Here, There & Everywhere

We spent the night in McCook, Nebraska on our second night out. We enjoyed a thunderstorm that rolled into town about the same time we did. Dinner was at the Taste of Texas BBQ and was really good. Friday morning we took off towards Laramie.

When we got to Sterling, Colorado, we saw the following sign. Enough said!

As we traveled through Sterling we saw something we had not seen in quite a while–someone using a pay phone.
Somewhere in Colorado we saw wheat being harvested. These machines are huge!
We arrived in Laramie about 2:00 local time. We unpacked and took Seamus out of his crate. Although at first look, Seamus wasn’t sure about us and hesitated about coming out. Evan got home and then we picked up Amanda from her work and headed to the Farmers’ Market. While there I finally got a picture of a sunflower like I’d been looking for. I guess they don’t grow them this big in the fields–not that I ever found a field of sunflowers. :(

After spending the night at our usual hotel–Ramada–in St. Joe, we ate breakfast at Shirley’s Dinner Bell in Troy, Kansas.
We saw this church in Kansas and liked the way it looked.

Another neat building we saw. Note the safe outside on the sidewalk. Guess there was nothing in it!
We saw this truck for sale. Initially, we thought it said the price was $67.00. We turned around to see it better and saw the price was really $767.00. We thought possibly Marc would like to buy it.
This is a beautiful wildflower that we thought was a dandelion. While it may be, it was about the size of a baseball. It really was very pretty.
A picture of Tommy and Kerry at the geographic center of the United States. How many of you can say you’ve been there? By the way, road ended right here!
A really neat, but abandoned old house in northeast Colorado. It looked like someone of means owned this house at one time. The cows still like it.

Not much to see or talk about from our first day on the road. The first day, from Atlanta to St. Joseph, MO, is always the hardest and longest. As we were driving over Monteagle (just north of Chattanooga) we looked

Those are the words for Anne and Cleg as they take Bubba for us while we go on our Wyoming Road Trip.

As you can see from this picture, Bubba is a very talented Beagle. He has 3 chew toys in his mouth (his record is 5). We fully expect by the time we get back from our trip that Bubba will add to his talents. Hopefully he will learn how to play well with others, go for boat and kayak rides and maybe even swim. Well, maybe not swim, but float with his new life preserver his Aunt Anne bought for him.

Thank you Anne and Cleg. We know he couldn’t be in better hands! :)

We went down to Brevard for the 4th of July celebration and saw this little guy checking out one of the antique cars.
When we returned to BG, I took the camera out for a little bit and got this shot of one of our daylilies.
Sara and Ed came up to the house Friday afternoon. They brought with them some good steaks and really good wine. So with the steak, wine, hash browns and Tommy’s blackberry cobbler we were stuffed!

Hall came up on Saturday morning and joined us all for bacon and french toast and for a group picture.

We had originally planned on heading home tomorrow, but may decide to spend one more day here. It’s so nice to be away from the heat and traffic of home.

We are back in Balsam Grove. The weather is gorgeous. I got a little chilly last night and we woke up to 54 degrees. Hard to believe it’s July 3rd!

We plan to go to the arts and crafts festival in downtown Brevard tomorrow. Sara and Ed are planning on meeting us there and then following us back to BG. They will spend the night and then go back home on Saturday.

JC and Cathy are also here. They went into town today to the big used book sale. Cathy does like her books. :)

I sure wish I was going to see some fireworks tonight. I can’t remember the last time I saw some. Tommy said that he hopes no “idiots” try to set some off around here since it’s so dry.

We ate our first tomato from the garden last night. It was so yummy! Unfortunately, it was a fairly small tomato so we didn’t get much. I’m dreaming of tomato and bacon sandwiches–can’t wait!

I got my new camera strap. It is so cute! It actually matches a pair of Tevas that I have. Won’t I look cool when I’m out and about with my camera??

Also, for those of you who haven’t seen, I got a haircut. I’m liking it a lot, but think I want the back to be a bit shorter and more angled.

Here’s the view from the deck. It has been absolutely beautiful here, although we could use some rain.
JC, Cathy, Brenda and Dave (JC’s sister and brother-in-law) came up on Saturday. We had a nice time visiting with them. After they left on Sunday, Tommy and I were pretty lazy.
Yesterday, we went up on the Parkway in the search of wildflowers. We have not had much luck with timing this year. We missed the rhododendrons earlier and we’re too early for the Parkway flowers. Maybe we’ll see some next week when we come up to celebrate the 4th of July. We did stop by Sliding Rock and were a bit surprised to see people sliding. It was pretty cool and the water had to have been really cold.