Home again

After an uneventful trip, we arrived safely at Blackhawk campground in Illinois where we spent the Memorial Day  weekend with 7 other couples including our son and daugher-in-law and grandsons. Monday morning we left and drove to South Bend, IN. to my brother's house where we spend time in his front yard.

Linda and our grandson Jordan, and her mom Maggie left for Washington D.C. Tuesday morning at 5:50am and arrived safely about 12 hours later. They spent a week and returned back to South Bend on the following Wednesday and we left for Illinois on Saturday morning.  Jordan had a great time in DC and is anxious to go back and spend some more time with his Uncle Danny and Aunt Dee Dee.

We normally stop on the Indiana toll road to dump our holding tanks, but they have closed all of their dump facilitys. We went on to the kids house in Woodstock, IL and than on to a state park to dump the tanks.

Jeff and Lorie suprised us by doubling the size of the camping pad and putting all new gravel in with a water and electric connection right on the pad so we do not have to run extension cords to get power or an extra 50 foot of hose to get water. Very nice. Thank you Jeff and Lorie.

We will leave on our family vacation next Saturday morning, driving almost 400 miles to Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, OH. to spend 4 nights before moving on to the Niagra Falls area for 5 nights. Than back, via Canada, to the Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village near Detroit, MI.

Hope all is well
love to all of ya
Jim and Linda

Free, at last

Jamie (our boss at Gate Guarding) called Thursday morning an told me we would be relieved at about 11:30 or so. So Linda got to sleep in until about 10am. We were all hooked up and sitting in the truck with the air conditioner running full blast when our reliefs showed up right on time.

By the time we got off of the site and they got on and we briefed them on their duties it was pushing 12:30 and we left and drove about 85 miles to the northeast side of San Antonio and got two nights at a campground. We rested up, took showers, and went out to Red Robin for an early dinner/late lunch and went back home.

Friday about 1 pm we went over to our niece Ally and her fiance Paige's house to visit. Ally gets off at noon on Fridays and we spent time visiting with her. Than we drove into San Antonio to the river walk and wandered around, stopping at the Hard Rock Cafe for some souvenirs. We met Paige about 5:30 at an upscale Mexican restaurant for a great meal and than moved on to our trailer for more visiting and to show Paige the rv lifestyle. He had no idea about  the size of our trailer and wondered why we did not park in their driveway.....our truck barely fit!!!

Today (Saturday) we drove a little over 360 miles to Mt. Pleasant, TX where we are spending the night and will move on to Tunica tomorrow after another 360 miles. That's a day early, but the driving has been easy with a tail wind most of the day (that's very rare for us).

We will spend two nights in Tunica now since we are getting in early and leave there on Tuesday morning with a two day trip to Rockford, IL to camp with the kids and some friends (about 5 couples) from our old camping club. We were hoping for cooler weather, but it looks like it will be in the high 80's for Memorial day weekend.

Have a great day

love to all of ya
 Jim and Linda

Another close call

Yesterday it rained almost all day in varying intensity's. Including hail, severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings. severe wind warnings, flash flood warnings.....By early afternoon it came down by the bucket including hail about half the size of a marble down to pea size.

I had tripped the breaker on the generator and pulled the electric plug out of the trailer. The dish was down. All electrical things I could find were unplugged. Not taking any chances this time......lol

Somewhere around 4pm the company man sent a man down in a truck to tell us to follow him back up to the "safe house" at the rig as there was a tornado. By the time we had gather up the dogs and the safe w missed seeing what building he went into so we sat there in the truck. We found out later they were all in  the crews changing room which is an all metal trailer with no windows.

Later reports from truckers and people on the rig were that a tornado did touch down about a mile from us. Between us and Karnes City which is about 7 miles away as the crow flys. We could not see anything because of the rain. Finally the safety man came out and said it was all clear and we went back to the rig about 4:30 and put the slides back out, turned on the breaker and put the power cord back in but did not plug in all of the electrical stuff or put up the dish until later.

We sat and read very apprehensively the rest of the evening as radar off of the computer was showing strong storms still coming at us.I finally went to bed about 10pm and Linda woke me up about midnight to plug the stuff back in so she could put up the dish and turn on the tv.

She had a very quiet night and morning and when I relieved her at 6am it is pretty foggy. They are predicting more rain today. And flash flood warnings have been going on since yesterday afternoon.
Have a great day
remember we love ya
Jim and Linda
6 days and counting
p.s.  Just saw on the weather channel that there were 7 tornados touching down from the Mexico border and our area during the big storm yesterday (7:03am this morning)

Invasion, cow trees and other stuff

It finally cooled off after the rain yesterday. Some reports of about 3 inches total. Next few days will be in the low 80's.
After it got light this morning, I was out checking in a trucker and saw these flying insects moving all over the place. I asked the driver and he told me that they were flying queen ants and they are looking for a new place to live. He suggested squishing them. Which I did, by the hundreds....those I could not reach because they were under the trailer I sprayed with wasp and hornet killer. Do not need giant ants in the trailer......no thanks!
Remember you can click on pictures to make them larger.....

They are huge, about 5/8 of an inch long...the last one is without the wings.

Across the highway is another ranch and they graze cattle. I saw the trees but did not pay much attention until one day the cows were out in this area. They eat the leaves and branches off of the trees up as high as they can reach. Never saw this before.

They TD'ed (reached the end) (do not know what TD stands for, may be total depth, or touchdown?)the well last night at 18.362 feet. They still have 3-4 days work before they can skid the rig over about 25 feet to start the next well.
  This is also crew change day. They started coming in yesterday and the old crew left last night and this morning. They work two weeks on, two weeks off and get paid for four weeks plus any overtime. They are on site the whole time, except to go off and eat or drink. The Marathon bosses all live in mobile homes that have an office and living quarters. They are quite nice.

Yesterday they came thru and unloaded the pipe for the pipeline. They had to put down the tires on our road to keep the loader's tracks from tearing up the road. The pipe is about 6 inches in diameter and looks to be about 40 foot long. Do not know when they will be in our area to weld it together.

We are down to 8 days on site. Do not know if they will send in a relief crew for us or we will just leave. Lots of folks, like us, are leaving for the summer as it is too miserable down here in the summer.

Have a great day
love to ya
Jim and Linda

Pulling casing

Yesterday afternoon they shut down drilling. Rumors from vehicles coming out are that the drill bit is worn out and needs to be replaced. Up in the "dog house"(control room )where the "tool pusher" (the man who runs the rig) works there are a number of monitoring screens and they know about how fast they should be drilling. When it drops below a certain point they know that there is a problem.
They started pulling pipe late yesterday and finished up sometime during the night and started back down. They pulled approximately 12000 feet of pipe out. You can see the pipe on the right side of the rig. It comes out in three sections which are about 90 foot total.

                                        This first one is when they were  starting to pull out

the last 3 were taken this morning after that had started going back in.

Sometime last night the wind shifted from the south to the north-northeast and the thunder and lighning came in. Linda put the dish down right away. When I got up and ready to work I went outside and it looked like the lightning and thunder was way tooo close.....so I turned off the power and unpluged the power cord from the generator...
Right now, at 8am it is 68 degrees and very windy, but with the wind from the northeast....a real blessing....but it is supposed to get up to 95 today.
Since we gave you the sunrise yesterday I will finishwith the sunset and moon rise last night.

Have a great day, and remember.....we love ya
Jim and Linda