Thanksgiving in Texas

It is just a quiet Thanksgiving day here in Livingston, Texas.  We have talked with our families and sent them our blessings.  We still miss them but let them know how much we love them when our travels take us so far from home.  I remember all the good Thanksgivings we had when we gathered at our house.  There was lots of good food and the aroma of turkey and apple cake was in the air.  It was the time when we all got to sit down together for time out of our busy lives.  We have so much to be thankful for.  I am thankful that our families are healthy and safe.  I am thankful that Doug and I are able enjoy this time of our retirement and our travels.  I am thankful for all the friends that we have made along the way.
          
We had dinner with really nice folks at the RV park clubhouse.  There are some good cooks out there!  I may not like to cook like I used to but I still love to eat! It was fun discovering all the different places the other couples were from originally before embarking on the full time RV lifestyle. The tables were decorated and arranged in a more cozy style so we could all see each other as we chatted and shared travel stories.  The smoked turkey was delicious along with all the side dishes.  Everyone seemed to enjoy such a good meal.  We all went back for seconds!   
                    
After we returned to the RV we were invited next door for coffee and desert.  We met a really nice couple just starting out on their full time adventures and are so excited for them.  We went over at 4:30 and talked until almost 9:30!  They are from New York. It was fun getting to know them plus getting to meet their son who drove up from Dallas.  Their son had been to Virginia Beach several times during his 4 year time in the Navy.  Small world!!  I loved hearing about the farm and especially the horses they had.  Of course the guys were sharing all their ‘guy stuff’ about trucks and RVs, etc.  We exchanged emails and certainly hope to meet up with them somewhere down the road again soon. 
So even though we missed family, we had a very pleasant Thanksgiving Day.              

Sunshine Sure Makes Us Happy Again

Hoorah! The sun is back out today with blue skies!  After 3 days of steady cold rain and even snow flurries, the sunshine was more than welcome.  Yes, those that were in town yesterday afternoon said it snowed here in Livingston, TX.  We were out in the rain yesterday for a short while but I guess it snowed later.  However, it is still cold for the next couple of days.  I went to the Stitch & Chat and genealogy groups this morning.  I think we did more chatting than anything else.  Most of the same ladies were there that I met last Wednesday.  Everyone here at the Escapees park is so nice and friendly and gives you a warm welcome.  It was fun to see what everyone was working on. It was such a diverse group, that each project was different.  I love these kind of classes because it is so interesting to listen to others’ adventures and each person seems to have a different story to tell.  Yet, many of us have still been to the same places and done so many of the same things.  It was also just plain nice to walk to the clubhouse and be outside again!

               

I am counting down the days until we leave on Monday and head to Austin.  4 more days!! I can’t wait and we are more than ready to get on the road and start more of our winter adventures!  We accomplished what we wanted, even though we had a set back and could not get a refund.  It just makes the anticipation of the days to come that much more exciting. We are looking forward to the dinner tomorrow and the chance to meet more people. 

    

Several people have made this RV park and owned lots (some large enough for full sized houses) their home.  Some still travel a bit and others stay here full time.  Others come and stay for the winter in one of the regular RV sites.  Livingston, TX, may be small but the people are just friendly and laid back.  We met some nice locals who call it home and the community tries to schedule events now and then to bring people together. Livingston is part of Polk County and has been here a very long time. Moses L. Choate, a native of Livingston, Tennessee, had started a settlement called Springfield on his land grant in 1835, and wanted the county seat to be located in Springfield, Texas.  He offered to give the new county one hundred acres of land if Springfield was selected as County Seat and the name of the town be changed to Livingston, for his former home in Tennessee.  So the election was held in June 1846, Springfield was decided upon, and the name was changed to Livingston.  It will probably be a long time before we are back this way again. 

I hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow with friends and family, no matter where they are.

     

Monday Blues– More Rain & Remembering My Old Dining Table

Oh, when will it end?!? Not until after Tuesday.  Uck! This is just awful, cold, damp, boring, depressing, frustrating and just plain wet!  

