Holidays in Hondo

We arrived at The Lone Star Corral, an Escapees Co-op in Hondo Texas, last Saturday. Our plan was to check out the park, stay overnight, and move on the following day. Once we got parked and set up, it was late afternoon, so we headed out to see the place before it got dark. At the end of our street we ran into a man walking his dogs, and immediately struck up a conversation. Our new friend, Howard, told us all about the co-op, the community, what all there is to do there, and then invited us to that evening's social hour, and a kind of bingo game played with cards. We talked so long that it was too dark to continue, so we went to check out the community center.

We walked inside and were blown away by the place. It was really big. There were two regulation size pool tables, a full size snooker table, two shuffle board courts, a library, a couple of craft areas, a jigsaw puzzle area, a large modern laundromat, a huge commercial kitchen, AND seating/ eating space for at least 150 people. There were folks inside playing games and we talked to them too. Everyone we met was so nice and so welcoming, that within two hours we had decided to stay for Christmas.

Christmas was really nice. So is everyone here. So nice in fact, that we're staying for New Years...

Hondo is not far from the Texas Hill Country so we went exploring. It's kinda weird because everything is flat and then BLAMMO! Hill. No gradual assent, not transition, just flat... then hill.

Once you pass into the hills the terrain immediately changes from the deep fertile black soil grasslands, perfect for pasturing cattle, to rocky, sandy, scrub filled grasslands, perfect for pasturing cattle. 

No longer can you see miles to the horizon. Instead, on either side of the road, the view is held close-in by Mesquite, Mountain Cedar, Live Oak, Scrub Cedar, Prickly Pear Cactus and Yucca. 

The topsoil is so thin that when it rains, there's nothing to soak into, so it just runs off and flash floods. These floods are so common and so fast, that not only are there permanent warning signs, but at places where they cross the roads, the pavement has been engineered to accommodate the fast flowing water.  Each side of the pavement is ramped so that when it does flash, the water, and anything carried along by it, meets minimal resistance and the road bed doesn't get washed away. There are flood gauges at these crossings to mark the depth of the water. They measure up to 5 feet!

We visited the Hill Country Natural Area, a 5,300 acre preserve. This is a popular area for mountain biking, hiking, cross country running, and horse riding. They have camping areas specifically for those with horses. Each site has a corral, fresh water and feeding facilities. We spoke to a group of folks who were readying their horses to head out. 

One couple had these furry stocky smallish Icelandic horses. The were soooooo cute! 

We took about a 2.5 mile hike and wore ourselves out but good, then headed back to the car.













On the way home we stopped at one of the ubiquitous barbecue joints along the highway. They had just brought in a brisket from the mesquite fueled pit. As the cook sliced it you could see how juicy it was. Of course that was what we ordered, and it was easily the best I had eaten, (and believe me, I've eaten a LOT of barbecue brisket,).

Barbecue in this part of the world is different from many other areas. This is cattle country. Here it's all about the meat, and that meat is BEEF! You can get pork or turkey or chicken, but on the menu the main items are "chopped" or "sliced", "sandwich" or "plate". Then the sides, then the drinks, then the other meats. When you order, they don't assume you want sauce, they ask if you do. And that sauce is homemade, thin, loaded with the meat juices and there's only the one kind. No fancy-schmancy rubs, no assortment of gourmet sauces (not that there's anything wrong with that,) and for sure NO FRIGGIN' MANGO ANYTHING!!! Just fresh butchered, grass-fed, tender, juicy, expertly smoked over mesquite beef.

Part of our mission this winter is to explore possible places to live when it's time to come in off the road. This place has a lot of plusses for consideration.

• It's a co-op so it's run by the lot owners
• The afore mentioned owners are some of the friendliest and warmest people we've met in our travels
• The infrastructure and facilities are top notch
• The lots are large and maintenance-free
• You can build a large "shed" aka workshop, hobby space
• Has mild weather in the winter
• Has a new modern hospital
• Is an hour from San Antonio a large cosmopolitan city with lots to do
• Taxes are low, lower, lowest...
• IT'S IN TEXAS

So it's up for consideration, but we'll still be moving on later this week.

Take Me to the River ...

After waiting waaaayyyyy too long, our mail caught up with us and we were able to leave Mission and head north. We enjoyed a day of good weather for traveling and arrived in San Antonio. Until today, we've had blue skies and warm weather. It's been so nice to be able to have the windows open, both day AND night!

