About rvrrat520

Retired L.E. from Sonoma County, CA. We've been full time RVers for 8 years, covering all lower 48 states and not nearly seeing a fraction of what is out there. Enjoy life in the "here & now" for the future is not guaranteed. Live, Laugh, Love...Grandkids rock!

W. Yellowstone Follies

Posted on May 19, 2021 by rvrrat520

Before we could EVEN get serious about our travels, we headed back to Caldwell, ID so as to retrieve our bicycles from our storage unit. A couple of days there got us a very nice catch-up visit with Jim & Stacy Camara (former co-workers, from another life seemingly far, far away). Bicycles in the rack, it was onward & upward.

Our first planned gig was to stay in the megalopolis of W. Yellowstone, MT and check out the area other than Yellowstone National Park (we had pretty well covered that on two prior trips). Jeanne found Baker’s Hole Campground just 3 miles outside of town, a National Forest Service campground in the Gallatin National Forest. This was a scenic little campground right on the Madison River and actually had some limited sites with electric hook-ups. It was heavily forested but we actually got a site with enough open sky to get non-HD satellite reception. (Note: this campground fills very fast, it is suggested you get here well before noon if you intend to get a spot with electric. I particularly liked site #22, a long, pull through with probably enough open sky for satellite reception). They had water spigots scattered about the campground, as well as pit toilets, but no sewer connections or dump station on site. The interior roads were pretty skinny & tight, but I think I managed to navigate them without destroying the 40’ beast’s paint job. We got set up, reconnoitered the campground, the Madison River and downtown, and generally settled in for the next 4 days. It appeared to me that the Madison River is a pretty big deal in the fly fishing world (take heed, Paul Sullivan!) and there was no shortage of fishing guide outfits in town.

Our big adventure day we chose to take a bit of a driving tour (200+ miles roundtrip). The first leg of the trip took us from our campsite on Hwy. 191 north to Hwy. 287, then to the areas of Hebgen Lake and Earthquake Lake. Hebgen Lake was beautiful and fairly large. Unfortunately, a sign posted at the lake informed us that during certain times a green algae pops up making the water toxic to humans and pets. I guess looks can definitely be deceiving. Continuing north on Hwy. 287, just a stone’s throw from Hebgen, we found Earthquake Lake. It seems back in 1959 a 7.5 quake hit the area near midnight causing a massive landslide which blocked off the river in what was called Madison Canyon, creating Earthquake Lake. It was a local catastrophe, 28 people died, about 250 folks (campers in the area and residents) were trapped/stranded as the roads were destroyed by the quake. The new “dam” caused the Madison River to morph into Earthquake Lake, gaining about 9’ of depth per day for about 3 weeks, to its eventual size of 5 miles long and about 190’ deep.

At the small town of Ennis, Hwy. 287 forked off and took us to the two small Montana ghost towns of Virginia City and Nevada City. These are not true “ghost towns” in the strictest sense of the phrase. Nevada City is a group of salvaged buildings that had been relocated and grouped together on the site they now occupy, and is a tourist attraction that at the time of our visit was not open for the season yet. However, we were able to walk about the exterior and at least see the structures from the outside, all in all still interesting to see.

Virginia City is a different type of ghost town. There are numerous currently operating businesses interspersed among “ghost town” structures & businesses throughout the downtown area. Many of the “ghosties” had open doors which gave us views of the interiors as they had operated back in their days. There was also a small “boot hill” cemetery perched on a hill overlooking downtown. Both of these ghost towns are nowhere near anything like normal ghost towns such as Bodie, CA, but are still fun to explore.

Our driving tour continued as we backtracked to Ennis, then continued on the main spur of Hwy. 287 up to Norris, turned east on Hwy. 84 to Four Corners where we started south back on Hwy. 191. Our destination was the town area of Big Sky, MT and along this part of Hwy. 191 we were treated to some beautiful scenery as the highway follows along the Gallatin River. We even happened upon a stretch where we could watch some white water rafters.

This guy was watching the rafters as well…

Upon our arrival to Big Sky, after a short break for lunch at the Lone Peak Brewery & Taphouse, we headed off for Ousel Falls. The trail to the falls was well constructed, well maintained, fairly busy, and pet friendly, so Woodrow Wilson got to stretch his legs and lead us on the short jaunt (1.6 miles) to the falls. The trail had some brief, minor elevation changes, but nothing difficult and no obstacles/rock scrambling. Again, beautiful scenery, worth the effort, but I have to say it was not one of the most spectacular waterfalls we have ever seen.

On our return to the campground, it was time to re-arrange our travel plans. At our last travel day we encountered issues with one of the bedroom slideouts. It appeared the dual motors were not operating in sync. If you know me or have been following this blog at all you already know that I am fairly incompetent in “the ways of the wrench”. So how the heck do I fix this sync thing?!? Well, by golly, when in the dark, find the light, in this case go to the good ol’ standby…the Tiffin RV Network (tiffinrvnetwork.com). Bazillions of topics, comments, common problems, common fixes, etc. posted by Tiffin owners. Lo, and behold, there I found a step-by-step on how to re-sync the slide motors. On moving day, I followed the step-by-step and son of a gun the slide seemed to return to sync. This came with a big “BUT”, as we have recently also encountered a God-awful metallic grinding at the beginning of retraction for that very same slideout. Even in sync, the grind remained. So instead of our formerly planned short travel days here and there through Wyoming toward South Dakota, we decided to change to a straight shot into Rapid City. From W. Yellowstone we headed into Sheridan, WY and took a 4 day respite to check out the area and in the meantime make an appointment for someone to check out the grinding. Jeanne located a mobile RV tech in the Rapid City area and made contact with him to arrange for the diagnosis/repairs. Our 4 day stay in Sheridan, WY will be covered in the next blog post, so stay tuned…

A Start Back To “Normalcy” (Perhaps…)

Posted on May 9, 2021 by rvrrat520

It has been a while since the last post, but not a whole lot of interesting shenanigans has occurred so this will be a really really really short update. We have spent the better part of the last 3+ months in the socialist state of Kalifornia, tending to some routine medical issues and helping take care of Jeanne’s mom. We finally decided to up-anchor and flee the state again. Not all of our stay in Kalifornia was consumed by healthcare tedium. While in Redding we happened upon a small car show at the Elk’s Lodge, “Runnin’ On Empty” and got the opportunity to check out some fine rides all gussied up by their owners (it actually shamed me into giving Rosie a good wash & wax while parked at Jeanne’s brother David’s house.)

