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tbutler

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Blog Entries posted by tbutler

  1. tbutler

    Bad to the Bone

    By tbutler,

    Our travels after Denver were easy to plan. We drove about three miles from Golden Terraces RV Park to I-70, headed east and stopped when we got to Foristell, Missouri. Another three miles south of I-70 and we were at our daughters' home where we are parked for an extended period of time.
    Our activities since arriving here have included a dance recital by our granddaughter, a barbeque on Memorial Day weekend which included several killer games of croquet, and now a brand new knee for me! We've visited with my mother, both of our children and their families including our four grandchildren in the St. Louis area.
    Our granddaughter loves to dance and it shows. The dance school has a huge performance about this time each year. The participants range from 2 and three year old dancers up through high school and beyond. The really young ones are cute beyond description. The older dancers have amazing ability. Our granddaughter is somewhere in the middle. She does love to dance and it shows in her performance. The show starts at 1:30 and runs until 4:30 for a full afternoon of dancing. We treated everyone to ice cream at Fritz's, the local ice cream shop.
    The next week included hitting the doctor's offices including getting surgery for my knee scheduled. Louise has had a persistent cough, ear congestion and swollen glands. The doctor diagnosed a sinus infection and bronchitis. She is now on the mend. My orthopedist scheduled my knee surgery for June 2. This set off a series of visits for tests and exams at the GP and a pre-surgery visit at the hospital.
    As part of my pre-surgery routine, I set about getting everything top shape on the motor home. I had no idea how long it would be until I was able to work on fix-its after my surgery. One of my projects was to install the day/night shades from MCD Innovations which we ordered on our way out of Texas. The shades arrived on Friday after our arrival in Foristell. I had them installed by the following Monday. So now we have first class shades in the motor home. Louise loves how dark the night shades are. She has been sleeping late trying to shake off her bronchitis and sinus infection.
    At 5:30 a.m. on June 2, I reported to the surgery unit at St. Anthony's Hospital. Two hours later I was in the operating room and two hours after that I was waking up in the recovery room. It is now the 4th of June and I'm resting comfortably at home in the motor home. My orthopedist prescribed a rigorous pre-surgery exercise and conditioning program and it has paid off by getting me home quickly. Now I'll continue with the follow-up therapy. Once this knee heals, I'll have the other replaced. I thought perhaps I didn't need to have the replacements but a week off the pain medication I've been taking for the last several years settled that issue. Once both knees are replaced and healed completely, we'll break camp and head down the road for more motor home adventures. In the meantime I'm really ddddddddddddddddrowsy. Those hospital beds aren't all that comfortable. I only got about six hours of sleep the last two days. It turns out I'll be enjoying those MCD Innovations shades also!
  2. tbutler

    On the Road Again!

