By JIM VERTUNO, JULIO CORTEZ and JOHN SEEWER

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha says that 11 campers and a camp counselor are still missing after powerful floods inundated central Texas.

Dozens of people have been killed since raging floodwaters slammed a portion of central Texas starting Friday.

The death toll from flash floods rose to nearly 70 on Sunday after searchers found more more bodies in the hardest-hit Kerr County. The victims include children who were camping along the Guadalupe River banks.

Officials have said they will not stop searching until every person is found.

Most of the deaths coming in Kerr County in the state’s Hill Country. Besides the 59 dead in Kerr County — 38 adults and 21 children — additional deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet and Kendall counties.

Rescuers dealt with broken trees, overturned cars and muck-filled debris in a difficult task to find survivors. Authorities still have not said how many people were missing beyond the children from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp where most of the dead were recovered.

With each passing hour, the outlook became more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone began searching the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so.

Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.

The destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the river in only 45 minutes before daybreak Friday, washing away homes and vehicles. The danger was not over as flash flood watches remained in effect and more rain fell in central Texas on Sunday.

Searchers used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims and to rescue people stranded in trees and from camps isolated by washed-out roads. Officials said more than 850 people were rescued in the first 36 hours.

A day of prayers in Texas

Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that authorities will work around the clock and said new areas were being searched as the water receded. He declared Sunday a day of prayer for the state.

“I urge every Texan to join me in prayer this Sunday — for the lives lost, for those still missing, for the recovery of our communities, and for the safety of those on the front lines,” he said in a statement.

In Rome, Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for those touched by the disaster. History’s first American pope spoke in English at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, “I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States. We pray for them.”

The hills along the Guadalupe River are dotted with century-old youth camps and campgrounds where generations of families have come to swim and enjoy the outdoors. The area is especially popular around the Independence Day holiday, making it more difficult to know how many are missing.

“We don’t even want to begin to estimate at this time,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said on Saturday.

Harrowing escapes from floodwaters

Survivors shared terrifying stories of being swept away and clinging to trees as rampaging floodwaters carried trees and cars past them. Others fled to attics inside their homes, praying the water wouldn’t reach them.

At Camp Mystic, a cabin full of girls held onto a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping around their legs.

Among those confirmed dead were an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic, and the director of another camp up the road.

Locals know the area as “ flash flood alley” but the flooding in the middle of the night caught many campers and residents by surprise even though there were warnings.

Warnings came before the disaster

The National Weather Service on Thursday advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.

At the Mo-Ranch Camp in the community of Hunt, officials had been monitoring the weather and opted to move several hundred campers and attendees at a church youth conference to higher ground. At nearby Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista, organizers also had mentioned on social media that they were watching the weather the day before ending their second summer session Thursday.

Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes the ravaged area, acknowledged that there would be second-guessing and finger-pointing as people look for someone to blame.

___

Cortez reported from Hunt, Texas, and Seewer from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed.

SELIGMAN, Arizona — They came suddenly and in numbers, cars and trucks weighed down with their owners’ worldly possessions. Angel Delgadillo was a boy when those hundreds of thousands of Dust Bowl refugees drove through his tiny hometown on Route 66, heading for California and the promise of work on farms so fertile, it was said, that fruit fell from the trees.

He and his friends used to run to a nearby building at night and wait for the passing vehicles’ headlights to cast their shadows on the white stucco wall. They danced and watched their shadows change as the cars neared.

“And as a car left,” he remembered, “our shadows went with them.”

Delgadillo’s entire life, all 98 years, has played out along what John Steinbeck called “the mother road, the road of flight.” He and his eight siblings grew up on the route; he went to barber college in the Route 66 town of Pasadena, California, and then apprenticed for two years at a barber shop in another route town 43 miles east of his home — Williams, Arizona — before returning to Seligman to run his parents’ pool hall and barbershop.

As Route 66 aficionados look to the historic roadway’s 100th anniversary next year, most agree there would probably not be a centennial to celebrate if not for Delgadillo.

