June 2026

June 6 The Party It was the plan all along to celebrate their nuptials with a party about a week later. Abigail and Kennedy both worked for a catering outfit in Lubbock and have had their share of weddings, large and not so large, and that’s what compelled them to have a small church wedding in Amarillo and a party in Lubbock at a later date, giving out of town folks time to travel, instead of a reception immediately following the wedding ceremony.

This party was held in a large facility designed for parties in a warehouse area of Lubbock. The Wylies and Hunts travelled from the Dallas area, and we had the much shorter trip from Amarillo. There was rain in parts of North Texas and most of the Panhandle which made for cloudy skies and cooler temperatures most of the day and kept the party building much cooler than it would have otherwise been.

Kari, Rebecca and Kaylee drove down early to help in getting things set up. Chris and Hans left in time to arrive about 2:00, which was when the party was scheduled to start. The Hunts and the Wylies must have left pretty early; both were there around 2:00. I managed to be there about the right time in spite of some erroneous directions and sometimes complete silence from my phone.

Some of Kennedy’s kin were there. I introduced myself to them and they seemed like pleasant people. A lady who works for the catering outfit that Abigail and Kennedy work for helped with the arrangements along with other employees. Most are friends of A&K, I believe, and were also guests as well as helpers. The food on offer was excellent, and the wedding cake was both beautiful and tasty.

Since Chris and Hans left early and RebKay stayed late, Kari rode home with me. We managed to get there just before it started raining.

Speaking of rain, we have enjoyed cool weather the last few days and accumulated an inch and a quarter of rain. SA is beginning to look pretty good and I see mowing in our future.

June 14. Another hot week and cool Sunday; more rain in the neighborhood of half an inch. There were some scary alerts in the late evening, something about 90 mph winds and flooding. I chose to ignore those warnings and hope for the best. Fortunately, nothing unpleasant occurred here on good ol’ SA.

We started mowing this past week and got 2005 cleaned up pretty good. We’ll continue on the southwest quad this week. We needed the rain we got last night to keep the grass growing and green. It had begun to fade but should turn back to a greener green after last night’s shower.

Yesterday I spent the morning and early afternoon in Palo Duro Canyon learning about the iNaturalist ap, something that was planned for a few weeks ago but canceled due to untimely wildfires that caused the canyon to be evacuated. The young woman presenter did a good job. She seemed to know her stuff pretty well. I learned a few things which I will try to build on. Of the 300 million iNaturalist observations reported worldwide, Texas accounted for around 15%, give or take.

June 21 We hadn’t made our quarterly visit to Alibates Flint Quary National Monument this second quarter and we were running out of time so I resolved last week to do so in the coming week, and so we did. We caught a break with the weather. A cold front blew in Thursday and the daytime temperature never got above 75. Friday started out cool and cloudy, just right for a ramble around Riverland. Our first stop was to the visitor center to learn if there had been any changes since our first quarter visit. The garden area around the visitor center was thriving both with plants and pollinators. We saw the largest big leaf milkweed I have ever seen and also the biggest chocolate flowers. Chatting with Elaine the ranger we found out there had been no changes and she told us about the rattlesnake she’d seen that morning. It had been lurking around a shed where she was storing some bags of potting soil or mulch. I wanted to go have a look for myself but didn’t see the rattler around what I thought was the shed referred to. Kari didn’t think that was the shed Elaine was referring to and spotted the rattler in what to her looked more like the shed Elaine spoke of as we walked back to the vehicle. It was quite a specimen. It was more colorful than others I’ve seen but we were peering through spaces in a wooden fence and couldn’t get close enough for a picture.

We proceeded to Riverland and went in search of the northwest corner marker which I had never been able to find. I brought the instructions from the 1964 survey done when Grandmother Rockwell devied up the half section she inherited among her three children. This time we were finally successful by using a compass to walk west from the northeast marker we could locate and translate the measurements in varas, a Spanish unit of measure, to yards and step off 10 yards at a time. We guessed that the distance would be about 1,000 yards or 10 football fields. Turns out that northwest corner marker was a USGS marker next to the national recreation area fence and between 50 and 100 yards farther south than I had ever looked in my previous searches.

We were proud of ourselves for finding the marker and with glad hearts we headed back to our vehicle for some lunch. That’s when things went south, so to speak. We got turned around. Those dang gas well roads are tricky. I think where I went wrong is when we started out, I was paying too close attention to counting off yards and got mixed up on the frequently travelled well roads we crossed and turned on the wrong one. Expecting to find the vehicle along it we walked quite a way before we figured out we were turned around but by then we weren’t sure where we were. Long story short we walked a long way before we encountered the paved road down to McBride Canyon. It was pretty simple to just follow it back north but it was a long slog before we got back to our vehicle. According to Kari’s phone we walked over eight miles total and water and some lunch were gratefully received.

June 30 This year is half over. Sometimes it seems like it has passed very rapidly and others not so much. We accumulated close to three quarters of an inch of rain this week that really greened up the grass. Then it turned hot and windy and the grass is fading again. I’m told we will have a pretty good turnout for our SA 4th celebration. It would be nice if we could get another shower before then so the place would be looking its best.