    By tbutler,

    Our winter this year was spent in our new mobile home in Sandpipers Resort in Edinburg, Texas. The motor home has been seriously neglected during this winter. We don't have to winterize in the normal sense. Tanks are drained and the refrigerator emptied and unplugged. We left the heat on and air conditioning when needed. Tires were inflated to maximum inflation pressure and we were parked on wooden blocks. I did wash the motor home several times through the winter and we were in and out moving items to and from the motor home. Still, we were occupied with the new house more than the motor home this winter. This is quite a change after almost ten years living full time in the motor home.
    Our goal was to leave south Texas on Sunday, May 1. Everything was going according to schedule until Louise came down with a serious cold just days before we were to leave. Fortunately, she had a good head start getting things into the motor home before the cold hit her. The final day was mine with all the mechanical things to tend to, check fluids, fill fresh water tank, move the coach off the blocks and adjust tire pressures. I finished loading the last of my personal items and closed up the house about 5:00 p.m. - yes, 5:00 p.m. We had delays, the starting batteries now 7 1/2 years old decided today was the day to quit. I started the coach using the battery boost from the house batteries. Then the Trailblazer wouldn't shift into neutral for towing. It has a chronic loose connection that no GM dealer has been able to fix. After a number of tries we finally get a shift and we're on our way - out the gate at 6:30 p.m.
    Our first stop was just 200 miles down the road. We were scheduled for maintenance at Iron Horse RV in San Antonio. Top of the list was to replace the starting batteries. Then there was a drip from the hot water heater that turned out to be a loose connection. That took several tries and replacing a broken fitting to finally solve that problem. The water pump was failing so it was replaced. The big job was replacing the refrigerator. The Norcold 1200 had finally become unusable during our last trip of the fall so when we unplugged it for the winter I knew it was the last time it would run. Our food was packed in ice chests for this trip, it would be transferred to our new refrigerator once it was installed.
    We chose to have a residential refrigerator installed in place of the Norcold. Iron Horse identified a model which would come close to fitting the space occupied by the Norcold. It was about 4 inches taller and three inches deeper but was the same width. Removing the old and installing the new took about two days with some interruptions for our tech to do other jobs on our coach and occasional assists working with other coaches. We left Iron Horse RV about 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday with good batteries, a working water pump, no drip from the water heater and a cold refrigerator.
    We spent the night at Riverside RV Park in Waco and then drove to MCD Innovations in McKinney, Texas the next day. The first of our pleated shades had broken just before we parked in the fall and we were unable to get repair because the shade couldn't be disassembled. Knowing that all the rest of the shades are 7 1/2 years old, we decided to replace the whole lot. Being on a schedule we elected to have MCD Innovations measure the windows for us and then ship us the shades for self installation later. With the roll up day/night shades and all our other fix ups we'll have a much improved coach. They got us measured Thursday afternoon and we were ready for an early morning departure on Friday.
    Our next destination was Denver, Colorado for a family wedding. It is an easy two day drive of about 400 miles each day. We had never driven the route from McKinney to Amarillo before and I really enjoy seeing new country and a new road. From Amarillo to Denver is a route we've traveled many times. We stayed overnight at the Wal-Mart in Dumas, our first night boondocking with the new refrigerator and it did just fine running on the inverter for the night.
    We arrived at Golden Terraces RV Park about 3:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, right on our planned schedule. Now we have a week of preparation for the wedding. Family visits, planning, scheduling, and on Saturday our youngest niece will be married. For now, we're sitting out a fine spring rain in Denver. The temperature is a cool 43 degrees. Wednesday morning I brushed snow off the Trailblazer. It is good to be back on the road again.
  3. tbutler

    I'm Still Alive!

    By tbutler,

    I was reading a recent editorial article in which the writer had Googled himself and found that he was dead! So, perhaps I should add to my blog lest I end up with the same fate. After all, if you don't stay active in the "net" world I guess someone could conclude that you are deceased. Why else would you not BLOG?
    For the last five months we've been living in our new mobile home (yes, some people don't know the difference between a mobile home and a motor home). Ironically, a mobile home isn't really mobile at all. The wheels are gone and I can't imagine what it would take to cut it all loose and move it - though they do that all the time. It usually only moves one time after it's initial installation.
    So now I have a lawn mower, a string trimmer and a host of other lawn tools. I'm planting landscaping shrubs and watering a lawn. These are all things that I haven't done in 10 years. There is a long list of things to be fixed and improved upon and I'm tackling them one by one.
    Still, we're living in a place we have stayed for the last 10 winters. This is one of the great benefits of traveling in a motor home. We have been all over the US and have found a place "fits." We tried several parks on our way south our first year and then we found our current home park. It just felt like a fit and each year we made more connections, solidifying our decision to make this a permanent home. At least as permanent as any home can be.
    Meanwhile, the road is calling. I can't wait to get the motor home on the road again and live the carefree lifestyle we had before. Is it possible? Only time will tell...
  4. tbutler
    As we were driving from Texas to Missouri last weekend it occurred to me that we were in the car making a road trip. Well, I knew that! But this was the second long-distance road trip we've made in the six months since we moved into a stick house. We chose to make this trip by car because of the driving distance and the possibility of encountering some real winter weather. Somehow, driving the four wheel drive Trailblazer seemed a better choice than taking the motor home.
    We'll leave Missouri next Monday headed for Denver and a family wedding before returning to south Texas. So packing for this trip we're digging deep into our stored winter clothes. Now we're using suit cases instead of the closets in the motor home. We needed formal clothes for the wedding and I just had shoulder surgery so I needed clothes for the rehab following the surgery. The uncertainty of the surgery added to reasons for driving the car instead of flying commercial. The shoulder surgery, by the way, was was successful. I still have a shoulder and it still hurts but give a few days or weeks to heal, it should be good as new and the pain of a torn rotator cuff will be a distant memory.
    Last summer we left the motor home at my daughters home while we hauled our stored goods south to our house in Texas. I took along tools so I could do some finishing work on the house while down there. Again, I was unloading the motor home for the trip. Traveling was much simpler when we just closed up the motor home and headed down the road. Now it is a real production getting ready for a trip in the car. We need to remember to take everything we need instead of knowing it is all in the motor home.
    So I guess this is an adjustment I'm going to have to make. At each of our stops we have family to stay with and on the road we're staying in motels again. I can't help but compare this with the days when we hardly ever stayed at motels and our family visits always ended each day with our return to our home parked not far away in a RV park.
    Louise almost ran the car out of gas when she was driving. Actually the alarm would have gone off first but our fuel choices would have been quite limited at that point. She said we had just fueled up in the morning and she was thinking it would be several days before we needed gas again! Oh the joys of motor homing.
    Funny how the equation for making decisions changes so much once we have a house.
  5. tbutler