In our runs back to Santa Rosa (our hub of medical care providers), we also managed to attend our grandson Max’s little league game. I’m about fed up with watching the youth of our country be forced to wear face diapers while participating OUTDOORS in youth sports! Our daughter Jenn told us that it is so bad, neighbors have actually taken photos of the game days where players and attendees were not wearing masks, then sent the photos into the league with complaints. A definite sad state of affairs…

This past week was our grand finale this time around with all three grandkids. We grabbed 5 days at the Jellystone RV Resort (Tower Park) in the Terminous area of Lodi, CA and the first two days Max & his mom came over from Santa Rosa and stayed with us. It was the Mayday weekend and the place was absolutely packed! But Max (9 years old) had fun anyways. The park has a very large pool and water park type area as well as other typical activities for the kids like the bounce pillow, basketball court, monkey bar play areas, lazer tag, mini-golf and gem mining to name a few. After we tried (unsuccessfully) to wear Max out, we met our son Chad and picked up our granddaughters Hailey (5 years old) and Ellie (3 years old) to try to do the same to them. They got the experience of being there midweek, offseason, and nearly deserted. Alas, we failed to wear the two girls out also. The only downfall during our stay is that every day but one we felt like we were in a huge wind/dust storm.

Jellystone Park in our rear-view, we returned Hailey & Ellie to Chad & Crissy, then began our trek out of state. We are aiming for South Dakota for now, but nothing is ever set in stone, which is exactly the way we like it. So that has us caught up for now, hoping to start making memories by the truckload so I can begin boring you out of your minds, er, uh, I mean keep you updated more frequently. Until next post…

C’mon, Man, Give Me a Brake/Break!

Posted on March 4, 2021 by rvrrat520

Yeah, it’s been a while, but not a lot to catch up to. A lot of family stuff keeping us on the left coast, but we did manage to sneak over to southern Nevada for some alone time. First stop was bee-you-tee-full Pahrump, Nevada where we spent a couple weeks hangin’ at the Pair-A-Dice SKP park. With the insane China-virus-hysteria still in full force, going places and trying to live life normally is still nigh on impossible. The really nice thing about Pahrump is it is surrounded by open desert, with scads of areas to head out to in the Jeep and cap a few rounds off to relieve some of the daily pressures (OK, so the only limit on the number of rounds I capped was the severe pain-in-the-ass shortage of ammunition available in any of the gun & shooting supply stores).

Heading, yet again back into “unfriendly territory” that is, Kalifornia, we wanted to do a few days of boondocking on the west side of Death Valley, a place known as the Panamint Valley dispersed camping area. This would turn out to be more of an adventure than we bargained for. Taking Hwy. 190 west through Death Valley, between Stovepipe Wells & Panamint Springs, we encountered a “glitch”. Now having been full-timing on the road for over 8 years, ocean to ocean and passing through all of the lower 48, I have traversed some of the steepest grades this country has to offer. But on this particular trip, I have found one of the worst. The above mentioned section of Hwy. 190 happens to contain a 9 mile stretch of 9% downhill grade. Thus far I have been able to manage all grades utilizing my lower gears coupled with my engine brake. Any brake use has been infrequent pumping just to take the edge off my RPM’s. But 6 miles into this downhill we got nailed with “that odor”. I immediately found a skinny piece of shoulder to pull off and stop. As I opened the door, the tell-tale “wisps” of smoke were emanating from my front wheels. Ouch. So there we sat, staring off at the flat valley floor 3 miles ahead. After a 30 minute “brake” break, I fired ol’ Rosie up and continued downhill. Not wishing to even touch my brake pedal, I made it down the remaining 3 miles using only first & second gears with the engine brake and absolutely no brake pedal use. Whheeeeeewwwwww! We made it to the dispersed camping area just west of the road to Ballarat and gleefully set up for a big “brake” break, 3 night’s worth, to be exact.

Being this close to the ghost town of Ballarat, we just HAD to see it. It was a mere few miles drive down the dirt road (don’t worry, all you “pavement Princesses” out there, no high clearance or 4×4 necessary) to get to the “center of town”. This was about as disappointing as a “ghost town” could be. There were a couple of mud walls here and there, old metal parts and pieces scattered about, and one whole building with a sign designating it the “Ballarat Jail-Morgue 1898”. I have my suspicions as to the authenticity of the sign.

Just walls left on all but one building in “town”

Seeing we had been to Death Valley on a few prior trips, there was not much to try and see. But we were close to the Windrose Charcoal Kilns so we took the slow drive up into the hills. The kilns were used by the early miners to create the fuels (charcoal, I presume) used for smelting. We found them to be pretty well preserved.

The really big downer about this time around in Death Valley, it happened to be nearly full moons all 3 nights. If you are not aware of it, Death Valley is an international Dark Sky Park. Needless to say, skies aren’t much dark if there is a big ol’ lit up cheese ball right in the middle of them. We missed out, big time.

OK, so that kinda catches us up for now. Until next post…

Christmas in Kalifornia, 2020

Posted on January 4, 2021 by rvrrat520

In Slidell, LA, home was the Slidell Elk’s Lodge. The lodge is settled in among the spanish moss covered oaks along the Liberty Bayou on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. We stayed a couple of days and toured the areas we did not see when we were here years ago in the French Quarter. Jeanne found the Lafayette Cemeteries to be big in the tourism stream, so we ventured in. Cemetery #1 was closed for repairs, but we found #2 open and walked among some very old burial sites. Walking through the nearby neighborhood I was facinated with many of the old victorian homes with what appeared to be real gas porch lamps.

Jeanne also found the Audubon Park, home to the Tree of Life. There is an area of the park containing two meditation labyrinths and while we were there they were occupied by several folks meditating (it looked more like a yoga class to me, probably was). The Tree of Life is one gi-normous oak tree that draws a steady stream of visitors.

And of course, we just HAD to peek in on the Urban South (NOLA) brewery and pick up a few slushies for our son Chad to sample. As you may recall, we had just visited the Urban South HTX Brewery (Houston).

