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"Gramps" Blog
 

Don't cry over spilt soup!

Last Saturday I roasted two 17-pound Honeysuckle White All Natural Turkeys to provide the main course for 30 people. The event was an open house at Deer Creek Motorcoach and Golf Resort that my wife and I are now the latest residents of here in Galax, Va. We had six coaches visiting and I wanted to make a fine impression. So after a quick morning round of golf with some of our guests, I started on the evening meal. I cooked one bird in an aluminum roasting pan on a large hooded gas grill over
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

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RelationshipDoc's Blog
 

Shared joys

One of the things Donna and I most enjoy about camping is the joys we get to share with each other and with others. A great case in point came from this past weekend. We were camping at a local Corps park. James, one of the volunteer attendants, was particularly friendly, so we made a point of talking with him each time we passed on our walks. It was during one of these conversations that James mentioned that he was feeding a doe, and if we would come by at a certain time, we could see her. We
RelationshipDoc

RelationshipDoc

2
Minnie's Milepost
 

Minnie and the Tree

It must first be said it was my yard, my tree, and my motorhome, so I do not know what the big problem was. I was not going to sue myself or call my insurance company to file a claim... But when I took Minnie out to have her house batteries checked for the second time in two months (they kept going out due to yet another case of operator error, I learned..), lo and behold, a huge tree branch became attached to her rear ladder. Woven between the rungs, it was. I was not completely surprised, be
Peggy

Peggy

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Our Favorite Places - In Love With Deserts - Part 1

In our first year of full-time living in our motor home we enjoyed a number of deserts in California. Since then we have visited deserts in other areas and always enjoyed the experience. Having taught school all my life, I had never had the privilege of traveling extensively in the cooler months of the year. This, it occurred to me, was the reason I had never spent time in any desert. Our first real desert experience was Joshua Tree National Park near Palm Springs. We stayed in Indio, CA, for a
tbutler

tbutler

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Julie and Frank's Continuing Travels
 

Sparta, IL

Tuesday, September 29 We were in Charles City, Iowa, for Labor Day weekend. While we were there we attended a Thrashers Reunion at an active museum that specializes in steam engines. They had a number of working steam tractors that were used to power the threshers. The day we attended they were threshing oats, large sheaves of oats were hauled to the threshing machines on trailers or sleds and then put into the threshing machines by hand. Grain came out one end and the straw and chaff out the o
Frankturman

Frankturman

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Out of the Icebox into the Fire

After a short stay in Denver, we headed west to California. In Denver we had a couple of days of nice weather followed by snow, rain and cold. We were busy visiting, but the cold and wet weather was something we don't find pleasant. It even managed to snow enough one morning to turn the foothills white. I took care of a few tasks around the motor home while Louise assisted her mother with trips to the beauty shop, grocery and other shops. Our friends Bill and Laura stopped by for a morning visi
tbutler

tbutler

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"Gramps" Blog
 

Rules for Owning a Motor Coach: Number 4 continued

Rule 4: Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience -- continued. Well, I had so much fun coming up with a list of things that I have learned over the five years that my wife and I have been motorhoming, I figured why not write down a few more? So here goes: I have learned that men need a precise set of directions when parking the coach. And women know just how to give them. For example: "I SAID STOP! STOP! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT STOP MEANS?" "DON'T BACK UP, YOU WILL HIT IT AGAI
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Therapy

We have been in Missouri visiting our children, grandchildren, my mother and other friends. Our visit has been punctuated with numerous trips for repair of our motorhome. We've been in the shop three times now to get the Carefree awning properly installed, painted and adjusted. Our KVH dish has taken two repair trips. An oil change and wheel bearing service took two trips. Each trip requires picking up and moving to the repair shop and then returning to base to set up house again. Normally we m
tbutler

tbutler

1
Exploring USA and Canada
 

Still Traveling together

After leaving Quebec City, we continued our trip south to see friends south of Montreal. Since we were close to the U.S. border, we crossed over to fuel up and for our friends Tom and Louise Butler to pick up their mail. We then crossed by into Canada Via a small blacktop road with a small border crossing. Only one border official was there; he checked us out and we went on our way. After we got into Canada, we promply took a wrong turn. With Louise checking the maps, we were able to reach our
PIPEWRENCHGRIP

PIPEWRENCHGRIP

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"Gramps" Blog
 

The Course of Dreams

If you have been reading my earlier blog entries, you know that I have said that a motor coach will improve your life, if you let it. I said it will improve your life in many ways. Your coach can take you to places you might not think to go to if you traveled like most "normal" people, carrying your bags and staying in hotels. It can also help you to make friends. Recently for Diane and I, our coach has done both. This has been a rough year for the two of us. Mike, my best friend and business
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Take Away Our Motor Home and We're Homeless!

We have moved in with my mother! A failure at 63! No, not really, just a temporary setback. We're having some painting done on the motor home and it has been in the shop for three days now. I just talked to Mark at First Class Fiberglass in St. Peters, Mo., and he has promised to be done about noon tomorrow. We'll be glad to get our little home back again. We have one more repair to accomplish and that is to get the KVH dish fixed. It quit working several weeks ago. I think we are lined up to
tbutler

tbutler

0
Julie and Frank's Continuing Travels
 

September 2, Prior Lake Mn

When we last added to this blog we had moved to Bemidji Minnesota. We spent a week there touring the surrounding area. We went as far north as International Falls and the Voyager National Park, Not much to see there with out a boat. We also visited much of the surrounding area within a 100 Mile radius of Bemidji. We next moved to Superior Wisconsin, staying in a nice RV park on the east side of town. We toured the northwest shore of Lake Superior (Northeast Minnesota) as well as the are
Frankturman

Frankturman

0
Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Enjoying the Last Little Bit of Canada

Our last day in Canada, Thursday, August 27, was spent in the area of Leamington, Ontario. Among the features of the southern tip of Canada are Point Pelee National Park, the Heinz ketchup factory, beautiful farms with fields of corn, potatoes, and tomatoes, a huge greenhouse and floral industry, the shores of Lake Erie, and some of the most beautifully landscaped homes in all of Canada. We are traveling with Bill and Laura Fejfar and today Bill is doing the driving duties. Our day started with
tbutler

tbutler

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

O Canada!

