2-26-2015 COLOGNE, GERMANY

COLOGNE, GERMANY 2-26-2015

Before I leave Holland (or the Netherlands), I have another story to tell you.  Here, Christmas is called St. Niklaas Feest, and happens on Dec. 6^th, not the 25^th.  On this day, ol’ St. Niklaas, in a long white beard, arrives in his robes styled like a Bishop, with a miter and scepter.  He is accompanied by his assistants who are called Zwarte Piets.  The assistants are not tiny elves but full-sized.  St. Niklaas arrives on a white horse followed by his “black piets” who carry sacks filled with treats (or coal, if you’re naughty).  The piets know which children have been good and give those treats, candy and cookies.  But, if you’ve been naughty, the piets might grab you and throw you in one of their sacks, so you better watch out, you better not cry.  He sees you!  The piets are black because when they visit the houses, they come down the chimney so they are usually covered with soot.  There are parades through the towns with St. Niklaas leading followed by piets, performers in black-face and big red lips, toting their sacks.  That is, until recently.  The locals have decided that black-face is incorrect and racist and so now, the zwarte piets are no longer zwarte.  They paint their faces orange or, wait for it, rainbow!  Political correctness run amok is now alive and well in Holland (or the Netherlands).

The boat sailed all night and made good time, arriving in Cologne 2 ½ hours ahead of schedule.  I ran

MS River Harmony

into the captain in the hall and asked, “You kicked in the turbos or what?”  He laughed and explained.  When the water is high (due to rain and snow melt), he can make good time because there is less technical maneuvering to do amid the big cargo barges, their tugs and other tour boats.  And although we were running against the current, the water is quite high now so, in a word, Captain Marian kicked some serious ass last evening. 

Chef Nicu - I like standing
next to this guy!

At 9AM this morning, it was time to attend stollen class presented by Head Chef Nicu and the pastry chef.  Nicu was very funny and I learned a lot.  For example, when kneading the dough, do not use extra flour, it makes the bread dry.  Also, do not knead on a hard surface but on a table cloth, for the same reason. 

Making stollen

Mom used to make stollen I know, but I don’t think she used crushed almonds nor did she soak the raisins in rum, that I remember.  It turned out very good so I guess now I have another experiment to perform at home.  But I’ll use pecans and try soaking some dried blueberries in rum along with the raisins!

Afterward, we were off on a walking tour on the cobblestone lanes into Cologne, about 2 miles to and fro, peering into the shops, admiring the old architecture and ending up in front of the Cologne Cathedral.  It is breathtakingly huge and beautiful.  The construction of this monster began in the 1200s and took 600 years to complete.  (Sounds like Boeing.)  During WWII, although most of the city was obliterated, the Allies took particular care not to bomb near this spectacular landmark.  The cathedral is the final resting place of the Three Wise Men. 

Cologne Cathedral

Tomb of The Three Wise Men

You can view the elaborate gold tomb that holds these relics.  This is all “in theory,” of course, since no one knows the DNA of the Three Wise Men, but Cologne owns this lore and there ain’t no fuzz on it.  (We do know that the Three Wise Men (and the camels they rode in on) arrived late, Jan. 6^th, to the birthday party at the stable in Bethlehem because they refused to ask for directions.  Wise men, indeed.)

Cathedral Christmas Market

Cologne is the first of the Christmas Markets featured on this trip.  Let the festivities begin!  Lunch on the ship?  We think not.  A hot bratwurst on a crusty bröchen and a hot cup of glüwein, please.  What is glüwein, you ask?  It is a hot drink of spices, cider and wine.  You can also add other superchargers, such as rum or amaretto.  It is everywhere in the marketplace.  It warms the fingers, tummy and soul and puts a “glow” on the cheeks, as the name suggests.  Since it was in the 40s, the glüwein was most welcome!  Much more to come on the Christmas markets!

Rob at the Weihnachtsmarkt

Gluwein!

Happy Thanksgiving!  The good River Harmony crew decorated everywhere with American flags and served us a traditional turkey dinner this evening and pumpkin pie for dessert!  Thank God the founding fathers changed their minds about making the turkey our nation’s symbolic bird.   What would we have eaten on Thanksgiving, eagle?  Gross!  Probably tastes like dead fish!

