Many Things to Celebrate - Sun., May 12

Happy Mother's Day. Happy 23rd anniversary to us. Happy birthday to Aaron and Iain. Many celebrations today.

Bob and I went our separate ways this morning. He ran 10 miles on the Riverwalk, and I hiked five miles at Government Canyon Natural Area with Hill Country Hikers. Both of us enjoyed our respective forms of exercise.

The hiking group started at 8:00 a.m. and we did five miles in two hours. Quite a few new hikers joined in today. I think we had about 15 people. Today's hike was a walk in the park - mostly level, easy trails with just a few rock and root trippers.

Hiking down into the canyon.

A portion of the canyon floor.

Brown-eyed Susans and blue-star

Bunny frozen in place.

Prairie larkspur.

Government Canyon State Natural Area - A path we didn't take.

Another 2.5 mile hike was next on a different trail in the park. We could opt out of the shorter hike and three of us did. After 8.8 miles yesterday, I felt five miles was enough for today. My feet thanked me profusely for not adding blisters.

I went back to the 5er (5th wheel trailer). Bob had not returned from his run. I started making our anniversary brunch thinking he'd return at any time. He came in the door with just enough time to shower before brunch was ready. I made scrambled eggs with sauteed mushrooms and avocado, heated refried beans, and cut up strawberries.

We relaxed for the rest of the day and had Papa John's Pizza for dinner while we watched the Survivor finale. I was very happy Cochran won.

I hope all the moms had a great Mother's Day celebration.

Travel Bug out.

We Earned Our Pay Today! -- Sun., May 13

Cotulla, Texas:
Happy Mother's Day to Mom and all my friends and relatives who are mothers!  I hope you enjoyed a nice relaxing day today, maybe with flowers, massage, chocolate, or a meal at a good restaurant.

This was, by far, our busiest day. We have two "pads" at our gate. Today both pads were up and fully functional. On my night shift I may have between 12-20 trucks from 3 pm to 3 am. Today, I had 54 incoming trucks. Bob gets the brunt of the check-ins during the day, I think he filled out seven log sheets today compared to my 2-1/2 pages of log sheets. But I do log out a number of the trucks he logged in during the day, so my count is a bit higher than 54 as I overlap with him...but who's counting?

All kinds of trucks came in today. We had trucks lined up on the road, trucks coming and going right at the gate. Inside, our gate road splits into a "T": Pad A is to the left and Pad B is to the right. Most of the big equipment was headed for Pad A to do cold tubing.

There was a time today when a huge trailer with wide load was trying to get up on the B Pad. Three sand trucks were waiting to come out. The huge "Wide Load" semi with trailer had to back down by our fifth wheel to let the three sand trucks out, then had to back up and do a three-point turn by the gate to get turned around again. By this time another sand truck was ready to leave. The two trucks were tete-a-tete and neither wanted to back up. One of the crew on the pad had the sand truck back off. It was that kind of day.

The weather the past two days has been beautiful...mid 80s, blue sky with white puffy clouds. Nice.

I love sitting outside in the late afternoon while watching the gate. I'm in the shade right next to our generator aka "bird feeder." All afternoon, I have birds (Bewick's wren, mockingbird, a pair of cardinals) coming to catch the insects on the ground by the generator. There are still some birds I haven't identified, probably because my Audubon book is the Western Edition.

Bob is such a wonderful man. For our anniversary yesterday, tucked into the card, was a packet of seeds for "Forget-Me-Nots." He knows I love to garden, but don't want any plants in the 5er for now. I can plant these seeds out in the soil behind our 5er and we can water them with our gray water. Hopefully we won't have any more major rainstorms that dump inches of water at a time. I don't think forget-me-nots are very hardy flowers. The seeds take 4-6 weeks to become flowers, so we should still be here to see a pretty display.

I forgot to mention, on the day I went into town to do laundry, a roadrunner "ran" (more like sauntered) across the road in front of my car. I had to stop to let him cross. He didn't seem to be in a hurry.

That's all folks!