STINK BUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my God!! We haven't told you about the Stink Bugs! When we were camped in Maryland (in September) at Elk Neck State Park the Stink Bugs were every where!! We stayed there almost a week and then moved 20 miles down the road to camp with Rob's sister Jeanne and her husband. We stayed  there another week and the whole time we were there we were battling Stink Bugs. Weird thing was, Rob's sister and husband who were parked right next door to us, didn't seem to have our problem.

We have been fighting these damn stink bugs ever since! After doing a considerable amount of research on the internet it is a known fact that the upper east coast has been invaded by millions of stink bugs and they are causing a variety of problems. When we were in Elk Neck State Park we must have been parked  right in the center of their breeding ground. No wonder no one else was camping in this enormous state park. There wasn't even any staff around the whole time we were there, it was self check-in. It was a little eerie.  Obviously someone knew something we didn't.

Now, thanks to us, we have depositing stinkbugs all over the southern United States. Every where we have gone since we left Maryland we park and they start coming out of every where. While at the Outer Banks we found what we thought was our mother load, there were hundeds of them all neatly tucked away in the folds of all of our window treatments. We sucked them all up with the Kirby. Then we found another mother load tucked in all of Rob's folded T-shirts. Rob took all of his clothes outside and shook them off. We also found them amounst our hanging clothes.
   At one point our ice started tasting like stink bugs so Rob disassembled our icemaker to find dozens of them in it. He had to do this 3 times! Then we went to Asheville and winter came. It appears as though they don't like the cold so we thought we were done with them. Not so. Now that we are back in the nice climate they are coming out again. On average, we kill about a dozen everyday.

The reason why they call them Stink Bugs is because they have a strong odor that smells extremely medicinal or a bad herb.  Rob has had them squirt on him when he is picking them up (I haven't) and it takes at least two hand washings to get rid of the smell!! They are a little smaller than the size of a dime. Damn little bastards.
Their average life span is about 9 months so I guess if they aren't breeding we should be done with them by
May. Look out folks, they ARE coming to a theatre near you. I loved Maryland, but you couldn't pay me to go back there.

A Trip down Memory Lane

We spent some time in Edgewood, Maryland. Rob took me  to the neighborhood of his boyhood home that he lived in with his ten brothers and sisters from third grade until he graduated from high school. He pointed out all the homes of his friends that I have heard so much about thru the years. We drove by the grade school, junior high and high school they all  attended. We drove over the culvert that Rob and some of his buddies blew up with some kind of homemade explosive device.  He pointed out first, second, and third jobs, bars he use to stumble out of, and places he used to hunt.

We connected up with a friend of Rob's that he hadn't seen or spoken to in over 30 years, Steve Upton. This was a guy he used to spend endless amounts of time with hunting and carrousing. Steve and his wife, Lorraine had us over for a dinner of freshly caught blue crabs. We spent hours connecting or as in Steve and Rob's case, reconnecting as they told old stories looking  over old photographs and caught up on each other lives. It was pretty cool  to be a part of. These two people turned out to be pretty special and  I am convinced we will be spending time together in the near future.
By now you have probably already read  Rob's account of their duck hunting expedition the following day. A pretty harrowing experience that  seems to get funnier every time I hear it.

We also spent time with other old friends in that area and when we went  Houston, Delaware. One of Rob's best friends, John Evans and his wife Faye entertained us  for three days. It was great to to finally meet people I had been sending Christmas cards to for 22 years.