Spring has come early to Iowa this year.  The Pella Tulip time won’t be until May 3 but most of the tulips will be dead by then.  Since we were in Pella to buy supplies for our yard, we stopped long enough to see the tulips on April 21.  We only took photos of flowers that still were in good shape although about 1/3 of them were already gone.

This little girl's parents were taking her photo in her Dutch dress with the tulips before they were gone. 

Marla, my sister-in-law took a photo of my tulips with her camera before we left AZ but I thought that we had plenty of time to photograph them when we arrived on April 13. As you know the hailstorm of April 14 did extensive damage to our house.  The tulips by the mailbox looked like this one day after the storm. 

NB to IA - storm

                       

        

Continuing with our journey, we photographed these silos in Nebraska and the windmills that have been added in the last year or two in Adair County in Iowa.  We missed being snowbound in New Mexico and the six inches of snow south of Denver in the area we picnicked in a week ago.  The weather was foggy in Nebraska and it rained overnight while we were camped but we made it home without any trouble.

Home looked so good to us. Most of my tulips had already bloomed. I pulled weeds and planted the iris that my friend Saundra gave me.

Nothing was damaged or destroyed in the winter months.  There wasn’t even dust on the furniture BUT  thirty hours later we had a hail and thunderstorm that tore up siding, broke a window and screen, and damaged our roof.  Our RV bra or mask was pitted, the clearance lights were broken, and the air conditioning covers were broken. All my flowers were now 1 inch high.

We were blessed that no one was hurt. We are also blessed that we can be with family.  These are photos of my newest great grandson, Carter, who was just a few days shy of three months old when we took these photos.

If you want to enlarge these photos, click on the lower left side of photo to see all the pics then click on the ones you want to enlarge.

  

From AZ to CO

 Nine days ago we left the rocks and cacti of Arizona to go visit friends in Colorado and then travel on to Iowa. The weather was fine through Gallup, New Mexico where our friends were snowbound a few days later.

          We saw the passenger train that travels from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, New Mexico and back again.

 It was so good to see the green green grass of Colorado and visit with Rex and Saundra.They showed us a carving on the side of a rocky hill where it said that "Morial Conrad Moschel pioneer massacred by Indians August 21, 1834." A monument below, put there by his children, said that he was 30 years old. 

 

I think that this is Pikes Peak.  The photo was taken from the highway  near Castle Rock.

We had a picnic near the Platte river with Rex and Saundra.  This is the South Platte because the North Platte flows from Nebraska to Wyoming. I'm standing on the Gudy Gaskill Bridge. 

 

Terry liked the little mine which is shown in the upper right of this photo. This ARGO mine reminded him of the restored Kennacott mine in Alaska where we  spent a couple of days.

Emerald Cove Women Ride the Colorado River

Debbie gave seven of us women from the campground a ride on her beautiful pontoon boat Friday. 

The powerful boat was fast as we raced up to the Parker Dam area. Soon the twins, Pam and Fran, were fishing the visors out of the river as the breeze took the visors right off Rose and Janice. Or did the red one belong to Evelyn? Anyway, we women had to hold on to our hats.

We slowed down to sunbathe and enjoy floating on the water. Since we were hungry, we stopped at the Roadrunner for lunch. The food was so good and so plentiful that I didn’t need any dinner.

  

Later we rode through the waves to the other end of the navigable river to the Indian Dam past the casino. Now I have heard of walking on water but sitting on it is something different.  Evelyn admitted that she was sitting on a huge rock.

We noticed a stranded boat so Debbie turned to check on it.  The men asked that we give a ride to one of the men so he could fetch another boat and tow them in.  Debbie cheerfully gave him a ride to the dock of his campground.

  

   
 We had so much fun that we will miss each other’s company when we leave this campground after Easter.

Can you imagine what would happen if the pontoon boat sank and all aboard were lost?  Well, the River of Life Church at the Cove would only have Linda, Patricia, Opal and Frank as surviving this year’s church leadership.  Happy Jack, who keeps all of us laughing, was Captain Jack as he gave us a ride on his boat down the Colorado River on Saturday.

 

Sunday we went to Opal and Frank’s RV for pie. It’s impossible for me to describe the pies made by Frank and Opal but you can see they were apple, coconut cream, chocolate, lemon meringue, and a cream cheese with strawberries, blueberries and black berries.  Of course we had to sample several pies to determine which was best but I don’t know if a conclusion was ever reached. 

 

  

  

Frank said that he would give me the recipes.  Do you think that if I practice I will be able to make his flaky pie crust by the time I’m eighty-three years old?

25 th Wedding Anniversary

The eight live red roses were for our eight children. 

We celebrated the occasion with our friends on the day of our anniversary, March 7.

Left to right in the back row are Frank, Opal, Terry, Jack, and Bill.  In the front row are Darlene, Bev, and Pat.

The full moon over the London Bridge wasn’t very bright at 6:30 pm but we could see it more clearly after dark. 

Our 25^th Wedding Anniversary was celebrated with
chocolate,custard filled sheet-cake with butter cream
roses served to the church family after services on Sunday.

We had this view from the window table at Shugrues
restaurant in Lake Havasu City.