March 24 - Livingston new friends - Rayne rally

Our time at Rainbow’s End in Livingston came to a close, but before it ended we had a wonderful time, and met a couple who we consider ‘forever’ friends!  They are Dean and Diane Tobias, of Michigan! 

On Thursday evening we visited with them in their Artic Fox, and then went to dinner at Shrimp Boat Manny’s…WOW, what delicious food!  I had never tried Etouffee, but was determined so that is what I ordered, pirogue with crawfish Etouffee…which came with veggies, some fried shrimp and hushpuppies….oh man, now that was some good eating!  David had ‘steak bites’ (dull, boring but what he wanted), Diane had the shrimp trio that she loved, and Dean had the shrimp Etouffee over rice.  Everyone loved their meals and we also had fair samplings of each other’s too!  Here are some pictures of our dinners  

Unfortunately I did not get a picture of Dean and Diane…but I will the next time our paths cross! 

Also on Thursday the park had their yard sale…it was a fun event and I bought a necklace and earrings that an artiste made from crinkle glass…it is gorgeous.  I’m sure you will see it in future pictures!  I also got the laundry all caught up which is very important prior to a Rally :)

We left Livingston on Friday morning fully intending to stop at Sulphur, LA but it was only 11 am, David said let’s keep going, and we came the whole way to Rayne.  When we got here there were people here already, although ‘early bird’ registration is today, and we got a very nice spot with a tree, just steps away from the exhibit hall.  We have full electric and water, but no dump station, so I will be taking my showers in the ‘hall’ – a small price to pay so that David only has a little ways to get into the exhibit hall. 

We drove around and looked at the town (very small, not even a Wally world, had dinner at Gabes Cajun and were not impressed.  It did not even rate a picture.  I once again had Etouffee, but this was RED, not the rich dark brown I had previously.  I will now always ask, because the red was much too spicy for me!  David had the shrimp boat and it was good…I ate some of his and he had a couple bites of mine! 

We came back to the cg and played with Cinder off leash for a while – she chased her ball and got a pretty good workout!  We sat outside in balmy 75 degree temps until the bugs drove us inside.  We ran the AC most of the night because the humidity is very high – I get too hot and David has trouble breathing in high humidity…good thing we have full electric!

This morning I headed to the shower house – feels funny to do that, but I took along a razor and had a nice leisurely shower.  That was the first ‘long’ shower I’ve had since I left PA…and it was wonderful…but not as comfortable as the shower in the motorhome. 

I made a terrific breakfast of steel cut oatmeal with dried cherries and whole grain toast…carb overload but good carbs!  David loves oatmeal, but since he is watching carbs I have to be stingy with it! 

We’re off to find a Wal-Mart, we have a list and the top of mine is a couple bottles of wine…after all, why waste all these balmy evenings on bottled water…

March 21, 2012 Livingston TX

What have we been doing?  Well let's see, we arrived on Thursday, March 15th at the Escapee's Corporate Headquarters in Livingston TX.  What a great welcome and wonderful place!  David says it is totally different from what he expected, but as you can see from his smile, he likes it!

We attended Livingston Trade Days, which is about 10 acres of vendors - very neat!

Here is the POOL that they have here...boy, this would be wonderful in Hondo!!!  They have exercise and water aerobics...now I'd teach that if we had one :)

They have social hour EVERY DAY at 4:00...and on Sunday when they don't have Social hour they have ice cream social and talk before you get your ice cream!  The social hour is always run by a park member, no manager...they do announcements, tell jokes, welcome new guests, say goodbye to people that are leaving, birthdays and anniversaries, and just generally shoot the bull for about a half hour - then folks sit around and chat after that...they don't seem to 'rush out' :) 

For St Patricks Day I cooked a corn beef, cabbage & potatoes, and it was excellent even though I couldn't find any soda bread! 