Thanksgiving Day in Yurrup 

11-25-15 Nijmegen, Holland

NIJMEGEN, HOLLAND 11-25-2015

We had enough frequent flyer miles to fly first class on our Delta 767.  The cabin is spacious and our seats had every adjustment up to, but not including, upside down.  When cocktails, appetizers and three course meals drew to a close, it was lights out.  The seats articulate and fold all the way down flat with your feet extended into the space where carry-ons are normally stowed under the seat ahead.  Later, when they awakened the passengers for breakfast, we had slept maybe an hour and a half or so.  By the time we disembarked in AMS, were gathered up and bussed to the ship and settled into our suite, I was so jetlagged and exhausted that I was dizzy.  We tried to nap but I didn’t have enough energy to fall asleep.  Finally, later in the afternoon, we managed a couple of hours of nap time to recharge our batteries and after that, we made it to evening.

Rob on the stairway with Santa

Harriet and Allen Lewis live in Boston.  They own this cruise line.  The MS (Motor Ship) River

Harmony dining room

Harmony is a beautiful old ship built in 1999 and detailed in dark wood, brass and lighted crystal chandeliers and sconces.  The addition of sparkling Christmas decorations reflects and creates nearly a fairyland.  It is hypnotic.  Our room is a bit small but it has floor-to-ceiling windows and a step-out balcony.  There is a table in the center of the room and sofas along each wall that are actually twin Murphy beds furnished with big fluffy pillows and down-doobie-down-down doovays.  During the dinner hour, the room attendant folds down our beds and places a mint on our pillows.  The staff is polite and friendly in the extreme and the experience is really luxurious.

Our stateroom 408 with
jetlagged occupant

One of the choices at din din last night was a fish called, “klip.”  We are not familiar with this fish and so, of course, we had to try it.  It tastes a little like cod, white and tender and flaky.  So now, we have another fish to add to our list.

The captain sailed all night and we passed through a few locks.  During our safety briefing, the captain explained that if we are the type that likes to watch the ship go through locks, please do not lean out to look down.  The walls of one of the locks are 38’ apart and the beam of the harmony is 36.5.’  That means we enter the locks with a shoehorn and a generous 9” to spare on either side of the ship.  Hanging one’s head over the side could possibly be hazardous to your health.  During the night, the ship glided through the water almost imperceptibly but on a couple of occasions, there was a “thud!”  I didn’t jump up to look but my guess is the lovely boat bumped into the walls of the locks so I guess I’m glad I wasn’t sticking my head outboard.

We are docked today in Nijmegen (pronounced nigh-make-in), Holland.  Er…the Netherlands?  I am not getting a straight story on the difference between all these countries.  They get pretty cranky about it, so it is safest to simply not mention anything.  We took a walking tour this morning and it was biting cold and raining and we desert rats did not appreciate it one bit.  (In fact, it has been raining since we landed.  This area of the world has an average of 230 days of rain per year.  Good grief.)  During the Nazi occupation, all the Jews in this town were eliminated. 

Weeping woman & plaques

There is a monument of a weeping woman in the town and plaques with the names of every one of them.  The cold gray drizzle added a quiet sad note to this encounter, as if the skies were weeping as well.  Nijmegen was pummeled pretty badly during WWII and much of the town destroyed, partly I assume because it is a port town built at the confluence of the Rhine and Waal Rivers.    The citizens rebuilt the bombed out town and so it is a mix of very old architecture adjacent to more modern structures. 

Typical cobblestone street in
Nijmegen

St. Stephen Cathedral

The construction of St. Stephen Cathedral was begun in 1200 and was completed 400 years later, presumably not by the same crew.  The streets are narrow cobblestone and rock and very slippery.  We were cold to the bone when the tour ended and we were happy to come back to the ship, sip a hot chocolate and thaw out.

INTRO YURRUP CHRISTMAS TRIP 11-23-2015

INTRODUCTION TO THE YURRUPEAN CHRISTMAS TRIP 2015

Last Summer, while on the quest to find something special to do to celebrate our anniversary, Rob and I came across a river trip the cost of which was absolutely too good to be true.  (People celebrate getting married?  Seriously?)  Since Yurrup at Christmas has been on Lindy’s bucket list for decades and Rob never minds the occasional trip abroad, we could not refuse.  The riverboat departs Amsterdam on November 24^th and sails down the Rhine to Basel, Switzerland stopping at the “Weinachtsmärktes” along the way until we disembark on December 4^th.

