Home Improvement

As I write this, all I can focus on is the pain in my right shoulder and the discomfort from numerous bruises all over my body and sore muscles. No, I'm not related to MLK but I did wake up with a dream a few days back. I visualised three things in my sleep. Termites in our crawl space, flood lights in the front yard and an electrical outlet in the garage. Not just an ordinary electrical outlet but a 50 amp outlet that would support the AC in a motor home. What do all of these things have in common? Crawling on hands and knees the entire length of our house (multiple times) (in the crawl space) (did I mention how low, dark and close it was?). Was it worth it? The good news is that a thorough inspection revealed no termites, we now have flood lights in the front yard and any of our motor homing friends (one in particular...you know who you are) that decide to visit and stay in our driveway will now have electric service and can't complain any more.

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Study this photo carefully. Do you notice anything different about the bulbs? They're LED's that are rated at only 5 watts each but produce light the equivalent of 90 watts of incandescent bulbs. While they're not inexpensive to buy, the cost of operating them dusk to dawn is only about 40 cents per month. They have a 40,000 hour life expectancy which is almost ten years of dusk to dawn use. Amazing!!

Two Weeks

I'll back up to the weekend of April 15 through 20. I know, weekends aren't supposed to be 6 days long but ours sometimes are. This is one of the few benefits of being both older and retired. Our Motor Home club had scheduled a rally at Fortress Monroe (in Hampton, Va on the Chesapeake Bay) for Friday through Sunday. We decided to leave a couple of days early for a visit with Carolyn's parents in Portsmouth and to try out a "new to us" campground operated by the City of Hampton. It was a delightful surprise.


Nicely manicured and the price is right! We spent Wednesday night then on to Fort Monroe for an early arrival on Thursday. Ten other couples arrived a day early too so the party got started one day ahead of schedule.






We enjoyed a great spot with all the coaches lined up along the seawall. For anyone interested in knowing more about our motor home club, here's a link to the clubs web site: http://www.fmcadogwood.blogspot.com/ .



By the time the weekend was over we were too tired to drive home so we decided to stay over another night in the Hampton campground. We arrived home Monday afternoon just in time to start getting ready for another long weekend.


We departed home early Thursday. Destination: Virginia International Raceway about 20 miles East of Danville Virginia. VIR is one of the oldest road race courses in the country and this weekend was the sight of the Bosch Engineering 250 mile Rolex Series race. This is exciting high $$ professional racing. We camped in the infield overlooking the track. A couple of photos follow for those that aren't familiar with this type of racing.



That's Shamu on the hill above the track.




The red Gainsco car was the ultimate winner of the 250 mile race on Saturday afternoon. There were lots of other races during the weekend of racing including the Mazda and BMW series open wheel racing, VW TDI series and others. There was wall to wall activity starting early morning and ending late afternoon. VIR is a neat venu with open spectator acces to the padoc and garages. This makes for good fun for car nuts like me.

Back Home in Virginia

Not much happening. Arrived home in Virginia March 20. Now all were doing is setting around watching the grass grow.

Rainy Weather

Our Week in Alabama

Wednesday, March 11. Travel day to Montgomery Alabama. Along the way we made an interesting detour to Mt. Olive West Baptist Church. Hank Williams attended church here as a young boy and developed his love of gospel music. This is a stop that would appeal only to those with an interest in country music. I recall listening to Hank Williams on the radio in the 1940’s prior to the days of TV. Songs like Jambalaya, Your Cheating Heart, You Win Again still resonate.

Gunter Hill, a COE park is where we decided to stay for a few days while checking out Montgomery.

We started by taking a tour of the Hyundai Auto factory, Montgomery’s largest employer. This is an example of what American industry can and should be. It’s highly automated, unbelievably clean to be a manufacturing facility, union free, and focused on quality. Their production is down only two percent during this troubled time.

Day two, we visited downtown sites including the State Capital, the Hank Williams Museum, The First Whitehouse of the Confederacy (The Capital of the Confederacy was moved to Richmond, VA after only three months to be nearer the center of Conflict activity), Hank Williams final resting place in Oakwood Cemetery and Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Martin Luther King was Pastor before moving to Atlanta. For lunch we stopped at Chris’ where we enjoyed Hank’s favorite Loaded Dogs (mustard, onions, sauerkraut, and Chris’ secret chili sauce), fries and bottled coke. Chris’ has been in business at the same location since 1917 so they must be doing something right.