The travel from Slidell, LA was “pretty much” uneventful, with a series of overniters at various Elk’s Lodges and the Rover’s Roost SKP park in Casa Grande, AZ. Very few travel distances are complete without Murphy sticking his nose into everything and this one was no exception. We have always had bad luck with road quality along I-10 along the southern edge of the US. Somewhere in there we suffered a very large chipped floor tile in the bedroom, thank you Louisiana DOT. Oh well…

Woodrow Wilson enjoying some desert time in Casa Grande, AZ

On a much happier note, we made it back to Kalifornia for the family XMAS with our kids/grandkids. Home was again the Atascadero Elk’s Lodge, and Chad & Crissy hosted us all at their house in Atascadero and a fun time was had by all. We spent one morning taking a family walk over to Atascadero Lake and walking around the lake. There we found someone has started a painted rock “snake”, trying to encircle the lake with painted rocks. Since I paint a few myself for our FB group “RVersRock!”, I just had to leave a couple for the “snake”. A few days later we took a short hike up Pine Mountain at Stadium Park in Atascadero, looking for one of the nine worldwide mysterious metallic monoliths scattered from Romania to Australia to Atascadero. We found it at the top, overlooking Atascadero’s downtown/city hall area. And wouldn’t you know it, we happened upon a few painted rocks along the trail, these from a FB group called “HiYaRockProject”. We decided to relocate them to the rock snake at Atascadero Lake.

Oma & Opa with 3 grandkids growing on a tree.

One fine sunny day we relieved Chad & Crissy of their parental duties and took Hailey & Ellie out to Morro Bay. We wanted to check on the RV park there for availability (sorry, China-virus-hysteria in full effect, park closed), so we walked the surf line instead.

That catches us up for now, counting down until we can escape Kalifornia yet again. Until next post…

Headed Back to Kalifornia, Yet Again

Posted on December 11, 2020 by rvrrat520

Sherman, TX in our rearview mirror, it was eastbound & down. We did an overnighter at the Shreveport Elk’s Lodge where we got invited to join them in a send-off meal/party for one of the locals getting ready to deploy to Iraq. Very friendly folks, we had a good time at the soiree. Oh, yeah, back to the land of “when in doubt, fry it!” cooking style.

Our next “lengthy” stay (ha!) was in Vicksburg, MS. We boondocked at the Riverwalk Casino which is right on the mighty Mississip for a couple of nights. It was a tough way to go, we had the back of the parking lot all to ourselves with a great view of the river and all the sunsets. Besides the requisite of donating to the casino economy, we got the opportunity to do a drive-tour of the Vicksburg Nat’l Military Park, site of the 1863 Battle of Vicksburg, a major battle site for the control of the Mississippi River. If I can muster ANYTHING good about this China-virus-hysteria-bullshit, it afforded us the opportunity to do the tour for free (none of the amenities, including the Visitor’s Center, were open). They have a free, downloadable “Vicksburg Battle App” that is a little cumbersome to figure out at the site itself, but still interesting to explore even after leaving the battlefield. Just like all the other Civil War battlefield areas scattered about this here part of the country, Vicksburg is awe-inspiring, humbling, melancholic, all of the above. We spent about 2 hours covering the 16-mile drive tour, which snakes its way through the 1800+ acre area. There are 1,325 monuments, 144 cannons, and the recovered/restored ironclad gunboat “USS Cairo”, among all the other features in the park. The Cairo bears the distinction of being the first U.S. ship in history to be sunk by a torpedo/mine. Unfortunately as I stated, the museum building at the USS Cairo was closed because of China, so we could only look from behind the barriers. The following photos will be a collage of our home in Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, and the battlefield, no captions.

Jeanne wanted to track down the “Vicksburg Riverfront Murals” which she located via TripAdvisor or some such app, so we took a short drive into the downtown/oldtown area, then let Woodrow Wilson lead us on a walkabout.

Moving on, we two-nighted it at the Sam’s Town Casino/Hotel just outside of Memphis in Robinsonville, MS. Sam’s Town has a FHU RV park that was near empty when we were there, and for $27/night to be able to do laundry (on their power, no generator needed), it is hard to beat that price. This particular area is known locally as the casino area, with several casinos well scattered about. The casinos that remain open are generally fairly large but do not draw big patronage, almost like an economically depressed area, and the ones that are closed down tend to appear to have been so for a very long time (years).

From Sam’s Town it was onward and upward to Nashville and a return stay at the Grand Ole RV Resort in Goodlettsville, TN (just north of downtown Nashville). During this stay we hit a couple of local breweries to nab some slushy/sour-fruited beers at our son Chad’s request. We spent one morning on another walkabout on Broadway, peeking in on some of the live music at Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk, picking up some cowboy/cowgirl boots for the young’uns back in Kalifornia, and just taking in the sights and sounds on Broadway.

After checking in on Buddy Holly back in Lubbock, we decided to check in/pay our respects to some of the Country music stars who are headlining at the Grand Ol’ Heavenly Opry. Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash are resting at the Hendersonville Memorial Gardens, just north of Nashville. Then we found the likes of George Jones, Johnny Paycheck, Jerry Reed (Hubbard), Tammy Wynette, Lynn Anderson, Little Jimmy Dickens, & Dottie Rambo all resting at the Woodlawn Memorial Park in Berry Hill, TN.

Staying at the Grand Ole RV Resort does have perks – they host live musicians for a couple of hours at dinner time, many of which are studio musicians with experiences playing with some of country music’s HOFers. Even with the China virus hysteria bull$hit forcing the musicians out on the back porch in 40 degree temps, it was a good time had by all. And when the temps got a bit lower, the entertainment went inside.

Ron Crites, playing at Grand Ole RV Resort

While we were here in the Nashville area, Jeanne & I decided to catch whatever we could along this end of the Natchez Trace. The Trace runs some 440+/- miles from Natchez, Mississippi in the gulf to Nashville, Tennessee, ending near the area of Pasquo, TN. We took a short day trip covering the Tennessee end of about 40 miles of the Trace. We have done lots of parts-n-pieces of the Trace, seen many of the civil war era features, but have never traversed the entire span. I guess it would be a feather in one’s cap to travel the entire length of 440 miles, but we just can’t seem to pull the trigger.

The double arch bridge over Birdsong Hollow, along the Natchez Trace.

Jeanne found a place called Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant in the area of Leiper’s Fork where musicians, sometimes famous, show up to play at night. We took a drive out there, which is near Franklin, TN, and had lunch at the restaurant. Not a remarkable meal, the highly touted BBQ brisket was way over salted, the beer just OK. We also took another walkabout around downtown Franklin, nothing seems to have changed over the past few years.