    Putting Her to Bed

    By tbutler,

    It's been a shocking month and a half since I've written about our motor home and the experiences it brings us. There are many excuses: busy lives, family challenges, etc. Most of all, there has been little activity involving the motor home. We parked the motor home in the driveway next to our new mobile home at Sandpipers on October 13. I buttoned her down with window sun screens, and tire covers. Then we began to unload our gear from the closets and cabinets. This was new territory for us. For the last 9 1/2 years we have been living in a motor home. We unloaded one motor home before this one and that was a direct transfer from the old motor home to the new. I carried drawers from the old motor home out the door of the old, two steps on the ground, and right into the new motor home. Louise unloaded them, packing them away in the new motor home, and I brought the drawers back to the old motor home. Three days and we were on our way in a new home!
    Now we were moving into a house. The half-empty motor home will sit beside our home until spring when we head north to escape the heat of the south Texas summer. The refrigerator was emptied post haste. It was near failing and we were glad to shut it down. Will it ever run again? Only time will tell. Some clothes came out right away, others as the occasion demanded. One of those rare times when I needed a pair of dress slacks I had to hustle into the motor home and dig into the closet to bring several pairs into the house. I reluctantly unpacked my tools as the jobs in the house began to pile up. After a while, my focus is on getting the house in operating condition. I'm spending less and less time in the motor home.
    When we returned home we made a stop at a inspection station to have the motor home inspected. We weighed in at the Flying J as we needed a weight ticket for our license plates. We planned to take it out one more time for our driving test to get our Texas drivers licenses. With that in mind, we didn't refuel on our way home. We would do that after we had completed the driving test. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Louise called the drivers license bureau to get specific details of the testing procedure. She was told we would not need to take a test and could get our license by turning in our South Dakota licenses. So we picked up all the required paperwork and headed off to the license bureau. After waiting in line for two hours, we arrived at the counter. Anna Marie efficiently worked her way through our paperwork and issued us our Texas drivers license. After checking her computer, she apparently found the information that equated our South Dakota operator license with the Texas Class B license. We were able to exchange our South Dakota drivers licenses for a Texas Class B license required to drive a motor home greater than 26,000 pounds without having to take a written or driving test! Louise was visibly relieved. Every time I had mentioned the impending test to her she got this graven look on her face that said she really didn't want to face the test now or later. I was greatly relieved because I was beginning to think that I was going to be the only driver of the motor home.
    So now we didn't have to take the motor home out for the test. But there it sits, with a partial tank of fuel and no fuel preservative. So I pulled the tire covers off and removed the sun screens. Several hours going through the interior to ensure that it was secure and we're ready to make a run to the Flying J. Now that I've done that, I am in the process of parking the motor home for the winter. Unlike my northern neighbors, I don't worry about securing the motor home against freezing temperatures. Here, the sun is a constant worry so the sun screens and tire covers go back on the motor home. Tires are protected from the concrete by parking on a set of boards that also help level the motor home. It will be plugged in to keep all systems live and the leveling system will be kept active. We'll keep the furnace active, set at a low temperature to conserve fuel but warm enough to prevent freezing of the water pipes when temperatures drop low during the winter. I'm working on the routine maintenance items, tire pressure, flushing the water heater, cleaning the furnace, etc. This will continue on and off through the winter with the goal of being ready to hit the road next spring.
    Having a house is nice but it has it's own challenges. I have a whole new set of tasks to keep me busy. I'll keep dreaming of the next trip, the new territory to be explored and new friends to see. The motor home will be there to remind me that there is still a whole world out there to be explored!
  6. tbutler
    I am still trying to put recent events in perspective. We attended a rally in Prattville, Alabama, recently. The rally was sponsored by Monaco RV, a subsidiary of Navistar. The focus of the rally was the Navistar/Monaco LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) Tournament at Capitol Hill in Prattville.
