Away We Go!!!!!

Away we go!  .... Just like in Disney's Peter Pan; except this time without the fantasy --- just the fun.

Roger here....  Before we "fly" (roll) off I need to show you the highlights of our last day at Retama Village in south Texas.  Dianne spent her last day walking her soul-mate, Bart, at the Cinderella Pet Rescue --- one of the dogs she walks twice a week.  She was very sad to say goodbye until fall.  She hopes that he will find a forever home, but would hate to not see him again.

If we did not already have two dogs, Bart would be a part of our family.   Dianne here...if you know of anyone who would like a smart, affectionate black lab, here's a link:  Dogs Available/Cinderella Pet Rescue info 

Our friend, Sue, fixed us an Italian dinner on the night before our departure so Dianne would not have to cook (yum), but first a round of Jim's frozen margaritas.

After dinner, we all took one last walk around Retama Village with our four dogs:  Click, Bandido, Tequila, and Gabe.

Sleep passed quickly.  Morning soon arrived.  I pulled the motor home out of our lot.

Wow, does the lot look empty, despite the new landscaping in the back.

After hooking up the trusty Toyota with the refrain of Peter Pan's song in my brain, away we go!  

Well, we have been driving for two days and we still have another full day before we get out of Texas.  Lest you think that everything works perfectly for us, the end of our first day (at least the first part of the end) was irritating.  

We had driven for four and a half hours to the small town of Carrizo Springs, hoping to stay in an inexpensive RV campground outside of town.  Our GPS, mapquest, and the directions from the campground website all failed us.  An obvious first turn in town did not appear in any of our directions.  So, we drove out of town (with no easy place to turn around --- these motorhomes require more space for u-turns than a car.  After some frustrated bickering (polite term), we drove to the next town, Crystal City, where Dianne was able to locate another campground off the beaten path.  What a find!  Things happen for a reason.  The Triple R Campground was just what we needed after a long drive.  You can see the view from our front window in the opening photo.

After setting up, we had time for a short hike in the rural campground before dinner.

The views as we strolled around the resaca (oxbow lake) were just what we needed.

In a short while, Dianne said, "Look! there's a motorhome just like ours!"  My reply was, "It is our motor home."  (Dianne here:  At times I'm a little spacey....)  A little while later, it was visible again.

We loved and ascribe to the placard that was displayed on the tree below.

After emerging from the trail, we wandered over to a deck that overlooked the Nueces River --- the original southern boundary of Texas before the Mexican-American War.  Such a tranquil place this is.

Before climbing back into the motor home, we returned to Neverland.  Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Crock!  Not a fantasy, this one.  He seems to have the beginnings of rusting teeth.  

After Dianne and I settled in for the night in this rural setting, our animals went on high alert.  Big Chuck and Tequila guarded against a large population of roaming house cats.

Hey cat, wanna fight?

Here, kitty kitty...

Bandido startled us with a series of urgent barks.  He was warning us that nine or more deer were getting a drink on the other side of the lake.  (Sorry, no pictures of the deer --- too dark.)  

I told you something was out there!  You guys never believe me until you look twice!

During our second day of travel, we forged on through Eagle Pass and Del Rio.  A scenic highlight was the crossing of the Pecos River.

Right now, we are settled in an overnight spot near Fort Stockton, Texas.  We have another full day of driving ahead of us until we take the long roll through El Paso, and finally cross into New Mexico.  More about that later.

We have two pet pictures of the day.  Both of them showing our doggies in travel mode.  Here is Tequila, snuggling next to me while I drive.  It is nice to have a furry friend to pet when the traffic is light.

AND. here is our fifty-pound lap dog, Bandido, crushing Dianne's legs in the passenger's seat.  She would not have it any other way.

Thanks for cracking the window, mom.  Laredo sure smells interesting!

So Why Are We Leaving?

Roger here.....  Wow!  Look at the riot of color in our back yard.  The plant life here in deep south Texas is amazing most of the year (even in January), but right now it seems to be at its peak.

