Back in Mission !!!

As most of our friends know, we have been back in Mission since October 22nd. I have been trying to get caught up with the blog since then, but we really have been pretty busy.

First we had to get settled back in and open up the coach house, which survived the summer without any problem. That made me very happy. We started to shop for some furniture for the coach house, but have not had any luck yet. I want a wall unit, where I can store all the stuff we hauled around this year and never used, but everything down here seems to be very massive looking and made out of dark wood. Ikea, where are you when I need you!!!!! The closest one is 300 miles away and that is so much to drive just to look for a wall unit and have to drive it back here, if we find something we like. So we might have something build for us. As if I needed another project for right now!

The first thing we did after we got back was to give both our vehicles a well deserved bath. It is amazing just how dirty the cars and the rig get when traveling down the road. I started on the rig this week, but it will take me a while to finish it. It is still to hot in the daytime to work on it while the sun is beating down on you. I am sure my friends from the east coast fully understand my dilemma :-). The weather was pretty much in the high 80 low 90 degrees in the daytime and about 70 degrees in the nighttime for the last three weeks. And then the first real cold front came through last night. I actually got the electric heater out and it got down to 40 degrees here last night. For us that is really cold!!!! Daytime temps for the next few days are supposed to be in the mid 70's, which will be fine for me, since I want to continue cleaning/waxing the rig.

Another one of my projects is our small "garden" at our RV site. The roses are still blooming like crazy and I have to trim off the old blooms every week to make sure the new ones can still come up for a while.


I wonder how much longer we will have roses. They are just so beautiful. We also have this bluish ground cover plant that has been attracting a ton of butterflies each day.

They look like Monarchs, but I have been told that the Monarchs left about two months ago. We can easily have about twenty butterflies on this bush in the afternoon and it looks so pretty. I really love sitting outside and watch the butterflies. Two other ladies and I have started our own vegetable garden this year and are growing bell peppers, tomatoes, green beans, peas, lettuce, scallions and radishes. We could not find plants for most of the veg's and started them from seeds. They actually started growing within a week. The sun and humidity really are helping us with our garden. It is just amazing to me, since I never had a vegetable garden in my life.

To add to all this excitement, Doug's right foot started acting up already again and we finally went to a foot specialist to find out what is going on. He has been having problems throughout the summer, but normally about every two months. This time it did not take four weeks for the pain to return. It is hard to go to a doctor when you travel as much as we do, since most of them want to see you for a follow up. Well, it is good that we are stationary for a while now. We got an appointment, the doctor wrapped and taped his foot and gave him some heavy pain/anti-inflammatory pills and asked us to come back in a week. Doug has capsulites (inflammation of the ligaments around the joint in his foot) and an inflamed/swollen nerve in his ankle. We went for the follow-up visit last Friday and the wrap came of. He is feeling much better and now has insoles for his shoes. If that does not help the swollen nerve, he will have to have shots. We will go back this coming Friday for another evaluation. I am so happy that we are here for a while and can take care of this problem. It has been on my mind a lot, since at one point this summer we had to stay for an extra day on a long drive, because he was in to much pain to drive the truck. That is really scary to me, but again, we will get it all fixed hopefully while we are down here. I have also found a primary care physician and we will get our physicals later this month. It was time to establish a family doctor again, since we are running out of medications and have not seen a doctor since we left New Jersey.

There has been a lot more things that we have done in the last three weeks, but I don't want to bore you guys and most of it has to do with housekeeping and making this new rig our HOME. As you can see, it has been a busy time, especially when you have "Happy Hour" every day at 4 pm and then there is the water aerobics three times a week. Life is just sooooooo stressful down here :-). I would not trade it for anything else right now.

I promise I will update you guys again, but it might not be every Sunday as I have tried to do over the summer. Things will slow down here eventually and we will be just hanging and relaxing for a while. It sounds so good. So stop by in about every two weeks and we should have some more stuff to report.

Austin - San Antonio, TX

Well, I was going to get all caught up with the blog last Sunday, but then we had to go to a shrimp cook-off in San Isabel and by the time we got back I was to tired and stuffed to continue the blog. Life down here in Mission is really stressful :-).

So we arrived at the Rio Campground in Sattler, TX on October 14Th. It is so nice to come back to a campground with no airport, highway, or railroad noises anywhere near. It seems that a lot of RV parks, that we have seen during our travels this year, are around these places. So we were guaranteed a good night sleep. We wanted to see San Antonio last year when we were staying at Spring Branch, but somehow never got around to it. Well, this time we took the opportunity and we got to see the Alamo.


It was pretty interesting to walk through the old buildings and I got another history lesson, which I have been enjoying during our travels this year. Next was the "River Walk", which reminded me somewhat of Italy, with the various water canals going right through this shopping and restaurant mecca. We decided to take one of the river boats and I am glad we did. There is no way we could have walked this whole area, it is so huge. They decorate the trees with Christmas lights after Thanksgiving and I think we will go back to see that. I really liked all the restaurants with their outside dining at the canal, since that is something you really don't find in the US.

We went to visit with Doug's dad and family over the weekend and went out for a nice dinner. By Tuesday it was time to move on and finally go back to Mission.

Heading South for the Winter

I know it has been a while since I have posted to our blog, but we have been so busy since we left Hutchinson, KS. Well, actually it has been so long that I had to go back into the blog to see were I left off.

We spend a couple of days in Thackerville, OK, which is about 5 miles from the Texas border. We arrived late Saturday afternoon and found a spot in the campground were our friends could park next to us. We were pretty much the biggest rig in the park until three of our friends, who also had been at the rally in Hutchinson, joined us Sunday afternoon. It was a lot of fun seeing them pull in and we had to have "Happy Hour" as soon as they were set up. After spending the last six month pretty much by ourselves, it has been really good to spend time with our friends again. Gail and Bonnie left on Monday morning and the rest of us decided to leave on Tuesday morning to head on south on our different destinations. In the end we will all end up in Mission sooner or later.

We had decided to go on to Austin to visit with Doug's dad for about a week before heading south for the winter to Mission. Everything went well through for Fort Worth and our first stop was south of Fort Worth at a rest area. We have had some drizzle and Doug just mentioned that his windshield needed a good downpour to be clean again. If he ever says that again, I will smack him. It did not take 10 minutes and we go into a downpour so bad that I could not see the rig anymore. Going 45 m/h and having my emergency flashers on, I fought my way through the rain as I am being passed by the big trucks, who of course dump more water on me as they pass me. Luckily the rain only lasted about 15 minutes and it cleared up again. We went through two more short downpours before we finally reached Austin about 3 pm. We had stayed south of Austin last fall and decided to go back to that campground in the hill country of Texas.

It was such a nice feeling to walk into a campground and they actually have you in their computer already. It makes checking in so much faster :-).