Airline tickets were another matter and we struggled to find arrangements out of Vegas.  Finally, we gave up and tried LAX.  Turns out there are a bazillion flights from LAX to AMS and it’s not entirely inconvenient for us, only 250 mi. from home.  A big upside:  our friend, Craig, opened his Huntington Beach home and parking to us and thus it all fell nicely into detent.

1640 NOV. 15, 2015

This girl cannot imagine that Christmastime at the homestead would pass without celebration.  So in August, the green flag waved and I was off like a prom dress.  On our long list were presents, wrapping and packing to ship, cards and decorations along with preparations for the trip.  A turkey even got brined, vacuum packed and frozen along with the dressing and gravy.  And there you have it and here we are on Day 1 of this adventure with Christmas all ready to roll at 1640 when we get back.

Down the river after some time, we stop in Strasbourg, France.  Or maybe not.  The Muslim problem?  We are a bit apprehensive but the Grand Circle Cruise Lines staff assures us that all is well and frankly, I don’t think France has a corner on this particular market.  A little more complicated is our 11 day car trip after the cruise that we tacked on to visit 5 more German cities.  We invited SEAL Team Six to join us but so far, they haven’t gotten back on that.  And of course, all points east of the Atlantic Ocean are gun-free zones (well, except for the murderers), so that leaves us a little, shall we say, empty-handed.  Rob rented an Audi.  I would have rented an M1-A1.  Slower on the autobahn, true, but the Audi doesn’t have a turret.  Anyway, our destiny is in the hands of those above our pay grade. 

There is this wise man, you know who I mean, he’s bald and he wears a sheet and sits on a pillow and says heavy stuff.  I think he’s the Karmann Ghia or something like that.  He said, “If you are depressed, you are living in the past.  If you are anxious, you are living in the future.  If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” 

OK, what he said, but I do have a question.  What if in the present, your house is burning down, your riverboat is sinking or your airplane is being hijacked.  It’s OK to feel a little anxious, in these cases, right?

So, with all these preliminaries documented, we are packed and Craig delivered us to the curb at the terminal.  Let the excitement begin

THE SLEIGH DELIVERS US
TO LAX O'DARK THIRTY

Mom

MOM

Brothers and sisters,

This is a little collage I put together.  The blog is the easiest way to send these pictures to you.  It was fun to create this and I hope you will enjoy them, also.

Love,

Lin

1953

1937

1

1938

1958

1968

1973

1975

7-10-2015 St. George, UT

Brigham Young was born in 1801, the son of a veteran of the Revolutionary War.  He had 11 days of formal education and his mom taught him to read.  He learned to work with glass and wood and that came in handy when he started building cities and temples.  In fact, he gave Miles Romney, Mitt’s great grandpa, pointers on how to modify the lovely spiral staircases in the St. George Tabernacle. Miles was insulted, by the way, because he considered those staircases his “crowning achievement.” Once again, management trumps talent.  Anyway, back to the story.

 Brigham Young wasn’t born a Mormon, that book fell into his hands when he was 29 years old.  I’m guessing that he believed in polygamy since he wound up fathering 57 kids and I don’t think any one wife would’ve put up with that!  In fact, he had at least one wife with whom he didn’t have kids so we know that at least a few of them must have thrown the horny old goat off a couple of times.

He lived in Salt Lake, mostly, but had pretty bad health toward the end and became a “snowbird,” building a home in St. George for the winter months.

Brigham Young's winter home & Old Rob

This original home still stands and is furnished with quite a few pieces that were owned by the Young family, including their china and furniture made of

pine table painted to look
like mahogany

pine and painted to look like oak and mahogany.  He lived in this home only a few years, dying in 1877.

pine balcony painted to look
like oak

There are numerous historical places still standing and in operation in St. George.  One is the Thomas Judd Store Co., a mercantile that traded in just about everything but mostly candy and other treats.  It is still open for business, featuring a soda fountain, baskets of old candies and wooden cases of bottled soda.  They will prepare an ice cream cone or make you a root beer float.  Back then, they also pumped Dixie gasoline.

OH NO!  A "Dixie" gas pump

 (The name Dixie is prevalent around here but there are a bunch of liberals in this town who now think that the name “Dixie” should be eliminated, all that reference to confederacy and slavery, don’tchaknow.  Fortunately, so far, they have been outvoted and roundly chastised.)

