This blog covers the past two weeks.
On Monday, June 12, Bob flew to Las Vegas to spend time with his mom. He had a good trip. He drove his mom to Phoenix on June 16 where they visited with his Aunt Sally, Cousin Charis, and her husband Mike; and his niece in Prescott Valley on June 18.
Meanwhile, Bob's sister Laura drove from Las Vegas to the Chicago area where she entered two of her dogs into the AKC National Rally Championship. Laura has a Canaan Dog named Ari that she co-owns with Risa Baumrind, and a Standard Poodle named Zeus. Both dogs and Laura performed very well at the Rally. Ari received a score of 99 out of 100 in the Championship category, and Zeus had a score of 94 or 96 (I can't remember which) in the Intermediate category. You can read an AKC article about Laura and Ari by clicking the lavender link in this sentence.
On Saturday morning, June 17, my friend Kathleen and I walked three miles along the Mission Reach of the Riverwalk in San Antonio. The temperature was 78 degrees with high humidity when we started and 82 degrees when we finished an hour and a half later.
Because of the recent rainstorms, wildflowers bloomed along the trail. Cormorants were sitting on rocks in the river. We saw one guy fishing. Another guy was at the water's edge tossing stones into the San Antonio River; two of his dogs were splashing in the water trying to get the stones.
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| American basketflower (Centaurea americana). |
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| American basketflower (Centaurea americana). |
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| Lemon beebalm (Monarda citriodora). |
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| Wild Sweet William (Phlox maculata). |
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| A low bridge over the San Antonio River. |
The sunflowers were particularly striking at over 8' tall!
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| Common sunflower (Helianthus annuus). |
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| Another view of the low bridge. |
Kathleen and I took a side trail up to a county building. The bridge pictured below crossed a side creek in front of the modern county building.
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| A view overlooking the San Antonio River from the bridge in the photo above. |
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| Orange Trumpet Flower (Campsis). |
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| Lemon beebalm (Monarda citriodora). |
Kathleen and I had a good walk. We'll get together to do more walks in the future.
In the past week, I spent a few hours each day working on a challenging, 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in the RV park game room.
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| Thomas Kincade's "Cinderella" puzzle. © Disney. |
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| Thomas Kincade's "Cinderella" puzzle. © Disney. |
Walking back and forth from our place to the game room was in temperatures ranging from 100-102 with "feels like" temperatures of 114-117!! It's a furnace in San Antonio. Our nighttime low tonight (Saturday) is 79 degrees.
Bob returned home from Las Vegas very early on Thursday morning, June 22. His flight was delayed out of Las Vegas and I picked him up at the San Antonio airport at 2:45 am.
Bob has recovered from his bypass surgery and has been cleared by his doctor to go back to work, resume heavy lifting, and drive. Cardiac Rehab three times per week is helping him regain his strength and endurance.
Six Flags Fiesta Texas has been calling my name. I bought a season pass at the end of last year and I haven't used it yet. Friday, I FINALLY went to Six Flags and got my Season Pass card. In past years, the Season Pass Gold Card was good all year long. When I went online to get the bar code to pick up my pass, I looked more carefully at what the pass covered this year. It expires on Sept. 4!!! Not only that, it no longer includes the Hurricane Harbor water park. What the heck? If I want to extend the pass to the end of the year and add Hurricane Harbor, I have to pay an extra $80. Nope, not doing it. I will start walking at Six Flags frequently from now until we leave on our trip at the end of July. I'll get my money out of it that way. Next year, I plan to buy SeaWorld's pass.
We had an entertaining date Friday night at Hermann Sons Rathskellar Bar in downtown San Antonio where we played Trivia. The bar has its own trivia host who is very creative and clever. We are a team of two. All the other teams had quite a few players. It is obvious we need a larger team with people of diverse interests to help answer difficult questions. This was our second time playing trivia there. For most of the evening, we were dead last, but due to creative bonus round score bidding, we came in 8th out of 11 teams.
On Saturday, June 24, Bob and I did the 10 km Volksmarch in North Star Mall in San Antonio. That's the only place we wanted to walk with our current high temperatures. Our walking friend, Wayne Henry, was walking there as well and we passed by each other numerous times. Pictured below are images inside North Star Mall. We are happy to report that we did not give in to the temptation of pretzels, cookies, the Food Court, Cheesecake Factory, ice cream, etc., even though we walked by most of them four different times.
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| This is a photo of the huge boots outside of North Star Mall. |
Saturday night we had planned to listen to Arrowhead, a local rock band, at an outdoor concert. However, the temperature was still 96 degrees when the show was scheduled to start at 8 p.m. With that heat, we changed our minds and stayed home in air-conditioned comfort!
That's what the past two weeks have been like. Now I'm going to concentrate on more walking since I've been rather lax in that regard. I can do early morning walks in North Star Mall, and then walk at Six Flags when it opens at 11 a.m. In this heat, I won't be walking very long at Six Flags, but I'll get some rollercoaster rides in while I'm there! [NOTE: I never did make it to Six Flags.]
That's it for now.