“They’re right,” he said with a smile, sitting in his barbershop chair on a Friday in June.

Follow our road trip: Route 66, ‘The Main Street of America,’ turns 100

An estimated 9,000 cars once passed through Seligman every 24 hours, Delgadillo said, until Interstate 40 bypassed it and other towns along Arizona’s Route 66 corridor. The time, he recalled, was around 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 22, 1978.

“When you lose something so important, your livelihood, how can you forget that moment?” he said. “Listen to me: We knew we were gonna get bypassed, but we did not know how devastating it was going to be. The world just forgot about us. County officials didn’t know about us. State officials, highway officials, the feds — it was like they told us, Angel, if you can swim out of it, swim out of it. If you can’t, drown.”

Businesses shuttered. People left. Delgadillo, his wife Vilma and four children considered doing the same.

Seligman was heading to its grave.

“It was a very, very sad moment,” he said. “First, it was so sad. Then I got so angry.”

Then he did something about it.

Enlisting the help of his older brother Juan, who built the Seligman institution Delgadillo’s Snow Cap, and others, he formed the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona in February 1987. They wrote letters to state highway officials telling them to step in and preserve the route. At first, they were ignored.

“But, you know what,” he said, “those big boys in Phoenix didn’t know who they were up against.”

By November that same year, the state’s transportation department designated 83 miles of Route 66, from Seligman west to Kingman, as a historic road. Delgadillo’s association kept up its pressure, eventually convincing the state to add more miles.

Today, the entire expanse is recognized by the state as a historic road, and Arizona boasts the longest remaining stretch of uninterrupted Route 66 in the country, starting at the California border and ending nearly 160 miles east near Ash Fork.

“To fight the government, you lose. Go to city hall and try to convince them, you lose,” Delgadillo said. “We had to fight our state government and we succeeded. We the people.”

Delgadillo soon fielded phone calls from would-be preservationists in the other seven states the route traverses. They wanted to know how they could protect their portions of the road.

Form your association, he told them.

Delgadillo’s efforts have earned Seligman the title of the “birthplace of historic Route 66,” and Delgadillo, the “guardian angel of Route 66.” He retired from cutting hair a few years ago; the barbershop inside the Route 66 gift shop that bears his and his wife Vilma’s names is now something of a shrine to his and his family’s legacy.

Route 66 travelers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Seligman to see him. More often than not these days, they see a life-sized cardboard cutout of his likeness instead. When he does stop in, like on that Friday in June, he’s quickly surrounded by people wanting to have their pictures taken with him.

“It’s as though they have known me forever,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s overwhelming. They’re so thankful. It is mind boggling.”

In retirement, he continues to help celebrate his beloved town and route. He started building birdhouses constructed using 100-year-old lumber from his grandparents’ Seligman restaurant that once stood on Route 66 before it was torn down.

Each birdhouse is numbered. Last week, he finished number 268. He has enough wood for another 30.

They sell for $100.66 at the gift shop. The proceeds are being donated to help Seligman construct Route 66 welcome signs at either end of town ahead of next year’s centennial.

Read the sixth dispatch, An Albuquerque neighborhood in peril, here >>>

The journey along Route 66 map to Seligman, Arizona, June 6, 2025.

By JESSICA DAMIANO, Associated Press

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle grew tomatoes in plastic buckets lined up like soldiers on the cement patio in their tiny Queens, New York, backyard.

They also grew dozens of vegetables in their 10-by-10 foot patch of soil and installed a pergola they made from green metal fence posts above a picnic table. While it provided much-needed shade, it more importantly supported grapevines that produced enough fruit for their annual homemade vintage.

Space — or the lack of it — doesn’t have to stand between you and a fruitful garden. You just have to be creative.

Start by looking up

Vertical space is a horizontally challenged gardener’s best friend.