Watch out for these speed traps in Leiper’s Fork…

We just can’t seem to shake that Murphy guy, his laws always catch up to us. While we were here in the Nashville area, we got hit with a little cold weather, OK, snow. And to cap it all off, our middle heater took a dump on us. I guess it was a good thing we are so close to Red Bay, AL. Our next stop was a brand new RV Resort called Red Bay Acres in the downtown megalopolis of Red Bay, Alabama. We scored a reservation with Daniel Humphries at MS RV Solutions to do several minor fixes on the MH, so we spent a few days hunkered down until our appointment. Tiffin pretty much owns the town of Red Bay, they have the main service center, plus an additional 3 overflow RV park areas. This new RV resort, although a bit pricier than the Tiffin lots, had a restaurant on site, fishing pond, pickleball court, and a small camp store. We passed on the previously completed sightseeing (Coon Dog Cemetery, Rattlesnake Saloon, Muscle Shoals, etc.), and pretty much focused on getting in and getting out with our planned MH fixes. We had used Daniel previously, and he did not disappoint us this time. Any Tiffin owners out there, we would recommend MS RV Solutions for any of your needed repairs.

We high-tailed it out of Red Bay as soon as we could and power drove all the way to Slidell, LA. We are headed toward I-10 to start the westward trek back to see some grandkids in the failed state of Kalifornia. Hopefully the morons in charge get the wildfires under control before we get back. Until next post…

Hangin’ In Texas, 2020 Style…

Posted on November 12, 2020 by rvrrat520

Well, we got our satellite antenna problems fixed, SATS2GO did us very well, we would highly recommend them if you are ever in the Montgomery/Conroe area of Texas (No. Houston area) and need satellite antenna assistance. I mentioned we stayed at the Lake Conroe/Houston North KOA in Montgomery. This was a fairly nice KOA, lots of family stuff (aka:things for kids), and with a stocked, catch-n-release pond for no license required fishing. The only problem I had with the park was the neatly, well trimmed grass areas, especially at our site. It seemed our site had the bulk of sticker weeds in the grass. They were the round spiral type stickers and they were more deadly than any of the goat heads we have encountered nationwide! It’s like my wife Jeanne has not had many personal lessons in 4-letter word vocabulary, but she got another barrage of them, every time I stepped on one of them buggers!

Using the KOA for our base for the week, we spent all our time pretty much driving around checking the areas, still looking for that “Ah, feels like home!” moment. We covered the area pretty well, even finding time to take a couple of brewery breaks. We had previously been to and thought we might like the area of The Woodlands, Texas, but it had been a few years since we were there. This time through sealed the deal for that area…a big no. Traffic has become an absolute nightmare with the congestion now. And to top it off, it seems the state of Texas is on a tear to spend highway construction dollars before they lose them, so in EVERY town we go through they are tearing up ALL their roads at the same time. With all the cones and reduced lane widths Jeanne gets even more lessons in 4-letter vocabulary from me. It ain’t fun maneuvering a 40’ bus towing a Jeep through some of that quagmire. (But, knock on wood laminate, no issues as of yet…). We did kinda take a liking to the area of Conroe/Willis/Montgomery and Lake Conroe, but it did not trigger that “home” feeling. As far as “beer breaks” went, we checked out a couple local breweries, one was the B-52 Brewery in Conroe. It was an interesting place, despite the China-virus hysteria bull$hit, it looked to be family friendly with a large outdoor area with lots of cornhole games and outdoor seating, pet friendly. They had some pretty good offerings, from stouts to IPA’s to sour fruiteds. Our son, Chad, also sent us on a quest to find the Urban South HTX brewery in Houston. We found it. If you are into the slushy style of sour-fruited beers, this is the place for you! I even gave a couple of them 5’s on the free Apple app “Untappd”. They don’t do a bad job on some of their IPA’s as well.

It sure is nice to see prices like this after our extended time in Purgatory (Kalifornia)

When we got ready to hit the road, we decided we were going to “slowly make our way” (to be painfully described here shortly) toward the megalopolis of Red Bay, AL. We have a couple of minor fixes needed on Rosie, so we contacted a couple of the folks who do Tiffin work outside of the service center and set up dates in early December. So from Montgomery we headed for San Antonio. OK, keeping our drive days short. It was only supposed to be a 3 1/2 hr. drive. And mostly 2-lane backroads which we love to travel vs. the pinball action between truckers on the major freeways. We wound our way S/W, at some point getting onto little Hwy. 237 toward La Grange. Well there happens to be a whole string of small town areas along the route, all of which do nothing but sell “antiques” out of their yards. Some are pretty big outfits, putting up large steel buildings to house their “antiques”. And as we were forced to slow through these areas, we came upon the “antique” capital of the area…a place called Round Top. It just so happened we were there during some big sales/show event and I swear every resident of the state of Texas was there to buy “antiques”. The 2-lane highway was at a standstill for a little over one hour! “Hey Jeanne, wanna hear some more 4-letter vocabulary?!?!” Once we cleared that traffic fiasco, we were on our way through La Grange and on down to catch I-10 for the last short leg into San Antonio. Cruisin’ along, fat, dumb, & happy (sorta), we happened upon an accident on I-10. Traffic stopped, all lanes. “Hey Jeanne, c’mon, say it with me, &$%#>@!*$@!*&%!!!!!!!” This time, 3 1/2 hours at a standstill… So we finally made it into San Antonio, to the San Antonio/Alamo KOA. This was also a very nice KOA, also with a stocked fishin’ pond (I get it, they like to fish in the great state of Texas!).

Our home with all the neighbors at the San Antonio/Alamo KOA

We only spent a couple days in San Antonio, been there before, but wanted to re-visit the River Walk and this time check out the Alamo. China-virus hysteria strikes again; the weekday, lunchtime visit we made to River Walk revealed NOBODY walking the Walk, and every restaurant along the Walk was closed. We walked on over to the Alamo and went in on the free ticket (you pay $7 for a guided tour which takes you into the museum part). I do have to say, visiting the Alamo was a waste of our time, it is not conducive to great photography moments (I took very few pix), and it was marred by massive construction projects on its outer grounds. Not what I expected, by a long shot. So we resolved ourselves to walking around the outskirts of the River Walk and down to the Pearl market area. The area was heavily decorated for the upcoming Dia de los Muertos celebrations. We got our fill of painted skulls, then decided to “skip town” (har-dee-har-har!).