Inside Judd's Store

The Mormons were a hard-working lot, like ants.  The Morris House, for example, was scheduled for demolition but it was decided to move the house instead and rescue nearly a century of history.  Power lines were even taken down to allow the flatbed containing the house to pass.  On the final lap, the flatbed tripped over a curb, an axle broke, tie-down cables snapped and the whole house collapsed in a heap.  The people were devastated and painstakingly reassembled the home one brick at a time.  Another fellow, Benjamin Pendleton, wanted a home but only had 3 forms for making bricks.  So he made 3, waited for them to dry and cure, then made 3 more.  When he had enough bricks, he built his home.  Most of the old homes, including the Young Winter Home, were built to fend off the oppressive Summer heat with 18” thick walls.

Snow Canyon State Park is named for Erastus Snow who founded St. George and became the President of the Cotton Mission.  The park is an amazing display of lava flows and enormous red and white steeple formations, red containing ferric oxide and white lacking it.  The majesty and contrast against the deep blue sky is striking.

Snow Canyon State Park
 & red Jeepster

Snow Canyon State Park & red rocks

Careful where you step and do not piss off the constrictor king snake, one of which, Jake the Snake, lives in comfort and joy at the park ranger’s office after a car sort of flattened a few feet of him.  Another animal is one you will not see, the chuckwalla.  So many tourists have captured and kidnapped them for pets that the poor iguana-like creature has been all but eliminated from the wildlife population of the park.  This speaks volumes to those who would hug trees and “preserve nature.” You can’t buy an iguana, you have to swipe one from the wilderness?  How do you cuddle up with a lap-iguana, anyhow?  Maybe Little Iggy sleeps on your pillow?

We are having so much fun that we scheduled 2 additional days, first, to play pickleball.  As for the courts, 12 more are materializing before our eyes at Little Valley.  Their goal is 24 courts and then they will qualify for senior and other national competitions.  Three to four hours of play for 7 days straight and I am wasted!  I am also exhausted from playing pickleball.

The other reasons we had to stay extra days are, second, we had to eat one more time at Cappeletti’s.  Third, we had to attend the Hubcaps oldies concert

Rockin' out to The Hubcaps
in the St. George Tabernacle

in the Mormon Tabernacle.  This evening, Jeremiah was not a prophet.   He was a bullfrog wearing blue suede shoes in a tabernacle!  The gray-haired elderly brothers (and sisters) snapped their fingers and sang all the words!  Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!  God, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles and Elvis were in the building tonight rocking out on the altar!

Well, it is time to activate Bee’s homing device.  These are all the words I have left in my fingers so good bye for now , my faithful t-loggers, and hello Pahrump.

7-7-2015 St. George, Utah

The troublemaker Mormons were booted out of the Midwest.  They were making lots of babies and changing the voting block.  (Today, this is apparently OK.    Ahem.)  So the government told the Mormons to make themselves scarce.  They decided not to move to another occupied place and face more problems, they needed to go to the middle of nowhere where they could do their own thing without any interference.  Which is where Utah came in.  Utah was out in the middle of nowhere and not even in the USA.  So they got these wooden carts that had two wheels and two handles, like rickshaws, and walked to Utah.  Yes, they walked to Utah from Illinois.  The women wore long petticoats and dresses and got pregnant a lot and the men… well, they entertained themselves by getting the women pregnant, for example.  I would have needed to live in Utah really, really bad.

Joseph and Hiram Smith were murdered in a jail in IL (So much for freedom of religion.) so Brigham Young took over and started the emigration ~1846.  St. George was populated ~ 1861.  The families who moved to St. George decided it sucked and started getting restless to move back to Salt Lake so Brigham Young tasked them to build a tabernacle.

St. George Tabernacle

They all thought that was a good idea and it brought everybody together to focus on a project.
It took 13 years to build it and they were kind of poor so they used pine instead of pricey woods like oak.  A craftsman painter taught the folks how to paint the pine so every square inch of everything everywhere was painted with different shades of brown to look like oak, cherry and mahogany.

Pine painted to look like oak in the tabernacle

Painted pine in Brigham Young's home

The tabernacle has a lot of glass, 2,244 panes, that were shipped from NY.  They knew the glass would not survive the bumpy ride across the plains so the glass was put on a ship and sailed around the tip of S. America to Los Angeles and then carted on wagons to St. George.  A lot of the glass panes in the tabernacle are the original pieces, swirled and blurry with age.