    We arrived on Wednesday, the 6th of October and set up "camp" with our friends Bill and Laura. Over 100 motor homes were parked at the entrance to the golf course during the event. Thursday morning we caught the shuttle to the course, walking distance from our coaches, but if you are going to walk a golf course, saving a few steps really helps. As we waited for the shuttle a volunteer visited with us asking us questions and we in turn asked him questions. It turns out they were still in need of volunteers.
    So, being spontaneous, we volunteered to help with the tournament. Twenty minutes later, we, Louise and I, were standing on the 9th green with our signs to silence the audience. Our friend, Bill, was on the 7th tee. We were marshals for the duration of the tournament.
    Soon the first of the ladies were hitting onto the green. As a rank amateur at golf, I was amazed to see the balls clustered around the flag. These ladies definitely were expert golfers. By noon I was pulled off the 9th green and sent to the twelfth tee. I had a chance to see the ladies hit their tee shots. Being the sole marshal on the tee box gave me a chance to talk with the ladies, occasionally. My day ended when the last of the players had cleared the 12th tee. Louise on the 9th green was still working. There were two starting flights that would conclude at the 9th and 18th tees about the same time. Louise got an early release from her position, as the supervisor took over sole responsibility for the green for the last few groups of the day.
    The next morning, Friday, started at 6:30 a.m. I got to watch the last group from the previous day putt out on the 9th green before we started the next round of the tournament. Today I would be on the 9th tee. All day, through the entire group of 160 ladies, I watched them tee off. The leader in the tournament was 7 strokes under par after the first day. Today, she would add an additional 5 strokes to finish at 12 under par after 36 holes. I would leave the 9th tee at 6:30 p.m. Louise had spent the day with a friend. She made up a plate of food for me from the buffet at the rally.
    After two days, the number of golfers is cut in half. To make the cut in this tournament, ladies had to be two under par! Those who were one under or at par or above were sent home! So now the field was smaller. Our day would be shorter. On Saturday we started at 8:00 a.m. and finished about 3:00 p.m. Louise took over the 9th tee while I was a spotter on the 9th hole.
    Stationed on a knoll overlooking the bend in the dog leg ninth hole, I was responsible for watching the drives off the tee to see where they landed. If any balls went astray, I would help to find them. With 76 of the best players on the tee, not one went astray. Louise helped by signaling the direction of each ball as it left the tee.
    As the day ended Saturday, the leader was 17 under par. Before the end of her round she was 20 under par but had several bogeys in the last three holes. Was this an indication of the direction the final day of the tournament would take? The leader was now tied for first place with another lady also at 17 under par. We enjoyed a thank-you dinner for all volunteers and headed home to our motor home, ready for a good night's rest.
    Sunday morning arrived and we were again on the job at 8:00 a.m. Today I would be on the 9th green, while Louise staffed the 9th tee. In groups of two, the ladies put their approach shots onto the green and then putted out. There were excellent shots onto the green and the occasional stray shot. The leaders were in the final groups and the excitement and crowds built with each passing group.
    The leader came to the green. After going -7, -5 and -5 in previous days, she now was even par after eight holes. Her approach shot put her quite a distance from the cup. A long putt put her closer but here was still a 7-foot putt to be made to par the hole -- it missed by just a few inches. One more hit and she was in the hole but 1 over par for the day!
    She finished the day at 17 under par, the same as she started the day. One lady was 18 under par and the winner finished at 19 under par after making a birdie on the 17 hole. Katherine Hull from Australia would claim the $193,xxx prize for first place and we were there to see it all.
    By the end of the tournament we were completely exhausted. We never dreamed we would be able to watch the tournament from such an intimate viewpoint. This was a bucket list experience that we didn't even imagine we could do! We had watched the best women golfers in the world play golf. There were ladies from five continents in the tournament. If you love golf and have a chance to visit an LPGA tournament, go, you won't be disappointed.
  7. tbutler

