Leaving Lincolnton behind

Beaver pond on our creek

Petanque court under water

We left our Lincolnton-getaway-home on Monday morning, 12/9/2019, to begin our journey to Spicewood, Texas, for the holidays. As many of you know by now, Spicewood, just west of Austin, is where our daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren live, and where we have spent the holiday season for about the last fifteen years.

Before we could get on the road for our 22-hour drive, we had one last bit of business to attend to in North Carolina. Shirley had a morning meeting scheduled with a representative of the NCDOT (Highway Dept.) to discuss the situation a group of beavers had created on the back part of out property which adjoins Highway 321 By-pass. It seems that the beavers had recently chosen to move in to Walker Branch and had built a nice dam to make their new abode more homey (for beavers and maybe ducks).

At the same time, their new home began causing problems for us, and, lucky for us, the highway foundation banking. The State of NC decided that the beavers needed to go and wanted to talk with Shirley (she inherited, along with our daughter Lynda, the property when Shirley's mom passed away a few years ago) about their plans. They offered to trap the beavers and destroy their dam which would alleviate potential problems with the highway and restore our bottom land to usable area for petanque.

We left town hoping that when we returned in January, things would be pretty-much back to normal.