I talked about the nice summer weather we've had so far in my last post, which is true, but forgot to mention it can get a little windy every now and than! 
It wasn't until I started to look at pictures for this week's post when I remembered waking up to this one morning!

Fortunately we had no damage whatsoever, thanks to the rack on the back of the truck (and due to the fact that it was a very small tree of course)!

Other than that, we're steadily working on our 'to-do' list. This time we tackled the toilet which had been giving us some troubles for a while now. 
The plastic valve to close off the bowl to the sewer pipe has deteriorated over time, and didn't close that well anymore, and when that happened it resulted in very bad (sewer) smells !!

We tried to order just a valve but of course that wasn't possible, you had to order a whole 'upper mechanism'!
Oh well, in the end that turned out to be 'easier' to install, so ..  all's well that ends well!
James did most of the contorting part, there's not much room in an RV toilet, and my job was to clean (ehw!), hold the flaslight and serve as a dead weight ...

Glad to be of service ...

Talking about jobs, I realize that I've not really mentioned my 'other' job yet. Time to set to things straight, although I'm almost done.
Since half May I've worked in housekeeping for the motel, (their own cleaner quit just at the beginning of the season) about 12.5 hours/week, in exchange for free rent and hookups. 
This comes to $10/hr., which is a very good deal, since most housekeepers are paid minimum wages and in South Dakota that's only $8.50.

This is my (t)rusty laundry cart for when I have to 'do' one of the six cabins:

And here's a view of my domain, the laundry room:

.... where I spent many hours washing, drying and folding the endless piles of laundry ...

And than there's the 18 rooms of the Motel. I can make beds with my eyes closed now ... in my sleep even!

Anyhow, it netted me $500/month + free water/electric/sewer, so it was worth it, and since I worked many more hours during Rally, 4th of July and will be doing this coming Labour day, I only have 5 more hours to go and September is all paid for! Yahoo!

Because of the working, and the warm weather, and the many tourists, I haven't been walking much lately so I'm almost out of 'nature shots'.
But here's a few from earlier in the season:

       

A northern Flicker (left) and, my first (!), Cedar Waxwing (on the right)

This couple of Red Crossbills, raised this year's 'crop' of youngsters in their nest high up in one of the Pines, behind our RV.

And this is our resident Red Squirrel. Almost impossible to get a good picture off since he doesn't sit still for a minute! 

I've been picking wildflowers in the meadow behind us all summer, but the pickings are getting slim these days, and the seeds of the Wavyleaf Thistle are flying everywhere ....

The end of the summer is here and Fall is coming!