Thursday August 13th 2020

The storm front that was threatening all of yesterday finally arrived in the predawn hours. The wind started to roar and my RV home was buffeted back and forth. I just had time to get the windows and vents closed before it started to rain. I went right back to sleep, but there was plenty of evidence of a big storm this morning.

It was a fifty fifty kind of day. It started off cloudy and ended very sunny. As usual, the dominant weather characteristic was the humidity. Every walk around the RV park or even a quick trip to the riverbank resulted in dripping sweat. Thankfully, the temperature peaked below ninety.

This was lawn mowing day around the park. One of the nice characteristics of the park is all the open grass. Today we paid the price with all the noise from the mowing equipment. They use a small riding mower around the sites, but a big platform mower towed behind a tractor for the open areas. Since I never saw both units at the same time, I think it was the same guy switching back and forth between the two pieces of equipment. It was an all day activity.

The barge traffic in the river was particularly heavy today. On previous days very few barges passed by during the middle of the day. Today it started early and continued all day. One of the early down river units was one of the biggest I’ve seen. It looked to be composed of thirty six barges with a huge three engine tug pushing them along. The challenge of turning to follow the bend in the river was particularly apparent.

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Later in the day a northbound lash up finally gave me a curious cargo to wonder about. The front barge had thirty huge white cylindrical to flat parts. I think they were windmill blades, but they didn’t look like the ones I’ve seen on the road. I’ll never know for sure, but it was fun to see something to speculate about.

Overall, today was another fun day hanging around my RV home.