     

I went ahead and made the desert to take to the Thanksgiving meal.  Brownie mix with nuts, chocolate chips and peanut butter added to the middle before baking. Umm! Doug is making his famous potato salad.  The park will provide the turkey.  I sure miss cooking my own and having leftovers.  I love turkey and miss that wonderful aroma of cooked turkey. When we had our house, I was in charge of the turkey, ham, dressing, gravy, and mashed potatoes every year.  Then the rest of the family would bring the side dishes and deserts. I would take out my Victorian dishes and crystal I had collected for many years, and set a fancy table on my antique East Lake 1800s table for 10 (using the leaf) that I refinished myself.  I just loved using my things.  They are still fond memories.

In regards to my table, I will NEVER again undertake refinishing a project like I did with that table and chairs!  I went to an auction and fell in love with the style of an old table and chairs.  My immediate thought was “I can refinish it!” I asked the auctioneer what he thought it would go for.  He said about $1500.00!  Yikes! That was out of my budget!  But I thought I would give it a try and see what happened.  Because of condition, I guess nobody was that interested.   Well, guess what? I got that table and 6 chairs for $450.00!! I couldn’t believe it!  It was delivered to the house and the work began.  I had refinished smaller items and thought this would be just fine to do.  Boy, was I wrong!  It was layer upon layer of black finish.  It had lots of decorative carvings all over the edges and legs.  It must have taken about 2-3 coats of stripper before finally getting to the natural wood.  What a wonderful surprise it was!  The wood was gorgeous English Walnut with such rich brown colors running through the grain.  I was thrilled!  It took me 2 full months of steady work on this project after work and on weekends. So the table took up the first month.  After applying clear polyurethane to protect it and bring out the color, it was shiny and beautiful just like it was when it was made over 100 years ago.

Now, the chairs were something quite different!  They were the same dark finish, with red leather for the flat seats, and edged with those big ugly brass tacks.  Just remember, I was looking past that although my imagination was getting weaker!  I started removing the seats.  “What the heck is this stuff! It feels course like hair”. It was original HORSE HAIR!! That is what they used in the 1800s. Those seats had never been redone since it was made!  What a chuckle that was.  I got down to the last chair and removed the leather when I was hit with this awful rotten smell that would just about knock you over!  It smelled like the horse was already dead when they used its’ hair! I had to put it in a separate garbage bag and leave it outside until the next trash day! I stripped the chairs and got another very pleasant surprise. The center strip down the back of the chairs was English Burl Wood.  It looks similar to a tortoise shell only with subtle swirls of different shades of browns.  Gorgeous!  Why on earth would anyone want to cover up that beautiful wood!?  I couldn’t imagine.  With all the different pieces and angles the chairs were very difficult to work on.  That was the second month! 

Finally! I was finished and had something I was really proud of.  Then came time to upholster the seats.  That project had me beat before I even started.  I had the foam rubber, the material, and the nail gun.  All set, right?  Wrong! I tried everyway I could to get the material to stay put, get it tight, and grab the nail gun.  It just was not meant to be.  Want to know what the real kicker was!? It was Xmas Eve and I had everyone coming over Xmas Day!!!  In tears, I call my parents. “HELP!!!” After arriving to help with no better results that mine, we panicked together!  Whew, calm down!  Mother suggested calling a local upholsterer she had used.  By some miracle he was still open and after I explained the situation, this kind man and his mother immediately set to work on my chairs.  I picked them up at 5:00 (nothing like the last minute!) and they were perfect!  This man did a beautiful job!  It works when you have the right tools.  I just could not thank him enough!  Xmas day came and I was so proud of my table.  Everyone raved about the nice job I had done.  I never told the rest of them how close they all came to either standing up or sitting in the floor to eat! We had a nice day after all. 

That old table is now sitting in storage until we stop travelling.  When we sold the house, I just could not bear to part with it.  To this day every time I think about that table, I remember the hard work, but most of all those ugly red seats and that smelly old horse hair!  A few months after that Xmas, I was reading the paper, and there on the front of one of the sections was a picture of MY table and chairs in a local restored house museum in town!  Now I knew I had uncovered something special and all my hard work was worth it!  That table is also now one of the things my daughter wants when I leave this earth. 