This June 21, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows squash, beans and tomatoes growing vertically in a space-saving Long Island, N.Y. garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

String up a trellis, hang baskets or attach planters to a fence or wall. You might be surprised at how much you can grow when you consider the third dimension. Vines, herbs and even strawberries are content climbers or danglers.

Create visual interest by strategically grouping containers in clusters of odd numbers rather than lining them up in straight rows or placing them all separately. Try staggering their heights by perching them on decorative pedestals, overturned crates or stone slabs to draw the eye up and out.

This July 29, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows a squash plant growing vertically on a trellis on Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Compact and colorful crops

Of course, size matters. If your space is limited, seek out compact or dwarf varieties of your favorite plants. They’ve been bred to thrive in tight spaces, and many are prolific producers of flowers, fruits or vegetables. These days, it’s easy to grow roses, blueberries, tomatoes, peppers — even apple and fig trees — in containers.

Tall garlic provides a lush backdrop for this small Long Island, N.Y., flower bed on June 19, 2025. Growing herbs, fruit and vegetables in flower beds is a great way to utilize limited space in the garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

And don’t sleep on plants that multitask as both beautiful ornamentals and nutritious crops. I’ve grown amaranth, cherry tomatoes and rainbow chard in my perennial beds. Other edibles with attractive foliage or flowers like chives, fancy lettuces and sage would be equally at home among my coneflowers, zinnias and roses. And sweet potatoes make a nice ground cover or trailing vine in a mixed container.

Make the most of a single vegetable bed

If you have a small, designated bed for vegetables, you can maximize your yield by planting a succession of crops throughout the season. Start by planting early-maturing plants like peas, beets, kale and lettuces. Then, after harvesting, replace them with warm-season crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, summer squash and beans. As they fade and fall approaches, use the space for another round of cool-season plants.

This July 3, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows squash, beans and tomatoes growing vertically in a space-saving Long Island, N.Y. garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Even a narrow strip or window box can feel lush if you plant it in layers. Place tall, upright plants in the back, midsized growers in the middle, and low bloomers in front to create visual depth that can help transform even a balcony or front stoop into your own personal nature retreat.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

As if ice cream could get any better, the addition of fresh, ripe cherries and chewy, gooey almond paste turns a summer classic into a gourmet delight.

The cherries are simply coarsely mashed, rather than cooked first like most cherry ice creams, preserving their fresh tartness that complements the nutty sweetness of the almond paste chunks sprinkled throughout.

Serve as is, or as a sundae with a dollop of fresh whipped cream, chocolate drizzle, toasted almonds, and, of course, a cherry on top.

Take advantage of ripe cherries at the farmers’ markets right now or, if you miss the window, thaw frozen cherries. If cherries aren’t your thing, raspberries or peaches would also be lovely with the almond flavor. For compressor ice cream makers, simply throw the mixture in right after whisking it together, since it is not heated to dissolve the sugar. But for a frozen canister model, be sure to chill it for at least 2 hours for best results.

Cherry Almond Ice Cream

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cup (8 ounces) fresh pitted cherries

2/3 cup + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar, divided

1 cup whole milk

1 pinch salt

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup (2.5 oz) chopped almond paste, chilled

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DIRECTIONS

Combine the cherries and 1 tablespoon sugar in a small bowl and mash them with a pastry cutter, potato masher, or scissors until they’re coarsely broken up into small pieces. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Meanwhile, whisk together milk, salt and 2/3 cup sugar in a medium bowl for 2-3 minutes until the sugar completely dissolves. Stir in the vanilla, almond extract and heavy cream and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Pour the cream mixture into your ice cream maker and run according to the manufacturer’s directions, usually about 25-30 minutes, adding in the chilled cherries and almond paste at the 15-20 minute mark when the ice cream just starts to thicken (so that they don’t sink to the bottom). Serve immediately for a soft-serve consistency, or empty into a chilled container to firm up in the freezer for a couple of hours before serving.

Registered dietitian and food writer Laura McLively is the author of “The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook.” Follow her at @myberkeleybowl and www.lauramclively.com.