We had wanted to visit with some good friends Scott and Jodi, but unfortunately we arrived on the day they were leaving to visit their families for Christmas. Next winter, God willing, we plan to just explore Texas so we'll get another chance to visit

We made sure to take some time to visit the famous San Antonio Riverwalk. We spent a few hours and really only saw a small part of it. The place is a street photographer's paradise with all the cool architecture, flora and fountains. Next time we'll spend more time.

I'd been craving some proper barbacoa, (not the stuff Chipotle passes off as barbacoa,) and at a local taqueria just outside of San Antonio, by golly I got some. If you've never had authentic barbacoa, and you're a carnivore, you owe it to yourself to try some. First you gotta find a real Mexican place. Not the Anglo places you're used to, with the fancy margaritas and combination plates, but the little diner style places, where the patrons are mostly Mexicans hunkered over big bowls of steaming hot menudo (tripe soup) and drinking beer out of long neck bottles. If they don't sell Agua Fresca and Horchata, head for the door. Barbacoa means barbecue, but really it started out as meat cooked for a long time in pits in the ground filled with hot coals. Today it is generally steamed until it's tender. Most often the barbacoa you'll find is beef, although I've had lamb as well.  The source is the cheek meat, and the flavor is to die for. Think of the most tender, juiciest, fatty pot roast without any stringiness that you can imagine and you'll begin to get the picture. Darn it, I made myself hungry again. Good thing we're still in Texas!

Next stop is the Lone Star Coral, an Escapees Co-op in Hondo, about 50 miles west of San Antonio. Until then...

Riding the Storm Out

We got out of East Texas just ahead of the first of the winter storms that clobbered most of the nation.  We were fortunate to have a dry trip all the way to the Rio Grande Valley area of South Texas.  Usually it's sunny and warm here, but with the weather the way it is, it's been cooler than usual and cloudy. Still, it's better than single digit temps, snow and ice.

We hunkered down at Chimney Park Resort & RV Park to wait out the crummy weather. This resort is right on the Rio Grande, and Mexico is right across the river. 

Yesterday we walked around the "neighborhood" and picked some fresh lemons and grapefruits off of trees growing all over the place. 

Then it began to rain, so we decided it was a good time to get caught up on laundry.  The park's laundry facility is in the lower level of the office/ recreation center, right next to the game room, library, and computer stations. They have four regulation size pool tables, so we played some pool while the laundry ran. All in all, this is a nice place, but a lot more developed than we would normally like. It's more of a 55 plus community with RV's, but it's warmer here than most everywhere else, and everyone we've met has been really nice. They have a church service on Sundays which is a big plus for us.

The National Butterfly Center is a few miles away, but it's been too cold and wet to check that out. It's supposed to warm up and dry out next week, so maybe we can go there and take advantage of this unique resource.

I (Paul) have some friends down here, that I haven't seen in a lot of years. I'm hoping to get to visit over a platter of Barbacoa. Then it's on to the Lone Star Corral RV Park in Hondo, TX.  That will put us about 40 miles West of San Antonio. Lot's to do and see in San Antonio, and we have friends to see there too.

Until next time, I gotta charge up my camera batteries.

Thanksgiving in Texas

We're still at Rainbow's End in Livingston, TX. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and the campground will be serving several smoked turkeys, YUM!!! We'll all be sitting at tables of ten and everyone at each table will bring a dish to share. The folks at our table all got together over some burgers last Friday, to  coordinate who is bringing what, and also to meet each other so we're not strangers when we sit down to dinner.  We're bringing Heidi Chmura's yummy Sweet Potato Casserole and Mark Elfstrand (of Moody Radio) Family's famous Strawberry Pretzel Salad. Penny's cooking the potatoes, jello and pretzel crust right now and the HOW smells heavenly.

After some, beautiful weather, it turned cold and wet. It rained for three days, and for a while it even snowed. We were taking the HOW for its Texas Safety Inspection and dime sized snow flakes started coming down. OK that's novel and all, and now I've officially driven the HOW in the snow, but we didn't drive all the way to Houston to get soaked and freeze.

Oh well, life's an adventure, and we did buy the ticket to the ride... By early next week we should be done with all our residency stuff and we can head towards warmer and drier climes.