We headed north into the Kerrville Elk’s Lodge for a couple of nights. We found Kerrville to be home to “The Coming King Prayer Sculpture Garden” containing “The Empty Cross”. We walked around gawking at the sculptures and marvelling at the number of “prayer rocks” scattered about. We also found in little ol’ Kerrville a small brewery called Pint & Plow Brewery. We just had to partake of their wares, only to find nothing spectacular.

Entry to The Coming King Sculpture Garden with the Empty Cross

Next up was a return day-drive into Fredericksburg. We walked the main drag, which appeared pretty much unchanged since we were last there several years ago. We also happened upon the old historical jailhouse which we missed last time around. A quick lunch at Burger Burger and we were outta there. Jeanne heard Burger Burger was a “must-do” when in Fredericksburg, but we were underwhelmed with the food.

Lubbock, TX, was next on our radar. We spent a week at the Lubbock Elk’s Lodge while exploring the area, taking care of some chores, and shopping for supplies. My first obligation was to stop by a pay my respects at Buddy Holly’s gravesite at the City of Lubbock Cemetery. While in Lubbock we ran accross an area of Mackenzie Park called Prairie Dog Town and, like most barren lots throughout the town, it was inundated with the little critters. For you chow-hounds out there, a place of note for lunch, we ate at “The Lost Cajun” and boy, howdy I had some ‘dat good ol’ Jambalaya!

Wichita Falls was just an overnighter for us, again at the Wichita Falls Elk’s Lodge, then it was on to Sherman, TX and the Lazy L RV Park. How we were surprised to find the 903 Brewers just a 5 minute walk from our bus. OK, arm twisted, yeah, we partook. And again, for all you slushie heads out there, 903 Brewers is well worth your effort. They also had a couple of stouts that were outstanding!

One day we took a ride back into Gainsville to look at some properties, then swung around back to Denton (No. Dallas area) to see that area. We took Woodrow Wilson with us and took him on a walkabout around the town square area at the old Courthouse museum, then ate some pretty good pizza at J & J’s Pizza across from the Courthouse.

Well, not a lot of overall excitement in this blog post. We’ll have to try and squeeze in a little more sightseeing as we hunt down that “Ah, feels like home” moment. Until next post…

Does Anybody Want to Save a Boatload of Money?

Posted on October 21, 2020 by rvrrat520

This post will be a short mish-mash of disorganization since we have not exactly settled back into our “routine”, but the main point will be about a great money-saving tip, provided to us by our RV friends Bud & Meredith Bradley. That will come at the end. But for now, since the great year of 2020 has been such a disaster and none of our plans have panned out (or so it would seem), we contemplated our future travels. We came up with plan #7,892. That would be a run back into the great state of Texas, after, of course, a short visit with the kids & grandkids. Texas has not fallen off our radar screen as a potential landing target when we decide to “retire” from the full-time RVing lifestyle, the eastern half of the state in particular. We also anticipate this year to be the first for us where we will not return to Kalifornia for family holiday times.

We hit Kalifornia, still suffering smoke filled skies albeit not as thick as before, returned Jeanne’s mom to her normal life, then made a beeline south for some children & grandchildren time, first stop Santa Rosa, with our home parked at the Petaluma Elk’s Lodge. Jenn, Gus, & grandson Max “The Gladiator” have been poised, seemingly forever, to get evacuated due to the wildfires in their area, but now the danger was diminishing, enough so that we actually drove into the danger zone to visit them. Max will be having his 9th birthday at the end of November, so we celebrated a little early. Max is into Nerf guns & Pokemon cards, and he made bank on Nerf gear and Pokemon. I was trying to figure out the Pokemon “game”, but I swear, the people who come up with this stuff must be on a continual acid trip! We then chased each other around, blasting away, Nerf darts everywhere! We wanted to go check out a local brewery, Cooperage, but thanks to China, they were not open on the day we were there. So we ended up at 3rd St. Aleworks in downtown Santa Rosa. Unremarkable beers, not the best nachos we’ve had, but we still had fun with Jenn & Max. While at Jenn’s, I took the opportunity to make use of her kitchen and cook up a whole bunch of my father’s famous Chile Verde burritos which we promptly chowed down on. I rolled up a bunch for Gus to take in his lunches, as well as a bunch for us to freeze in the bus for easy dinner nights. Jenn & Gus had chef’s duty one night and they made some outstanding street tacos for us. It was a very nice visit, as usual, and sad to see it end.

Atascadero Elk’s Lodge (my home lodge) was our next run. As is the case with most of the Elk’s Lodges, the lodges & lounges are still closed because of the China virus bull$hit but thankfully the RV lots are open. We had fun with Chad, Crissy, Little Miss Hailey & Little Miss Ellie, even a couple of granddaughter sleep-overs in the “camping bus” as they call it. We had arts-n-crafts time, Jeanne found a new hairdresser (see photo), and mommy & daddy got a childless date night. With Jeanne’s birthday just passed, Chad & Crissy also treated us to a birthday dinner followed by some ice-cream cake. One day Chad & Crissy took us to their club winery, Rava, where they did their product pick-up and we got to sample some of the winery’s offerings. Hailey & Ellie had fun running around the small pond and playing on the swings. During our time here Chad took Jeanne & I to check out Manrock Brewing Co., Santa Maria Brewing Co., and Liquid Gravity Brewing Co. One standout quaff was Liquid Gravity’s “Twist & Stout”, an imperial double stout. We took everyone out to dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall called “Don Q’s Restaurant”. The service was not great (mostly due to the China virus hysteria, no doubt), but the food was unique and very tasty.

Miss Hailey Hairstyles, by appointment only.