Rain Rain Go Away…..

Cold rain yesterday, today, and more of the same tomorrow with highs only in the 40s.  I thought we left Virginia to find warmer weather!  Seems like they are about the same right now.  It is supposed to warm back up some after Thanksgiving.  Since it was so chilly, dreary, and rainy yesterday, we decided to do absolutely nothing.  We didn’t even get dressed!  We stayed in pajamas all day long!   We almost never do that.  Good thing nobody came knocking on our door!  They would have taken one look at us and thought we forgot Halloween was over!  Also a good thing we both wear glasses and sight isn’t all that great without them so we are still lovely in each other’s eyes…awwww. Sometimes we need to relax and recharge ourselves.  So we played on our laptops, snacked, I sorted the pantry for food we were not going to eat, snacked, we watched a movie, snacked, did little miscellaneous things, snacked.  Oops.. That wasn’t good for us !!  Guess we really were lazy bums yesterday! It did feel good! And there was plenty of chocolate on hand! 

We did go out in the rain today because we WANTED to, not needed to, in order to take care of some things.  Breakfast at The Whistlestop Café, Boot Barn for some polish, Wal-Mart (of course!), then the library for more movies.  Yep..we are bound and determined to find SOMETHING to do.  Speaking of breakfast..  I did it again!  I ordered a pancake! I should know better! It was so under cooked and mushy that I just couldn’t eat it.  After all, I am a pancake connoisseur!  The place was busy and we had already waited a long time to get our meal so I took my plate back to the kitchen area myself and asked for another pancake.  The second one was much better but not that great.  What can be so hard about making a flavorful fluffy pancake? Got me.  Even the ones at McDonalds are far better than most I try on the road.  I’ll just stick to eggs and toast.  

So the rest of the afternoon was spent finishing some greeting cards I have been working on.  I like to make my own.  I really got hooked on card making one winter several years ago down in the Rio Grand Valley of Texas.  I thought I was nuts about crafts but those gals were absolutely crazy!  We were crafting 2 days a week.  I had so much fun and got so many ideas that Doug said I would need a trailer to pull behind the 5th wheel and decorate it like a craft room!  But when he found out there is a painting class at the RV park in Tucson, where we are headed, he put his foot down and said “No more crafts! Pleeese.”  Now let’s see, there is such a thing as miniature paintings so maybe I can make a really tiny one and hide it in one of the tote bags under the bed. He never looks there!  Hee..Hee, He doesn’t see all the OTHER craft ideas I’ve downloaded from Pinterest!  The picture on the card is one I took of the larger 17 X 14 that used to hang in our den.  Told you I was nuts!

One of the other craft projects I was doing this weekend really was out of pure BOREDOM.  It was one of my grand daughters’ ideas that she came up with when she was camping with us.  I really liked it and made these flowers to use in my scrapbooking.  Boy , Oh Boy.  That shows you how desperate I was to be entertained!  Just look at me, now I am even sitting here posting a picture of these silly things writing this blog!  I really do need help, don’t I? !!             

      

Then a pot of chili (the Chili Magic shortcut kind) was just right for such a cold dreary day and we watched one of our movies.  It may have to be more of the same tomorrow if it keeps raining like it is now.  We should have followed some of our friends to Florida for awhile!

Expensive Boredom Cure To Houston, TX, Today! $$$

A 50 mile drive, shopping, and breakfast at Cracker Barrel was an expensive way to make up for not doing much yesterday!  Wondering what to do today, we came up with a last minute idea to drive to the very northern tip of Houston.  It was a straight shot for about 50 miles so we figured that wasn’t too bad for a day trip.  Breakfast at Cracker Barrel was the first stop.  Pecan buttermilk pancakes with hot sugar free syrup and apples –Umm..Umm! That is my favorite item they serve for breakfast.  I love pancakes and theirs’ and mine are the only good ones!  All other places need lessons in how to make tasty fluffy pancakes.  Doug likes the breakfast sampler that has a little bit of everything and today they brought us an extra serving of fresh hot biscuits that,  with a bit of butter and honey, would melt in your mouth .  Yeah, that is just what we needed!!!  We did bring home some leftover biscuits. 

