Time with Isabella and Eve

On Tuesday, July 26, we traded Jake for Isabella, age 10 and Eve age 9. We spent the next three days together at the lake. We had a blast going out in the boat and watching movies in the trailer.

I continued on with my daily skiing. At the end of our time at the lake I ended up skiing 8 out of 10 days. The good news about that is that I skied my way into shape. By the end, I was not getting sore by the next day and I was really happy about that. I also can say that I did not crash the entire time. I have been skiing safe and at my age that is probably a good thing. The only problem is that I would now like to challenge myself to a slalom course. I may try to do that when I return to Missouri in September.

Isabella turned out to be a great camera person. We played with a more zoomed in picture and I decided to give everyone that watches, a look at what it feels like to water ski from my perspective. I combined the footage that Isabella shot and from a GoPro mounted on a bike helmet on my head. I think it turned out pretty cool. Check it out:

Water Skiing with GoPro cuts

The girls had a great time riding in the tube. They rode by themselves, but they really enjoyed riding together.

Here are the girls posing in the boat for some pictures.

We did a fair amount of fishing. We did not have much luck until the last day. While they were swimming I was fishing along the bank and caught a small bass. They saw that and wanted to fish also. After a while, Isabella caught this nice Blue Gill. She would not touch it, but wanted it to be returned to the water safely.

While they were here we had some interesting bird sightings. First we saw our first Great Egrets in Missouri. We see them all the time down on the gulf coast, but it was cool to see a pair here.

I love checking out these scissor tail flycatchers.

We had some interesting sunsets while the girls were here. Here are a couple of shots.

I got up early one morning and sat outside the the trailer looking out over the very foggy lake. It was a beautiful setting.

This year we are celebrating the 30^th birthday of our boat. It is a 1986 Correct Craft Ski Nautique 2001. Yes it is true, this is a 30 year old boat. It is in amazing shape. I have owned it for only 5 years, so all of he credit has to go to the two Mikes that owned it before me. Most of the credit goes to my friend Mike that owns an auto body shop, he did an amazing job restoring it to new. I am doing my best to keep it looking good. It runs like a brand new boat even though it has almost 600 hours on it.

I know it is tough to call myself a full time RVer when I still own this boat. Well, this is how we have chosen to do it. Lucky for us we have a place to store it when we are on the road. I love this boat and plan to keep it as long as I can still ski.

Speaking of travel, it is now time to move down the road. We are heading to Colorado in the morning. It will take us about a week to get to Denver. I know, I know that is too fast, but we have a limited amount of time and really want to get up to the cool air in the mountains as soon as possible. We are done with the heat and humidity.

I will close this entry with a dose of cuteness. We had all of our grandchildren together at Shannon's house on Friday for a couple of hours. It was great to see them all at the same time and a great way to end this time in Missouri. I did get a couple of shots of Amelia in her swing.