Unwelcomed Guest!!!

Throughout our travels we have encountered all kinds of animals and you will find all kinds of critters in campgrounds. However, if I don't see one of these ever again, I will be happy!

It was Saturday night, the dishes were done and I was taking out the trash to the trashcan behind the coach house. As I worked towards the trashcan I saw something dark out of the corner of my eye down on the ground. As I walked back to the door I realized that it was a HUGE spider. Now I have seen spiders before, even killed a couple of small ones when I had to, but this things was HUGE.

I know it does not look that big in the picture, but there was no way I was getting any closer to the monster. Doug trapped it for the night, since we were not sure what it was. Well, come to find out, it is a tarantula.

The tarantula was the talk of the town for about an hour and then Doug took it out into an empty field and let it go. There sure is never a dull moment around here. The lesson to be learned was that next time the trash can definitely wait until morning, since I will not go out at dark again any time soon.

Giving Thanks for Good Friends!!!

You know how things sometimes just don't work out the way you plan. Well, that happened to us on Thanksgiving Day. We had planned on going up to Austin to spend the day with Doug's dad and his family. Doug was not feeling so good the night before, but I figured it would just pass hopefully during the night. We got up the next morning at 5 am, since this is a 300 mile drive and we were supposed to be there at 12 pm. We left at 6 am and headed north. Within about an hour I realized that Doug was still quietly holding his guts and asked him if he was still in pain. After a confirming yes, I turned the car around and headed the 60 miles back to our home. We arrived at 8 am and Doug went straight to bed.

By around 10 am Donna knocked at the door and I explained what happened. There was a Thanksgiving dinner at the clubhouse that afternoon, but Doug certainly was not up to going and I was not going to leave him alone in the rig. Linda stopped by around 11 am and brought over some turkey soup that Donna had made the day before in case Doug would get hungry. He had some soup around 2 pm and started feeling a little bit better.

And then there was a knock on the door at 4:30 pm and Grant had two big trays with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, a buttered roll, another plate with two cold salads and a fourth plate with deserts. Trust me, you can't asked for better friends!!!! Thank you all you put all that food on the plates!! It was delicious!!

Friday was leftover day and Doug was well enough to participate. We were at Gina and Rollie's, who made a fresh deep fried turkey that was just to die for.


There was so much food, nobody went home hungry again and I was glad that I was able to participate and bring my Deviled Eggs to this feast.



So there is our Thanksgiving Day story this year and thanks to all our friends, it turned out pretty good.

Who killed Ramsey Gordon??

You might wonder who Ramsey Gordon is and I have to tell you that I don't know either!. We attended a "Murder Mystery Party" at Retama Village last night. It was a blast!! I have always wondered what these parties are all about, since friends of ours from NJ have attended them and loved it. We were sitting with our friends at a table for eight and had to discuss among ourselves who out of the six suspects was the killer. While debating, interviewing the suspects and reading our clues, we managed to drink two bottles of wine and have a nice dinner served to us. It was a three hour event and it did actually get a little bit cold on the patio around 7 pm, but we all had a great time and I would surely attend another one of these parties, even though our table did not guess the correct killer.

In the meantime, the ABS controller arrived, was installed by Doug and there are no more error messages from the ABS computer and the brakes function just fine. Next is the hunt for the brake controller. Doug has a bid in on E-Bay and we will see if we can get it for a good price also.

When I washed the roof a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the seal on the kitchen slide was not out correctly. For another reason we had to move the slide a little bit in yesterday and we took a closer look at that seal. Come to find out, there is a metal retainer in the rubber seal and it has rusted through and broke in some places, which means the rubber seal does not stay in place anymore and that might be a reason why we have mosquitoes in the rig sometimes. Just another job on the BIG to do list.

Well, at least my project of scanning all our pictures and negatives onto a hard drive has been finished and we now have 2500 pictures (2.5GB) of memories on two different hard drives as well as a DVD to make sure we never loose them.

Time flies when you are having fun ....

..... or a really BIG to-do list. I did not realize how long it has been since the last post until my girlfriend from NJ asked me what we were up to!! So much has happened, I don't even know where to start anymore. We got the truck back about a week after it was dropped off and the hitch was installed and the truck was shortened about 12 inches.


