Saturday, April 23, 2016

Warnock Lake, Atchison, Kansas

A lot has happened since we left Puerta Penasco, Mexico.  We drove rapidly from Mexico to Allen, Kansas, since Dean's mom was not doing very good.  She is 94 and needs 24 hr care.  Hospice had given her only a few days.  She lives at Tom's farm (Dean's brother) and we stayed there a week.  During that time it was warm one day, snowed two days, and terrible winds the rest of the time.  Snowing at the farm:


One advantage of being at the farm: Tom has hired three ladies to take care of Marge and they also do the cooking.  I learned to make corn tortillas and chili rellenos with Anna and Myrna.





After a week Marge was doing better so we decided to go to Oklahoma for my 50th high school reunion outside of Chickasha - Am-Po class of 1966!  Here are the classmates that could attend out of 30:


During our stay in Oklahoma we visited my brother and sister in law in Oklahoma City and my stepmother in Chickasha.  We stayed at my cousins on their farm near Chickasha, a very nice place to park:


We visited my brother three times in OKC.  I knew he was in poor health but didn't expect the sudden news as we were leaving Oklahoma to go back to Kansas that he had died of a heart attack.  We had just seen him one day earlier.  So we turned the RV around and stayed another week - making funeral arrangements, calling relatives, the funeral, the burial.  All in quite a shock.  Thank goodness my brother and his wife from Las Vegas flew out and helped.

We returned to Kansas, and since Marge was still doing ok, we decided to spend some time with the youngest daughter and her family in Gardner, Kansas.  We went to an arboretum with daughter Suzy and grandson, Ethan and granddaughter, Parker.  Here we are feeding fish and the kids posing for pictures:



We stayed at Baldwin City, about 15 minutes away from their house, at the Lodge.  It is a nice private RV park/ hotel with about 10 RV sites.  We enjoyed walking around the town of Baldwin City and eating at the Moose BBQ.

Next we moved on to the oldest daughter in Atchison.  We have been to grandson Lane's track meet, where he competed in long jump and ran the 400.  On Saturday we went to younger grandson's soccer match.  Lane running 400:


Landon with teammates and intent on listening to his coach:





We are staying at Warnock Lake park in the city of Atchison.  This is a wonderful place to park.  There are about 15 camping sites with 50 amp power, central water, for  a senior rate of $8.  The lake is beautiful and there is at least 2 gagles of baby geese.  There is a lovely walking area called the International Forest of Friendship - trees donated from all the states and many foreign countries.  Atchison is the home of Ameilia Earhart so in this area is the Amelia Earhart earth works - a likeness of her face and head in natural earth setting.  It is pretty hard to see but the website helps.  We are walking everyday in this beautiful setting and we are about the only ones here.


Sign below shows where the different donated trees are located.


Lovely area to walk:


Gagle of geese - probably over a dozen babies:



Was Ameila this tall and skinny?


This morning we had a severe thunderstorm and spend some time in the campground restrooms.  More storms predicted for tonight.  Guess we will button everything up and spend the night at daughter Stephanie's.