After saying our good-bye’s it was eastbound & down. It would seem the motorhome gremlins had recently hitched a ride with us. We started with my DEF system. We had just fueled up, DEF included, when out of nowhere my “DEF Low” emergency warning light and dinger came on while driving down the road. Scratching my head, I got out and checked the DEF tank. No obvious leakage, the little red light on the gauge lit up but the gauge showed full, so I popped the cap and re-seated it thinking it could be similar to when your “check engine” light comes on in your car & they always start with checking your gas cap. As we continued down the road, the “DEF Low” warning continued, but stopped after a short distance, so I repeated the “scratch head” motion and kept going. Probably a couple hundred miles down the road the Gremlins were thinking I had it too easy, so my “jacks down” warning light and siren goes off. Repeating the “scratch head” motion, I got out and checked the guilty jack. Sure as $hit, it had rattled down about an inch from it’s normal seated position. I checked the bay containing my hydraulics system, found no obvious leakage, then hit the auto-store button again. The errant jack pulled back to it’s normal storage position and my hand returned to it’s now-normal “scratch head” position. So, our escape from Kalifornia went like this. Keep in mind, I personally do not like long travel days, and if I drive more than about 4 hours I am not having fun. We did a long run from Atascadero to the Needles Elk’s Lodge. Their RV lot is just a flat dirt/gravel lot with FHU’s, but you can’t complain about the $20/night rate. Since it was just an overnighter, we left the Jeep hooked up to Rosie the bus. The next day it was off to Gallup, NM and the USA RV Park. There, we needed to disconnect and use the Jeep but in unhooking it, BAM! the gremlins struck the Jeep and killed the battery. Now, when the supplemental air brake system was installed the tech told me they put in a trickle charger for the Jeep battery, so I did not need to disconnect the battery when towing any more (as I had been up to then). So much for trusting the “trickle charge”. I got a jump from the clerk at the park and ran the Jeep for a while to get it back up to speed. In the morning I ran the Jeep into town for a little more charging, then we hooked up, disconnected the battery, and off to the races we were. Another long day brought us to Clovis, NM and the Wagon Wheel RV Park. We left the Jeep hooked up overnight, then continued eastbound into Texas. We landed in Waco after yet another long day’s drive, just barely beating the sunset. Jeanne found an RV park called Flat Creek Farms RV Park and we pulled in just as the sun disappeared. Those dang gremlins hit me again! Dead battery, again! Bottom line – there were no spaces available at the park, so we had to overnight at a nearby Flying J, with another jump start to start the next day. And just to pile on my already $hitty disposition, driving through the nightmare of a residential area just to get to the RV park I had to maneuver through skinny streets and low hanging trees. In doing so, my satellite antenna took some serious damage from one of the branches. Hey, Jeanne, have you had enough lessons in 4-letter word vocabulary yet?

A sign spotted at the local grocery store (Indian reservation country). Is that all you need to ward off Mr. Repo Man?

Well, we found space the next day at the North Crest RV Park in Waco. There, we got set up and promptly drove the Jeep to Autozone where they checked the battery and charging system, no issues. Head scratched. I also found a mobil satellite repair outfit, SATS2GO, out of the Willis area, so after a few days of rest and decompression, we moved the short distance over to the Conroe Lake/Houston No. KOA. So here we sit, waiting for the satellite repair, then it will be on to some good ol’ Texas ‘splorin’.

North Crest RV Park is buried in large trees.

I guess it wasn’t as short as I thought it would be. I mentioned saving some greenbacks. Our road warrior buddies & fellow Texans, Bud & Meredith, recently turned us on to an RV Fuel Program by TSD Logistics, Inc. It is a credit card system you use at truck stops. They have a $20 sign up fee and easy-to-use phone app (that’s “easy” according to Jeanne), you just need to use the trucker lanes at the truck stops when you fuel up. It does not include discounts for DEF, but the diesel savings is substantial! There are various participating gas stations and each has some minor (cents, not dollars) fees they add to the transactions. Examples of the savings we have enjoyed are: 32.97 gallons purchased, saved $19.03; 40.29 gallons purchased, saved $12.97; 55.73 gallons purchased, saved $34.94; 63.75 gallons purchased, saved $36.15; and 63.94 gallons purchased, saved $48.09. I’ll leave it to you do do your own math re: price per gallon savings. Pilot stations (and presumably Flying J) do not participate in the TSD program for RV’s, they already do the Good Sam program.

That sort of catches us up for now. Until next post…

Circle the Wagons, Squaring the Circle, Circular Logic…

Posted on September 23, 2020 by rvrrat520

You get the picture, right? Circle? We basically left Idaho, “circled” back down to Kalifornia then back to Idaho (with Jeanne’s mom Yvonne in tow) to give Yvonne a little break/vacation from Anderson, CA. The “circling” went like this…

Our first stop after leaving the Cd’A Casino was the Columbia Sun RV Resort in Kennewick, WA for a few days. This is a very nice RV resort in the tri-cities area. We managed to make time for some drive around exploring as well as a bike ride along the Columbia River on the Sacagawea Heritage Trail and the Columbia Park Trail. During our bike ride we rode through a section along the river where workers were setting up for an upcoming event. In a unique response to the current bull$hit China virus hysteria, the workers were setting up assigned spaces right on the river for the upcoming annual air show that was about to be held over the river. The assigned spaces were for spectators to park their cars on (in good ol’ American “drive-in” fashion). We got some nice river views, including highway bridges and the Gateway Arch, Tower Beacon lighthouse. On our local drive we found the Bombing Range Brewing Co. which we just HAD to check out. The beers were OK, as was the rather large taco salad, and it is definitely a pro L.E. outfit.

From Kennewick we returned to Caldwell, ID to offload our bicycles, then continued south toward Anderson, CA. We overnighted at a brand new (in fact, still in progress) RV park in Burns, OR, called Quail Ridge RV Park. Quail Ridge is not much of what I would call a “vacation destination park”, but it does have FHU’s on a large open gravel lot. Since we had left Caldwell, we were plagued with smoky skies from all the left coast wildfires. We sucked it up and drove straight on through to Anderson, taking Hwy. 395 down to Alturas, then Hwy. 299 into Redding, smoky skies all the way. A couple of nights at the Win-River Casino and then it was back toward Idaho, trying to escape the ever-increasing burnt skies, with Yvonne riding shotgun. We initially wanted to drive up through Klamath Falls, OR into Bend, then over back to Caldwell. Those plans, like most well-laid plans, changed on the fly due to wildfires and road closures. We were forced to backtrack the way we came into Kalifornia. “$%#&*@!”

We were unable to find much relief from the intense smoke. Here is a bit of a montage of what we encountered all the way back into Idaho.

We overnighted at the Desert Rose Casino in Alturas, CA. This is a small, hole-in-the-wall casino but they do have a large flat back lot area on which they allow free overnight RV parking. Then it was on back to Quail Ridge RV Park for a 2 day rest, and finally back to Ambassador RV Resort in Caldwell.

Our home at Desert Rose Casino. Not a lot of neighbors…

Our whole time, so far, here in Caldwell has been cursed with smoke filled skies. With just a few days left, we will be making the return trip into Kalifornia. And right now, as it stands, our plans are in perpetual change mode. You’ll just have to wait…until next post.

