Good morning Team!!!
I haven't had a chance to catch up, but I wanted to tell you how our weekend fishing trip went!! I will come back later and read all about you all!!!
Anyway, we put the river boat on the truck and away we went. Off to do some fishing and relaxing on the White River in Arkansas. Everything was going along smoothly until we stopped for fuel before heading north off I-40 to our resort. A guy backed into ua and broke the mounts on the boat motor. Result: We had a boat, but no motor for our relaxing days of fishing.
Okay, we can make do, rent a boat or possibly even a motor and if we have too, we might be able to buy a motor somewhere. We get to the resort and, WOW! The will rent us a boat motor while we are there. Yay! vacation is back on again!! We spend the next day running up the river (20 miles) and float fishing down. We catch and release 27 fish and just enjoy the day. We even packed a healthy lunch and enjoyed it along the river.
We returned to the boat dock and the resort owner said that we could tie up our boat on the dock and then we wouldn't have to load it out. Seemed like a great idea at the time! We cleaned up and met friends at a local restaurant for dinner.
During the evening and night time hours, it rained. And it rained hard. Over three inches. We slept in the next morning, but at 8:30 we get a phone call, they need us at the dock. Jon gets dressed and goes down to the dock and our boat is underwater along with the rented boat motor.
Jon manages to get in the cold water and they managed to get enough leverage on the boat to raise it. Chis (the resort owner) starts reading manuals and begins figuring out how to save his motor. While Jon uses a sump pump to pump water out of the boat. Chis does manage to rescue the motor, so everything is looking UP again. We had plans to spend that day, the fourth, with our friends, so we didn't bother going back out on the river.
I also discovered that morning that there was a critter living under the sink of our bathroom. I kept opening the sink to see if I could see the critter, but finally gave up. I let Julie (Chis's sife) know that there is a problems when I grabbed coffee to take to Jon, while he is rescuing the sunken boat. When we return to the room, Jon unlocks the door and pushes it in and I see........a bird! A bird flies across the the room into the bathroom. I go into the bathroom and the poor thing braves the doorway and gets away.....no more critter.
Saturday dawns bright and we decide to try to take the boat out, again. We stay pretty close to the dock in case there is a problem. There was. The bow of the boat keeps dipping down and comes level with the water. If a big wake comes along at the wrong time....the boat will swamp. We decide that God says, "Don't fish the river, how many times do I have to tell you this". And we give up on the whole the riverboat thing. We spend the day driving around and going to Farmer's Markets and then take in the fireworks at the resort that evening.
It was an exciting trip! We met some really wonderful people. Our next door resort neighbors were two 20 something couples that were just delightful. The resort owners were just as nice as they could be and even the guy who backed into the boat couldn't have been nicer. We made it home safely with our boat and our motor! I will be making some blueberry goodies today and freezing blackberries. Everything is great!
I hope that you all had an exciting fourth, too!