November 4, through Nov 22, 2012

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Punkin Park Campground

43037 Billville Rd
Hammond LA  70403

We traveled about 200 miles today, and were glad of the extra hour we had.  After battling rain for a couple hours, we pulled into this park about 1:30, and had some Taco soup for lunch.  This is not the best park we’ve ever been in, and I must say that as it got dark, we closed up tight.  There seems to be some loud people, squealing tires, and just general malcontent here, and we would not stay here again. 

I made porcupine balls, baked sweet potatoes and veggies for dinner.  We ate and enjoyed the end of the Steeler game where they beat the Giants – yahoo!  We’ll take a win any way we can get it!  

Monday, November 5, 2012

Pine Grove RV Park, LLC
1102 Alan HickmanDr
DeRidder, LA  70634
www.pinegroverv.com

After another 190 mile day, we arrived here about 3 pm.  This is a very nice small park in town.  Very clean, spacious sites,  electric, cable, good wifi, for the princely sum of $10 per night (Passport America). 

We jumped into the car and headed to Wal-Mart because we were out of some basics, milk, eggs, bread, dog food J  The most important of the basics was the dog food!  We then came home and had leftover Taco soup, and it was yummy the second time around too!

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

We got up and headed out to Coushatta Casino.  What a great day!  When we got there we signed up for the Player’s Club card – and the lady that gave them to us said we were in luck, the Buffet was on sale for $5.50 per person on Tuesdays…we were happy about that, so we went and played some slots for a while, then went to the buffet.  I must say it is one of the better buffets we’ve been to in a casino.  Very large variety, extremely fresh, the stuff that should be piping hot was, and the stuff that was to be cold was icy!  We waddled out (it was $11.00 including drinks) and played some more slots.  We ended up coming home with a surplus of $8.75…now I would consider that a successful casino experience!

We spent the entire evening and part of the night watching the election returns.  Very happy with the outcome :)

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

We got up to a very disturbing phone call, telling us that our daughter that lives in Grand Junction, CO was in the hospital and had a heart attack in the middle of the night.  She is really too young to have this happen.  We spent quite a while just trying to wake up and deal with the fact that Tanaya is in the hospital.  Later on we got to talk to her and assure ourselves that she is doing ok – they put in a stent and she will go to Cardiac Rehab for a couple days.

Otherwise it was a very lazy day!

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Hanks Creek Campground
Lake Sam Rayburn
Zavalla, TX

We got up and on the road this morning by 9 am – and we drove until noon when we arrived here at the Corp of Engineer park.  We are in site 24, which is marvelous.  We have an inlet on the door side of the motorhome, and the lake out the front windshield.  This lake has 750 MILES of shoreline, and is big enough that it makes its own waves…amazing!  Since it is a Thursday, there are hardly any people here – as a matter of fact, in this loop, there are only 2 other campers!  There is a very nice shower house just across the way that I can use in the mornings, since there is no sewer here, just a dump station, which means about Sunday we will have to go dump! 

The lady at the gate said they have quite a few reservations for the weekend, so I think it will be fun watching all those folks come in and set up :)  

We have NO internet here, and little to no phones.  David did manage to get a text msg to Tanaya telling her we have limited service, I’ll get one off to Dawn soon.  We will go into either Zavalla or Lufkin tomorrow to check them out, and probably have late lunch/early dinner.

When I put lunch on the table today, David took a bite of carrot, chewed, inhaled and promptly got a couple pieces of carrot in his lungs.  This was followed by almost 2 hours of pretty nonstop coughing.  I thought I was going to have to take him to an ER, but finally he coughed 1 piece out – and after another excruciating coughing bout, the second one came out.  It was exhausting for him, and after about 10 minutes to calm down, he fell into a deep sleep.  These spells don’t happen very often, but when they do, they are extremely frightening for him.  Me too but in an entirely different way.  When you have COPD and can hardly breathe anyway, and then you can’t stop coughing, it is terrifying!

The plan was to get out the grill and make burgers, but I think it will be soup for dinner, tomato with grilled cheese, very good comfort food. 

Friday, November 9, 2012

After a wonderful lazy morning of sipping coffee looking at the lake, walking Cinder and making a good breakfast of pancakes, bacon and eggs, we got ready and drove into Lufkin.  It is 20 miles away from the campground, and we stopped in Huntingdon where there is a library, and the sign on the outside said ‘Try our free wifi’ – we went in and oh my, every site we use was blocked – couldn’t get to our blog, couldn’t get to BING, or MSN, could not get to facebook – sheesh.  The excuse was that the school paid for the wifi and they blocked students from using all that – David said they really ought to take down the sign, it’s pretty misleading!   We went on into Lufkin where we found a McDonalds and we got a couple drinks and used their wifi for about an hour.  We then went to Olive Garden and had soup, salad & breadstix for lunch – boy, we love that lunch! 

 We came back home and just kind of vegged out for a couple hours, then made burgers on the grill for dinner…life is good!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Once again it was sip the coffee on the banks of the lake, take Cinder for a walk, play a little fetch with her, made ham on the grill outside (don’t ya just love the smell of cooking outdoors), grits and eggs – yum!  Then it was go outside and read a while since David was busy getting the file ready to upload to the LSC site, and just hang out.  About 1:30 we went into town to use the wifi at DQ, and of course we had lunch there – David had the steak finger basket and I had a grilled chicken salad – and a small butterfinger blizzard :) 

David talked to Tanaya and she is doing much better – on lots of drugs, but hopefully that will stop her from more heart trouble!  I called my aunt Nancy, who is really more like my sister…my Aunt Kay is not doing well, she is in the hospital and is having issues remembering things, she is seeing/hearing people/noises.  She is only 74, and too young to be going through this!   Wished Nancy a happy birthday, talked to Harry too.  David and I chatted on the way home that we may have to go to PA and take care of Aunt Kay – whatever will be will be, I don’t have an issue with this – if need be we will go and aunt Kay can move into the spare room with us, and I’ll take care of her.  I know Nancy would help too – Kay is the only sister she has left.  I’m glad my mom doesn’t have to see this – she was so broken up when Aunt Leila died.  I love them so much, it just breaks my heart!

We came home, went for a walk, played with Cinder, and had a bite to eat (David had cereal, I had pepperoni, cheese & crackers) and got ready for bed early – I just hate Daylight Savings Time – it is dark too early and stays dark too long! 

Sunday, November 11, through Tuesday, Nov 13

Stayed the last couple days and did literally nothing – hung around read J

Wednesday, Nov 14, 2012

Traveled to Bastrop, TX where we stayed at a very overpriced KOA – NEVER AGAIN! 

 Thursday, Nov 15, 2012 through Nov 22, 2010

We pulled into Potters Creek, Canyon Lake COE park, site 89.

This is a lovely lake, most all the spots are very nice, and we watched about 40 rigs come in – the weekend campers.  There was a group here that I didn’t go introduce myself to, but they reminded me so much of our camping clubs in WY and CO.  they had a pot luck Saturday night and it looked like it was a lot of fun.  Just not feeling very social right now :(

We went for a drive into Gruene and stopped into Camping world, looked at some units…didn’t buy anything J  Had a very nice lunner at a place called ‘Granny D’s’…David had country fried steak and the works and I had a patty melt, then we shared a piece of coconut cream pie. 

We expect to be on the road bright and early (around 10) on Tuesday morning and hope to pull into Hondo by 2…I’ll try to post some pictures then, as we are on our Mifi and the upload speeds are abysmal…the park has wifi, so I might just put up a bunch of pictures from the last couple weeks!