We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Please remember to thank God, our Father and the giver of all we've been blessed with.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Here we are at last in Livingston, Texas, where we'll stay until the end of the month.  The leaves are just starting to change, like late August at home.  When we arrived 10 days ago, the forecast was for daytime temps between 60 and 80, with nights between 40 and 60.  Now it's cold and wet, with days in the 40's and nights in the 20's and 30's.  I thought we came south to enjoy the warm weather - yikes!     

 

We're staying at Rainbow's End RV Park, which is one of the Escapee campgrounds.  Escapees is the premier full-time RV'er support organization in America, with over 30,000  active members.   This campground is their national headquarters.  Their mail forwarding service is one of the largest in the country, and they will be handling ours.  They will forward our mail to whatever address we ask them to, so regardless of where we're staying we can get our mail.

These pictures are of our site.  We're at the end of a row, and there's pretty much open area, both beside and behind us.  Campground is nice.

 

This week we're going to do our residency stuff so we have a place to register vehicles and vote.  We've been seriously planning where to go next.  We're thinking, work our way south to Galveston, then up the border through Mission, El Paso and west on Interstate 10 to Arizona until mid April, then start our way back home after a full timer rally via Tennessee.  We plan to be back in Rockford before May 15th

Thanks to the lovely and vivacious Penny for her photos and authorship of this post.

We have liftoff

 We finally left Illinois. Better late than never. Although it was really windy most of the way down I-39 and I-55, it cleared up when we got into the southern part of Illinois. Our first stop was outside of St. Louis. It was already dark when we got there and we got to see the famous St. Louis Arch, gateway to the west, all lit up. As many times as I've been to St. Louis, I've never seen this iconic structure in person. I thought it'd be bigger... 

We overnighted at a local campground nearby and tried to leave early, but ran into a small problem. We always do a light-check before we hit the road, and this time Penny found a taillight on the toad that wasn't working. Fortunately it was a beautiful warm and sunny morning. Bless God for gifting me with good troubleshooting abilities and an aptitude for technology. Tracked the problem down to a loose wire on the plug. Tightened her back up and we were on our way, late, but moving none the less.

Since it was already afternoon, we decided not to drive for too long, so we made our way to a nice campground called The Landing Point in Cape Girardeau, Mo. 

The campground had laundry facilities, so we took advantage of the unscheduled free time to freshen up our skivvies. By the time we finished, it was after dark and getting cold, so we had a bite to eat and hit the hay.

In the morning, we were off again, heading southwest.  The winds had calmed and it was getting a bit warmer, which brought out A LOT more Asian Lady Beetles. We we going through corn and soybean country where these pests like to live, and with the crops all being harvested, they had nowhere to go except everywhere else, especially the HOW. By mid-afternoon we had made it to the Little Rock, Arkansas area. We stayed at a place across the river from downtown Little Rock. It was nice and warm now, so we were able to sit by the river and enjoy the night skyline.

The next day we headed south, and in a few hours were out of farm country and driving past horse and cattle ranches. We knew we were in Texas when the road kill changed from racoons to armadillos. Sure enough, we were in our new home state!

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Or shall I say we? Doesn't match the song lyrics, but there are two of us.

Anyway, when I left off last time we were being invaded by plagues of insects, enduring day after day of rain, and I had repairs and mods to make on the HOW (House On Wheels). 

The rain finally let up, and I was able to install the windshield washer pump.  That was fun because the pump is attached to the reservoir, which is attached to the coach near the bottom of the body. You can just touch the top to open and close it for filling. Mind you, you can't fill it unless you have a 30 inch funnel, but hey, maybe the guy who designed the rig had really LONG arms. (I bet it was the same guy who decided that the brake fluid reservoir and fill cap should be located so far up in the engine compartment that you can check the fluid level, but if it was low you'd have to remove the upper dashboard and defroster vents to add any.) The fun part was laying on the ground, installing the reservoir with the plague of bugs covering me like a second set of clothes. (Did I mention just how BAD those Asian Lady Beetles smell when they congregate? And did I mention THEY BITE???)

That task successfully completed, we contacted Sargent Mike's RV and Home Repair. Sargent Mike is a mobile RV repair guy. He's an institution in and around the greater Rockford, IL area. He's not only extremely competent and trustworthy, he's a great guy. We wanted Sgt. Mike to see if he could resolve our leaking slide issue. 