The jasmine vines that we planted at the corners of our pergola are growing so fast that you can almost see them creeping up the trellis.  They are in full bloom and so fragrant.  

I just finished conducting our last community meeting of the season.  Good to have that behind me.  It almost feels like the start of Spring Break (educators understand the analogy).  It is so relaxing to sit in a comfortable chair on the back patio ---- looking at the flowers, watching the butterflies and birds, enjoying the ever-present Texas breeze, reading a good book.  SO, why are we leaving?

Well let's see....  

--  We have been working for a couple of months getting the motor home ready for a long trip:  new tires (expensive -- ouch!), new tire pressure monitoring system, annual service, oil change, battery fluid checks, repair to a couple of the bay latches, a thorough wash and wax.  It would be a shame to waste all that effort.

There's no place to sit in front of the coach house  -- our red Adirondack chairs have disappeared.   Oh, wait!  There they are.

-  The back patio looks so empty --- nothing except the camping chairs that we are taking with us.

-  Even our Texas bar has found its way inside.  Why linger here if there is no bar?

-  Necessities have been moved into the motor home and location lists have been made so that we can find them.  Dianne did most of the list making this year.  My obsessive compulsive, concrete- sequential traits are finally rubbing off on my dear wife.  It only took forty-some years...

-  Our good friend, Jim, helped me drain the water heater that lives in the attic.  We have to leave, or his help was for naught.  Have a look at those legs!

-  Anal retentive me has been planning the trip for weeks:  routes, reservations, timing to meet with family/friends, things to see, things to avoid, new adventures.  It would be a waste to not follow through after having done all that work.

-  Most of our dogs' friends have already left.  Look at those sad faces.

-  Oh, and there is a scary spider in the back yard.

This fella is about three inches long.  Everything in Texas is bigger.  I have no idea what the spirals are that seem to be caught in its web, nor do I know what kind of spider it is.  Maybe some of you readers can help.  Pretty interesting, though, isn't it?

-  There are lots of questionable reasons to leave, despite the beauty of our place right now.  However, the main reason for leaving is to begin a new set of adventures.  We are planning to travel through southern New Mexico and Arizona.  We plan to spend some time near Palm Springs to see our Los Angeles daughter and her boyfriend.  When it warms up in the northern climes, we are headed to the beaches of Oregon and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington where we will get to see both our daughters and our granddaughter --- as well as our life-long friends, Jay and Nancy.  Lady Dianne will get to spend some time in Salt Lake City doing genealogy research (seems she is descended from royalty), while I fly to Indiana for a couple of weeks.  We will then spend a month in the Colorado mountains before heading back to Texas.  I am starting to get excited!

We will be blogging more frequently as we travel, so start looking for our posts.

The pet picture of the day shows Bandido being a selfish boy while Tequila looks on.

The story behind the picture.... Dianne gave each dog a leather chew.  Bandido stole Tequila's chew, and then proceeded to chew up his own, while protecting Tequila's chew by trapping it under his paw.  In the vernacular of our friend, Bob:  Bad Bandido.  Poor Tequila.  Good Dianne (for eventually rescuing Tequila's treat).

Going, Going, Gone!!

Hi all, Dianne here.  What's wrong with this picture?

We're the only ones left from our nightly happy hour group!  Much of Retama Village is emptying out as snow birds head north.  Our friends Jim and Sue are still here, but our East Mallard Drive group has already left.  It all began just a couple of days ago when Tim and Bonnie headed out for their summer in Colorado.  I missed getting their photo as they left, but yesterday Bob and Linda were next...

Pulling Out...

Hooking Up...

Hope we remember all the steps when we leave April 11...haven't had to do it since September!

Off to start their summer adventures!