It has been just two weeks since we crossed the border with Bill and Laura Fejfar into Canada at St. Stephen, New Brunswick. We've seen whales, incredible scenery, the great St. Lawrence Bay and River, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. We've enjoyed the long and narrow fields of rural Quebec and explored Quebec City. There were small towns with delightful homes and buildings. We wished there had been parking places for large motorhomes but had to settle for a drive-by. When we did stop we were an obj
tbutler

tbutler

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RelationshipDoc's Blog
 

A band of brothers

Donna and I spent the last week in Brunswick, Ga., at the Golden Isle RV Park. Nice place. But rather than talk about our relationship this time, I want to talk about two men I met there. Both men were camped next to me, which is how we met. Both were Viet Nam war vets. They saw my USAF Retired tag on my toad, and that's what opened the conversation. One completed a full 20 years in the Army. The other served just one tour in the USAF. Both were enlisted when they were in the military. I was an
RelationshipDoc

RelationshipDoc

0
Exploring USA and Canada
 

Traveling together

Our travels so far have taken us from our home in South Dakota through the Northeast, into New Brunswick's Grand Manan Island, back northwest to the St. Lawrence Seaway and down to Quebec City. En route, we stopped to visit friends in Michigan, and they joined our trip in their fifth-wheel for about a week. We also joined Tom and Louise Butler in Ohio; they had just left the FMCA convention in Bowling Green. With the Butlers and our fifth-wheel friends, we visited the Warther Carving Museum in
PIPEWRENCHGRIP

PIPEWRENCHGRIP

2
Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

The Rapid Pace Continues

In one week we have traveled from New York through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick and we are now just outside the city of Quebec. We have visited Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor. The weather was cloudy and threatening rain but we never got more than a light sprinkle. The view from Cadillac Mountain always amazes me. From Ellsworth to Calais we took a different route than in past trips and this rewarded us with new and interesting scenery. In New Brunswick we stayed o
tbutler

tbutler

2
Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

A Summer Like No Other

Our travels this year have been delayed by family illness, a trip with grandchildren, a broken awning, a Monaco International rally and the FMCA International Convention. So it was almost the end of July when we began our summer travels. We will have to return to Missouri to take care of painting the awning we had replaced. We'll head west to California by the end of September and be in our winter resort by the first of November. So we get about six weeks of travel this summer. Like all people,
tbutler

tbutler

2
Julie and Frank's Continuing Travels
 

August 6, 2009 Bemidji Mn

The past four weeks have been full of family visits. We left Montrose and drove to Castle Rock CO. via I-70 with its high passes (over 11,000 feet). While in Castle Rock we visited Julie’s cousin Diana, as well as spending a little time touring the area. After 4 days in Castle Rock we moved north to Cheyenne, WY, spending a few days there touring the local area. One highlight of the visit was finding a Cajun restaurant in Laramie WY about 35 miles west of Cheyenne. Tommy Jack’s had e
Frankturman

Frankturman

2
RelationshipDoc's Blog
 

Update On Sugar

I mentioned in my previous post that several things had kept me from being as active here as I had planned. One of those was Sugar, the stray we found in June (that post is on this blog). About 2 weeks before Drew was killed, we woke up one morning to find bloody mucus all over the floor, and blood on Sugar's back legs. We took her to the vet as quickly as possible and found out that she had been pregnant when we found her, but the pregnancy didn't take. Instead of miscarrying, everything stayed
RelationshipDoc

RelationshipDoc

3
RelationshipDoc's Blog
 

6-wheel, 2-slide Healing

It has been much longer than I ever anticipated since my last post. There are several reasons for that, but the most significant, at least in terms of its impact, was our son-in-law’s being killed in a motorcycle accident on 18 July. He was only 36. After all the funeral and the insurance actions, we -- my wife, our daughter and I --needed to get away. Despite the forecast for a rainy weekend (a forecast which proved correct), we loaded up our trusty SeeYa and headed out. Three adults, four c
RelationshipDoc

RelationshipDoc

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"Gramps" Blog
 

Rules For Owning A Motor Coach: Number 4

Number 4. (Maybe the Last Rule!) Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience. And just when you think you know it all, you find out just how stupid you really are. I have learned a lot about my coach, more than I ever wanted to know. I have had to study the mechanics of my engine, my slides, and my power seats as well as learn how it is wired for Surround Sound and cable TV. And, how it is plumbed including the ice maker, the fresh-water tank, the whole coach water filter and o
-Gramps-

-Gramps-

1
Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Good-bye, Bowling Green

Friday brought the end of the FMCA International Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio. Everyone was up and moving early. Neighbors said good-bye, caravans formed up, a few wise individuals sat in lawn chairs and watched the parade of motor homes. The electric was shut off as I was winding up my cord. We were away a few minutes after that. The parade out of the campus was orderly and didn't take long at all. The police were manning the signal light to ease our way onto the highway. Louise and I se
tbutler

tbutler

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