What's new around here

Hey everyone..When I got up this morning it was breezy and chilly in the mid 60's.. maybe chilly is a strong word. I bet my friends in MI and WI would like to discuss chilly with me. We've been taking the golf cart out every evening since we arrived with Lady and she's come to expect her ride with the wind in her ears. We've seen a lot more arrive just in the past week. Roy and Mildred arrived yesterday. They are neighbors a couple sites down from us. We drove by Jim and Linda's site the other day and about the same time we said "their plant is blooming" so Reid got the camera and took a picture to send to them. They hadn't landscaped when we left back in March but it's done now and looks really nice. Karen and Larry sold their RV so it looks different with it gone, they are through traveling and got themselves a park model. They are right next door to us and said they are building a "party area" for cook out and get togethers, being right next door is going to be fun..
We went to Eric's for lunch one day and had the shrimp and fries basket..it's always good. Then on the way home we found out that Granny's Cafe had open back up so we went there later in the week. Good as usually..Reid had been wanting a burger.
The awning has been started and the rest of the materials arrives today so we've been told we should have the awning completed by tomorrow. That was Reid's main reason for wanting to get here so early. (that and golf) did I say that out loud. BTW he's golfing right now with Lou, another neighbor. I know that George and Wilma are headed this way, and Bob & Nancy, Larry & Phyllis and Jim & Linda will be arriving throught out the next couple of months but my biggest thrill is Danny is coming down for Christmas. yeah...Don't know yet about Stephanie, Uncle Sam probally want give her time off but we'll see.

Getting settled in

After arriving last Monday and being super tired I was ready to get set up and rest. We want to get an awning build over the shed to provide some shade and cover from wind and rain so Reid worked on finding someone to do that. We didn't have a lot of rain here last winter but lot of wind. They did have a very wet spring and summer this year which we could tell as we drove down cause this area was a lot greener than it was last winter. There's a few that live here full time and we've seen a couple RV's come in this week so people are slowly starting to arrive. We have new neighbors on our left. They moved in a couple of weeks after we left in the spring. They will be living here full time. They are going to be developing the lot to right soon so Lou should be all set up by Thanksgiving. Right now he's lives behind us but once his new place is ready he'll be selling the site behind us. My hope is that with the two buildings on our left and right some of the wind will be blocked this year that we suffered through last year.
We wanted to go to Granny's for lunch one day and it was closed...now we don't know if it was closed for good or the summer or what. They are doing major road construction in front of the cafe so she might have closed for that reason. We're still trying to find out if it will reopen. Another favorite of ours is Luby's and we were very disappointed. They had changed out the menu so our favorite wasn't on it and the veggies weren't up to standards..So we decided we have to try some new restaurants and stop going to the same old ones all the time. On Saturday night when the threat of rain called off our cookout we decided to go to Joe's Crab Shack..We've started our restaurant experiment, it's a new place for us and we love seafood so it was an easy choice and it was very good. Not quiet as good as our most favorite Red Lobster but still good and we'd go again. It's more causal that RL but still had the choices we wanted. What will we try next, who knows.

walmart and sam's clubs

We find a Sam's club at the exit we took and they are just closing for the night. Reid goes in to talk to the manager and she says it's ok to stay here but the walmart in that county doesn't allow it. so we stopped at the right place. The parking lot is fairly empty and no one else is boondocking there but she said it's safe and there's a night shift stocking in the store and it's well lit and trucker's will sometimes pull in for the night. so we get a spot near the side road with a little grass for Lady and we're all set. We have the room for our slides and we run the generator for a while to cool us off. About 9:30 Reid heads off to bed, with out the air on I know it's not going to be comfortable in bed but theres a nice breeze so Reid takes the bed and I take the sofa and we have the windows up. I didn't figure I'd sleep anyway cause I don't like boondocking so I figured I'd just sit there on the sofa till morning. I did fall asleep around 10, I guess I was more tired that I thought..About 11 I heard a truck pull in and park a row over from us, It was a walmart truck so I felt right at home. About 2am there's this pounding on our door and I jump up, Lady's barking, Reid's getting up and the pounding continues and it was this man drunk I believe, he's wanting money for "crystal" ( you figure it out) and then some story about running out of gas at the pump and needing money for gas to get to his son's surgery... we tell him to go away and leave and he did leave and went to the truck and knocked on his door. I'm watching from the window with the cell phone in my hand ready to call 911. He finally leaves the truck and then gets in a waiting car with someone else driving and they pull out of the parking lot...(thought he was out of gas) Any way at this point we're not going back to sleep and we're not sure he want be back so at about 2:30 we're putting slides in and heading out of town...we don't like driving at night but we did it. I just didn't feel safe staying. We got fuel about 4 and we heading through Houston about 4:15 guess what, not a bad time to travel through the city. We arrived on our site about 11:30 and we were glad to be here. Sam club parking lots are out..maybe a walmart if the store is open and there's other RV around...we'll see.

on a mission

We'll after a few days of non stop visiting in TN we were heading toward west TN for a few days but after a couple of days we decide to head on to Mission...Reid was ready to quit driving for a while and get there. As we're leaving I told Reid instead of doing the drive in 3 days lets get it over with and do it in two...He said ok. But let me explain my thinking. I thought it was going to be 3 four hrs days...so lets just don it in 2 six hrs days...I was wrong...it was going to be 3 six hrs days so trying to get there in two days was going to make it a long 8 hrs drive both days...now we've done that before but I don't really like to do that anymore..but the decision was made. So I knew it's going to be a while before we stop again and when Reid drives I help him out by sleeping. that way I'm not telling him to get over, slow down, speed up, watch that car, etc so I take a nap and when I wake up he tells me that it's going to be just as easy to head on down to I-10 and go that way..Ok that's fine with me. I ask him were are we stopping for the night cause I was ready to stop but we'd stayed in Vinton, La before and it's about half way so we are going there. It's a couple of hrs away. When we finally get there it's about 5 I guess and we're more than ready to stop. We pull in and they are full...so we head out again...we pass couple of other RV parks and the rigs are jammed in there also. Now we're getting worried. we see a sign for the Flying J and we don't like using them and we never have but we'll check them out and we see another sign for a RV park so we stop in. The Lady running it said she's booked too and everything in that area (about 100 miles from Houston) has been booked up since IKE..now we know we're in trouble. The Flying J didn't have any spots for RV so we got the map out for walmarts...and that's another story. read on