We've been back in Arkansas since about the middle of April, but we didn't move back into our house until July 14. In the meantime, we've been enjoying stays at several other places: the month and a half at the lake cabin we wrote about, a month in an apartment in town and near the bicycle trails during June, then ten days housesitting for friends/neighbors two doors away from my house for the first 11 days of July, then three days at our nearer (next door) neighbor's lake house with them and grandchildren.
First, a few pictures from Andy and Julie's place where we house sat. They like gardening. While there we enjoyed flowers, vegetables and fruits from their garden.
We earned our keep by watering plants and mowing, feeding their chickens and being good buddies with their aging dog - Buzz.
Then, after we brought them home from the airport, we headed next door to John and Judith's where we followed them up their place on Beaver Lake.
We spent a good bit of the time there down on the dock where we all took turns swimming.
On Sunday afternoon, John took Tom and Destiny out on the tube. We wondered how Tom would do, but he seemed as pleased as Destiny to be spinning along on the top of the water.
When John and Judith and kids went back to Fayetteville on Sunday, they let us stay in the lake house that night so we could time our arrival into our own place just right: Monday night. That's when I found myself hanging out on the deck.
Now, we've been here in my house for about five days. We've been very busy unpacking things from the storage room and putting them away. We do notice that animals have gotten real comfortable living on our property while we were away.
Sometime during this time, Tom and I went camping (vans and motor homes) with my brother John and his wife Brenda down at a park on the Arkansas River. We spent lots of time fishing and catching fish. And bicycling the back roads and playing gin rummy. Generally just having a good time together.
And one Sunday, when Tom didn't feel like doing much, I went out to one of my personal favorite spots, King River Falls. Here is where I usually get my first swim of the year and it worked out that way again this year, only it was in late June rather than May. A natural swimming hole with water fall and above it little pools holding water to dabble in.
Now we're to a place where we're about to leave this area. Usually, in Arkansas, it's hot in July and August. And Tom's son Jon has some weeks free to travel. So we plan to meet him up in Wyoming around July 27. There he and Tom will travel some backroads in Jon's jeep and I'll hold down the fort while checking out the local scenery and maybe getting in some drawing and violin (yes, you read that right) practice. After a week or two, Tom and I will head over to Arizona to see an area where my late aunt Betty lived, a little town up in the mountains near the Colorado/New Mexico border. We should be home in the middle of August.
Below is the house we live in. Hard to leave after we just got settled in, but it will be here waiting, projects and all, for when we get back.
