It's been awhile

We are just so busy doing nothing that I just haven't sat down to the blog.

The Loch Ness (Nessie) monster.  She showed up after
the flood.  (center of picture). This is the 2nd green of the
flooded golf course.

We are still in Arkansas at our place on Table Rock Lake. I've discovered the joys of listening to audio books and staring out at the lake.  It's hypnotic!  I use the binoculars to count the turtles that show up every day around 5 just in front of home away from home. We also have front row seats to watch all the crazies on their boats and jet skiis. Weekends are crazy but then during the week things quiet down. Jeff and I are enjoying our time here immensely. He goes out fishing every day before we ever get up.  The girls are doing their "sleep til noon" thing. Unfortunately, all they want to do is go home.

I caught a fish!  A large-mouth bass?

We've got the boat, the wakeboard and the big floaty thing we pull behind the boat, fishing poles, an inflatable kayak made for two, my kayak, two swimming pools, pickle ball courts, tennis courts, and of course, the lake.  Maybe it's just too much of a good thing. It's been a little tricky on the lake too.  With all the rain there are tons of logs in the water and we don't need to wreck the boat or the girls running over one of these. But that's improved over the last week.

Jeff and I don't know what we are going to do next year. This place is paradise but apparently not for the girls. We did go out wake boarding again the other day and both girls are getting the hang of it. Jade asked me if I had taken pictures which I hadn't (I'm lousy at remembering to do that when we are on the boat) and she said "What kind of mother are you?!" - jokingly) They aren't interested in going to the pool. UGH!  On the positive side, both of them have finished their summer reading and assignments for their pre-ap classes and we are proud of them for getting that done and out of the way.  

One of Jeff's many catches.  Fishing after dinner - no pressure!

Many people have told me that this is the age when all kids want to do is be with their friends and now I see what they mean. Jeff said when they return to school and are asked to write a paper about their summer vacation, they both can write "We slept - The End".  

Eureka Springs Parking Signs

We made a trip into Eureka Springs (about 25 miles from here) just to window shop and go out to lunch. Jade had fun taking pictures of all the silly, but serious, parking signs.  One said something about "no parking here, violators' cars will be towed to another continent!"  It's an old Victorian town that's been around since the mid-1800s and now is a funky little tourist town with delightful shops selling all kinds of "hippie" stuff. We've been there a number of times in past years and it was fun to hear the girls reminisce about previous visits. 

Went kayaking this morning. I was kind of grossed out when I came upon a dead bloated deer that had washed up on the edge of the flooded golf course - yuck.  There was also a BIG dead fish (catfish?) that had washed up. All that rain that we got last week made one heck of a mess of the area. In early June when this happened, they opened the spillway to let out some of the water but they haven't done that this time. There are three or four dams in this area that all work in sync with one another and it's a balancing act to keep the water levels where they need to be on each lake.  Apparently, one of the dams has a problem and they have to lower the water on that lake so they can fix the floodgate problem. So they can't release water from this lake until they can drop the other lake levels down and complete the repairs.  

These grow wild all over the place.

When I kayak I love to just go slowly right along the shoreline because I always see something interesting; birds, deer, flowers, etc. But because of the water level, there is a lot of trash that's floating around so shore cruising isn't exactly pretty at the moment. Although this morning I saw a number of herons and some beautiful flowers. Also saw a deer just lying in the woods and she didn't spook when I drifted by.  I'm getting quite stealthy in my kayak. The other day I found an old fishing tackle box floating on the shoreline.  

Some kind of puff ball flower.

I hauled it in to the kayak hoping for some good local lures but no such luck. Just old rusted stuff.  What I need to do is get a big net I can drag behind my kayak and pick up some of the trash.  Makes me sad to see so much yuck in the lake.  LOTS of plastic bottles.  We are killing our planet:-( ~sigh~)

The Branson Belle stearnwheeler.  I think this is a
dinner/gambling place.

The other afternoon we took the boat out and went way up to the dam.  Now we have seen it from both land and water.  I didn't like being that closed to the spill gates though. I could just imagine them opening up and sucking us through there - horrors!  We've been looking for restaurants along the shore so we could just jump in the boat and drive to dinner. There is one not to far from here but it's in an exclusive club and the prices are out of this world. I don't think we packed clothes appropriate for dining in such a place.  We are looking for the shorts, t-shirts, and flipflops kind of places and surprisingly, there don't seem to be too many of those within easy boating distance. We did find a great burger place - Blue Eye Burgers - in the little town of Blue Eye about 7 miles from here.  Awesome burgers!  It's a family-run business, so friendly, and the place is so clean and quaint. We've seen a crowd parked outside every time we've driven by.  We really are in the sticks out here.

We are scheduled to leave for home a week from tomorrow. There's a lot of rain in the upcoming week's forecast.  I hope it's wrong because we can't take much more water here and it will mean more debris in the lake. I'm going to miss feeding the chipmunks, hanging out at the pool, and watching all the activity on the lake. On the up side, we won't have four people sharing one bathroom anymore!The girls will be delighted.