February 22-28, 2010 Desert Hot Springs, CA

This week has been very slow and relaxing ... just what the doctor ordered! Last week was loads of fun with family at Disneyland, but it was also very tiring.

After we arrived in the Palm Springs area on Monday afternoon, our goal was to visit with old friends from Modesto, check out the area, and most importantly, simply relax.

We spent Tuesday doing household chores like laundry. I also made hotdog and hamburger buns from scratch. Yum! Wednesday we met up with Jim and Carolyn Doud (they moved here 6 years ago for their daughter, Diane). We visited with Jim and Carolyn over a nice dinner, went to the Wednesday evening services at their church, Calvary Chapel Palm Desert, and then enjoyed frozen yogurt with the Douds, their pastor, and another friend from Modesto, Lynn Marcus. (Lynn has been here for a few weeks caring for aging parents.)

Thursday evening we went downtown Palm Springs with the Douds to a very crowded street fair. We took Lucy but ended up holding her most of the time because of the crowds. Apparently it is unusual for the fair to be this crowded, but it was a a beautiful day and everyone decided to come out!

Friday we took a ride to Shields Date Gardens ... I wanted to try a Date Shake. I absolutely love dates and the shake was great. Super sweet -- so much so that I couldn't finish it, but it was good. After leaving there, we decided to take a "short" drive to see the Salton Sea. We had seen it on the map and thought it would make a nice little trip. It was definitely worth seeing, as there were thousands of birds to see as well as some gorgeous scenery. The entire area is under sea level -- at one point our GPS said we were at -256' elevation. Cool! Anyway, it ended up being a much longer drive than we anticipated. We had left home a couple hours after a small breakfast, had the ice cream at Shields, and ended up going to Applebees on the way home for dinner at about 7:00. Needless to say we were quite hungry.

Today I made bread and did our taxes. Wayne did a bit of cleaning up and reorganizing. All in all, a good week. Tomorrow we will attend church in the morning and prepare to head for Arizona on Monday morning. Bye for now!

February 15-21, 2010 Anaheim

Wow, so much has happened since I posted last. Monday, we drove from St. David, AZ to Anaheim, CA, arriving mid-afternoon. After getting the 5th wheel set up, Wayne drove me to a salon to get my hair trimmed ... I ended up getting a pretty short cut! It has been driving me nuts ever since I got my long hair cut off at the end of June and ended up with serious waves and curls in the back. I haven't had hair this short for years! Anyway, after the hair cut we met up with Jon, Cristen and Anne for a great chinese dinner.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we went to Disneyland with Jon & family and Wayne's youngest brother Ken, his wife Laurette, and their two wonderful little girls Lana and Lily, all from Washington. Although very tiring, we had a great time. It was so fun watching Lana and Lily experience Disneyland for the first time and see all the excitement through their 8 yr. old and 5 yr. old eyes! Ken and his family left late on Thursday for San Diego.

Friday, we took a day off to rest up and do laundry. Such a nice day ...we were all SO tired. We got back together with Jon & family on Saturday to go to the aquarium in Long Beach. Anne thought all the fish were amazing! She did a lot of pointing and squealing ... she was so fun to watch. My favorite part was in the Lorikeet Forest where I got to feed nectar to several Lorikeets. It was awesome to have them just fly right up and land on my arm. Of course it got real interesting when one decided he/she really liked my earrings! One of the birds practically took up residence right on top of Jon's head! He had one on each shoulder and one on his head for quite some time!

For dinner we met up with Jeff and Erin Bright and their two boys from Modesto, California. Jeff, Erin and Jon were very good friends in high school at First Baptist Church in Modesto and spent a couple of summers performing at Disneyland with the choir tour group from church. Jeff and Erin got to meet Jon's wife, Cristen and their daughter Anne, and of course Jon and Cristen got acquainted with their boys, Justen and Garrett (sorry if I spelled their names wrong).