We knew there was a big mall nearby, so we headed that way to walk off those biscuits! It was a really nice big 2 story mall so we had a good walk, plus of course, we had to check out some of the stores as well!  That is the fun of shopping!  It was the thing to do on a rainy hot and humid day.  As usual, being the 4th largest city in the US, Houston’s traffic was really heavy, even in the middle of the day, and all the shopping areas were extremely busy. 

Then, from out of nowhere, a Boot Barn Western Wear store just jumped right in front of the truck!  It sucked me right in!  I told myself that the next time I was in Texas, I wanted some casual REAL cowgirl boots.  Not the kind you find in the retail stores.  I wanted real western boots. Well, I found them!  Of course a new pair of jeans long enough to look right with the boots had to be bought! So that is where the $$$ expensive part comes in!  Wonder who is hiring extra help for the after-Thanksgiving Day sales?!! So now my western look is complete with boots, jeans, western jewelry I  already had, plus my cowgirl hat I bought a few years ago. Yee-Hah, Ride a horse, Howdy, and all that other cowboy stuff!   Guess I will have to post a picture of my ‘getup’ when we go out or to a rodeo.  That’s just me, I tend to get over zealous about things I really love, like the west.  Sometimes you have to just reign me in, no pun intended!  I am like a chameleon, when out west, dress western.  When in Florida pull out the flamingos and flowered shirts.  I know the kids and grandkids must think I have gone off the deep end and they are checking the rates at the Shady Pines rest home! 

So we enjoyed the day and headed back to Livingston just in time for some more rain.  Guess it is back to the Oatmeal or Cream of Wheat for breakfast tomorrow! 

 

                

A Day for My Favorite Craft

Creativity rules my life! That’s me and it grabs hold of me much too often! Since I started scrapbooking so long ago, my imagination has exploded.  I never look at things the same old way.  And, oh, help me when my camera is around my neck!  I am always looking for the perfect, unusual, or special shot for my scrapbook and always thinking ahead about ways to create.  The camera is never still.  Like one of my posts a few days ago, who takes a picture of the inside of an auto dealer’ service garage? I did! I am really crazy and should probably seek psychiatric treatment!!  Doug shutters whenever we pass a craft store! For some reason, that ole truck just wants to speedup! I just have so much fun with my crafts because it is also my relaxer.  It keeps my mind working and, at my age, that is a good thing! So I caught up with my scrapbooking with the pictures from the barrel racing this past weekend.  I have to drag stuff out, but that is life when living in a box! I have 2  photo enhancement programs, so I can manipulate my photos pretty much like I want, and then print them.  I have gotten better about the number of photos I use because, like potato chips, I can’t seem to print just one.  Yep, I spend way too much time on my laptop!

But now, that was not the ONLY thing I did today! I did manage to do some cooking (not my favorite task, as Doug will tell you).  We also managed a nice morning walk around the park.  We were just in time for some ice cream at the little shack that opened today here in the park. We had to show our support!  Right? Any day is a good day for ice cream! Chocolate didn’t work yet. That was disappointing to this chocoholic!  I need to stay away from there anyway! I also managed to scan lots of things into my laptop. Plus, I did some other odds and ends so I wasn’t TOTALLY engrossed in Craft land!