    One of Those Days

    By tbutler,

    It all started as we prepared to depart from a one-night stay at a campground on Matagorda Bay in Texas. We couldn't resist a morning walk along the seawall in Palacios. When we returned I completed most of the outside work while Louise cooked breakfast. French toast was delicious and welcome on this cool coastal morning.
    We were just beginning to clean up the kitchen when Louise reached for the refrigerator door to put something away. She pulled the right-hand door on the two-door Norcold 1200LRIM just as she had hundreds of times before. This time the door came off the refrigerator and dropped to the floor! The bottom of a bottle of wine broke from the bottle. A plastic container of tea dropped to the floor and the lid popped off. A variety of other jars and bottles rattled on the floor with the trays that contained them. Louise stood there in shock - holding the door and just looking at this completely unexpected mess on the floor.
    I finally took the door from Louise's hands and placed it on the floor out of the way. We used half a roll of paper towels to clean up the liquids and rinsed the other containers before putting them back in the half-open refrigerator. As Louise continued with the cleanup I began to analyze the door and the hinge on the refrigerator.
    How had this unimaginable mess occurred? My post-crash analysis showed a piece of plastic about 2 inches long by 3/8 inch that was held in place by two screws with a metal plate of similar dimensions backing the plastic. Further analysis showed a screw hole in the bottom of the door - but no screw. We had lost a key screw in the door and the door had been hanging by the plastic for who-knows-how-long. When the plastic failed, there was nothing to hold the door on the lower hinge. The upper hinge is simply a pin on the refrigerator that inserts into a hole in the door. Since the pin is inserted from above, the entire weight of the door rests on the lower hinge. When the lower hinge fails, the door falls and "down will come cradle, baby and all!" So if you have this model of refrigerator, get down on the floor and look up under the hinge to see that the screw that anchors the door to the hinge is still in place. Without it, the door will eventually fail.
    I found that I could put the door on the upper hinge and, with the lower hinge in the open position, the hinge supported the door while the vertical section pinned the door against the refrigerator. The door doesn't open normally, but we can reach around to get anything stored on the right side of the refrigerator. A healthy application of Gorilla Tape made sure that the door didn't move off the lower hinge. There was one small glitch: The door kept dropping out of its latch, which sets off a beeping alarm. Louise can't stand to listen to the beep, so I got a few washers to insert under the door to lift it about 3/16 inch and that did the trick. No more beeping.
    We traveled non-stop for about six hours before arriving at Rayne, Louisiana, just before sunset. This is a place of special memories for us. We purchased our current motor home at a rally at Rayne. There is a convention center with hundreds of RV hookups. We were told to stop by any time the facilities weren't in use and stay overnight or for a few days.
    Sure enough, the convention center was completely empty. We pulled in, followed shortly by another motor home. We talked briefly with them. We were looking for 50A, they were happy with 30A. We went on to look for our spot.
    We arrived at a point where a turn was going to be difficult, so I elected to drive through the dump station. We were almost back to the main road when, WHOA! I hit the brakes. There, resting on the windshield right at eye level was an electrical wire, a single cord of insulated wire supported by and wound around a bare metal wire. It was twilight and I felt lucky to have even spotted it in time to stop. It would likely have cracked the windshield or even worse if it slipped off the windshield onto the front cap of the motor home.
    I put Louise into the drivers seat and went outside to assess the situation. We could unhook the car, 20 minutes, and then hook up the car in the morning, another 30 minutes. Or I could find something to raise the wire above the motor home. One option was to get on the roof and walk the wire down the roof as we passed under. Then I thought of the wash brush. With its extended handle and a rubber covered handle, I thought it would work.
    We started off and I had to shout instructions through the window to tell Louise if there was a problem. After a short trial, I moved to the other side of the coach and used a radio to communicate with Louise. We eased our way along without a hitch, over the satellite dome, the front air conditioner, fan vents and sewer vent. Finally the back air conditioner and the ladder and we were free!
    We found a place to hook up and plugged in. In about 30 minutes a city employee showed up to collect our camping fee. Water, electric and a dump station for $20 a night. I told the employee about the low-hanging wire. We had encountered more than our usual challenges in a single day on the road. The refrigerator was working, maybe better than before. The encounter with the wire hadn't damaged the motor home - or me.
    We slept well that night. The next morning, the electrical company was out with a truck and secured the line. We were on down I-10 headed for Montgomery, Alabama, and our next adventure.
  8. tbutler
    It has been a while since my last entry but I have an excuse ...
    Louise and I have just returned from a visit to our 50th state. It was the 50th state we have visited together and also the 50th state for the U.S. Of course, I'm speaking of the only state that is impractical to visit in a motorhome! Hawaii is one long wet drive and the puddle is so deep. We elected to make our trip on a cruise, which, in a way, is a little like living in a motorhome.
