Lowell's Blog
Updates from the road

July 29th… The heat is on here in Missouri. Last night we had our first rain since we arrived back on July 4.  We’ve been here for the past 5 summers and haven’t seen such weather. A lake side party is the perfect way to cope. Rex’s nephew, and my 2nd cousin, Todd had a big party to celebrate buying is his Mom’s lake house and becoming a full time laker..

 

Lake water temps were perfect and everybody grabbed noodle floaties and took to the water. After an early dinner the girls took to the water and didn’t get out until after sundown (after 9pm). Pruned a bit but cool.. You know the water was nice if Frankie was in for 3 hours straight.

 

Below, Rex gave us a pose before jumping in.. Cool water dancing to “Rural Route 3” a local band playing southern rock and country.. Rex calls this a redneck party and I have to agree based on two Confederate flags flying.

 

 

 

Todd, our host, takes a big swig of hooch a concoction of who knows what but very tasty.

Neighborhood pontoon boats anchored in the cove and enjoyed the music that carried all over the lake.

As you can see the girls are still floating well after sunset.

The big boat dock holds two boats and 4 more were tied up so it made a great place to hang out with the music driving from the patio above us. People were still swimming as we left around mid-night. Rex and Phyllis had to hang until 2am waiting for family to be ready to motor back to their house. Fun Night.

 

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Nearby town Chillicothe is bigger than Gallatin and has some awesome building painters. In the old town district there’s lots of murals depicting communities of the past. Pretty cool standing looking into them. You’re almost back in time.

We went to Chillicothe to stay cool during a hot afternoon. Actually the day turned out to be better than we expected with picturesque clouds to help the temp and of course my photos.

 

 

 

Our big purchase for the day was an old antique lawn chair with layers of paint and in pretty good condition. Next we needed a plant to go with the chair. We found a potato vine which seemed to be a retro plant to match this old retro chair. Good addition to Frankie’s flowers & plants.

We also picked up tile to finish our bath as you will see later in the blog.

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Aunt Sarah invited us to go to the Jamesport vegetable auction where the Amish bring lots of their garden produce to sell. Good photo op.. They bring wagon loads for beautiful produce which is auctioned off directly off their wagons. We bought 4 crates of beets sharing 2 with Aunt Sarah. Mom canned 5 quarts of beets from our purchase.

 

 

 

 

 

Frankie and Aunt Sarah watch as wagons of produce are auctioned.

 

 

 

 

 

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Every type of tomato you can thing of. Unfortunately raw tomatoes are not my thing. Horsed wait patently to pull their wagons through the auction.

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Jamesport is a tourist town drawing people from the big cities around and of course we have relatives with a business there. Cousin Stef is working on the day we visit. The store is A Natural Difference and is packed full of natural products. The aromas in the store make you ready to purchase something.

 

 

 

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Thanks to Mort, our Phoenix neighbor who stopped by with his wife Pat, we got started on the chair rail finish for our bathroom. We’ve been living with just drywall. Now we have old antique lumber we took from the old porch ceiling topped with a ceramic backsplash. Frankie had it decorated and detailed within hours of the completion. We like that we were able to use some of the old stuff.

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Finally you can see how dry it is here. Our pond was going dry. It did give me a chance to repair the overflow drain which was leaking.

Actually I’m finishing this blog on Sat the 30th and we received 2” of rain last night after having some rain the night before. The result we had good runoff and the pond is now full and my overflow repair is working. Neely and I had to check it out first thing this morning.

 

 

 

 

As you can tell, I can’t go the pond without Neely. It’s one of her favorite places, chasing frogs into the water one by one. Hope this rain continues and the cool weather holds… Stay cool… Until the next Update.

Time to go play in the rain…