In the meantime the weather turned cold, real cold. It got down to the mid 20's on several nights. Our HOW is not a four-seasons rig. Four-season rigs have heated water tanks, plumbing and storage bays to keep things from freezing. Our tanks, and some of the plumbing are enclosed in a semi insulated space that runs about 15 or 20 feet between the frame-rails and under the floors. The space is fully enclosed, except for a 18X12 inch opening to the utility bay where the water pump, fresh water fill, outside shower, electrical hookups, waste dump valves, etc are located. (Probably designed by the same guy who designed...) I filled the opening with fiberglass insulation and hung a metal trouble-light with a 75 watt bulb next to the pump and pipes. Just enough to keep things from freezing. I put another of the same kind of trouble-light in the enclosed space where the 80 gallon fresh water tank feeds into the plumbing. Inside the HOW we kept the furnaces set to a minimum of 65 degrees. The heating ducts don't seem to run through the same space as the plumbing (same guy who designed...?) but we thought if the inside didn't get too cold, and we left the sink cabinets open overnight,  plus the trouble-lights, we wouldn't burst our pipes. We supplemented the gas furnaces with an electric radiator in the bedroom and bathroom at night and used a mattress pad heater (YES!). We used a small oscillating ceramic heater when we were in the living area. Still, we went through propane pretty fast. All in all we were pretty comfy.

Sgt. Mike came out and was able to get our slide fixed pretty quickly. Bless God, for Sgt. Mike!

We got everything battened down and ready to travel and went to bed to the sounds of our local pack of coyotes. Next morning I set out to check the inflation on the four tires on the toad (towed vehicle) and six tires on the HOW. Improper inflation is one of the leading causes of breakdowns and crashes in RV's. I started with the toad, and on the first tire, something didn't seem right. Turns out my trusty, big old honking', calibrated, tire gauge was missing a seal nut on the inside valve. Nice. I looked around but couldn't find it anywhere. Oh well, time to get out the spare smaller tire gauge. Toad tires checked out. No need to wrestle with a cold, stiff compressor hose yet. Put the tire gauge to the first tire on the HOW, and POW! The tire gauge exploded into pieces. Some of them shot six feet! This gauge is for bicycles and goes up to 150 PSI, ("This one goes to eleven..."). The HOW's tires only take 80 PSI. I didn't have another gauge that went over 50 PSI, but I found that I could coax the first one to work if I held the thing together with my finger and thumb. Measured five tires, all five were fine. On the sixth, when I pulled the gauge off the valve stem, the valve core stuck open and air was hissing out. I could not get it unstuck, so I put the cap on the valve and the air stopped leaking. I use high quality metal valve caps with o-rings for this very reason. I went inside the HOW and raised the front jacks to take the weight off the tire, and also so that if it went flat, the wheel wouldn't crush the tire and ruin it.

  Bein' the former Jeeper that I am, I've dealt with a lot of inflation/ de-inflation, stuck/ frozen valve stems, and lost beads. I know I've got a tire valve repair kit, but where? IN THE STUPID STORAGE SHED WITH OUR BIKES, THAT'S WHERE!!!.
OK, we're paying for roadside assistance and it covers this kind of thing, so Penny calls them up. They dispatch a guy and say he'll be there in one to three hours. It's already hours passed our departure time. And guess what? It's beginning to rain.

So the guy shows up, and he's not going to replace the valve core, he's going to replace the whole valve stem. So now the 22,000 pound fully loaded HOW has to be jacked up and the wheel taken off. I'll spare the ugly details of the whole process. Suffice to say, that when I pointed out that the tire now seemed to be leaking from the inner bead because the guy hadn't cleaned all the balancing powder off the wheel when he reseated it, he said that always happens and that if he over inflates the tire, it will seat itself after a while. Hey whaddya know, he was right. when we called him back out three rainy days later, (three days is "a while" isn't it?) and he cleaned the powder off like he should have the first time, it seated properly and stopped leaking.

With all the strange problems, delays, plagues, and now Penny coming down with a nasty cold, we started wondering if God was trying to tell us he had other plans for us. We came so close to throwing in the towel that we we put ernest money down on a small place in Belvidere, IL. Long story short, we didn't buy it, and left town.

BTW, I fabricated a DIY cold air intake that employs a high performance air filter, and won't suck water into the system when it rains. HA!

Failure to Launch

We're still in Illinois, currently at Rock Cut State Park, north of Rockford. We've been here for three weeks. The park is over 3000 acres, and has several campgrounds. We're the only ones in our campground during the week. As the cold is setting in, the animals are getting really active. I guess they want to eat as much as they can while there's still food to eat. The other night a pack of coyotes was just outside of our campsite, yipping and barking and making all kinds of noise. (Click this to link to some audio of what it sounded like.

