Ruth's Life is Good: Friday 9-27 Opening Dances

Saturday, September 28, 2019

Friday 9-27 Opening Dances


Have fun

We started the day off by walking the trail around Ottawa Metro Park. It is a bit less than 2 miles, it goes by Lima Lake, the beach, fishing pond, disc golf course and the playground. The beach area is really large and includes life guard stands, bathhouse and very nice picnic tables. The lake is about 100 acres and quite pretty. The disc golf course is well maintained and had a totem pole at the beginning of the course. The trail is paved and very easy to walk, it also allows you to access the trail to town. We saw people jogging, walking and riding bikes. We had a very nice walk.

The beach area in Ottawa County Park

Lima Lake

Paved trail

Totem Pole at the entrance to the disc golf course

Our opening dance for the Smokin' In Rail City Advanced (A2) and Challenge (C1) weekend started at 3:00 at the Veterans Memorial Civic and Convention Center. It was an A2 dance. We had six squares plus a couple of extra couples. It was computer run. The dancing was very good, Johnny Preston and Jack Pladdys did a great job. They kept the dance moving.

At 5:00 we went back to the Minnie to relax and have dinner. While we were relaxing a front came in. The wind came up, Larry looked at the weather and saw a lot of rain coming in. When it was about 6:30 the rain hadn't arrived so we took a chance and rode the motorcycle to the dance. By the time we got there it was starting to sprinkle, we just made it. Our neighbors at the campground are square dancers, Jan and Don and they said we were lucky we left when we did because the rain really came down hard at the park.

The first evening session was an hour of C1, we had three and a half squares. It had been a little over a month since we danced C1 but we did study Taminations. Taminations is a program that shows you each move and tells you the definitions of each move. Taminations helped me get through a lot of the moves. We also had strong dancers in our squares which helped the most. A2 dancing started at 8:00 and went to 10:00. We had eight and a half squares of dancers. The dancers were very good. When people were struggling with a move both Jack and Johnny did a super job walking the floor through the moves. During the dance the rain came through so when we left the seat on the motorcycle was wet. Larry dried it down the best he could. We had a super evening of dancing with friends and to Johnny and Jack.