Back home again in Indiana ...

Praise the good Lord, we made it back home safely!  Got in about 4-ish Saturday afternoon.  Spent most of that evening and Sunday afternoon unpacking, doing laundry, etc.  Today we went and got our mail from the post office!  Wow!  So I spent about two hours going through it.  Fun, fun, fun.  Now I have a PILE of magazines and catalogs to go through.  There were some seed catalogs in there ... great!  Looking at them always gets me excited about planting the vegetable garden and trying some new flowers.  On our trip I had some wonderful pickled okra one day with a salad for lunch so for the first time I have decided to grow okra this summer.  And learn how to pickle it, too.

Our trip home went great.  The first night we spent at the Gage Hotel in Marathon, which is about an hour out of the Big Bend National Park.  What a wonderful place!  If you ever get a chance to stay there, do.  I'm posting some pictures from that place.  The room was all Texas!  A steer hide rug at the foot of the bed as well as another, smaller one, in front of the bathroom sink.  Chaps over the bed.  A saddle on a plank.  Spurs on the wall.  And lots of typical west Texas decor.  We liked that town so much that we are trying right now to rent a house there for next Jan. & Feb.!  Wish us luck.  

The second day was pretty uneventful.  We tried a reservoir in northwest Texas, right at the NM line, but it was a bust.  We did end up eating a picnic lunch there, then on through SE New Mexico, which was BORING ... all oil wells and cattle, oil wells and cattle ....  Third day we spent driving through the south of OK because we didn't want to get on the interstate ... it took all day.  Beautiful country!  We found the nicest little cafe somewhere in south central OK (and I had that wonderful salad with the pickled okra I mentioned).  We met the three sweet little ladies who ran it as well as two of the husbands!  Wonderful people.  We have met some special people on this trip!  Wandered across the south of MO the last full day out.  We stayed in Sikeston MO that night and had throwed rolls at Lamberts!  What a kick!  I had fried chicken livers there and they were WONDERFUL!  And the rolls were good, too.  It is an enormous place!  Lots of servers and they were super nice.  You should go there!  Got up Saturday a.m. and headed for home.  Stopped at the grocery in Linton so we would be ready to stay in for awhile (the cupboards and frig were bare of course).  Sunday went to church and got a nice welcome back!  

NOW ... today is not so good.  We noticed that our water pressure was low so Wendell found out that there are a couple broken pipes in the well pit and, bless his heart, he has been trying to get that fixed for the longest time this afternoon.  One trip to the hardware and one to a neighbors for something he forgot at the hardware!  It's now 4:30 and we've been without water since 10 this a.m. .... so I am thinking I should pack a bag for us for a night in a motel because I don't see this getting done before dark sets in.  Oh well ... nothing is ever easy, is it?  Later ...