I had another procedure to finish, and then wait for results, some additional tests, and wait for results. One doctor scared the $#!* out of us by telling us that I would explode and die if I lifted more than ten or twenty pounds, or left town, or anything more that sitting around waiting until I needed a liver transplant. That was two weeks after the doctor managing my care cleared me to lead a normal life. Travel, kayaking, the whole "Live long and prosper" thing. We were frozen in place. Stay? Go? We had to wait a week to talk to the main doctor to find out if something had changed, or was the other doctor being overly cautious.

After all that was settled we packed up the HOW, and tested out the Brake Buddy (a braking aid for the car towed (aka toad) behind the HOW), and all the electrical and mechanical connections. All systems go! Next morning, car won't start. Battery was bad. Jumped it and went to get a new one. By the time we got back to the HOW, it was too late to leave.

Next day, it poured. Day after that, it poured. Then it rained after that. Rain is a problem for the HOW because of a design flaw on certain model years of Fleetwood coaches. The manufacturer put the air intake right behind the grill, so at highway speeds in a hard rain, water gets sucked up and soaks the air filter. At best the the engine looses performance, at worse the filter collapses and the engine ingests water causing a hydro lock.  Hydro lock means new engine. Yikes! Fortunately I heard about this before, and I carry a spare in case I need to change it, but until I can retrofit it, I try not to drive in the rain.

In between showers, I was checking out the windshield washers when they quit squirting. Pump died. I pulled the failed one and set about finding a replacement. After WAY too many hours, I found a "universal" replacement. By the time I got back to... you guessed it; raining.

Since it was raining, we decided to finish some HOW-improvement projects. During the work, we noticed that the carpet on, under and next to the front slide was soaked. Slides are a mixed blessing. While they expand your living space a lot, there is much to go wrong. The seals wear out over time, but you really can't know when, until they fail.  Until we could have this looked at, we decided not to deploy the slide when it rains. When it's not, we aim a heater at the wet spots to help them dry.

When it cleared up, I went to install the replacement windshield washer fluid pump and found that it wasn't all that universal. Another hunt, another pump, this one truly a replacement, and guess what, rain.

Though all this, we've been tormented by a plague of Box Elder Bugs, Asian Lady Beetles, and flies. In case you're among the fortunate, who don't experience this twice a year display of biomass, let me describe it. 

Asian Lady Beetle
Image source: orkin.com

Asian Lady Beetles, like the more commonly known Lady Bug Beetles, are really beneficial insects. They are very effective at keeping agricultural pest populations in control, which in tern reduces the amount of pesticides needed. These little buggers are so effective that the USDA released zillions of them in Virginia and North Carolina in an effort to control aphid populations on tobacco plants. Along with the Fed, various State and local governments, as well as universities with agricultural departments also released the beetles. All these releases produced favorable results, but the beetles never reproduced, and soon died off. Ironically, in 1998, a freighter from Asia was docked in New Orleans. The ship was infested with Asian Lady Beetles. They escaped and have been spreading since.  In late Autumn, when crops are harvested, the beetles have no place to over-winter, so they move into anything they can, houses, barns, RV's... It wouldn't be so bad, but these ain't your Granny's Lady Bugs. For one thing, they bite, or pinch. Second, when threatened or squished, they release a really bad smelling yellow fluid. It's nasty! Third, there are boatloads of them per acre. 

Box Elder Bug
Image source: orkin.com

Now on to my personal favorite, the Box Elder Bug. These things serve no useful purpose that I can ascertain,  except as a pestilence.  On warm fall afternoons, the sunny side of a house, or RV, becomes covered with a living carpet of the things. It's creepy beyond belief. Fortunately, not as many of these bugs bother coming into the interior. Mostly they hide in cracks and spaces. Box Elder bugs stink too. Squish one and they let out a red fluid that stains anything and stinks.

The flies? Who knows. 

I think that'll do for today. I'll continue with the saga in the next installment.

Gettin' the Score

Tuesday, I'm having a third medical procedure to assess the outcome of the last two, and see if anything remains to be repaired.  If any more work is needed it will be done right then, and I'll go back in two weeks for another assessment, yada yada yada...  If all is well, we'll be free to hit the road.  So Tuesday, we find out the score.  Either way, we have to move next week coz the campground we summered at is closing soon.  If we have to stay here for a little longer, we'll stay at Rock Cut State Park until we can leave.  They close to RV's for the season October 31, but we should be good to go by then.  