We visited with friends Barbara and Larry Hill - Barbara is at the CARE center allowing Larry to have some respite time.  We will see Larry again tomorrow.  We did get a tour of CARE and it is amazing how they manage to operate with such a limited budget.  Yet one more reason to be an Escapee! 

We toured Lake Livingston and it was nice - we met some terrific people, and are enjoying the area.  We've had dinner at Catfish King, a lunch at Jack in the Box, and lunch at Big Burrito where they served far too much food...it was all very good!
We had a terrific Taco Salad lunch at the clubhouse for $4 per person, large taco salad, choice of brownie or pineapple upside down cake or sugar free banana pudding, and a drink...yum!  We were very full!

Today we drove 70 miles to Nacodoches, TX, primarily to tour the Foretravel RV Factory...let's just say the tour in NO way compared to the tour we got at the Newmar factory in Elkhart, IN.  After the tour we visited with Extreme Paint & Graphics and saw some of their terrific work!  Wow, those folks are good!  Then we went to a place called Auntie Pastas...that I had researched on the web...our gps took us out to a field in the middle of nowhere, but when we finally got back into a place where we had reception, David looked it up on his Droid and we were there in no time.  It is a renovated warehouse alongside the rail road tracks, and the food was excellent, and big enough lunch portions to bring home for lunch tomorrow!  Yippee, two for 1, I like that! 

Tomorrow the park here is having sale days, and there are about 20 tables set up in the Activity Center, and people will be having sales at their lots (they provide a map) so we're going to be yard saling...but, remember, if we bring something new into the MH, something has to go out...sure saves money, since we like everything we have!

I'm going to attempt to add some pictures, but if the connection is too slow, I'll try to add them later!

David - love of my life, thanks for helping me make some wonderful memories :) 

March 15, 2012 Lexington TX

After several fantastic dinners and bbq's with several sets of friends, Napoli's with Ron & Ali, Walker and Evelyn, Margie & Edmund, then a dinner hosted by Carol and Jerry, in honor of his sister Jackie, Babe & Andy, Faye & Dutch, Rusty & Alice, then a BBQ at Chuck & Rose's, with Babe & Andy, Carolyn & Bob, Max, George & Joan, Hank & Euona, Marty & Tim,Ruth & Don, then a final dinner with Bob & Jan, we hit the road! 

Our first night was spent at Class A RV repairs as they were resetting our windshields - and once they were in we were not to drive for a couple hours, so we spent the night in their parking lot.  We got up this morning and headed North east, avoiding Houston and Austin! 

We arrived at Lexington TX at Sonny's RV park, a simply lovely little park with full hookups for $20 per night.  During our trip we ran into a little rain, and when we turned on the wipers, BANG, the passenger wiper went flying off...sigh, just another adventure in the life of full time RVer's!  So after we arrived we went looking for windshield wipers - yep, had to get two of them because trying to take off the driver side one, David broke it...so, $38.00 later we got two new wipers, and we managed (David did, I just stood around and played gofer - gofer other glasses, gofer the step stool, gofer the screwdriver), and then I made us a fantastic dinner of spinach, strawberries, red onion, slivered almonds and chicken for me, steak for him, with raspberry vinagrette dressing - it was SO scrumptious! 

Stay tuned, we're planning on more adventures this coming week!

March 9, 2012 LSC

Once again I find myself playing catch up…it is very hard to keep a blog interesting when we are in one place and not traveling.  Here are some highlights of the past month:

·       Had a fantastic lunch with Shaun & Cindy Love and her parents.  Shaun and Cindy are friends from Cheyenne, WY and they came for a surprise visit to her parents who live in Jourdanton, TX.  We met the at Rocky’s Grill in Devine, and besides the ever wonderful food, we spent 2 hours catching up!

·       We spent many hours at the VA in Kerrville and San Antonio.  The result is that David’s ears now have tubes in them so he can hear, he is now officially a diabetic, and is on Glipizade pills.  They started him on Metformin and he is allergic L  However the good news is that we have been watching his diet (and he is so grumpy about it!) and I think we have a handle on the sugar.  He has to have an A1C test June 1^st in PA, and that will determine if he needs to go on insulin immediately or if we can control this with the pills and diet.  At least twice a week we were going to one facility or the other, and usually spending the entire day there!

