A New Journey Begins: Life is an Adventure

All I did was brush my teeth. And it kicked off a 24-hour series of
events that led us here, to Whitehouse, Ohio, where I sit with
instructions on how to use the tornado shelter that's about 250 feet
away. (That's it, in the picture. Well, it's the garage of the house
you see in the picture.)

And, yes, bring the dogs.

Let me begin.

Our 2010 Summer Adventure includes a visit with the kids and grandkids in Seattle, Glacier National Park, Yosemite, Death Valley and whatever we can pile on.

It begins now.

I'm brushing my teeth at the end of the first day of Our Summer 2010 Adventure. I rinse and ACK! POND SCUM! Our water tastes like POND SCUM. Oh, yuck. Spit spit. Where's the mouth wash? Gargle, gargle. Spit.

Must be something horrid is growing in our fresh water tank. Ack. Ack.

OK. No problem. No one use the water until we can rinse out the tank, sanitize it and rinse it out again. OK. No problem. Until then, we'll just use public restrooms. At Walmart. Or at the Rutherford B. Hayes Center (wonderful place to learn about our 19th president AND about
the history of croquet and other late 19th-century passions).

It's at the Center in Fremont, Ohio, that we try out our brand-new, $1,200 mega generator. It's 90+ degrees, so we need to use the generator to power the air conditioning we need to leave on in the motor home so our dogs don't die.

The generator guzzles all its gas in about three hours and, we discover, gets so hot it tries to melt our power cord plug. OK. Now we have sour water and a melting power plug. And we need to wash our hands.

That's when we decide to pay for an overnight at this campground, in Whitehouse, Ohio, an appropriate place to end the day after visiting a presidential museum.  And we have total access to all the water and power we need to wash our hands and fix our problems. However, on the way here, a bully of a truck kicked up a rock and we think our windshield cracked.

OK. We have a dinged windshield, nasty water and a deformed electrical plug.

And now for the tornado.

The people who own the campground point to the garage just up the street and tell me to head there, with my dogs, if the tornado siren sounds. And, they say, it probably will because there's a watch on for tonight and this is, after all, Ohio.
 

That's why the campground is so empty.

Our life is such an adventure.

(It's 10:21 p.m. and no tornado yet, but a storm brews. OH! I see lightning!)