    Our ship, the Celebrity Constellation, was to be our home for the next two weeks. Once we were unpacked, our stateroom became home and we just needed to take any materials we needed for day trips. After nine years of living in a motorhome, an inside stateroom on the lower deck of a cruise ship wasn't really a challenge. In fact, we enjoyed the darkness and slept late several mornings!
    Our trip started on the 13th of March in San Diego. After four relaxing days at sea we reached Hilo, Hawaii. Hilo is a wet place being on the windward side of the Big Island as the natives call the island of Hawaii. I've stayed in Hilo several times before (under a previous administration as Louise likes to put it) and always enjoyed the city. My Earth science background has always found the volcanoes, waterfalls and beaches to be very interesting. A cruise really isn't the best way to see Hawaii. We like being on our own schedule and the cruise ship sets a very strict schedule. We took a shore excursion which was a hike on Kilauea in an attempt to see red lava. We had no luck with that but did get a good look at lava trees and many other lava formations. We also had a chance to see the summit features of Kilauea and quick stops at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut plantation/processing center and Akaka Falls before returning to the ship.
    Our second stop was in Honolulu the next day. We had both been to Honolulu before so we decided to spend the day on our own rather than go on a tour. We found the shopping to be relaxing and managed to scoop up souvenirs for most of the family in the shopping center right by the dock. Surprisingly the prices were quite reasonable with most shops offering deep discounts. Apparently the state of the economy has left them hungry for business from cruise ships. Of course we didn't have room in our suitcases for all the gifts so we sent those home via UPS. Then we hiked up to the punchbowl which is the cemetery for the Pacific war veterans. It was my first visit and we took our time walking around reflecting on the tremendous sacrifices made by so many for the benefit of all of us. The climb to the punchbowl was exhausting but I kept thinking it was nothing like what these men and women faced during WWII and other Pacific conflicts including Korea and Viet Nam.
    The third day in Hawaii and the third stop was at Lahaina on Maui. Here we wanted to do some snorkeling and signed up for a tour with the Pacific Whale Foundation. The cruise ship was much too large for the tiny harbor at Lahaina so we had to take tenders ashore. From the tenth deck of the ship we ate breakfast that morning watching whales surfacing and spouting all around us. This promised to be a great time to do some snorkeling. We got lucky and had an extra adventure when the pilot of the tender mistimed the entry into the harbor and attempted to back up just as a wave swept past us. We climbed the face of the wave with the rear of the tender going high up the face of the wave and then the front of the tender did a nosedive into the surf taking on a fair amount of water. We were returned to the ship and then loaded on another tender for a return trip into the harbor. During our day trip we saw numerous whales and had a nice time snorkeling off the island of Lanai.
    So now it is turning into one of those adventures where you say to yourself this is Kailua Kona so it must be Sunday and it was. Four days and four stops, some people were beginning to wear down at this pace. I overheard one gentleman at the guest relations desk inquiring about selling his shore excursion tickets! We went ashore here to walk around the town and do more shopping. After shipping more "stuff" home we had ice cream then browsed through an art gallery. We found a beautiful glass piece that we both like and had it shipped home also! The main drag in Kailua Kona was shut down for the afternoon for a street fair and we enjoyed strolling from booth to booth looking at creations of the many artisans on the Big Island. There were bands playing and there was food for sale. What fun.
    Our final stop, now day 5 in Hawaii, Monday, March 23, was in Nawiliwili on Kauai. We again elected a shore tour package. Louise had never been in a helicopter so I wanted her to experience a helicopter ride. I had taken many a helicopter ride courtesy of Uncle Sam. This one was a little different. Blue Hawaii Helicopters runs a first class operation with safety concerns addressed and wonderful pilots, helicopters and staff. We took off from the airport and circled the island flying through many canyons including the Waimea Canyon, known as the Grand Canyon of Hawaii. We saw spectacular waterfalls everywhere and enjoyed a close look at the dramatic Napali Coast. We returned to the ship for our late afternoon departure and enjoyed some relaxing time poolside as the ship left harbor.
    The next five days would be at sea as we returned to the US with a short stop in Ensenada, Mexico. The first day out of Hawaii, there were very few people moving around the ship as everyone was catching up on rest. Most of us managed to over schedule our time in Hawaii. The sea time was welcome. The seas were relatively calm and even Louise who experiences motion sickness fairly easily took no medicine after the first two days at sea out of San Diego. This was our first cruise and we enjoyed it greatly. Food on hand most of the time with no dishes to wash were a treat for Louise. Unfortunately, it was too much of a treat for me. It will take me several weeks to shed the additional pounds I packed on during the trip. We arrived back in San Diego one week ago on Sunday, March 28 and flew back to Texas that afternoon.
    It will be a while before we take another cruise but this one certainly set a high standard. For relaxation it would be hard to beat a cruise. We're back in the motorhome and back to our routine. Life goes on and it isn't bad in the motorhome!
  9. tbutler