We're looking forward to heading south for the next six months. If there's anything that we both hate about the upper midwest, it's the humidity. Mix that with the cold and these old bones commence ta achin'. Lately the humidity here's been so high you can see it!  As soon as we hit the road, we're headin' directly southwest until we arrive in the great state of Texas. We'll be establishing an address in Polk County, Texas and creating a legal domicile there. Our vehicles will be registered there, we'll vote there, our driver's licenses will be issued there. We were born in Illinois, but by the grace of God, we'll be Texans. We won't be paying the crooks from Chicago one more cent in state income tax, (we already jettisoned any property taxes when we sold our house). Can you say "yippie ky eh m@!$*r f^%&%r"?

Git er dun

Aw NUTS!

Walnuts that is; black walnuts to be exact.

A typical black walnut

As you can see, the nuts grow pretty big. The Eastern Black Walnut is native to Eastern North American riparian woodlands, but they are especially plentiful in the Midwest. The trees mature, and bear significant fruit at around 20 years of age. They may live for 130 years and reach heights of 100 to 130 feet. During the Civil War, gun makers found that the heartwood made high quality and long lasting gunstocks. That, and its value as a source of wood for furniture, flooring, paddles, cabinets, caskets and veneer, led to a decline in the numbers of Eastern Black Walnut trees in many parts of their natural range. Poaching of black walnut trees became common and continues even today. This decline got so severe that by the approach of World War II, the federal government began encouraging people to sell the black walnut trees growing in their yards and orchards. Today, thanks in part to open land conservation, selective harvest logging, and synthetic and engineered wood products, the Eastern Black Walnut Tree is back with a vengeance.

It's a mixed blessing...

You can't even imagine what it's like to be in an RV when a nut, like the one pictured, falls 130 feet from a treetop and lands on the roof. The sound is like a cherry-bomb going off. We live in a 37 foot long, 18,000 pound motorhome which is currently stabilized by four hydraulic jacks. A nut hit the roof so hard today the the coach actually moved. It was like someone shoved a corner a hard as they could.

Chipmunks LOVE these nuts. We have enough chipmunks to start a band. They stash the nuts everywhere: up trees, in holes, in hollows, in the exhaust of the HOW...

Did I mention the exhaust of the HOW? That reminds me of late last summer, sitting outside of the House On Wheels, when Penny thought she heard a metallic scratching sound coming from the tail pipe. She tapped the pipe and sure enough, the noise got louder and kind of frantic. Me, being ever the animal lover that I am, went in and started the engine and hit the gas. A couple of walnuts shot out followed by a panicked chipmunk. The rodent landed on its belly with all four legs splayed out, got up, looked one way, the the other and took off. After a few more guns of the engine, we had ejected 27 nuts, and one unhappy chipmunk. There's more to the story but it can wait until another day.

On a personal note, I've been cleared to travel and resume a normal lifestyle pending one or two more minor procedures. Not bad for almost gettin' dead three weeks ago. God is good, all the time!

Osprey

Recalculating Route

Isn't that what your GPS says when you turn unexpectedly from the predetermined route? Well we've been sent in an unexpected direction, and now we're recalculating our route. Last Thursday, I (Paul) went through a life-threatining medical crisis that landed me in hospital for three days. Not good.

Depending on the outcome of some followup tests, we may have to rethink how we're going to continue to live a full-time RV life. We may have to stay close to places with Trauma Centers. We may have to travel via interstates instead of smaller roads. We may even end up with two "home bases" and simply travel back and forth with the weather. Right now we don't know, but we fully intend to pursue our dream of living in a small house with a really big yard. 

In the meantime, while I heal and see doctors, we'll be recalculating our route, and see where it leads.

Life in the now.

Yep, almost two months into this adventure and I (Paul) have slowed down sufficiently to live in the now. I can sit quietly and do nothing more than listen to a bird sing, or watch some squirrels chase each other around. I can enjoy the now that is, right then, unhurried. Just enjoy it. What a gift.

Comin' in Hot

As our river moves into its late summer mode, the water is getting clearer and the smallmouth bass are getting hungrier. Both make for good times on the water. By September it's so clear that you can see your toes when you're in chest deep water. By that time the smallies are stuffing their bellies with big ol' crawfish. They got pretty big mouths for fish called smallmouths.