It's been weeks since the fire came right to her door, and they are hoping to save these big old trees.
We also did some cooking this week. It was fun to get together with Denisa's sister and make an old family favorite.
That's a big plate of veranika--a hearty German dish that our Grandmother used to make for us. She often called them "cheese pockets" for the dry curd cheese that is inside.
Mark also did some windshield repair. We had two big chips in our motor home windshield, and two sizable chips on the car. For the price of a $10 repair kit and a full morning of work, he successfully filled all four chips, plus some little indentions he found when scraping the windshields. It wasn't easy, especially when applying the resin to the motor home windshield. Mark found that because it is straight up and down--not slightly slanted like car windshields--it was harder to get the resin to stay in the chipped holes. We tried to take pictures of his finished project, but he did such a good job that the camera couldn't find the imperfection. Good work Mark!
Mark is also doing other work to get us ready to hit the road. He's checking the tire pressure and the fluid levels of the car and motor home. That's because we're ready to get on the road for our summer travels!
So even though we enjoy the big panhandle sunsets, we're ready to go some place cooler for the summer.
With temperatures forecast to be up to 100 degrees next week, we are glad to be heading to the mountains! The first leg of our journey was over some mighty narrow roads with no shoulders or center line.
That's the first 18 miles of our journey, and that narrow road is taking us to Denisa's Mother's house. In fact, on the way we pass by the one-room school house where both of Denisa's parents went to school from first grade through eighth grade back in the 1930's. After using them as a community church for many years, it's sad to see that the buildings are in such disrepair now.
In this trip to the mountains, we have a stowaway coming with us. After sheltering at home and isolating since the pandemic started, Denisa's Mother was really looking forward to a vacation. But where can a 90-year-old with underlying medical conditions go on vacation? She can do what we are doing--sheltering in place in a motor home. She got the co-pilot seat for the drive.
This drive took us the length of the Oklahoma panhandle, and then into New Mexico.
The speed limit suddenly changed when we crossed the state line. Even though the road is straight and level and desolate, the speed limit is now 60 miles per hour during the rest of our trip.
After close to three hours on the road, we stopped for the night in Clayton, New Mexico. We had plans for this stop that included some prehistoric animals. When we took these pictures in downtown Clayton, Denisa's Mother commented that she was about as old as a dinosaur.
We made plans to take these dinosaur pictures this evening, and then go to Clayton Lake State Park early the next morning when it was cooler. The sign next to these statues states that this state park is, "one of the best dinosaur track sites in the world." We wanted to see the 500 fossilized dinosaur footprints, made from at least 8 kinds of animals over 100 million years ago. Discovered in 1982, these well-preserved tracks are visible on Clayton Lake's spillway. So we were super disappointed to find out this evening that the state park is closed on weekdays right now.
Not only was the state park closed, but so was the place that we had researched and where we wanted to get take-out food during our one night stop. We should get used to this, since we have been disappointed by closures over and over since the pandemic started. But it feels good to do a little work, and to be back on the road once again.
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