We raised jacks in Summerdale and gently headed north, constant worrying about the cracked surge tank. We pulled over after the first 40 miles to check my epoxy job and found a small leak still found it’s way through the repair. We decided to stop for a couple nights at the Montgomery KOA. There, I slathered on another round of epoxy over the leak and hoped for the best. I ended up calling a couple of “nearby” Freightliner shops, hoping for good news on the needed part. To shorten the frustrating story, Freightliner required I show up in person and pay for the part ahead of being allowed to be placed on a wait list (they would not take credit card payment over the phone). We decided to try for the Beaumont (TX) Freightliner shop since we were headed for Livingston anyway. They had no ETA on the part, claiming their parts manufacturer was having “tooling issues” precluding them from mass production of that part.

So from Montgomery, we made it to Red Bay. Another look and I STILL had a tiny leak in the coolant tank. And, another round of slathering epoxy. This was a 6-day stopover and MS Solutions took care of our fixes on the coach lickety-split. After the 6 days, it was an overnighter at the River Walk Casino in Vicksburg, MS, then in to Beaumont, TX to order/pay for the Freightliner part. We continued and arrived at our final destination in Livingston, TX, Rainbow’s End Escapee Park (and  HQ). It was there that we settled in for at least a one month’s stay while waiting for the part to fix Rosie.

I probably described this many years ago upon our first visit to Livingston, but just in case you missed it… Livingston is a town of 5,000+/-. Real restaurants are limited, but fast food abounds. There is a Walmart (oh boy!), real grocery stores are limited to a Berkshire’s and an H.E.B. If you want to go to semi-civilization it is about an hour’s drive anywhere, Conroe & The Woodlands being the nearest. There is very little outdoor activity in Livingston; no nature trails, bicycle lanes/trails are basically non-existent, and very little area for public use around Lake Livingston other than the small Lake Livingston State Park. Needless to say, our Livingston stay was not noteworthy. 

After a month with our thumbs firmly inserted into our posterior regions, we decided to limp back to Beaumont and set up at the Beaumont Elk’s Lodge to wait on Freightliner. A quick check-in with Freightliner and we were told the “expected shipping date” was November 1. So here we sit…

Just to prove my total technological incompetence, you will be getting notifications (I presume) on quite a few back dated blog posts. When I switched from Blogger to Bluehost for my hosting, I was unable to bring my earlier posts over due to incompatibility between the two hosts. I am now starting the arduous process of copying those posts back into Bluehost. I figured out how to get them inserted in chronological order, but realized you all will be getting e-mails about posts from our earlier years on the road. Sorry for the confusion. My intent is to try to capture our entire full-time lifestyle on one medium. We’ll see how long I can hold out…

Well, it was time to do a roundabout aim towards Max’s rendezvous with Gus in Lost Wages, NV. We chose to complete a type of lazy circle which would take us into Idaho to dump some stuff off at our storage. First stop was a couple of nights at the Arco KOA. We tried to take Max to The Craters of the Moon Nat’l Monument, but he quickly showed LESS than no interest in viewing that unique piece of real estate and exploring some of the caves, so we aborted that mission just after we got there.

Mountain Home RV Resort in Mountain Home was good for a couple of nights during the 4th of July, we lucked into a spot. We used this as our base to do a day trip into Star, ID so we could load more stuff into our storage unit. No sightseeing in Mountain Home, but I did take the time to give Rosie a bath and shine her up.

It was straight south to our next stop in Elko, NV. I gave everyone on board of Rosie an in-depth 4-letter word vocabulary lesson while on the drive to Elko. We just happened to run into the biggest swarm of Mormon Crickets I had ever seen. Mormon Crickets are not God’s smartest creatures, they tend to stay on the ground and go airborn very little. The swarm was so thick that all the vehicular traffic squished a nice thick layer of cricket guts all over the highway, creating a very slick surface. And just like water, when you drive over the “cricket slush” you spray behind the wheels. Just what I needed after giving Rosie the painstaking hand washing that I did in Mountain Home. “@&$%#@&*!” We stayed at a previous stop for us, the Double Dice RV Park. I’ve been on the lookout for somewhere to go out and do some shooting and sight in my new AR-15 and I was going to introduce Max to some handgun shooting with my little .38 S&W. However, Max again showed no interest in shooting a real gun, but we found the next best thing…an airsoft pistol at the local farm equipment & westernwear shop. Then, while picking up another box of 5.56 ammo, the guy at the counter pointed me to the local public shooting range just outside of town. We loaded up (OK, pun intended, I can’t help myself sometimes) and drove to the range where Max got to blast away with his airsoft and I got to sight in my rifle. He also got some airsoft time at the back of our RV park, he sure enjoyed it.