A Little Idaho Wandering

Posted on August 30, 2020 by rvrrat520

The start of this post will be a bit boring for all you non-blogger types out there, I give you fair warning. So if you are so inclined you will probably want to skip forward to the photos. And to top all of my incompetence off, I see my photo captions are not appearing in the blog itself. Great! More headache to deal with, so bear with me. At least you can see the pictures!

I am the furthest from being computer savvy that a human can possibly get, so why I let Jeanne talk me into doing a blog in the first place just boggles my mind. But I had managed to fake my way through it for the past almost 8 years, so there’s that going for me. We started with Blogpost, but quickly switched over to WordPress and chose to let WP be our hosted server. When we wanted to access certain effects (fonts, schemes, colors, etc.) we had to upgrade to the WP business plan which was running us $300 per year plus having to renew our domain name independently (another $18 for the year, through Wild West Domains). I put up with all the occasional “upgrades” that WP kept putting out, having to decipher and relearn how to do some of the simple stuff (managing media-photos, learning the new “block editing” style, etc.). Now, we are thinking hard about coming off the road and “landing” somewhere, maybe going part-time instead of full-time RVing. We’re not in much of a hurry, but are giving serious consideration to a couple of particular areas. In anticipation of all that, I wanted to capture my entire 8 year blog onto some type of printable format. My computer advisor (Jeanne) found a plug-in at WordPress, “Print My Blog”, and looking into it, I thought it just might work. Alas, how I was wrong! I fiddle-farted with it for days trying to get a successful result, but all I got was a haphazard mish-mash of text and photos that were cut in half between pages and it threw me into a cyber rage! I wasn’t able to figure out if or how to edit the mish-mash into something usable. Again, my computer advisor (cooler heads always prevail!) hit me with something she found while surfing the ‘net called blogbooker.com run through WP. Blogbooker turns blogs into a book format, at least for those that really are savvy. In my exploring Blogbooker, I took a chance and $30 later had the standard plan loaded up. It did not take long to complete, however the PDF version that appeared was a mess as well. My photos were no longer in their original arrangement, there was a fancy table of contents page that had a strange numbering system for my “chapters”, there were long spaces, sometimes entire blank pages between posts and pix, and the pix were of a large variety. Again, I don’t know how to edit a PDF, but I figured out enough to copy & paste what I wanted into a Pages document, then spent a couple of weeks editing that document into something that makes sense and is manageable. Because of all that hassle, and after consulting my computer advisor, we decided to change our WordPress hosting over to Bluehost shared hosting. That just created a whole ‘nother series of cyber-rage-blowouts with me schooling Jeanne on my vast vocabulary of 4-letter words. I transferred my domain registration from Wild West Domains to Bluehost (many hours spent on hold with their tech support getting secret codes and whatnot to unlock MY domain name and allow the transfer), then signed up for the Bluehost Choice Plus plan. In some circumstances, you can actually migrate your entire existing blog over to Bluehost, and after another few hours on hold and talking with tech support, I found they offer to migrate your blog (for a $150 fee) for you. That would be handy to a skilled computer expert such as I (NOT!), but then the tech also clued me in that they do not recommend migrating WordPress blogs such as mine due to loss of certain functionalities and possibly some material (great, just my luck). So I sucked it up and decided to start off anew, having the peace of mind that I captured my previous 8 years onto something printable. That does no good for any of you who wish to go back and visit some of our past haunts, and for that I sincerely apologize. Also, I apologize if the “notify by e-mail” function has been interfered with or deleted for those of you who actually signed up for it. So, that brings us to current events, ending all this breathless bloviating.

Southern Idaho is our current focus on possible landing zones. One, it IS NOT Kalifornia. Two, it is within a doable striking distance to all our family still residing in Gavin’s Autocracy (aka: Kalifornia). Three, the weather is tolerable. And four, it IS NOT Kalifornia. We spent a few busy days back at the Ambassador RV Resort in Caldwell, getting some chores done. While there we had a local outfit wash & wax Rosie the MH. We also had just completed moving our stuff from a little 5×5 storage still in Santa Rosa, CA ($103/month), up to a 5×10 storage unit in Star, ID ($63/month), so we needed to get things organized and arranged. We also downloaded some unnecessary “ballast” from the bus (stuff we don’t use or need on the road).

One shiny beast, at home at Ambassador RV Resort.

We wanted to check out the area of Moscow, ID, so it was north on Hwy. 95 from Ontario, ID. We picked Canyon Pines RV Resort for an overnight stay in the area of Pollock, ID. This is out in the middle of nowhere right on the Little Salmon River. It was a very nice RV park just south of Riggins, ID. One of the reasons we chose the area was we really wanted to go see the Hell’s Canyon area, however in talking to the locals, every which way we turned it was a spread out area with just enough driving time to get to for us to be discouraged enough to cancel that thought.

Lewiston, ID was next on the itinerary. We found the Clearwater River Casino & Resort to spend a few days at while exploring the area. The RV lot associated with the casino is really a dump, but at least it had FHU’s. The location was good for us, what with Lewiston ID and Clarkston, WA right there at the confluence of the Clearwater River and Snake River (which acts as the border here between ID and WA). We got to get some shopping for supplies done (Walmart, Costco, etc.), and we chose to do the short roadtrip into Moscow in the Jeep, sans Rosie. And of course, we had to donate to the local economy of the Nez Perce tribe…

Having already inspected Moscow, we drove on past and landed back in Core-dee-ay-lean, ID (OK, aka: CD’A or Coeur d’Alene). We stuck out a few days at the Elk’s Lodge there (nice weather, by the way!), then spent 5 days at the Blackwell Island RV Resort right on the Spokane River at Lake Coeur d’Alene. This is a very nice resort park with both human and dog beach areas, boat dock, and even a small dirt BMX track for smaller kids. We spent some more time checking out CD’A (we thinks maybe a bit more snow than we would like to see in wintertime, and talking to some locals it appears Fall time the sun tends to disappear 3-4ish in the young afternoons). We also tried out a few more of the local breweries, this round “Daft Badger Brewing” and “Trail’s End Brewing” both had some tasty offerings. Daft Badger had a half order of nachos that was absolutely huge (very tasty) & we ended up boxing up about 2/3 of it for take-home!

