June 11, 2005 - St. Bernice - 3
Amazing the "work" I can get done here when we're staying home and it's raining like stink out there. Good for the farmers, though. No irrigation systems around here like California where I'm from. Mother Nature takes care of the water needs here. And boy, does it rain--and thunder and lightning.
See? It's not all fun & games this lifestyle has to offer, you know. Sometimes you have to do some "real" work. Like pulling a window to replace the seal so your atlas' in the rack under it won't get wet any more.
The window rests against the table, while I scrape the old sealant off the window and coach. That little ball I'm holding is the result of the effort. Not a major job by any measurement, but time consuming. Needed to remove the day/night shade, and the valance that lives there as well.
But it isn't really all that bad. Next day I was doing this. And then yesterday we had another adventure. The notice in the Thousand Trails bulletin for June said that for $10 each, we could ride the bus to the casino, get a free buffet and $10 cash once we got there. Without asking where the casino was or how long it would take us to get there, or how long we'd have in the casino, I gave the ranger $20 and signed us up. We knew we were to leave at 9 AM, get our money back plus lunch, and get back about 8:30 PM, and that was it. Until after we got on the bus and the woman who checked us in said something like, "It'll take about 2 1/2 hours to get there today because of the road construction." Lessee. 5 hours on the bus and 5 hours in a casino. All for a free lunch. Hummmmm. Didn't sound like such a good deal after all. But the bus was underway, and there we were. At least until I began to get motion sickness. Then I abandoned Barb and moved to the front of the bus and was OK again.
Didn't take us long to realize that since the buffet line didn't close until 2 PM we didn't need to stand in line behind all the other people that had come, so we wandered a bit before eating. Finally found out where we were. On a boat on the Ohio River, in Evansville, IN. About 130 miles from home. The boat hadn't been anywhere for some time, and wasn't going anywhere any time soon. The warm breeze was nice up on the observation deck.
After enjoying an OK meal we decided that Las Vegas casinos had spoiled us with their excellent buffets. We're not much into gambling, not from any moral sense, but just because we've worked too hard and saved too long to really enjoy spending our money that way. We pulled the handle on a few slots, and that was it for us. Barb read her book and I snoozed up on the observation deck while we waited for the bus ride back home.
It was fun to watch the barges plying the river. This tug was pushing 15 barges all tied together, and carrying coal, scrap metal, and some that were covered and I couldn't tell what was inside. There were some pleasure boats playing around as well. All in all it was an OK adventure, but not one we're anxious to repeat.