Ye gads, yesterday Monday brought torrential rains and wind

Monday afternoon it was raining buckets, and blowing too. Lary bravely drove me in to attend the Flute Circle, they practiced kind of jamming with each other, playing the same few notes, right after the other person, and generally catching up with each other's news. New folks were there, and some of the ones from the week before. One man Adolph makes flutes, and he is very innovative, he had one flute with the mouthpiece made of hand formed clay, the rest seemed semi normal, and there was a big gold nugget he had found on top of it. He and his wife kind of noodled around, another couple Larry and his wife had just been on an Italian cruise and we heard all about that.

Some of the people have exquisite flutes, all inlaid woods on them, and with turquoise inlaid in them along the top, but some of the most simple flutes sound equally wonderful, so that is very exciting to learn, too.

Lary did some shopping for a toolkit for his woodworking, and we puttered around in the dreadful rain and howling wind. Ate at IHOP, one of our sinful locations, then came over to DHS and home.

All evening the wind was howling, and tossing the trailer about, because we have canvas canopies over all slides, the wind comes in under them, and lifts up the canvas, and slaps about very noisily, shaking the trailer. About 1 AM we got up, moved the furniture out of the way, and pulled in all slides, as neither of us was getting a wink of sleep.

There was an inch of rain I believe, and the roads get very scary as there aren't a lot of drains, so the water tends to form huge pools, and where it is running along the road or across it, it can be deep, or carrying a lot of gravel and soil. Entering a flooded part of a road, especially when it's dark, you don't know the depth of the pool. The cities all post 'flooded' signs, it kind of feels as if there is one on every main road. We woke this morning to see a dump of snow on the mountains nearby, it's funny how it's a clear line where it ends, but of course today, Tuesday, the air is very chilly, and there is still the windy aftermath.

One of our swimming pool noodles flew away in the wind, and we haven't found it as yet. Lary went for his usual walk today, but now isn't feeling too well, I hope that it's just that he's tired as we had a crazy night last night with the wind and rain. And he was wet during the afternoon so he may have a bit of a chill, or a chill from the parade on Saturday evening.

I went to the first watercolor class of the year today, we did a winter scene with pine trees, and a river and distant trees, with some snow on the ground, we used a sponge to paint the trees, and tried a few techniques, we were only 3 students, so got a lot of attention, still one painting in 3 hours is quite a bit to accomplish.
I think I'll end up being the class bozo.

I went up to a travel club meeting, we signed up for a 2 night trip to Laughlin by bus, good price, in late January. Talked to a nice couple Rose and Ron, they are fulltimers, he's legally blind, so she drives their coach. They are trying to decide where they want to settle down, it's a challenge for people to choose a place to live.

Then I went for a bike ride around the park, it's grand not to have to wear a helmet but I just have to watch for all the loose gravel from yesterday's rain. I bought a helmet to wear outside the park, on the roads. The bike has pretty skinny tires, and doesn't do that well in deep sand, I discovered, but packed sand is OK.

Some of the big coaches in the park are decorated for Xmas, and look very cute, also some people even decorate their lot nicely for the holidays. Those coaches have quite a lot of storage, whereas the trailers don't have so much.