        

A Beautiful Day in East Texas

So pleasant today with the temperature at 75, lots of sun, and a light breeze.  So much better than the high humidity we had yesterday.  A nice morning for another walk around the park.  The leaves area finally finishing their color change and falling off the trees. The color is nice this year.  Back in VA, when we left, the leaves seemed to just turn brown and drop off.  Then we headed off to Wal-Mart again!  Geeze..I knew we should have bought Wal-Mart stock!   Guess it is the thing to do around here because we recognize lots of folks from the park in the store!   Then we returned some movie rentals to the library.  The park has a movie library but it leaves a lot to be desired .  Doesn’t that sound exciting??  We need some kind of entertainment!  We got rid of our Direct TV service because we got no additional benefits when they raised the price and it was just the same old programs, plus the overall programming has really gone down hill.  So we will just use cable when we get to campgrounds that have it.  Unfortunately, we can’t even get anything over the air with the RV antenna from our site here, so I am missing The Voice!  I have to see who is where by watching the recap on my laptop.  Have to be careful about how long I do that.  But I can watch the rest of the season when we get to Austin and San Antonio.   The park in AZ, where we will spend the winter, has cable so I will be set!

   

We got the truck weighed here at the park yesterday using the Smart Weigh scales.  For some reason, the truck weighs a bit more on the right side.  Wait a minute!  I sit on the right side!  Was the report trying to tell me something?  I am not taking the blame for that!  Sure I need to get rid of a few pounds but not THAT much!  No Tofu in this tummy!!  Only food that is yummy!!

We will get the truck weighed when hitched to the RV on the morning we leave.  That should be interesting!  We did a major shake down when back in VA, so we are anxious to see what the weight is now.  The only really heavy thing left to possibly give up would be the bike rack and bikes.  I sure hate to do that because they are too new. 

This is just too funny!  I meant to mention that when we ate breakfast at Jerry’s the other morning, I asked for my eggs poached hard. Simple, right?  Well, the waitress replied “We don’t poach eggs”.  What?!? Duh, boiling water, one raw egg dropped in the water for a couple of minutes = poached egg.  That was a first!  We chuckled because we had never heard that one before!

Back to the Barrel Racing Arena

OH, the temptation was just too much to resist!  After our morning walk in the heat (82) and humidity,  we went back to the barrel racing event this afternoon.  I have to keep practicing taking pictures don’t I?  Sure I do!  But I still need lots of lessons.  I was going to use any excuse to go back! Since it was right here in my back yard, how could I resist? I could also get right up by the rails for a really close view.  I sure got my barrel racing fix this weekend! The park we are going to stay at out in AZ this winter has photography classes for free, and I am sure signing up for that one!!  Maybe I can finally learn how to take good pictures in low light.  Today was an open event for any age.  The cute little girls in cowboy boots riding beautiful horses is just so much fun to watch.  They control their animal with no fear!  What a fun way to grow up, riding horses.  All the riders accumulate points towards the national totals.  This weekend was sponsored by the Polk County Youth Rodeo Association.  I also had fun just wandering around petting some of the horses.  But not too close! I was leery of getting bitten or kicked.  I asked the owner first if the horse would let me pet it.  Like the Toby Keith song “I Should ‘a Been a Cowboy”,  I would loved to have been raised in the west.  But I belong to ‘GRITS’, Girls Raised in the South.  I am still proud of where I came from but just envy young people out west where there are wide open spaces, big sky country, and beautiful horses.  One picture below shows a horse with blue eyes!  I had not seen that before.  Notice, also, in the picture of me by the horse, I am not standing all that close!  I am going to call the arena office tomorrow and see if there is any other ‘cowboy stuff’ events before we leave.  When in Texas….

 

As we were leaving, we saw a young man holding a tiny little piglet.  It was so cute!!  Hey, this is the west. If you have a ranch and raise horses or cattle, why not raise any animal you want to!?  The little piglet was only 3 weeks old and a pet.  We were told that based on the way you feed them, they will only grow to about 30 lbs. and can even be potty trained!  That little piglet sure did not like being picked up and tried to bite as he was squealing at the top of his lungs!  So we had a fun weekend and always to when we come upon the unexpected.

Just Roaming Around Back Roads On A Saturday

What do you know, we found something to do today after all and even had a pleasant afternoon surprise.  We started out on a foggy morning and headed about 20 miles to the tiny town of Onalaska, Texas.  Population 1764.  Onalaska is by Lake Livingston  but it was so foggy we couldn’t see any of the lake.  Below is the fog and a picture of what it looked like when we were at the lake a couple of weeks ago. We headed that way to try a new place for breakfast that we were told was good.  Instead we found a place called Jerry’s.  Just an old small building fixed up rather cute on the inside.  A place where swamp boats, trucks (oops, we have a truck!), & camouflage hats fit right in. Their Idea of Home Fries is frozen bits out of a bag rather than home made like the name implies.  I will say the smoked bacon was great and Doug really liked the gravy.