Silver was found a short distance from St. George and a community of miners was established at Silver Reef.  They were mostly Catholics.  Fr. Scanlan wanted to hold a high mass for his Catholic flock but they had no church so Brother McFarlane offered them the use of the Mormon Tabernacle.  The Catholics didn’t have a choir to sing the hymns that fit into various parts of the liturgy so the Mormon choir learned all the hymns in Latin and the big event, the Catholic mass, took place on May 29, 1879 in the St. George Mormon Tabernacle.  There were more curious Mormons at the ceremony than there were Catholics.  By the way, there are Mormon churches, tabernacles and temples and I have no clue as to the difference but if I find out, you’ll be the first to know.

Augustus Hardy was the town sheriff in the 1860s.

Sheriff Augustus Hardy (L)

A miner went postal and murdered the foreman at Silver Reef so Sheriff Hardy arrested him and had him behind bars at the Hardy House where the little quarry rock jail was located.

Jail where guilty prisoners were
apparently baked to death

This pissed off an unruly mob that broke into the Hardy House, stole the keys to the jail and kidnapped the prisoner.  He was taken out and hanged, probably from a tree, since there was a copula added to the courthouse building for hangings but it was never used.  Sheriff Hardy was pissed, too.  He had a prisoner stolen from his jail.  Prisoners are often thieves but thieves are not usually stolen.

In Spain, if you want to stop in at a saloon and have a beer, you have to order food to go with it.  They call it a “tapa” because you put the snack on a plate and set it on top of your beer like a cover.  Well, St. George, Utah has established the same rule.  If you want to stop in for a cold beer, you MUST order food to go with it.  I like this.  Don’t outlaw beer, inlaw food!  Good idea.  So we broke up the tour of the city to stop in for a cold frosty and fries.  More to come.

7-4-2015 St. George, UT

The hail storm and deluge cleared up as suddenly as it had arrived.  These aren’t “normal” for this area but there are a lot of warning signs around for those who like to hike in the canyons and arroyos.  They don’t need to worry themselves about me.  I do not believe in snakes, spiders or gully washers, they all should be against the law.

The locals didn’t blink.  The 4th festivities went on as usual.  We went down to the biergarten but they didn’t believe I was 21 without an ID, those rascals.  So we found a different place to have a fine Italian dinner, Cappeletti’s.  An appetizer of insalata caprese was first.  The mozzarella was so freshly-made that the kind waitress apologized for the delay.  Freshly-made, like right now, not kidding.  The cheese is kneaded and then woven into a braid and submerged into a tub of hot water, then squeezed and sliced. The cheese on the salad was still warm, drizzled with fresh basalmic vinegar sauce and topped with freshly-made ground walnut and basil pesto.  It was divine!  Not even in Italy did I experience mozzarella fresh off the hoof or warm from the pot in the last 30 minutes (at least, not of which I am aware).  Escuisito!  The rest of our dinner and the accompanying chianti was also perfecto!

This morning we sang “Happy Birthday” to our wonderful USA.  There aren’t that many reasons to get up early, trust me, but getting a front row seat at the Fourth of July parade is a good one.  This was not the spectacle that occurs in Flagstaff, by any means.  It was over in an hour.  The parade, however, was rife with American flags, soldiers, military vehicles and one very old veteran who served in 3 wars; WWII, Korea and Viet Nam, just like Dad DeLaMare.  His birthday is today.  Happy birthday to you, too, brave soldier, and thank you.  (At the rv park, we also met John Burkholder.  He flew the Corsair 2 off of the Midway.  His dog’s name is “Midway.”  Thank you, too, John.)

After the parade, we went to Worthen Park to see what else was shaking.  There were lots of rides, food vendors and a bit of music.  Oh, and gaggles of little miniature Mormons in strollers.  Indeed, veritable herds of them.  These are little miniature conservative hatchlings.  This can only be a good thing and I enjoyed the feeling of being among birds of a feather.

Suddenly at the park, Rob’s antennae went up as he heard the familiar, “pop, pop, pop.”  What the…?  Do we hear pickleballs?  We followed the sound as it got louder until we found them!  Six courts!  Yay!  Home to Bee we scurried, changed into our game clothes, grabbed our gear and we were off like a dirty shirt!  An hour and a half later, in the heat and humidity, we couldn’t take one more swing.  Of course, we were playing against 30-somethings and they played our pants off (there’s a vision).  Now, we be bitten.  We had heard of other courts here and so went to have a look see.  These 12 are designer, complete with canopies for shade and, yes, a wind sock!  A wind sock, seriously?

