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While Amanda slept and Evan worked, Tommy and I went for a drive. We actually had a destination in mind on this drive. We were trying to find a sawmill that had beetle-killed pine. Tommy is going to build us a TV stand for NC. We found the mill and were lucky enough to find the guy who owns it. So he and Tommy made a deal for some wood which we will pick up on Sunday. After leaving there we looked at the map to see what sights were close. Lake Hattie and Twin Buttes were fairly close so we headed that way. Along the way, Tommy started yelling, “Camera, camera, camera!” I don’t know what I was looking at—maybe the beautiful countryside—but when I looked out the front window there was a cattle drive. Good thing I travel with the camera in my lap.

Twin Buttes

Lake Hattie. This picture does not come close to showing how incredibly blue the lake was. Simply beautiful!

I love cow faces so when we saw these close to the side of the road Tommy pulled over so I could take some pictures. When I got out of the truck they all came over to the fence to see me.

Since the kids had something to do that night, we got a picnic lunch together and went to find trains.

Amanda, Tommy, Bubba, Moose and I (Evan had to work) went up to one of my favorite places on earth—the Snowy Range. It is absolutely gorgeous there.

One of my goals in going to the Snowies during the summer is to find wildflowers. They seems to be blooming later this year because of the cold winter they had here.

We went for a short walk and had to stop to take a “family” picture, minus the photographer.

Another goal is to see a moose. We didn’t see one on the way up to the Snowy Range so we decided to drive on towards Saratoga. These, obviously, are not moose but they made such a pretty picture.

We finally gave up and turned around to head back to town. And wouldn’t you know it, we found two having lunch:

We stopped and had a picnic lunch at a roadside picnic area and then headed back home.

After a good night’s sleep we got up and started getting ready to get on the road again. Tommy took Bubba out and as he was walking back he saw that we had a flat tire. Unfortunately, it was about 6:30 a.m. local time. The clerk at the hotel told Tommy that his best friend’s dad owned a Firestone in town that opened at 7:30 a.m. So we packed up, after Tommy put the spare on the truck, and headed to town. We filled up with gas and then went to get some breakfast. We ended up at Kathy’s Kafe at the Ogalalla Sale Barn, otherwise known as the stockyard. The breakfast sandwich was pretty good though.

After getting the tire fixed and put back on the truck we headed west and in just a little time were at Cabela’s. This is the one place that Tommy really likes to shop!

We arrived in Laramie about 1:00 p.m. very happy for that part of our journey to end.

We were glad to get up and on the road. Breakfast was at Shirley’s Dinner Bell where we had eaten before. Tommy went in and got us breakfast sandwiches—one with bacon and one with sausage. The sausage was awesome and was huge!

Somewhere along Hwy. 30 in Kansas we saw a lot of windmills in the distance. Tommy said, “Do you want to go find them?” I of course thought that was a silly question! We found the Brown Co. Ag Museum which had a few building (all of which were closed), some farm machinery and the windmills.

Still on Hwy. 30 we saw this old abandoned home. It was up on a bit of a hill so I had to stand in the back of the pickup on top of the cooler. I just love these old buildings and wonder who lived there and why they left.

If you look really closely right in the middle of this picture, you can see a crop duster plane. But what I really liked about this scene was how the rows were not straight.

I like old homes and buildings, Tommy likes old grain elevators.

We had to stop here!

We ended this day of driving in Ogalalla, NE, at a much more reasonable time.

We left home Saturday morning early with no particular destination in mind. Our route was to drive up the Great Illinois River Road but we didn’t know how far we would go or where we would stay for the night. We started the River Road in Cairo, IL which looked at one time to have been a fairly prosperous little town. No longer.

Along the way we stopped at Grand Tower for a picnic lunch. This was one of the few places that we were actually able to see the river. It was a nice little area but it sure was hot!

We passed through Chester, IL, which is the home of Popeye. Bet you didn’t know that!

Tommy saw this mailbox and we had to turn around and go back to take pictures. You have to look closely, but the mailbox itself is on a pulley that goes up to the top of the hill. I don’t know if the person who lives there is lazy, safety conscious because they live on a “highway” or physically unable to get down the hill to retrieve their mail, but it looked to be ingenious!

By the afternoon we needed to make a decision if we were going to continue on the River Road through St. Louis or head west. Since we hadn’t been too impressed with what we’d seen we thought we’d hit Highway 30 and go through Missouri and possibly spend the night in Jefferson City. Unfortunately we didn’t find hotels that allowed pets. No problem—we weren’t far from Columbia and a hotel we’d stayed at numerous times. So we headed north to Columbia and into a huge storm. We had to stop at a roadside park to make sure everything in the back of the truck was bagged up tight.

It was quite a storm and we saw lightning the likes of we’d never seen before. Wish I’d been able to capture it with the camera.

The hotel we normally stayed at was nowhere to be found—where did it go? No problem—Boonville was just 20 miles down the road and we’d stayed at the Comfort Inn there with Beau and Bubba. We continued on. Now it’s starting to get late and Tommy was pretty tired so we were really looking forward to stopping for the night. Well, that was not to be. The Comfort Inn was sold out and the guy there told us that he’d heard pretty much everything between Boonville and Kansas City was sold out. Not entirely believing him we continued on and stopped at a few hotels. They were sold out. We eventually got to St. Joseph at midnight and got the last room at the Days Inn. We were pooped! And sleeping on the 2” mattress didn’t help.

we lost a husband, father, grandfather, brother, nephew, uncle, cousin and to all a very dear friend.

I was invited to volunteer to take photos at the Chattahoochee Nature Center’s Butterfly Festival this past Sunday. While the butterfly release was a bit of a disappointment–I expected lots more and lots bigger butterflies to be released–it was a fun afternoon. I think the most enjoyable part of it was watching the kids’ faces.

We took a drive on the Parkway this morning looking for flowers. Every time we’d see some really good ones they were at a place that we could not pull over. Here’s one that I’ve never seen before. It looks like it has tiny white polka dots on it.

On our way back down to the house we stopped at Albert’s rock yard. He said he had some Turk’s Cap Lilies that he was going to plow up and if we were interested we could come get them. We got those, some dark red Bee Balm and some Black Eyed Susans. I, of course, had my camera handy and found this dragonfly:

I love being able to sit outside in the middle of July and the temperature be at about 75. This is one of my favorite views:

But did you know that they eat poop?

We took a ride to the Fish Hatchery with Anne and Cleg yesterday. On our drive over we pulled into a trail parking lot because we saw lots of butterflies flying around. We jumped out and found several groups on the ground. As we got close to them we saw that they were eating poop. Guess there weren’t enough flowers around to get pollen. Hmmm…….