our EXTENDED raincation

Yes, you read that right. More rain. It came down in sheets starting just before midnight on Friday night (6/27). Jim was watching the radar and kept me posted how it looked. “Whelp, it looks like it’s raining at the combine but it looks like we won’t get anything here. It’s headed Northeast”. Then he fell asleep on the couch and it began to rain. Well, first I noticed the intense lightning that kept flashing through the closed shades. So I went to the door and realized the storm was headed directly for us.

More rain, more hail and a lot of wind; but no tornadic activity. Friday morning, I looked out my window and saw Mat and Brice working on the tornado shelter. Apparently the farmer called Mat earlier that morning to tell him he needed to make sure we would be able to get in the shelter. He also wanted Mat to buy some tie-downs for the Cottage. I guess he was concerned of tornadoes. Maybe I should have been concerned but I wasn’t. Reed Timmer’s map didn’t include our area.

The tornado shelter is on the other side of the pickup and not far from the Cottage.

Jim gave up once he realized there was nothing more he could do and went to bed. I had a hard time feeling sleepy. I think I may have been either caught up on sleep or wanted to make sure Callie got to the school in time, or both. She was supposed to be at Murdock at 3:30 a.m. to load the bus taking the FBLA group to the airport in Omaha. I knew there was nothing I could do from here but I wanted to make sure she was up and about. And…I wanted to make sure and give her a shout before the adventure began to wish her luck. I remember going to the National FBLA conference the summer I was a junior and a senior. It was the best experience. At 3:30, the lightning was constant – like a strobe light. And the thunder – a continual roar. There was no break.

Once I knew Callie had made it to her destination, I allowed myself to sleep. The next morning, I woke up to lakefront property…once again…

and I walked out to the rain gauge.

Nothing would be happening for a few more days.

This is what the U.S. National Weather Service out of Dodge City had to say about our latest storm and extender of our raincation:

With last night’s heavy rainfall (4.37″ at the Garden City airport!), the all-time monthly precipitation record was reached at Garden City (airport), beating July 1979. Official Garden City records go back to 1947. In Dodge City, we have now seen our wettest June in over a century with 8.25″ this month! Some of our long-term climate stations may have reached record June or even all-time monthly precipitation, but we will not know for sure until sometime in July.

The excuse to go to Garden City (again) was to get the mail. There was two large packages of mail waiting for me. Once we got the mail picked up, we took a little tour of the town to see what we could see. The first unbelievable sight was water in the creek that has been dry every year that we’ve been coming here. This is the sixth summer we’ve stopped in this location.

And then we drove to the one RV park that we knew of east of town.

What a mess. The RV park had turned into a lake – literally! We drove in so far and then Jim thought it was getting deep enough he backed out.

By now, it was time to grab something to eat. So we decided to hit Taco Bell. It was cheap. 🙂

Next activity on the raincation schedule was a drive by the MacDon Support Trailer. “Let’s go say hello to Paul”. Ok. What the heck…might as well. Well, Paul wasn’t there but a pickup with several guys working for a fellow harvester were. We had a good visit with them and then Paul showed up. Visited with Paul for a little while and then decided to go visit the New Holland Support trailer again. We probably over-extended our time with them. They were good sports, though, and helped eat up our day with conversation.

On our way back to the Cottage, we drove by the John Deere dealership – American Implement. We had been told we should go see the amount of water that was in their lot.

We took the long way back to the Cottage. Jim wanted to see what it looked like by the Yellow Beast. It just looked wetter. There was water running out of the field we were supposed to cut next. I think we better let it dry just a little more before we try it.

There she sits…just waiting to get back to work.

This brings us to today. We slept in. Why not? It was Sunday AND we had nothing to do. Then we got a phone call from Eric and Emily Wolgemuth. They would like to meet us for lunch, if it fit into our schedule. I laughed at Eric when he said that. Schedule? What the heck is a schedule? We’re on raincation! We met them at the Pizza Hut in Scott City. We had a very enjoyable lunch and it was good to see fellow harvesters. One of the positive benefits of rain is getting to hang out with other harvesters – if possible.

A sign of where Jim’s been hanging out. Good thing we got something to read in the mail! He’s even got the TV turned ever so slightly towards the couch so he can enjoy the old shows on MEtv.

So far, we haven’t had any rain since the storm ended about 4:00 yesterday morning. Will it continue? Or will we get an even longer raincation? Only time will tell. In the meantime, I will continue doing what I can now so that when the time comes that we get busy in the field, I won’t feel behind. My only wish is that the kids were here to enjoy the down time with us.  Jim’s outlook is getting a little more dismal. I try to remind him there’s nothing we can do about the weather. God knows what we need and sometimes that’s not the same as what we want. We’ll be ok. Things work out just as they should. And, as I’ve mentioned time and time again, this country NEEDS rain more than anything. They’ve had more rain the past week than they have in quite some time. God is good!