Day three, we traveled to Selma AL for a day tour. Selma was not what I expected. This is a town that I could enjoy spending multiple days in. The downtown area is loaded with well preserved and restored homes and businesses (over 1250 in the historic area) dating to the civil war era and before. Of course, there’s also lots of civil rights, voter rights etc. stuff around the town too. For those who were around in 1965, you may remember that the Edmund Pettus Bridge was the sight where the voting rights march to the capital began. If you’re inclined, this would probably make a good subject for some bedtime reading to brush up on some 1960’s civil rights history.

Now that we're overloaded with country music, how about some good western stuff? Frank and Jessy James stayed here when stopped in Selma. How's this for good western stuff?

It's raining cats and dogs. It's time to move on to get away from this.

The Question is:

The question most ask is where are you and what have you been doing. For an answer, let's back up a few days. We left Lake Conroe, TX on Monday March 2nd and drove to Lake Charles, LA where we stayed at Sam Houston Jones State Park once again. The drive was short so we did some geocaching in the afternoon. Tuesday we traveled on to Chicot State Park near Ville Platte, LA following the Zydeco Cajun Prairie Scenic Byway. We spent a couple of days touring Ville Platte, Opelousas, and Eunice LA. It seems that every small town in Louisiana is the capital of something or other. Ville Platte is the "Swamp Pop Capital of the World", whatever that is!! It's also the "Smoked Meat Capital of the World". A little further searching turned up the headquarters for "Slap Ya Mama". This has been one of our favorite Cajun seasonings for several years so happening across their offices and company store in Ville Platte was a special treat. We dropped in, had a nice visit and left with what is likely to turn out to be a life time supply of every available flavor of "slap Ya Mama" from very hot to V E R Y HOT. Interestingly, for those of us old enough to remember, Sears Roebuck sold houses and cars back in the day. "Slap Ya Mama" has their corporate offices in a 1914 Sears Roebuck house pictured here.

In Eunice, we visited the Cajun Music Hall of Fame and the Jean Lafitte Prarie Acadian Cultural Center. Both of these are fascinating stops. For us, we're finally getting to connect some dots that we started on when visiting Nova Scotia several years ago. Many of the French speaking peoples that first populated this area of LA in the mid 1700's originally lived in Nova Scotia. When they refused to swear allegiance to England, the British forced them to leave. They were loaded on ships and delivered to various ports along the US east coast and to New Orleans.

Thursday was a short travel day. We followed more of the scenic byways to Fontainebleau State Park which is on the North shore of Lake Pontchartrain. From here we see the New Orleans sky line across the lake. Our current plan is to spend the next few days visiting New Orleans, touring one or more of the plantations along the Mississippi and eating some Creole food. More later!

Back at Lake Conroe, TX

We came back to Lake Conroe Feb 9. We like it here. It's a nice rural setting but less than five miles from here there's every kind of commerce imaginable; very convenient! Things have been pretty quiet. Carolyn does line dancing three days a week, we visit with Lara and family one day on the weekend and we go somewhere one day a week.

Last week we went to Huntsville, TX to the Prison Museum and did a driving tour of the town.
The museum was very interesting and we recommend it as a stop for those that pass close to Huntsville. A history of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is presented. One thing that is pretty obvious, Texas takes things pretty serious when it comes to their prison system. This is old Sparky, in service from 1924 to 1964. 361 including 2 from Bonnie and Clyde's gang were intimately familiar with this chair.

Those that are incarcerated all wear a white prison uniform, get up at 4:00 AM, work at an assigned supervised job, and live in a 6' X 12' unairconditioned cell with one other inmate.
The only exceptions are those that are on death row. They don't have cell mates and don't get out to work.


Texas has about 150,000 inmates in it's prison system. Any one incarcerated in the Texas prison system is released in Huntsville when they get out. Each is provided a prison made suit ( it looks a lot like scrubs and is made in the Huntsville Prison), $50 in cash and a bus ticket to the Texas town of their choice or, if going out of state, a bus ticket to the Texas state line in their general direction of travel. The Huntsville Grey Hound station is the drop off spot for all inmates being released.

We had a nice visit with Lara, Jeff and grand kids on Saturday. We enjoyed a traditional tamale dinner of chicken and corn tamale's, fried corn, fresh tomato and onion salsa and guacamole. We're told this is considered special fare by the locals and would be typical of a new years dinner.