·       We’ve had may wonderful lunches and dinners, in D’Hanis, Hondo and San Antonio.

·       There has been some patch up work done on the motorhome – We had the drivers window and the passenger windows taken out, scraped, caulked and reset.  We had Total RV Repair in Elkhart Indiana do it last year in July, and we really should have saved our money – they did a lousy job, and as a result we have water damage underneath the windows that we repaired as best we could – thanks to Matthews RV Repair here in the park!  They did a great job.  They also fixed our awning so it would roll back, and fixed the antenna so it didn’t leak around it.

·       We took the MH to Pipe Creek to Class A RV Repair and had them look at our windshield – turns out the gasket is dry rotted and has to be replaced.  Of course insurance will not pay to have this done.  A WORD TO ANYONE GETTING A WINDSHIELD REPLACED – Insist on a new gasket!!!  We had our windshields replaced 3 years ago in Cheyenne, and did not know that we should insist on that – as a result we will now have to eat the cost of getting new gaskets and the windshields’ removed and reset.  Ggggrrr!

·       I’ve worked in the Membership office about 1 day each week – learning new stuff, keeping the brain busy :)

·       Managed to get all Mom & Dad’s Estate taxes to the lady at H&R Block who has always done their taxes…waiting on her OK to send the IRS a BIG check.

·       Got all our tax stuff to our fantastic accountant and BFF in Lander WY…and we’re planning a get together with her in PA probably in June…maybe July – can’t wait to see her! 

·       Cleaned out bays and put items in our shed here in Hondo that we don’t need to carry with us – lighten the load!  Gave bags and bags of stuff to the Airman’s Attic, from clothing to a portable DVD player.

·       Filled all the batteries, checked the oil, filled the windshield reservoir, got the car inspected.

·       We will leave here on Wed morning, taking the MH up to Class A for final windshield repairs, we’ll drive into San Antonio from there for a last follow-up for David’s ears. 

·       We were planning on heading to Galveston for a week, however, with Spring Break in full swing, we’ve decided we will go to Livingston, TX which is the Corporate Headquarters of Escapee’s RV Club.  We will make sure we get our voter registration done, tour the CARE facility, and tour the mail service facility.  We’ve wanted to do that for a couple years, however something always comes up!

·       Update on Abigail – she has had several chemo treatments and has been doing well.  Last week she did get ill afterwards, so please keep the prayers going.  She will be getting a CT scan next week – please pray that the nodules on her lungs are GONE!

Yesterday it was a year that my mother died.  I was rather emotional all day.  I know she is in a better place, but boy, do I miss her. 

That’s all that we’ve been doing – and as soon as we get on the road I’ll be updating more frequently.

Feb 13, 2012 Week in review

We had a great dinner and fun super bowl – and we were snuggled back in our condo on wheels by 9pm, and asleep before 10! 

Monday morning we slept in – and then we got ready and went to a little hole in the wall place called ‘Gonzales’ burgers – where the burgers were so huge we shared them and it was plenty to eat!  They must be ½ pounders!  Of course, we also got onion rings and fries!  You would never guess it is a restaurant – there are NO signs, and they do NO advertising – they open at 10:30 for orders and that place was packed by 11:30…people were standing waiting on orders and places to sit!!!  This is a definite do-over. 

