I swam another quarter mile today, and this time without stopping.  HOWEVER, before anyone gets too impressed, today I did all but the last length breast stroke.  There was a woman in there really swimming laps - but I'm only competing against myself, and I did better today than yesterday when I didn't swim any.

It's always a bonus when you see a penguin, right? Here's one I ran into on my walk back down for breakfast -

Later in the Apple pool we were chatting with Scott, a hiker & biker who is volunteering here for two weeks leading the evening tours up to the bat cave.  

When I found out he lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas I told him how I spent my first year there. (My parents "honeymooned" driving from NYC to Fayetteville so that Dad could start a teaching job at the law school; I arrived a year later.  We stayed until I was one, when the Korean War emptied the law school of most of its students.  That meant there were fewer professors needed, and as the last hired Dad was the first fired. That's when we moved to the DC area.

Scott asked if I'd ever been back (no), though on a trip through in their RV some years ago Mom and Dad tried to find the little house they had built (with help from some of his law students) and weren't able to.  Scott says Fayetteville has doubled since he moved there in the 1980s, so not surprising that a tiny house built out in the middle of nowhere in 1949 has since been swallowed up.  He says if I can find out where it was (will have to see if Mom can give me some route number crossroads) he'll send me a picture of what it looks like now.