Our bicycles have been feeling neglected for quite a while (inanimate objects “feeling”?????), so we hit the Prairie/Centennial trails that follow along the Spokane River. We meandered along the path for a 3-hour ride, then took a short jaunt into the marina area of CD’A and McEuen Park. After our bicycle trek, I needed to fabricate some type of bicycle rack we could carry with us in the bus (I forgot and left our old store-bought one at one of our stops in Montana). So a run into the local Lowe’s scored me some PVC pipes & joints. 30 minutes of manual labor and voila!, one bicycle rack in hand.

The weather was very pleasurable in CD’A, clear skies, 80-90’s in temperature, and our Sea Eagle kayak was yelling out our names from it’s dust gathering position in our storage bays. We launched from the RV park boat ramp/beach area and cruised up the Spokane River for about an hour, cruising through some pretty fancy riverside homes, before discovering our inflatable floor section was losing air. So we turned around and returned to the park. An inspection of the air valve for the floor section revealed a nick in the plastic rim was causing the leak. Hello again, Lowe’s! No luck finding some type of rubber seal/washer that I could use to seal the leak, good ol’ Google to the rescue sent me to the local Ace Hardware establishment. They had a plethora of different types of seals & washers. I picked a few different types and found the good old-fashioned O-ring did the trick. Good to go for the next ocean voyage…

Finished at Blackwell, we made the arduous journey (OK, 30 miles away) over to the Coeur d’Alene Resort & Casino near Worley, ID for a couple of days of boondocking (free) in their parking lot for RV’s. They do have numerous 50A hookups for which they ask $20/night, then refund some of that onto a Player’s Card if you so choose to get one inside the casino. And yes, again, we donated to the local economy of the Coeur d’Alene Reservation. This is a nice Casino/Resort which has an 18-hole golf course which I guess is used in the LPGA tour (or so their signage tells us).

Our home at Coeur d’Alene Casino & Resort

So, our plans are to kinda circle back on down to Caldwell, ID through Kennewick, WA, where we are going to do some more sorting through the storage stuff and prepare for a run into Redding, CA to pick up Jeanne’s mother & bring her back to Idaho for a couple weeks or so. It’s all tentative, never know when something attracts our eye…Until next post!

****OK. So this is an edit added at the end. I’m trying to solve my lack of captions and thinking maybe the artsy-fartsy mosaic type of format isn’t supporting the use of captions. So here I will add pix into the standard “gallery” block in WP. I can’t cross my fingers any more than they are now, they look like one big Gordian Knot. I see the captions appear at the bottom of these pix in the edit, I’m assuming they will show up on the blog once I update the post. If you find no other edit additions in the waning seconds after I publish this one, I have solved that issue, WHEW! But now I am disappointed I cannot caption my pix in the mosaic mode. Baby steps…

****OK, so I lied. This addition to the addition is to inform y’all that I went back and changed my artistic mosaic format of my photo blocks into a standard “gallery” block and added the captions back in, it drove me nuts having certain types of photos with no explanation (aka:caption). I will reserve my future use of the mosaic style for those series of photos that need no caption…Now, I really mean it, “until next post…”

Life goes on…

Posted on August 14, 2020 by rvrrat520

China virus… Riots all around… Goofy politicians. Unneccessary societal closures… & tons of new RVers out there making it a little tougher to find spaces at RV parks…like I started out, life goes on. Sorry, it’s been a little while since my last real post, but we’ve been floating in limbo pretty much all year, as have most of you. A big change for us has been our decision to change this blog over from WordPress hosting to Bluehost shared hosting. The big drawback was we could not bring the entire 8 years prior worth of posts over to Bluehost, so we are basically starting from scratch here. So be it…

I am still trying to get acclimated to Bluehost, so this post functions as a test procedure, as well as keeping y’all up to date on our limited activities. From Kalifornia, we headed up to Idaho. We are still looking for a possible landing zone to come off the full-time road gig, and the southern part of Idaho is currently on our radar. Jeanne wanted to do some boondocking, so one of our first excursions was to some Forest Service land near Sun Valley, ski area to the stars. As it turned out, someone mentioned that to get to the area we stayed at, we had to drive past Arnold Schwarzenneger’s fancy digs. Not sure if that was true or not, no sightings of the Terminator. While here we walked Woody around the area of our site, checked out the ski lodge area, and took a drive to Stanley to see the valley below the Sawtooth Mountains.

Our home at the Lake Creek Rd. NFS area of Sun Valley.

We stopped off for a couple of days to stay at the Mountain Home RV Resort. We ran into a little plumbing issue with our kitchen sink drain hose (OK, a leak!). Unfortunately, I found trying to find some replacement one & a half inch flex hose to be a daunting task. In the tiny hamlet of Mountain Home, I hit every plumbing, hardware, and ranch supply store they had – not a one had what I needed. They all pointed me to the tiny local RV parts store, which just happened to be closed that day. I called the big boys, Home Depot & Lowe’s in Boise (50 miles away) and neither of them had it either. I lucked out and found Dillon’s RV, Marine, & Powersports in Boise that just happened to have my hose. Yippee! A short road trip and wham, bam, fix was done!

The pool/spa area at Mountain Home RV Resort

We had to make a side run back to Eugene, OR, to get some body work done on Rosie the bus and once finished, we headed back toward Idaho. Ourt next stop was the Elk’s Lodge RV lot in Bend, OR. There, Jeanne found the Deschutes River Trail, about a 3-mile loop trail that followed a section of the river from Farewell Bend Park. We left Woodrow Wilson at home for that one. It was a nice, easy, scenic hike on well kept dirt trails. I felt like we were living out the sci-fi movie “They Live”, what with all the goofballs using the trail while wearing the stupid face masks and getting nasty stares from some of them because I absolutely refuse to wear one outdoors.

We also took a short drive up to the ski lodge area of Mt. Bachelor. There, we found an RV area on the paved lot, some sites (20, I think) with power, and a large area for boondocking. They did have a nice shower/restroom building but I found they want $50/night for the power sites, just a bit way too much for the location.

From Bend we returned to the Boise area. We are planning to spend a good part of this winter in this area, provided we can get a monthly gig at one of the local RV parks. But in the meantime, we spent a very busy couple of weeks scouting, checking out properties, sub-divisions, and the area in general, everything short of contacting realtors. No decisions made, but as I started out, life goes on… Until next post.

Road Trippin', Watkins Style

Prowled county roads for a living, prowling country roads in retirement!

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