Sunday, June 24, 2012

back at Martin Manor

It was a little before 11:00 am when we backed into our back yard trailer pad.  We have unloaded the necessities but will wait for some cooler temperatures in the morning to unload the dirty clothes and linens.  The trailer will sit for a few weeks as our next outing will be our flight to Alaska that begins on July 14.

This was a very nice trip that included the family reunion with a visit from Phyllis and then some relaxing time on the banks of the Pomme De Terre lake.  My father, Ellis Martin, was born near the town of Polk, MO and in his youth fished the Pomme De Terre river well before the lake was formed.  It is a beautiful small lake with great fishing possibilities.

Check back on or after the 14th of July for postings of our Alaska adventure.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

weekend on the lake

The weekend has arrived.  Our campsite is still nice but we do have lots of company.  Yesterday afternoon and on into the night folks filled up all available spots, some came in after my bedtime.

This morning I drove out to find a good cell phone signal because we had a voice mail message that made us wonder.  While we do have a minimal data signal apparently the voice signal isn't strong enough to use.  It turned out that the call wasn't any emergency but still needed to check it out.  I didn't have to drive very many miles so not a big problem.

On the way out I could see that there were probably more than a hundred pickup trucks with boat trailers parked in the parking lot and spilling out over the grassy areas.  The weekend fishermen are out and hopefully filling their stringers.  This looks like a great spot to spend some time in a boat wetting a line.  I have been away from fishing for so many years that all of my tackle is junk and if I wanted to try again I would need to make a trip to the tackle shop and that would involve much more stuff to find a place to store in the trailer.

Friday, June 22, 2012

afternoon visitors

This gaggle swam by our front yard this afternoon. The group in these pics is only a fraction of the total.



Beautiful small lake

We got out this morning and drove around the area to get a few pictures of this lake.  We drove through the State Park campground and are thankful we are in a COE facility.  The State campground would have been near impossible for us to even drive through as they apparently have been built for less than 30' trailers and the roads around the loops would not allow for ours to make turns around the trees.

Tuesday afternoon when we drove into this campground we had a welcoming committee of one doe and two fawns grazing at the side of the entrance road.  Today as we came back from our outing they were there again and since I had my camera out for the pictures of the lake it was handy to point and shoot through the windshield.



The second fawn is in the picture but you have to look close as it is right in front of the triple trunk clump to the right of the large tree where fawn #1 is standing.

Here are the remaining pics of the day.

 Pomme De Terre Dam and buzzard roost
 without wind today like a mirror


Thursday, June 21, 2012

our check in story

Tuesday when we arrived at the campground the check in booth was closed.  The sign told us to get set up in our site if reserved or any open non-reserved site and then return at 4:00 to register.  We had site 25 reserved for Wednesday through Saturday nights and I had checked the on-line registration page before we left Chanute and found that it was still unreserved for Tuesday so therefore it was available and we then backed in and set up camp.

A lot of State and Federal campgrounds use "work campers" for a lot of campground functions and they are usually retired RV folks that get a campsite for free in exchange for some part time service.

At 4:00 I went back to the booth and a Jed Clampet type character came to help me get registered.  They had only one reservation that they were expecting for Tuesday night and that was for site 20.  He assumed when I walked up that #20 was what I was going to be checking in for and even when I told him who I was and what I wanted (to slide my four night registration ahead one day to end on Friday night) he still was trying to sign me up for #20.  I retold my story and assured him that I wasn't his #20 so he said that he needed to get his expert with the computer to handle my check-in.  He went to their trailer sitting right behind the booth and out came his wife, Mrs. Clampet, and she sat down at the computer and punched a few keys.  I told my story again and she said that they would probably have to get a park ranger to handle that move of a reservation and cancel our Saturday night but it would take some time to have one there.  I told her that I would just pay for Tuesday night as a walk-in and then would be good for five nights instead of four.  He said, "if you have the old farts card you can have #20 for only $10."  I told them again that I was in #25 and yes I did have the Golden Age Passport which allowed me to make our advanced reservation for that price per night and if they wanted to see it I could get it out of my wallet.  Mrs. Clampet then said that she now found me registered for #25 and there was my Passport number so all was good.  I gave them $10 and was finally legal for five nights.

I shouldn't have tried to make fun of our camp hosts but thought it was a funny story. 


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Lightfoot Landing COE campground

We backed into our spot a bit after noontime yesterday and just relaxed for the afternoon.  I got out this morning and took a few pictures around our site and of the lake from this viewpoint.





 The view from our front door


A truthful sign






Tuesday, June 19, 2012

work done and back in Missouri

We were at the service door at 7 am this morning and sat in their customer lounge while the work was going on.  About 9:30 they came to tell us that all was done and gave me a demonstration of the new system that was installed.  Our trailer has an automatic leveling system but the control panel didn't allow me to tweak the setup.  The new control panel is awesome and I now have full control including a remote key fob.

We left Chanute and headed for our reserved campsite on the Pomme De Terre Lake and got here a little after lunch time.  It is a nice site in the trees with an opening for our satellite so we have a TV connection.  Our Verizon signal is weak but works for both voice and data.  The view from our front door is an arm of the lake so we will see what other views we can picture in these next few days.  It may be just a nice restful few days. ;-)

Monday, June 18, 2012

Land of Oz

This morning we hitched up and pulled the trailer to Chanute, KS with an appointment at the factory service shop at 7 am in the morning.  Jo isn't too happy with that time schedule.

The trip was a bit unusual as there were two construction sites that altered our route. The first was our major east/west route in KS and by the time we saw the closure we were already past the marked detour.  I knew we were south of Chanute and knowing that most routes in this part of KS are either N/S or E/W figured we could just continue north and Ms Navi would pick up another E/W route to take.  After trying to get me to do a U-turn for some time she finally decided our route should be going north all the way to Rte 54, which would have worked.  We saw a KS route marking sign that pointed to Chanute so took it and Ms Navi soon decided that we were on the right path.  When we arrived in Chanute and got to the city street we were to turn on for our route to the campground, I had my left turn signal on and began my turn when I saw the barricades and the street totally dug up under reconstruction.  I adjusted to a right turn, drove around the block and then maneuvered around the construction area and we were back on track.  There is a tree directly in the satellite's path so our TV for this evening is a few channels over the air from Pittsburgh, KS, we'll make do. ;-)

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Happy Father's day

We want to wish all Father's a great day.  It has been so nice to have our daughter, Phyllis, with us these past few days and to be able to get a hug from her this morning before she headed back to Baltimore.

The Martin family reunion went very well yesterday with most of the clan there.  If you haven't already, you can visit the martin-reunion.blogspot.com/ for pictures. 

Thursday, June 14, 2012

To Springfield

On our way to the Martin Family reunion on tap for Saturday we pulled the trailer to an RV park in Ozark, MO, arriving a little past 2pm and tomorrow we will visit with Jo's mom and sis.