As a final note, today is Spanky's 2nd birthday. Time flies! It seems like yesterday when he found his forever home. He enjoyed a special dinner and a new bag for his special day.

Columbus, Texas

We moved about 120 miles Wednesday of last week from Lake Conroe to the Thousand Trails in Columbus Texas called Colorado River. It's nice here. We're in a rural setting just a couple of miles from town. We look out our back door at the Colorado River ( Not T H E Colorado River, just a river named Colorado that flows through Colorado County, TX). There's lots of wildlife here including herds of deer, lots of birds, coyote, armadillo etc. Spanky has been well entertained. He enjoys watching all the activity.

Life has been quiet since we got here. Last weekend we went out for dinner at Peters, a local beef bbq restaurant. This is pretty typical of restaurants through this area. It's interesting how much food they seem to be able to serve for a very small price. A half pound of beef brisket,two vegetables, iced tea and soft ice cream for $5.95. The food was good and place was packed. It's not obvious to me how they do it.

Many of the small towns through this part of Texas have their opry houses that provide periodic entertainment for the locals. Many of the performers travel the circuit and use this as a way to try to break into the county music entertainment field. Monday night we went to Country Music Monday in Giddings Tx.
It's about 45 miles from here. One thing about Texas, it's a long ways between places. Everything is at least 40, 50, maybe even 100 miles away. Anyway, the music was good and we had a good time.

The Grandchildren, Lara and Jeff will visit this weekend. They live about a 100 miles from here. We'll probably go out for beef brisket again. Beef, it's what Texans eat.

Lake Conroe

This is a really nice place this time of the year. Today is the first cool day (upper 50's) we've had since arriving here two weeks ago. Most of the time the temperatures have been in the upper 70's during the day and lower 40's at night.

It's interesting how areas develop here in Texas. The commerce always grows along the large highways with residential development nearby about a mile or two away from the major roadways. Most major roadways (Interstate or State Hwy) have access roads beside them. The access roads are built first with a large right of way between them. When an area builds up and highways are needed, the highways are built in the right of way between the access roads with no disruption of traffic.

We've gotten out a bit since getting here. We went to College Station, TX one day. College Station is home to Texas A & M University and

The George H. W. Bush Presidential Library. The library was an interesting visit. We spent most of the day there. It was well done and there wasn't nearly as much evident effort to skew the history of the Bush presidency as we saw in the last Presidential library we visited in Little Rock, AR.

We've also visited the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, TX.

To understand the role of Sam Houston in Texas history is to understand Texas History. He was a bigger than life character that was instrumental in leading Texas to the status of a free Republic and then to statehood.

Galveston Island

We were curious about Galveston following hurricane Ike. We all know how things were portrayed on TV but we wanted to see for ourselves. On average, things looked better than expected. There was very little middle ground. Things either looked pretty good though there was evidence of damahe like the blue tarps on roofs, etc. or things looked really bad like total devistation.




The South Western end of the island (San Louis Pass) was devistated. The beach road was washed out and we traveled ten or more miles on the beach to get to the southern end of the Island

Texas

Here we are in Texas, Conroe to be exact. Lake Conroe is about 40 miles north of Houston on I45.

First, lets back up to the last post. Shamu started fine the morning after and we proceeded onward. Wednesday we spent the night at a beautiful Louisiana state park called Fountainebleu located on Lake Pontchartrain.

You could see the New Orleans skyline across the lake. Louisiana has the nicest state parks of any of the states. This was the fourth one we've visited in the past few years and they've all been top notch. Thursday we proceeded on to Lake Charles, LA where we stayed at Sam Houston Jones State Park, another beautiful one. Friday we drove on to Conroe TX. We're staying at Lake Conroe Thousand Trails. It's real nice here. Daughter Lara and here family live about 50 miles from here so we're close enough to see them on the weekends and far enough away not to be a nuisance during the week. Lara and Jeff both work and the kids are in school so their life is pretty busy during the week.

We had a nice visit today and got to see the grand kids for the first time in about six months.
This all new to us. All the family has always been fairly close by till now. The grand kids have both grown a lot and Matt who's 14 now has a deep voice where is squeaked and cracked a mere six months ago.

S T R E S S

The title for this post will probably be more obvious by the time I get to the end.