Aerial view Little Valley

The plan is to add 16 more.  So far, we have come across 22 courts and Rob just found 14 more on the net.  We may have found a reason to move to Utah.  Not MANY reasons, A reason.  High taxes, our minority status as non-Mormons and the scarcity of saloons are sniggly problems.  (“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Wisconsin, anymore.”)  Granted, Utah has snow and temples.  At our age, snow is something you look at and gasp, “Wow, look how deep the snow is!” and then wait for it to melt.  I guess you wait in the temples since saloons are, shall we say, not so frequent whereas there are veritable gaggles of temples.  Many more than pickleball courts and without the windsocks.

Windsockless Temple

7-3-2015 4th of July in St. George, UT

7-3-2015 ST. GEORGE, UTAH

On the subject of “What to do over the 4th,” votes were tossed into the hat including our usual favorite, Flagstaff, where we’ve been several times for their 3 hour long parade and festivities in the local parks.  Rob’s research brought up St. George, Utah for the parade, craft fair and jazz festival in the park biergarten (in UTAH?!).  Lindy’s reply is ,”YUP!”  So we returned from the MSRA Cruise-In in St. Paul, spent just enough time (one week) recovering from the fever and cold I caught there, packed up Bee and embarked on the fairly short trip (~180 miles).  Logistically short, yes.  About 20 miles from our final destination, however, road construction brought us to a halt.  They are building a new bridge (Do it in the Summer or don’t do it at all, as we often say in the Midwest.) through the mountains and so it was an hour to travel the last few miles.  The tall red rocky crags were most beautiful,

if a little intimidating, with the tiny trickle of the Virgin River snaking its way far, far below.  Bee kept her cool in the 110F heat on the climb, always a little worrisome, and here we are at Temple View RV Resort, sitting on our porch, sipping a cold brew with a fine… er… view of the temple.

Why is it called St. George?  First, Joseph Smith started all that Mormon hullabaloo and he was the first President of the Mormon Church.  When he died, Brigham Young picked up the torch and agreed to export the troublesome Mormons out of the Midwest (mostly Illinois) and head out west.  Thus, the Emigrant Trail was born.  When I say “emigrant” it is because the Mormons were actually leaving the USA.  They settled in the Utah territory.  Joseph Smith’s cousin, George, was instrumental in the creation of St. George, or “Dixie” as it was nicknamed.  He and his buddies, apostles, were sent here with their wives (epistles) and 300 families to begin colonizing the area and start raising cotton crops (thus, “Dixie”), to supply themselves and to market the rest. George was called the “Potato Saint,” because he convinced people to eat raw unpeeled potatoes to fight scurvy, which apparently worked, all that vitamin A, don’tchaknow.  So at least one story says that St. George was named after George, Joseph Smith’s cousin.  They all call each other “saint,” which I kinda like.  Saint Krauser has a nice ring to it.

Today, we saw dinosaur tracks at the Dinosaur Discovery Site.  A guy named Sheldon Johnson was tilling his farm land and he had removed about 20 feet of rock layers (Would you have given up?) when some of them split open laterally.  Between the layers were all these footprints and fish bone

T. Rex (R) just for comparison

fossils, skeletons and even leaves and branches.  They hit the jackpot with this and now, for a fee of course, you can walk through their small museum to see it all up close and personal.  The dating on some artifacts indicate ages in the millions of years, in some cases 70-250 million years old.  Makes you kinda wonder why Adam and Eve got such a late start, eh?

Rob (on the R with the hat)

We’ve been scouting out the town and trying to figure out where we’ll situate ourselves for the grand parade tomorrow.  While doing this the sky turned rather black.  By the time we got back to Bee, we had ourselves a storm, rain and big hail.  The rv site we were originally going to choose, next to the one we are in, was submerged under a foot of water.  We got soaked to the bone battening down the hatches.  We even pulled the Jeepster up under the awning as much as possible to try to preclude hail damage.  I was a bit frightened.  Over the thunder, amid the gale force winds, Rob shouted frantically, “You want a beer?!”  “Well… yeah.  What’s a little hail?”

Hail to the Jeep