Sunday (today) we went to church with Jon and Cristen and really enjoyed the service. We had a nice light lunch together, said our goodbyes (those are just killing me!) and headed back to the trailer. We took Lucy to a great dog park for the 2nd time (went on our Friday day of rest too), ran a few errands, and now we have settled in for a night of rest, prior to heading out in the morning

Trip from Sanger, TX to Lubbock, TX to Alamogordo, NM to St. David, AZ

We have done a lot of traveling over the past few days! We left Sanger, TX on Monday morning, February 8^th in the pouring rain … a thunderstorm to be exact. A huge clap of thunder right over our heads woke us all up in the middle of the night. Poor Lucy jumped (as we all did!) and started barking a very scared bark. It took a bit to calm her down! Fortunately, Wayne fell right back to sleep but it took me over an hour, not from fright, but I was really awake. When we were leaving, the storm was again right over our heads with lightening and thunder. Now that DID make me nervous being outside in those conditions.

We made it on the rode safely though thanks to our Lord, and headed toward Lubbock, Texas for a one-night stay. It absolutely poured for most of the day as we traveled … Wayne had his hands full and he was exhausted when we arrived. He was also still wet! His clothes had been soaked completely through while getting the trailer hooked up. I was wet too, but he was much more so. We knew we were heading into even more cold but that could not be helped. At some point during the day, we ran into some freezing rain as well, but that was short lived.

Our stay in Lubbock was pleasant but cold. We headed out the next morning and drove toward Alamogordo, NM. What a nice day we had. The sun came out for a good portion of the day, and we drove through some stunning scenery. We came through the Sacramento Mountains where the Mescalero Indian Reservation is located. There was between ½ to 1 foot of snow everywhere … it looked like a winter wonderland!

We pulled into Boot Hill RV Resort and found a wonderful, new RV park owned by a delightful Christian family. We had read about this park online and we were not disappointed. We may plan to go back in a month or so when we can stay longer. As you can see, the view was amazing!

From Alamogordo, NM we traveled to St. David, AZ yesterday to stay in one of our favorite parks within the Resorts of Distinction group we belong to.

The area is wonderful, but believe it or not, after expecting some warmer weather, it is still quite cold. My Aunt Flora lives about ½ hour south of here in Sierra Vista and it was snowing there last night! We just can’t seem to find warm weather. All across the nation the weather is unusually cold and snowy right now! What a winter to decide to embark on our adventure! Oh well, the sun will eventually find us I am sure.

We plan on visiting with my aunt and my cousin Dotty this afternoon and evening. We always enjoy coming here to see family. Aunt Flora is one of my favorite people and I can’t wait to see her. Till next time …

Dallas/Fort Worth

Okay, I am almost caught up now! Whew, this blogging thing takes time, but it will help me remember what all we have seen and done too! I really enjoy writing all of this down, but believe me, if I were actually writing, as in journaling with pen and paper, this would be really short! You all know how I hate writing as my hands shake, but writing with the help of a computer works just fine.

Thursday, February 4th we took off from Sattler and drove north of Dallas/Fort Worth to Wagon Master RV in Sanger. Again, we have found our campground to be quite nice. As I am sure you can tell from the name, this one has a western theme. Once we arrived we concen-trated on getting laundry done and relaxing. Wayne had to drive for about 4 hours in the pouring rain, and I do mean pouring. It rained so hard, we somehow ended up with wet carpet inside on the dining room slideout. Anyway, needless to say he was tired.

Yesterday the 5th would have been my mother's 90th birthday ... it was a hard day for me. We spent most of the day running errands of one sort or another. However, the highlight of the day was our visit to Gospel for Asia in Carrolton. We have supported a missionary in India through GFA for several years now. It was awesome getting to see the administration building and hear several stories of the Lord's work through the indigenous believers called of the Lord to reach their own people.

Today, February 6th, we drove down into the Dallas/Fort Worth area to see as much as we could in one day. We ended up not seeing nearly as much as we hoped but we did pretty well. We started out at the Fort Worth Stock Yards and watched as they demonstrated a long horn cattle drive. Let me just say, these cattle are huge!