First, the good stuff. Service work at Freightliner was finished by early afternoon so we headed toward warmer weather confident that the coach is in good shape. In fact the alignment was off a bit and there is an improvement in handling albeit a slight one. We managed to make pretty good time but decided to stop north of Atlanta at Carolina Landing Thousand Trails. It's located on Lake Hartwell which is on the SC / GA line. Traffic was heavy and we thought that mid morning would be a better time to tackle I285 traffic around the west side of Atlanta. Everything went as planned and though traffic was heavy, it wasn't too bad. It was windy and for those who don't drive motor homes, this translates into stressful driving. By the time we got to Montgomery AL I was feeling a bit tired and decided to stop for a rest in the parking lot of Sam's Club. At the top of the exit ramp there was a traffic light and naturally it was red. Here's where the fun begins. I was sitting at the light when the engine stopped. It wouldn't start. This is a busy road and there's lots of traffic. I'm blocking one of the two right turn lanes. It wasn't long before the police arrived to inform me that I had to move it or they would. After a little conversation (negotiation) he agreed that he'd put out cones to divert the traffic for a while. I called Freightliner for help. They have excellent telephone help 24/7 and told me that the symptoms I described sounded like the engine's Electronic Control Module wasn't getting power. With their help, I found the in line fuse they suspected was the problem buried in a bundle of wires the size of your wrist. Not only was the fuse bad, the fuse holder was melted. The cop drove me to Auto Zone where I bought a new in line fuse holder . Back at the MH I cut out the old fuse holder, spliced in the new one and it still wouldn't start. After pondering the situation for about ten minutes with Carolyn and the Cop breathing down my neck, I decided to get out the multimeter and verify the circuit. Would you believe the new fuse that I put in was bad. Replaced the fuse and voila! The engine starts. Drove across the street to the Sam's Parking lot for a much needed rest. Like I told Carolyn, "it's 5 o'clock somewhere". During all of this, there were calls to road side assistance, the shop of the mobile mechanic they recommended and numerous interruptions by the cop saying his boss was insisting that we get Shamu off the roadway. Needless to say, stress levels were high.

By now it was late afternoon and Montgomery's rush hour was beginning. We decided to spend the night and try for a fresh start on Wednesday hoping for a better day.

It's time to go

January 2009 is here and it's time to go. Christmas activities with family and friends are done and it's time to head South. It's been cold the past few days and snow was in the air as we pulled out of the drive.

First stop, Forest lake Thousand Trails, Mocksville NC for a day of R and R and a visit with some of Carolyn's family in Statesville. Her Uncle Charles is now in a nursing home so we spent some time there on Saturday.

Second stop, Freightliner factory in Gaffney SC for some routine maintenance. We got new tires last January and still haven't gotten an alignment. The factory has all the best equipment so this is the ideal time to get the alignment checked and fixed if necessary. This is cheap insurance to protect the investment in new tires. The last set lasted about 60,000 miles. Our hope is that the new ones will do better. Freightliner has put in electric hookups in the back of the shop so we can arrive early and leave late if we wish to. Service on motor homes is a problem so it's great to have access to a factory facility where the help is competent and well trained.

Our appointment is for Monday Jan 5 so we'll arrive on Sunday and spend the night. That way we'll be ready for a 7:45 appointment.

Time flies when you're having fun

Since Thanksgiving we've been stressed by a number of projects all of which needed to come across the finish line before Christmas in order for us to leave for our winter trip as planned.

First, our motor home Shamu:

The passenger side windshield got smashed a while back so she had to go to the hospital for a repair. Everything went as planned and she now has a new windshield.

Second, our house:
We've had construction going on for more than a month now but the final result is wonderful.



It now looks like a brand new house only much better than it was 20 some years ago when it was new. It's now maintenance free with new, bright white siding, new windows, new railings on the porch and new gutters with gutter guards (these stop all leaves etc. from entering the gutters thus no more gutter cleaning).


Third: Shamu just came home from nearly a month in the paint shop.





She's now a beautiful shiny white that's the result of multiple coats of paint and multiple coats of clear coat, a total of ten gallons. She's gained almost a hundred pounds but is beautiful none the less.

Fourth,our Jeep (Elvis) has plastic fender flairs and bumper covers which over the past year have changed from a beautiful bright white to a not so beautiful light tannish hue. Needless to say, we weren't too happy about the change of color feeling that this wasn't part of the deal when the car was purchased. Following some negotiations with the local dealer and factory rep, Chrysler Corporation generously volunteered with a dying breath to make a warranty repair. The local Chrysler dealer did a high quality repair and Elvis is once again a beautiful solid white.