When we left there we went to Target, where I found my black and red rugs for the motorhome without rubber backing!  Woohoo!  It doesn’t take much to excite me :)

We then went to the movies and saw Red Tails – I highly recommend it if you like movies about war.  We certainly had tears in our eyes a time or two!  Of course we stopped at DQ and his ice cream for dinner…

Tuesday we had a plan and we pretty much stuck to it!  We went to the little bakery/restaurant I discovered and had a fantastic breakfast, Ron and Kathy also decided it was a keeper.  The plan was to catch a boat tour of the Rio Grande river, and we had reservations for noon.  While having breakfast, they called and said the boat was full, would we come at 2…so we went home a while, then off to the river tour. Remember, click on the pics to make them larger :)

It was $18 for two of us, and well worth the money.  We glided down the middle and got pics of both the Mexican and American side of the river.  The guide said that occasionally they got stopped and everyone had to produce their picture ID’s, but that did not happen to us!  He was very informative and there are a lot of disaster pictures that we took – a hurricane came through in 2007 (Alexander) and changed the course of the river somewhat, and took out a restaurant/giftshop/boat tour place, and much of a park that had just been completed.  Also a big Mexican park that was very well attended was actually cut in half by the river.  I’ll post some pics here but they in no way do justice to what we saw!

After the boat tour we had decided we wanted to do a Mongolian Grill, as Ron and Kathy had never been to one, and we had seen one on our travels up and down Hwy 83 Expressway.  So off we went, and when we got there they were not open, only doing ‘training’ – so we followed David’s camera and went off to another one – and it was closed too!  We ended up eating at a Texas Roadhouse, and it was very good – also we had enough for another entire meal with the addition of a salad later.

All good things must come to an end and on Wednesday we got up to rain rain rain – but because we HAD to be in San Antonio on Thursday we hooked up and pulled out of Mission TX, heading for Hondo.  Our gps sent us up 281 and then onto Hwy 16…what a mistake!  It did save about 23 miles, but the road is terrible – there is a lot of fracking going on along there, with big trucks which made the road totally washboard – and when we were almost to Jourdanton, the windshield started whistling – and it got louder and louder.  So we are going to have to call the insurance company and have it fixed before we start out trip mid-March!

We got back to LSC about 3:30, went to Social hour at 4, and attended a potato bake and brown bag auction – it was great fun but I forgot the camera!

Thursday we went to San Antonio for the appointment for David’s ears – there were no surgeons available, so we go back on the 27^th.  We DID go to a Mongolian BBQ for an early dinner and it was fantastic – it was HuHot and we will go there again!

Friday we just stayed home and tried to get some paperwork done – Saturday we were supposed to go to the Winter Texan lunch in Uvalde, we drove over there and could not find the place…we had lunch and shopped at Wal-Mart and came home – Sunday we got up to freezing temps, and David has some kind of stomach bug, lots of pain and gas, so we did nothing and it was a good day to do that! 

That brings us up to date once again!

Feb 5, 2012 Pleasant Valley

We arrived here at Pleasant Valley on Wednesday afternoon about 2 pm, and then it was off to the races...no, not real races, but what we do when we are trying to pack in 8 months of visiting with our friends, Ron and Kathy Bernard, and sightseeing and eating in a week!!!  Whew :)

First night - RV park put on a feed - burgers or hot dogs (2), chips, drink & dessert for $3.50 each - followed by some pretty fair Karaoke!  Followed by several hours of chatting...

Thursday morning we got up and headed to Harlingen and the Tropic Winds RV park where Ron & Kathy spent the last two years - and Kathy's hometown.  We picked up yet another friend, Doris Padilla and went to lunch at LaPlaya.  This was undoubtly the best mexican food I've had in a long, long time.  You know I always try different things, and this was no different - their 'speciality' is a fried avacado, so let me start by saying I am not a big avacado, but this has made a believer out of me! They skin and take the seed out, then put in fajita meat with seasoned cheese, dip in batter and deep fry...pure heaven!  You do not need any kind of salsa on it or anything - it was so yummy!  Everyone was happy with their meals!

After that we visited with Doris a bit at her house, then we went to visit the Marine Museum and ORIGINAL Iwo Jima Sculpture.  http://harlingenedc.com/QualityOfLife/Recreation/Museums is where you can read about it!  The 30 minute documentary is SO worth  the time!  We learned a lot about Iwo Jima that we didn't know.    We finished off the day by having popcorn for dinner because we were still so full from lunch!

