Soggy Birthday
Like we have every recent year we decided to head for Bryan for Bruce's Dad's birthday on the last week of October. We reserved a site at the Karstens RV place in College Station where we have been before. His birthday was on the 28th yet we had arranged for Leigh and Brooks and grandson to come down on Saturday night the 24th, go to Cenere's on Saturday like usual and go home after the great occasion. Well, it began to rain ...
As we left we had to stop at the Walmart in Addison to pick up prescriptions and then on the way in the pouring rain.
As we went through Corsicana on the way down to Bryan it began to rain more and later Friday night it had rained more than 14 inches ... wow ... with derailed trains and massive flooding. Eventually Interstate 45 and 35 were closed that night due to flooding.
We were lucky and moved into Karstens to the rainbow view below. Soggy park but high and drained well so that we were free of the heavy rain and flooding.
With both interstate highways closed heading south the kids couldn't come down to Bryan for the annual celebration on Saturday night. OK we had to ensure the kids could cancel out of their hotel and then we planned for plan B for pop for his 99th on next Wednesday the 28th.
To help us decide what to do we went over to Messina Hof Winery for a break. We had their goat cheese and salami plate with a couple of nice Temperanillo wines which allowed us to make some plans.
With some coordination with the staff at the St Joseph Manor we arranged to have the birthday party.
OK this is the 99th ... let me say this again THE 99TH BIRTHDAY ... pop has been doing stuff in this world for almost a century ... wow! We would have rather had the party at Cenare but because of the nasty weather we cancelled the normal dinner at Cenare and worked out a place for us to host pop with less attendees.
Here's brother Richard and myself with the old dude who continued to regale us with stories of cousins and work acquaintances as we had a really neat birthday cake and a couple of presents. It was sad that mom couldn't make it but she is not quite as responsive as the old boy here is ... but holy cow back to the almost 100 year thing ...
After the annual celebration of life in the Bryan area we headed back up to the Dallas area along the favorite two lane highway 14 toward Mexia.
Below for our lunch entertainment was a caracara which is an unusual but not rare roadside visitor. These critters work with the vultures to help the Texas Dep of Trans keep the roadside clean but also will get their own prey as they are really in the falcon family.
And then finally back to Plano and the allergy shot for Jo-Anne. Fortunately (not for them) Calloway's garden center has a big parking lot that we can park in and Jo can run through the hedge and get her shot while I pretend to work on emergency repair to the RV ...
Back to Aubrey to chill and repair and clean and repair and clean etc for a bit at the Shady Creek RV place.
