Facing The Facts

I've had to face the facts, and come to the realization that based upon our circumstances right now I'm not going to be able to write the blogs the way that I want to. It looks as though we are going to be moving to Chaparral New Mexico around the first of June, and on the 18th of May I'm having all four of my wisdom teeth taken out. So between the two upcoming events I doubt I'll be able to do much blogging, certainly not the way I had planned concerning the short vacation we took. So I'm going to do my best to sum up the vacation and put the rest of the pictures into one album labeled "Vacation" for you all to see.
Fishing-we did a lot of fishing while we were on our vacation. We tried Lake Leon, Lake Hubbard, and even the small pond at the RV park we stayed at, but all we caught were little bitty things. Finaly when we decided to fish in the pond at the RV park we kept what we caught and cooked them up anyway. On our last day that we could fish there we decided to try a place that we went to when I was a kid, and we have heard that there has been some good fishing out there. It's park of Lake Leon but it's at a place called LaMancha. It's like a small zoo there with peacocks, bison, ostrich, etc. They have a boat dock there that sticks fairly far out into the water, and it can house up to six boats. Most of the time nobody uses it as a boat dock, but it is used as a fishing dock. I've heard it's about 35 ft. deep there so you only need to drop your line, you don't need to cast. You do have to pay $2 each to fish there though, which isn't bad so long as you do catch something.
So we went to the boat dock to give it a try. Mike is determined to catch him a southern fish that outweighs the one I caught when I was 12. I caught a 26lb. catfish at the spillway of the dam that year. While there I spent most of my time making sure Leah didn't fall in since she is so clumsy and at an age that she isn't afraid of much. The rest of the kids did alright and spent a good deal of time fishing. Mikey spent more time reeling in and casting again till he busted his bobber than fishing. We hadn't caught anything worth keeping when we decided to pack it up and head back to the camper. Mike was banking on coming back again at night while the kids and I slept. He would be taking Pawpaw (Loyd) with him. As we were packing up the van to leave, we heard quite a commotion going on down by the dock, and when I heard Debbie screaming and crying at the same time and yelling Mikey's name the picture of what had just happened was as clear as day in my mind. Thankfully there were a couple of other young fellas down there fishing, and they fished out Mikey too. Mikey wasn't in the least bit phased by it all, in fact he felt mighty proud of himself and showed how he was paddling to stay up. This is a time when you aren't sure if you should be mad at them or just thankful that you didn't loose them.
On the same topic a couple of days later Mikey came in asking for a piece of toilet paper to get a buger out of his nose, shortly there after I noticed it was bleeding. I figured he must have just been too rough with himself. Later on that day I saw his nose was running so I went to wipe it, at which time he protested with crying saying that it hurt. After a closer examination I saw that he has pushed a rock up inside of his nose. Mike had to break off all of the tines but one on a plastic fork to dig the rock out of hiw nose. Both Mike and I had a good laugh over that one.
After leaving Ranger we headed up to Amarillo to visit my brother, while visiting we stayed in the Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The place where you hook up your camper is actually located at the bottom of the canyon, which I've heard is about a 1000 ft. deep in some places. This is recorded as being the last battle grounds with the indians. While staying there we met many friendly widlife. There were the turkeys who came around every morning, you could hear the toms calling to their hens, and they would get quite close to you. Then there were the dear, though we never saw any bucks, there seem to be plenty of does. There is a picture of Mike and dear to show just how close they would let you get to them. Then at night, or I should say early morning, the Coyotes decided to act as alarm clocks. I never thought a coyotes would sound like a little fluff ball pomeranian puppy, but they did. We enjoyed our stay there.
On our way back home we only had one incident that was interesting. It ocurred on I-70 near Roswell, NM. The story as Mike heard it from an eyewitness goes as follows. A small car driving at approx. 120mph was driving on the wrong side of the road, into oncoming traffic. The car was headed straight for a Walmart 18 wheeler. When the Walmart truck tried to change lanes to avoid hitting the little car, the little car also changed lanes, still aiming for the Walmart truck. The Walmart truck tried to veer off of the road to the left, all the while the little car was still honed in on the truck. The Walmart truck ended up on the opposite side of the highway in the barditch, but not before having a head on collision with the little car. I'm not good at math but the little car going 120mph and the truck going 70-75mph equals death. The truck driver thankfully walked away from it all. The car on the other hand was so totaled if it wasn't for the headlight still attached you would have never know what it was. There were engine and car parts strewn all across the road, and the firefighters had to do a thorough search for body parts just off of the right side of the highway. Even after the ambulance left with "the body" the firefighters were checking the dunes over for more parts. The best anyone can figure was that it was a suicide. Thank God we were not a 1/2 hour earlier, we too could have been a part of that.
Well that's the sum of our vacation. Hope you enjoy seeing all of the pictures that go with it.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/baabaamilker/my_photos

Denise

P.S. That night when Mike went back fishing he returned to the camper at 3:00AM with 63 good size fish to clean, we still have some in the freezer. One other note I wanted to add was that the house I wrote about in my blog is not the house we are moving into. I hope that I can take pictures and write more about our new house soon.