Elko in our rearview mirrors, we continued south to our next rest stop, a couple days at the Ely Valley View RV Park (kinda a dump). Ely is just a speck in the desert with nothing to do but go for ice cream. 

After sufficient rest it was off to the Sam’s Town KOA in Lost Wages to await Gus’s flight into Vegas in a few days. Being Vegas, in mid July, we were treated to lovely triple digit temps 24-hours a day, WHEWWWW! When we weren’t in the pool, we spent our days walking through the air-conditioned casino compounds and letting Max play in the arcades. The one sightseeing outing we did do was to take Max to Hoover Dam & Lake Mead. That poor lake is diminishing quickly!

Well, again, all good things must come to an end. We picked Gus up at the airport and delivered he & Max to their motel next to the Raiders stadium where they were to attend a soccer game the next day. Max seemed happy to be back with his dad. We said our tearful goodbyes and headed back to our own reality.

The following 2 nights we stayed at the No. Las Vegas Cummins center getting my yearly maintenance service on Rosie. Then it was westbound back to the viper’s nest—Kalifornia. We did get a pleasant opportunity to spend a day with Hailey & Ellie, swimming at the Vines RV Resort. Then it was date night at Cane Tiki Room in Paso Robles where we relaxed with a couple of tropical adult beverages that I have to say were WAY WAY WAY WAY overpriced! $20 for one drink is highway robbery! But we still had fun…

Our final loop through Kalifornia took us to the Flag City RV Resort in Lodi for a few days, then back into Sonoma County and our stay at the Petaluma Elk’s Lodge for our medical appointments. I had a follow-up upper endoscopy so the GI Doc could see if the damage remained. We were more than a little disappointed in that neither of our children ever called us and asked how everything went and in fact, that was the second time in a row we were in Petaluma and not even the smallest of effort was made by our only daughter to try to see us. But I can say my scope went well, no damage, onward and upward, saddened but hey, life goes on.

Winnemucca, NV was our next stop off, at the “lovely” Model-T Casino and RV Park. I say that facetiously, Winnemucca is another speck in the desert and the Model-T is a dump. Continuing eastbound, W. Wendover Nugget Casino/Hotel/RV Park was good for a couple of days. We hit most of the big casinos in the area, pretty much breaking even, then took a walk down to the historic Wendover Army Air Base. You can look out into the desert and see some of the buildings & bunkers that were instrumental in the development of the nukes used on Japan in WWII.

The Provo (UT) Elk’s Lodge was our next stop. This time we spent 2 weeks in their lot, FHU’s for (5) total sites. Provo Elk’s has a very nice building and lounge compared to many we have been to. We settled in for a relaxing stay, checking out Provo, Orem, Springville, and Spanish Fork. We took full advantage of Costco, Trader Joe’s, the many Walmarts, and several malls. We even got the opportunity to hit a movie theater, something we have not done in numerous years. We saw “Top Gun Maverick” and it was actually a very good film.

BYU has a large white “Y” on the side of the mountain above the school, with a pretty steep trail that covers a little over a mile to the top of the “Y”. Again, we loaded up (sans Woodrow Wilson) and headed up the trail bright and EARLY one morning. We were sucking wind pretty good, my pulse soared to around 150 BPM at one point, but we made it! The views were well worth the effort.

One fine day we broke out the bicycles and wanted to head out on the Provo River Trail that wanders through downtown and out to Utah Lake in one direction, into town and finding its way out to Bridal Veil Falls & Vivian Park. We quickly found the path out to the lake was closed with construction in some parts, so we headed out to Bridal Veil Falls & Vivian Park to the tune of about 15 miles of biking.