Finally, this morning Jeff and Val headed north to their home in Manitoba, Canada:

If you look closely, you can spot Val and their cute dog Maggie in the Passenger Seat

Roger and I have been working hard to get ourselves ready to hit the road April 11.  We've had the motorhome carpet cleaned, cabinets cleaned out and rearranged, but there's still more work to do before we're ready to leave.  We have a wash and wax scheduled for the motor home next Friday, and we're still moving things back and forth trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind for six months.

On March 21-26  I took a short spring break to join high school girlfriends at a condo near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  We all went to school together in Frankfort, Indiana, but flew in from Chicago, Indiana, Michigan and me from Texas. Penny was our guide, since she lives there on Pompano Beach.  Some of my high school buds read our blog, so here are photos of the highlights of my trip for them:

 My friend Karen brought matching cover-ups for all of us so we could be "quintuplets" on our girls weekend.  Trouble is, we wore them so much and forgot we had them on -- you should have seen the looks we got from people who didn't know why five 62-year-old grandmothers (except Margy, she's just 62, not a grandma so far) would be acting so silly and dressed alike!  Let's just say those huge bubba mugs in the photo didn't contain water....

Then there was the happy hour at the Tiki Bar...

Matching eyewear courtesy of Nancy...

More strange looks, and more silliness...

Two of the guys from our Indiana high school, one a '68 classmate and another from the class of '65 joined us for a barbecue at the beach.  We can all proudly call ourselves Frankfort Hot Dogs (that really is the mascot name!)  Actually, Nancy (in the middle) wasn't from our school, but she might as well have been, and we consider her an honorary Frankfort Hot Dog.

Larry, Me, Karen, Nancy, Margy, Chuck, and Penny

On our final evening together we took a dinner cruise through the intracoastal waterway:

 As you can see in the photo, we came well-equipped (Penny and Margy discreetly hid their bottle).  We all had a wonderful time and it was great to see them and revert back to our high school silliness for a while.  It was kinda like the slumber parties we used to have, although we didn't stay up nearly as late as we did back in the day.

Back in Texas, one of the things Roger and I wanted to do before we hit the road was to make a quick day trip across the border to Progreso, Mexico for some cheap prescription drugs and shopping.  We managed to get over and back in under two hours, mainly because our favorite outdoor margarita bar wasn't open the day we were there.  I stocked up on Mexican vanilla and found some very heavy, colorful drinking glasses and a salsa decanter:

I think the glasses will go well with my Fiesta dishes.  I'll be leaving the Fiesta and glassware behind when we hit the road, for it will be paper and plastic for us for the next six months.

My wildlife cam took some exciting night-life photos behind our fence this month.  Here's just a sampling:

Big Ole' Coyote

Big Ole' Skunk

Since the local sugar cane fields have been harvested (good hiding places), there has been a lot of Border Patrol activity right here near our neighborhood lately.  If any of you have watched  Border Wars on the National Geographic Channel, much of the activity when they film in Texas takes place right here in the Mission/McAllen area.  We don't need to watch TV to catch the action.  Here are some shots of the Border Patrol agents searching the trench behind our place for illegals trying to pass through.  Most of us have the phone numbers for Border Patrol programmed into our cell phones to phone in any activity we might see. Believe it or not, we slept right through this activity which took place right behind our bedroom in the motor home.  Bandido didn't even wake up!

A little blurry, but you get the idea.  They must have been moving fast!

I'm sure the question in your mind is "Are you afraid to be there?"  My answer is no, not at all.  We feel only compassion for the poor souls who try to cross the river to find a better life.  Most have paid large sums of money to crooks who have taken terrible advantage of them.  The Border Patrol here is very responsive and constantly on the alert, and the illegals are routinely rounded up and sent back over the border.

Back here, the view through our back pergola shows empty patios where once was snacking and laughter and friends gathered around fire pits.  We know that we'll pick up next fall right where we left off, but today it sure is lonely on East Mallard Drive!

The pet photo of the day shows Bandido and Tequila as Jeff and Val drove past on their way north.  They seem to be saying "Where is everybody??!! 

Bye, Maggie!  See you next year!