Thinking about all of this, there seems to be a common thread woven through the past month. WHITE!

Christmas Rally

This weekend we attended the annual Christmas rally of our Dogwood FMCA chapter in Williamsburg, VA along with about 60 of our closest motor homing buddies. As usual, there was a bit too much eating to feel good when it's over. Activities started on Friday evening with a delicious BBQ dinner. Saturday started with a group breakfast. Afterward, most of the women spent the day shopping.




The evening activities included wine tasting, dinner and a Yankee gift swap. There was lots of fun for all.

Urbanna Oyster Festival

Once again we wrap up a great four day weekend having eaten entirely too much. So, how did this happen? One of our FMCA Dogwood chapter members, Ed and Anke Fisher lives in Urbanna, VA. They have a property just a couple of miles from down town Urbanna which has a large commercial style building and enough parking for about a dozen motorhomes. The Urbanna Oyster festival provided the only excuse necessary for a gathering. Nine coaches and their owners arrived Wednesday and Thursday and the feasting began. Seafood dinner out on Thursday night, steamed oysters, oyster stew and oysters on the half shell (two bushels worth) Friday and Saturday nights along with beef tenderloin and too many other specialties to mention. The men are always in charge of breakfast. Cheese eggs, bacon,
sausage, toast, baking powder biscuit's, pan cakes etc. etc. were the order of the day for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. When we weren't eating, there was game playing, shopping for the women and fire house bluegrass music at night. We even made time for a few hours of geocaching with expert geocaching friends Wilt and Barb Greenwood.

This is all so exhausting that we have to come home to get some rest! Speaking of which, the leaves are falling now so there's no rest for the weary.

Baseball

Today started with a baseball game in Ashland VA. Translated, this means we got up early to get to the game on time. Scott (our son-in-law) coaches the boys team and apparently has earned a good level of success. They won today 17 - 0. Most of the recent games have had similar results. There's probably some prejudice here but check the form of this batter. Note the eye on the ball and follow through on the swing.

This is Grandson Dustin.

No show of step brother Bryan who's also on the team but here's his picture too. He too is an accomplished batter.


The weather is beautiful for this time of the year. So nice in fact that the afternoon was spent washing the Motor Home and cars. Boy, this sounds like fun doesn't it. It was a great workout for the new power washer

Time Away From Home....F I N A L L Y

After a long summer close to home, we finally got away for a week. On Sunday 10/5 we traveled to Kerr Lake on the NC / VA state line and spent a few days at North Bend, a COE park just west of Kerr dam on the Vrginia side of the lake. North Bend is the point to the right of this picture.

While there isn't much to do in the area, the weather was perfect and it was a good opportunity to relax. It's a beautiful place to just set back and enjoy life.

We had planned to attend a rally with the FMCA Dogwood chapter that we belong to in Smithfield, NC on the weekend of 10/11 and 12. This group is made up of about a hundred of our closest motor homing friends. Since some of these friends always show up early, we decided to do the same and traveled to Smithfield on Thursday. We guessed right and enjoyed a Mexican dinner Thursdy night with 3 other couples. Friday and Saturday were occupied with our usual social activities, and a Bar-B-Q
dinner Saturday night at a local restaurant followed by a delightful show "American Musical Jubilee" at the Rudy Theater in nearby Selma, NC.

Mann was elected President of the Chapter for a two year term that starts in January. We had 32 members present this weekend.

Carolyn was elected to our News letter Editor position so we'll have at least one more thing to keep us busy for a while.

We'll be at home for a couple of weeks then we're off to Urbanna, VA for the Urbanna Oyster Festival. It's an annual affair and one we look forward to. More later....

Printer Excitement

This is an interesting one! Installed a new HP 3310 all in one printer recently. It really is an amazing device. Not only does it print (paper, photos, you name it) , it scans (not only paper documents, film and slides too), it faxes (in and out if you have a land line which we don't), and that's not all. It has a built in 802.11 wireless card and is connected to our home network. It does it all without wires and everyone connected to the network can use it.

Back to the story, the only problem is that when you're not present when printing, all the pages come out crumpled and torn. If you're by the printer everything seems to work as expected.

After several days of frustration, we set up a camera to see if it would disclose anything that would help us to diagnose the problem. It wasn't exactly what we expected but the problem has been identified.