Mt. Timpanogos off the Alpine Loop up by Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort contains a large system of trails leading to the top, about 17 miles worth. That being a little bit too aggressive for us, we chose a couple of the lesser hikes. One day we set out on the Stewart’s Cascade Trail, about 2 miles one way, which culminated at Stewart’s Falls. It was a steady moderate ascent and again we got some pretty spectacular views. I was also reminded why I should have worn long pants while hiking the hills…stinging nettles! I got out with minimal damage. The second day we took the other fork of the Timpanogos Trail to Timpanogos Falls (both upper and lower). Beautiful views everywhere and we managed to run into a family of moose right on the trail. In fact, momma moose and daddy moose kinda pinned us down on the trail (baby moose was in the brush nearby) for about a 5 minute period, both of them about 30 feet from us, one up trail and one down trail. But they eventually disappeared into the brush so we could get by. This one was almost 3 miles round trip.

Our stay in Provo was certainly a step up more enjoyable, weather-wise, than the triple digits of Las Vegas. We got some sporadic rain but  temps did not reach 3 digit. Our 2-week stay finished, it was off toward Colorado where decisions on locations are on a day to day basis. So, our first stop was…Until next post.

It seems WordPress folks have no interest in really helping users of their product, that is, unless they want to pay premium bucks. So being on my own, I am getting closer to some type of resolution on my photos issue. I have now initiated a “carousel” format where all you do is click on one of the pix in each block and it will open a carousel style viewing platform for that block that shows full photos, whether portrait or landscape style. Captions are funky, when I can actually do them, but I will continue to try to solve that function. I hope you can enjoy the new photo format…Here, give it a whirl.

Until next real post…

I have discovered somewhere in cyberspace evolution my posted photos have changed to strictly a square format which is not friendly toward portrait & landscape style photos. You would notice some of my blog pix appear to have parts cut off. I am currently putting my pea-brain to task, at maximum overload mind you, in order to try and rectify that situation. My first stop was to change blog themes, you might have noticed here (Jeanne never liked the bus in the desert home page anyway.) Just changing the theme did nothing towards that end, but Jeanne likes the homepage better, so it can stay… My quest will continue to try to solve the portrait/landscape issue, so like the title says, “bear with me.” Strictly for entertainment purposes, here are a few pix (in portrait style only) that should come out perfect after going into media settings and manually changing the dimensions. I’ll hold my breath while I hit the “publish” button…more to follow and stay tuned until next post…

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.

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.

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.

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…

Bear with us as we are trying to move over from WordPress hosting to Bluehost shared hosting. This is putting this cyber-technologically challenged cowboy into a severe tail spin. Stand by…

This will be a short post due to our “limbo” status but beware—-many pictures of grandkids to follow! So, despite the absolute fiasco of the China virus shutdown, apparently Glacier Nat’l Park has reopened (with limited services, of course) and the W. Glacier KOA is open so our original plans of flying Chad & his family into Montana for a week’s run on the Nat’l Park are still a go. With Jeanne’s mom settled in, we ventured south back to Atascadero for a month’s worth of babysitting the two granddaughters Hailey & Ellie. It seems the scam China virus shutdown caused Chad’s wife Crissy to get furloughed from her job, then their daycare was shut down (luckily Crissy was forced back into being a stay-at-home mom), but then all of a sudden she got called back to work in June, with no daycare available. Hence, Oma & Opa to the rescue. They were able to find new daycare (but not until July), so it was June in Atascadero for us! We started off with a stint back at the Atascadero Elk’s Lodge RV lot. 

It got tiring having to put up with the China virus silliness, what with not being allowed in certain businesses without wearing a useless mask, to businesses being closed, period, to having to stand in insufferable lines just to get into buildings, but we did manage to squeeze some fun into our babysitting tenure. We made a run into Pismo Beach to play at the Dinosaur Caves Park. Chad, Crissy, Hailey, Ellie, and the old folks (Oma & Opa) went on a mild hike (ending with getting drenched in the rain) at the 3 Bridges Oak Preserve. The girls got some water time on several very hot days in their backyard inflatable pool. Then, we spent a week back at the Cava Robles RV Resort in Paso Robles where the girls got some REAL pool time at the fancy pools there.

Like I said, short post…