dust bowl or mud bog?

Two things gate guards despise are windy days and rainy days. Don't get me wrong though, we appreciate a nice cooling breeze on a hot day as well as the soothing sound of rain lightly falling on the roof of the rv while we are sleeping. :-)
But there is another side to it. The wind blows the dust into big clouds that cover EVERYTHING. The rain then turns all that dust into MUD. Yuck!
In the last week we have had both. The wind kicked up last week end and the dust was blown to the point we had "dust drifts", similar to snow drifts back home, in the road. Later that same day the wind shifted and blew all the same dust back across the road where it came from! :-)
Tuesday the rain started and turned all that dust into mud. What a mess! The road leading back to our site was now a quagmire. All the large craters were now full of water so there was no way to tell how deep they were. I experienced all this first hand when I drove to town Wednesday afternoon.
I made the trip to meet with some of the other gate guards at a restaurant in Cotulla. We take advantage of these trips and do our grocery shopping and other errands after lunch with the gang.
There were about a dozen of other guards there and I enjoyed swapping stories with them. After lunch I made stops at the post office, grocery and gas station. I also picked us up a couple of sandwiches and a Frosty at Wendy's for later. :-)
Next week will be Rudee's turn to meet with the ladies. Hopefully she wont have to use the 4 wheel drive on the Dakota to leave our little piece of heaven out here in the giggle weeds. :-)
Things have been drying out here and our starting to return to "normal" if there is such a thing in the world of Gate Guarding. I'll keep you posted/

small world visitors

We had a slow week end with only a handful of entries in our logs which suits us just fine. I don't mind being a lazy gate guard since it pays the same as a run you a&$ off gate guard. :-)

Sunday afternoon I received an email from blog readers Max and Shirley. They were in the area waiting on their first gate assignment and thought we might like some visitors. Absolutely! We love visitors! They included their cell number so I called them right away and gave Max directions to our gate.
I knew they were from Indiana so we had that connection as well as being fulltimers and now gate guards. They arrived around 5pm and we sat outside under the awning getting to know each other. They mentioned they moved from Indiana to Florida several years ago and when we asked them where in Florida they told us they used to own a home in Zephyrhills! That is where our double wide that I inherited from my parents is located! Wow, it is a small world indeed. :-)
They had several questions about gate guarding and we did our best to pass on everything we could think of to help them along their way. I remember last year when we were rookies and showed up at Kit and Jerry Bertelsen's gate and they helped us out the same way. I always like to "pay it forward". :-)

Max and Shirley left just as the sun was setting. As they pulled out of the gate I flipped the flood lights on and decided to go ahead and close the gate for the night (or so I hoped). Rudee got busy making us something to eat and we settled in front of the TV in time to see the Super Bowl half time show and the second half of the game while munching on hot wings and nachos. Now that's Super Bowl food if I ever heard of any!
The game turned out to be really exciting. We were rooting for the 9ers because Jim Harbough used to be our Quarterback in Indianapolis. His nick name while here was "Captain Comeback" and he just about lived up to it again. Exciting!

I am looking forward to a trip to town on Wednesday to meet some of the other men at JJ's Country Store and Restaurant for lunch and some "guy time". I'll keep you posted.

early spring?

The big news this morning is that fat rat in Pennsylvania did not see his shadow. That means there is only 4 more weeks of winter left. I'm not sure if I believe that but, growing up in the snow belt, you look forward to any kind of relief you can get! :-)

No problem with snow here. In fact the weather has been pretty darn nice. We suffered through a couple of days of gusty winds but that was nothing compared to the weather those of you further North were experiencing. We prepared for the wind by closing the awnings and putting away anything that could be blown around. We even put the slides in during the worst of the wind to protect the awnings attached to them. Our preparations paid off and we didn't have any damage and have since put the awnings back out to enjoy the shade and moderate temperatures.

Today marks the start of our 3rd week here. Last week was a little busier but the crews are still finishing their work by 6pm and the gate is usually very quite until they show up again at 7 the next morning. I can get used to this! :-)

I have had some interruptions a couple of nights to let vehicles in dropping off equipment but luckily they are in and out pretty quick.

We are enjoying our time here, not as much fun as traveling and exploring but my Dad always told me, "if your gonna dance you have to pay the fiddler". So we'll be here several more weeks making some $$'s and looking forward to our next dance. I'll keep you posted.