Friday Kathy had to work, so Ron, David and I took off to a bakery/restaurant that I found that had good reviews - they were not kidding - it was fantastic and on 1st Street downtown Mission.  I ordered something completely different, and it was so good I couldn't believe it - and David got huevos ranchero and said they were the best he's ever had...Ron had biscuits and gravy and they were also excellent!  Mine was shredded chicken inside whole wheat tortilla's, with a bean sauce, cheese and chorizo on top...the pictures don't do it justice, it was so very good!  Then, because it IS a bakery, I got blueberry cream cheese empanada's for dessert for dinner.  Since Kathy worked, I made dinner - Taco soup and it was very good :) 

Saturday morning we got up and drove to South Padre Island for the Kite Festival.  The kites were amazing, but we were not impressed with SPI - far too commercial for our taste, and if there was public beach access, we couldn't find it!  We did go for a very late lunch (2ish) to Dirty Al's Pelican Station, where 3 of us indulged our seafood cravings...Shrimp bisque was good but not great, but the shrimp platter with fries and cole slaw was wonderful!  We did not get dessert although it looked fabulous, since we planned to stop at the Hygeal Dairy in Harlingen for ice cream - and that is what we did!!! 

This morning we got up and drove to the Don-Wes Flea Market in Donna TX - it was cold (54 degrees) and rainy when we started out - but the good thing was that many people did not show up, so it was good shopping!  I got 5# of vidalia onions for $2, and  a really neat foldable straw hat for $5...and a mah jong game for $35!  We found some clips that we needed for our curtains for .50 each, and I got a few things for our brown bag auction at LSC when we get back...

Kathy is making a pork tenderloin for dinner and a salad, I'm making baked sweet potatoes and a lemon pie...and we plan on eating about 5 - followed by the Super Bowl and snacks...don't know OR care who wins, it will be fun to watch the commercials!

That brings us up to date...

Jan 30, 31, 2012 Blessing Hotel & Spaghetti Dinner

Monday morning - take car to Craig's Tire to fix the lights on the car - the passenger side light was not working, and I got stopped Friday night and was given a written warning by a policeman...grrr.  So, after an hour and a half they said they needed to order a part, come back tomorrow. 

I came home and we decided to go for a ride - and ended up in Port Lavaca where we decided to drive on to Blessing, TX.  Our friends, David & Janet recommended the Hotel Blessing - and OMG were they ever right!  The hotel is fabulous, and they serve lunch on two old wood burning stoves, it is an all you can eat buffet.  It is truly amazing - for a Monday here is what the pots and pans held:  First of all, lots of salads...tossed, broccoli, coleslaw with apples, applesauce, pickled beets, fruit salad, fresh yeasty homemade rolls, cornbread, and on the stove - green beans w/bacon, hominy w/jalepenos, corn, butter beans, spinach.  Mashed potatoes and fluffy rice.  Beef tips with mushroom gravy, roast beef slabs, country fried steak, pork chops that were 1.5 inches thick, breaded and fried...apple cobbler and cake, ice tea and coffee...and the bill was $17 for both of us!!!  WOWOWOWOW!!!! 

On the drive home David slept most of the way, he gets tired so easily any more - it is worrying but we go on :)

This morning it was back to Craig's Tire to get the light fixed.  I highly recommend this garage - they did the same thing that the Chevy garage did in Wisconsin the only difference is that the bill here was $43...and WI was over 200.  Hmmm, stay away from dealers!!!

This evening we joined our friends Janet & Dave at their RV park, Coastal Oaks for a spaghetti dinner - it was excellent, but the best thing about it was the company! 

We are now snuggled in for the night, and tomorrow we head down the road to Mission TX, where we will continue to eat our way through Texas :) 

Dave and Janet - we had a wonderful week - and we'll look forward to seeing you in PA!!!