Does it not look nice!!. The hitch has three airbags and since the truck also has its own airbags, it should make the ride for Doug a lot more comfortable. The next step was to line up the rig with the truck, since you want to be pretty level when you are driving down the road. The tape measure came out, the guys started debating the subject (there is always help on hand, which is really nice!!) and we knew that the kingpin had to be extended. I always thought that I was fairly strong, but to loosen those bolts took two guys. Here are some pictures of the process and what it will look like when we are hooked up.

We did not hookup all the way, since we don't have the brake controller yet that will activate the brakes on the rig, but I think it is going to look very nice. The next step for Doug was working on the ABS system and it has turned out to be a really challenge. After trying out things for about two days he decided that we do need a new ABS controller, since we don't have six wheels anymore and the computer is looking for them. The Volvo dealer wanted $1000 for it and Doug found it on E-bay for $400. I just love my husband!!!

Now I have been pretty busy also, starting with finally getting the rig washed from top to bottom. That alone is a three day job and all I got left to do is the windows (which I hate doing). Some things just never change and sometimes I think we have more windows in the rig than we had in the house. There is actually 14 windows in the rig!!!! Well, next step was shampooing the carpets, which really needed it. Since I have my steam vacuum here from the storage unit, it really was not bad at all. It is amazing how much dirt and sand a carpet can hold.

It took a while this year, but the butterflies have finally returned to Retama Village.


I just love watching butterflies.

I am proud to report that all the boxes (except the one with the Christmas Stuff) have been emptied and stored away. It took a while to make a walking path through the coach house, but I even managed to get that done by now. All the pictures have been hung up and all our memento's, that we used to have in our entertainment unit in NJ, are out again. It really starts feeling like home.




So as you can see, we have been pretty productive and the to-do list is still going on. But at least I found time to plant a couple of flowers in the holiday spirit.

Busy, busy, busy ....

You might think that being down in Mission is all "Happy Hours" and relaxing, but you would be totally wrong. Well, we do have our happy hours most days and the weather is beautiful most days, but we do get work done.

I started unpacking our boxes about 1 1/2 weeks ago and thanks to our neighbor Linda, my nick-nack case and a lot of our pictures are hanging up. It will take a while until I take pictures of the coach house, since there is still a lot of work to be done. We decided to scan all our pictures from the albums on to a hard drive and that project is a "little" bit bigger than I thought.

Doug has been working on the truck, since we got the fenders last Monday. For a day or so it was just him and our neighbor Larry working on the first fender, but once they had things figured out I just had to get involved too.

Don't they look just beautiful!!!

This morning we brought the truck back to the shop to have the hitch installed and the truck bed shortened. So as you can see, we are actually very busy down here.

Castles in the Sand

Just because we are back in Mission does not mean that we are not doing things anymore. We needed a break from working on the truck and the coach house, so we went with Larry and Linda to South Padre Island to check out a sand castle building competition. The contest went from Thursday to Saturday and since the weather forecast was talking about rain Friday night, we decided to go on Friday, just in case all the sand castle were going to be washed away.

It was actually pretty cool to see the making of these statues.




The artwork was pretty impressive, even though it was not finished yet. I am glad we did not go on Saturday, since 250,000 people showed up to check this event out. I just don't like big crowds and having to hunt for a parking spot.

Instead we went for a nice lunch with Larry and Linda on Friday and arrived home before the thunderstorm started.

... and then came the call!!!

We had been back in Mission for a week when we got the call Thursday a week ago. Tru-Trac called at 12:35 pm to let us know that the truck was ready to be picked up. I was of course in the middle of making lunch, so we ate really quick, packed an overnight bag and got on the road. The trip was pretty uneventful other than the swarm of small butterflies by Alice and the thunderstorm north of Waco as we had 35 miles left to go. We arrived at Alvarado around 9 pm and turned in fairly soon, since we had to go another 500 miles the next day and on the way back we both had a vehicle to drive.

We picked up the truck on Friday morning and headed back down to Mission. We made good time through Austin and San Antonio and I actually got to drive the truck once we put in some fuel in Alice. It took a little bit of getting used to, but I actually drove 80 miles and even made it through a small town without any problems. It sure is a different view point sitting so high up in the truck. We got into Mission around 7 pm and now our lot is filled up with vehicles.

Here are some pictures from the inside of the truck.




Now I can start relaxing and get settled back in at our winter home. Doug has started working on the truck and next week we will have a new hitch installed so that we can put the Ford on the market. Once he is done with all his stuff, I will work on making the inside look all shiny. There is always a project to be done down here, so we surely will not get bored this winter.