Since we were out and like to avoid cabin fever, we took a drive around the lake and explored a few back roads. It started to clear up some so we headed on out to the dam.  The spillway was really flowing when we were out there a few weeks ago but  today only a little was flowing. Pelicans love that place. And I love pelicans!  The pelicans are sitting on the dry part of the spillway.  They just wait for the rushing water to churn up fish.  What a life! 

 

Lunch was sure unique!  Texas has a list of what they rate as the top 50 Bar-B-Q places .  One is right in Livingston, TX, called the Hitch-n-Post.  Back road fine dining at it’s best? Or maybe not!  A colorful place where you eat on a covered porch with all kinds of junk surrounding you, no chair or table matches, & odds and ends even are on the tables. Our fine china was designer Styrofoam and plastic silverware.  I guess you could say this was a fast food place but I am still not sure how to describe it! I had pork ribs that were fair but the flavor was one I had never tasted before.  Hope that’s not a bad sign!  Doug had brisket and it was good.  But overall, not a place we would return to. They didn’t ask for our vote so we are marking this one off.  The place sure was popular though.

The surprise I said we had was on the way back to the RV.  A bunch of horse trailers and horses were outside the small arena up the road.  We stopped by to see what was going on.  It was a NBRA event.  Barrel Racing!  My favorite event at the rodeo! My close friends and family know I love rodeos.  It was free and will continue tomorrow.  Soooo….since I already had my camera, guess what? I am clicking away to my hearts content!  It was a covered arena but I still haven’t mastered the skill of taking pictures in such low lighting. Thank goodness for photo enhancement programs! It sure was fun to be right up close to watch.  There sure were some beautiful horses!  I might just have to slip back up there tomorrow! 

Exciting Friday? NOT!

Throwing in the mundane, like I said I would, just gives me a chance to play with this new found toy some more!  Please don’t give up on me, I promise to post much more interesting stuff as we head down the road.  But for now, we are BORED, BORED, BORED! So I may not be posting everyday. We will be in Livingston, TX, until Dec. 2nd.  We will, however, have a nice Thanksgiving Day here at the park. Boy did we goof.  We should have just signed up for a couple of weeks then extended if we needed to.  We are better RVers than that after our years of experience but had another one of those senior moments.   We were really trying to be nice and let the city know we were available for the month of November for Jury Duty.  Well, we called the first day here to let them know and the response was “I’m sorry, we don’t have jury duties in November”.  Go figure!  And we were just trying to be nice!  But since there are no refunds, we are stuck.  We have already explored everything there is to do here. Yuck, we could have been further west and doing FUN stuff.  Guess there is always the option of taking a day’s drive somewhere. 

Got up and went to an advertised Trade Days market with food, fun, entertainment, collectables, etc.  Boy,  the brochure sure exaggerated on that one!  There was hardly anybody there and nothing but junk.  Really, pure junk.  Oh, well, there went our morning’s entertainment.  So we were driving back to town when, “BEEP”, the maintenance light came on for an “oil change due”.   So we stopped by the local Dodge dealer and he said to come back at 1 PM.  Now, how do we kill about 2 hours?  We go to TRACTOR SUPPLY!!  Oh,boy, a store where we can pretend we are JR Ewing from the TV series, Dallas, and are ranchers!  Where is my horse? Everything a rancher needs and then some.  But, seriously,  we really do like those stores.  They have unique stuff and we like to browse. Plus, I have bought a few western shirts from them. 

