May 12th Journal Entry.

Good morning! I listened for the rain to stop for a couple of hours. I doze under my blankets and then wake up to more thunder and lightening. The storm has passed or is at least in temporary remission so I am hurrying down to my morning toilet. Back.
There is no dry wood in the neighborhood so I'll happily munch a banana and an apple for breakfast. I left the Dean Koontz book I had finished on the picnic table last evening. It is drying inside the tent along with me. A woodpecker is finding grubs with a ta-ta-ta-ta-tak. We will be breaking fast together. By the way, the camp hosts are the Youngs, not the Williams. I misremembered. Don and Marion Young.
I covered the picnic bench with a plastic bag, made a brunch of oatmeal and decided to head for the docks. I have been reading and listening to rain for a few more hours.
I paddled over to the rental cabin docks and tried to sail back. Not good. I need a daggerboard according to a photographer, who once sailed his own 20 foot boat. We talked about fetch and other things that I had to ask explanation for and why.
I came up to the campsite at 1:30 and ate more oatmeal. I'll be going back down with a plastic tote lid for a daggerboard. I must find a way to seal the front edge of the folded pain cloth I use for my sail. Maybe I can find some tape for that? The opening fills and acts like a brake.
Got the daggerboard in place, but did not seal the front edge of the sail. Did bail out the boats with an empty plastic pop bottle. Set a bit of dead baby bird on a hook and left the bamboo pole and line in the water. Maybe a fish come morning?
I put two of the gum log pieces that don't burn well on top of my little oak oatmeal fire. i am cooking now with a can I recycled from the dumpster near the dock. The logs may smolder all night so there will be coals at 4am. Just in case this doesn't work, I put dry twigs in the tent. Once again I can see more rain coming. Tonight I'll bring in my still damp running shoes and two skirts. I hope not to leave any books outside.
Wind is gusting, thunder rubbing against the hills. Time to pick up. Kim called today, during her lunch break. She is working at Gatorade. Her wife (girlfriend?), passed out this week and the hospital doctors suspect multiple brain lesions. Not a fun report. Please get to fixing, sir.
One of the neat, but annoying things about living in the forest, dear, is the leaves and creatures that land in my water cup. Just heard a roar from the sky, like a male lion announcing his intent to defend the pride. All is undercover, two gum logs are wedged together.
I went back out and put another gum log on the other two, that may last. Saw a doe moving through the forest. She stopped to look at me before deciding I was not a threat. She slipped slowly until she disappeared into the brush. It is time for the does to drop their fawns. The does leave each other in the way of Whitetails and now travel solitary. I hope she does well.
I noticed that the campground sign map is a mirror of what it should be. The D campground is shown to the north instead of the south. The marked trails shown going in the wrong directions. Walked a little as the wind builds. Mosquitoes found me in every wind shelter. I am smorgasbord. I will go back in the tent now. Some of them are as fat as I am.
Good night, Father.

May 11 Journal Entry

Rumi, the poet, calls you Beloved and i call you father or daddy. Both of us know your love and how you always come to find us when we hide in sorrow or pride. I used the present tense for both of us and you know why.
Watched the park employees driving out of the maintenance area on their way home last night. Lots of waving to each one. Two days here and I spread a bit of joy. Thank you daddy for the day, for friends, for dry kindling, for oatmeal and a can to cook it in, for being our beloved.
Took off for Dublin and found myself at a little convenience store just outside the park entrance. I waited for30 minutes until it opened. Discovered that they carried only cakes, cookies, candy and beer. Not exactly a good diet.
I walked up the next hill, passing a dead possum and a sign announcing Lupine Lane. Just over the rise I came to the junction with Dunkard's Road. I always read drunkards first when I see the word on a map. That road runs down to a hollow that was originally named Dunker's Hollow. Oh, the things you can learn by reading tourist bulletins.
I had just crossed the road when two pickups passed me by and then a woman coming from the other direction stopped. She asked where i was going, turned around and gave me a ride into Dublin. She took me right to the Walmart store by the back roads instead of the Interstate, so I would know the way to walk and hitchhike back.
I purchased some fruit and cheese, a pound of marked down hamburger and walked out the door. Surprise, there was the lady, whose name was Janet. Bless her, father. She teaches health as a professor at Johnston College in the Roanoke area. She gave me a ride all the way back to the park entrance.
I had a breakfast of hamburger patties, the whole pound. I was on my way to the dock to rig a mast and sail by 11am. The fire wood had taken some convincing to burn, mainly because of last night's hail and rainstorm. By 3pm I had a rig in place. The boats were bailed out, but I lost my oatmeal cooking/bailing can right at the end. It slipped from my fingers and sank. The water is 8 feet deep at the docks so I did not strip down to go fetch it. Much to public also.
It looked like another storm was building, so I set the sail in line with the length of the boats, tied it well and walked home, to my campsite. Last night before sleeping I called Jim Luckett of Instant Sailboat and arranged for an inflatable to be shipped after my Social Security check comes. i am getting a slightly used, slightly larger, but well patched 11 foot raft with stout oars. He will send a sail kit for it when I reach Bluestone Lake in West Virginia.
Resting now after gathering more dead-fall wood for the morning fire. I hope this wood burns hot enough to dry the gumwood the park folk brought me. The camp hosts for this section pulled in today. i thought they were trying to take a huge camper trailer down a very narrow roadway and hurried to stop them. But they were only setting to pull into the host site right by the shower house.
They have been hosts at this location for the past ten years. The Williams couple live in Rhode Island and she is a non-Hodgkin's cancer survivor. I will be talking more with them.
Life is good. Calling some of my kids tonight. Kay sent me a picture of the snow-covered street in front of her house.  Snow in Wyoming and thunderstorm in Virginia. Bye Jesus, night Daddy.