Sunday, June 15, 2008

June 15, 2008

Happy Father's Day to all of the dads out there. We are sure enjoying this day and the trip thus far. Since our last posting, we spent time on Sean's (Mary's son) goat farm in Fargo, ND, traveled to Cold Spring, MN (about 200 miles from Fargo, the place where Mary grew up and where many of her brothers and sisters still live) to attend the wedding of her niece, Becki, then traveled with two of her sisters and their husbands to spend time at her sister and husband's lake home in Hackensack, MN (120 miles north of Cold Spring), and are now back in a beautiful RV park right outside of Cold Spring. Mary's nephew, Terry, and his wife, Lynn, live on the lake across from the park. Yesterday, they and their family came across the lake on a pontoon to pick us up to take us to their lake home. Absolutely lovely! Now -- that is. In winter, the lake is totally frozen over.
About the most unusual for us is the weather. One minute, the sky is blue with white puffy clouds, and the temperature in the 70s. Within 5 minutes, the sky can turn ominous, dark, with winds coming at us at 60 miles an hour with heavy rains. Last night we were entertaining Ann (Mary's sister) and her husband, Mike, when the camp host drove up to our coach in a golf cart and told us to get to the shelter immediately. We jumped up from the dinner table and ran 50 feet to the men's shower (a concrete building) where we met up with 25 or so other adults and children. One man had a radio tuned to the weather station, and we heard how a tornado touched down 15 miles from us. Poor Chanti (our dog) and some of the young children in the room couldn't stop shaking as the rain came down in buckets, lightening and thunder all around us. Boy, when they say, "get to a shelter" -- they mean right now!