Uh, Oh, is that a Montana Silversmith jewelry case I see!?  My favorite jewelry!  They make beautiful things, do nice work, and it is MADE IN AMERICA.   ummm….”I’d like to see that one” It is one I saw in another western store on our way here.  Do I need it? NO. Do I want it? YES.  Can I afford the pretty fair price?  Well, let’s see, I get my next Social Security check in a week and a half!  Sold! “I’ll take it.”     So then off we go to lunch at the Catfish King (that wasn’t so great either but we are in a small town so we take we we can find) and back to the Dodge place for the hour it took to do the oil change.   So you can see how exciting our day was!  Now, what are we going to do the rest of the weekend?  Please, let’s wait a few days before we roam thru Wal-Mart again…..

Social Hour at the RV Park-Always a Chance to Make New Friends

Gosh! Another Simpson!  At the daily social hour yesterday, a nice couple sat down across the table from us and the first thing we noticed was THEIR last name was Simpson!  But we don’t think the guys are related.  This couple also has the same brand name of RV as we do and Don recognized my name from the RV forum.  A nice couple who have only been full-timing in their RV for a little over a year (we are at 4 1/2).  They asked questions so it was fun helping newbies along the way to some fantastic adventures ahead of them, plus hearing about where they have already been.  Ahhh…I so remember our excitement at that early stage of full-timing in an RV as the roads west called for us to follow them. 

We have made good friends in our journeys and some are the kind of friends that when you see them again after a long time and say “Hi”, it is like you just saw them yesterday.  We have run into our friends all over the USA and some even by surprise coincidence.  It is also fun to stay in contact and make plans to meet as we explore the same different places across the country. It is so easy now, with email, forums, blogs, and cell phones, to say hello to friends anytime we want.  We already plan to catch up soon with friends down the road in Houston, TX, in Apache Junction, AZ, and 2 other couples are headed to the northwest next spring and summer just like we are, and we are already talking about meeting up with each other.  So there is always the fun opportunity to meet and tell each other where we have been, what we have done, and where we are going.   Plus the door is always open to welcome new friends wherever we go.  That is the fun of sharing the RVing lifestyle.

A New Toy

Oh, my gosh! I have found a new toy!  I am now in the blogging world, as a friend put it.  I think another monster has been created!  I woke up at 5AM this morning thinking “Let’s see, what can I post next?!”.   This feels like a combination of email, Pinterest, Facebook, and RV forums all rolled into one spot.  I am sure the novelty will wear down a bit after a while but right now my new toy is all shiny and new. Another excuse to keep clicking away on that camera.  I still have lots to learn but the important part is easily sharing with others.  I will still do my scrapbooking because it is still my favorite craft.  I think I had 7 albums to put in storage after one of our trips out west! Yep, my supplies add a few pounds to the RV but I would rather give up Doug’s tools than my scrapbooking!  When we stop traveling, I can sit on the porch at The Old Folks Home and look at my books and revisit all that we have done and share it with all the other grannies and grandpas.  Speaking of scrapbooking, I went to the Scrapbook Superstore in Pidgeon Forge, TN, last month and spent 2 & 1/2 hours in it!  Ouch$$$$, I got in trouble!  But they have some of the most interesting and  beautiful background papers you just can’t find anywhere else.  It was great fun!  I was there 6 years ago and told them I would be back in another 6!  Don’t worry, I have already googled the major craft stores in the cities we are visiting as we head west!  Still cold here in northern Texas so for entertainment it is off to ANOTHER visit to Wal-Mart, what we we do without them………

Starting My Own Blog! “When the Mountains Call, I Must Go….”

November 13, 2013

Well, this ole gal is trying to learn something new!  I should have learned how to “blog” a long time ago but after having other friends do it, I decided not to put it off any longer.  I want a better way to share our traveling adventures with friends and family with full descriptions of the wonderful places we have been and the gorgeous scenery we have seen.  I may throw in a few day to day mundane things and personal views just to keep it interesting!  But of course, those of you who really know me, know that I can get quite overly excited about new adventures and, especially, over my photos!  Yep, my camera is glued to my hip (and the windshield of the truck) so there will be lots of pictures and hope I can keep from posting every one of them!  So my dear husband and I hope you enjoy our travels as we share them with you.  This is my first post and hope it works!