Then we went to our 2nd stop at a botanical garden. However there wasn't much to see on February 6th, so we left there rather quickly and went to DFW International Airport. They have a viewing area called Founder's Plaza at the north end of the Airport, where there are binoculars set up for a great view of the planes as they land and take off. Wayne got some great pictures, but it was quite cold today, so we didn't stay terribly long there either.

After a quick lunch at Fuddruckers, we headed to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on Elm Street in Dallas. Actually walking on the grounds, including the "grassy knoll", and looking out the windows from the 6th floor of the book depository was both fascinating and sobering. The museum is set up with an audio tour, complete with photos, historical documents and other items, videos, etc. all dealing with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 and the days preceding and following that dark day in our country's history. I was too young to have any idea what happened at the time, (I would have been just over 7 yrs. old) so I was glad to have had the opportunity to visit the area. I remarked to Wayne that when visiting an area of historical significance, one can usually say it was "neat" or "awesome", but not in this case ... it was just sad.

Now it is time to hang up my "pen" and go to bed. It has been an eventful day and I need to get some sleep

The San Antonio area

Monday, February 1st, we left the Corpus Christi area and drove to New Braunfels, just north of San Antonio. I lived San Antonio as a toddler, but of course have no memory of it at all. Anyway, our campground was actually located in Sattler, even a bit more north than New Braunfels. It turned out to be quite nice ... Summit Vacation Resort ... we saw deer every single day! The only real issue was that it is in the hill country of Texas, and it was rainy most of the time. The roads were slippery and it made me very nervous when we were driving, especially with the 5th wheel attached.

On Tuesday, February 2nd (Cristen's birthday!) we actually had a day that wasn't rainy -- it was gray, but not really cold. We spent the day getting acquainted with not only San Antonio, but Wayne's cousin, Karen, her husband Denny, and their daughter Rhiannon.

In San Antonio, we went to the Riverwalk and found it absolutely beautiful, even with gray skies. We had a wonderful time walking most of the length, and had a great lunch at The County Line ... awesome Texas barbeque!

After the Riverwalk, we went to The Alamo. I am continually embarrassed by how much of our country's history I don't know. I really had no idea what The Alamo represented or what actually took place there. I was also amazed to find that Davy Crockett not only died there, but had been a Congressman from Tennessee prior to that battle. In addition, I learned about the fact that when Texas was granted statehood, it started a war with Mexico which resulted in our obtaining New Mexico, Arizona and California! I am sure all of you reading our blog already knew this, but I did not. I love learning new things, especially when I can actually visit the places where they occurred. It makes learning them so much more meaningful, at least for me.

After leaving The Alamo, we met with Karen and her family at a local Starbucks (surprise, surprise). We had a great time getting to know one another. We will look forward to seeing them again the next time we are in the San Antonio area.

Wednesday, February 3rd, was a day spent in the trailer listening to rain, rain and more rain. The gravel "road" in front of our trailer turned to a small stream, and the site two over from ours turned into a pond ... we practically needed a boat! Nothing scary though, just a lot of water. I know Texas really needs the rain, but I must say, we are very tired of the cold and wet. We knew we were leaving California at a bad time -- this isn't really a surprise and it was what we needed to do. Suffice it to say though, that we are looking forward to spring and a bit more sun.

Corpus Christi sightseeing day two

On Sunday, January 31st, we went to church at Calvary Chapel Coastlands ... had a great morning there. We wanted to do some additional sightseeing, but not before eating lunch. A couple we met the day before had suggested a local eating establishment called "Snoopy's". It was located right on the pier at Port Aransas, and the fish we had were probably hours out of the ocean. We chose to have a platter than included deep-fried shrimp, oysters and white fish fillets. Yes, we tried oysters ... they were good. I have to admit that I don't believe I could ever stomach eating oysters on the half-shell, but deep fried, yes. We both enjoyed our lunch immensely.

We did a bit more sightseeing, but it was just too cold to be outside much. Wayne did a lot of driving and we just took in the view. All in all, we enjoyed Corpus Christi but not quite as much as Galveston. Glad we went though!