cent replacement nut -- plus tightening the other seven solved the problem. I used some of Sandy's clear nail polish to seal each nut in place so that they can't come loose.

Today was great.

I am including three photos. The first is of a very large parking lot, the next is a view of where we are parked and the last one is taken from a window of the motor home.

Here is the story on the parking lot. First, my photo does not do it justice. It could easily hold 500 cars. In 5 hours two trucks and about 4 guys completly covered it with a sticky black oil and then spread limestone chips over the oil. In the Chicago area, this would have taken six trucks, 12 men, three days and a column by John Kass to finish the job.

Here is the story on the farm stand. We did return to it. Every ear of corn we picked up was loaded with worms. It was a pay via the "honor system" -- probably because the farmer was ashamed to collect money fact to face. We did not buy any corn, but we got a really large bundle of fire wood for three bucks.

The firewood made a nice fire and we had s'mores in the evening.

Highlight of the day: No problems! And we made friends with Katie, the Black Lab/Airdale mix dog at the adjacent campsite.