Friday March 1st 2024

Cloudy and hot are the operative weather words for the day. The high temperature was in the low eighties with high humidity, but the sun only flirted with an appearance once late in the day. This is a much wetter weather pattern. It rained hard for about an hour in the mid afternoon.

A trip to Walmart for groceries and the rain storm really cut into my hiking time today. I started the afternoon with a trip into Gainesville for groceries. The Walmart wasn’t busy. I was able to park near the door, find a shopping cart, and make my way up and down all the aisles with ease. The only negative part of today’s experience was the checkout. There was only one “Assisted” checkout open and that one was a training session. When I have a full cart of stuff, I resist to the nth degree using the self checkouts. Today I was willing to give up time at the checkout for simplicity. As a solo shopper, self checkouts are just a pain. There isn’t enough room and I only have two hands.

Once I was back at my RV home, unloading my purchases from the car and stowing the groceries away took half an hour or so. By that time, the rain storm was rapidly approaching. My thought of taking a trip to the observation tower on the prairie went on pause. The rain was much heavier than I expected, but it only lasted about an hour during which I went into cooking mode further delaying my visit to the observation tower. After I finished eating it was too late for anything other than a walk to the day use area on the lake.