    I Got a Round Tuit Today

    By tbutler,

    This is a shout out to Brett Wolfe. We went in for maintenance at Cummins West in Avondale (Phoenix), AZ today. In a post several months ago, Brett had suggested replacing the belts on the engine and saving the usable used belts as back up in case a belt breaks. I asked the service representative to replace the used belts and save them for me.
    We were having the generator serviced at the same time. In the discussion the service rep asked if I wanted the belt on the generator (7.5 KW Onan) replaced also. I thought, "If it's good for the engine, it has to be good for the generator." So I said to replace it also and save the old belt for me. Actually, I didn't even know the generator had a belt. Who knows what is in that big green box?
    When the job was done, the service rep gave me the belts from the engine and then showed me the belt that came from the generator. It was missing an inch of the inner notched material of the belt. The only thing holding it together was the strong continuous strip on the outside of the belt. Some additional inner material was peeled off the outer belt but still hanging on. It was just a matter of time until the belt derailed and we had generator failure. With temperatures in the low 100's, we really needed the generator to keep the motor home livable while driving.
    So thank you Brett. Your advice saved us a delay or more!
  10. tbutler

    We Have Turkeys

    By tbutler,

    We are currently in the gold hills of California near the town of San Andreas. The abundance of turkeys in this area is amazing! Today we were sitting outside beside the motorhome and I saw a turkey fly by behind Louise, along the main entrance to the park. It landed within view and then circled around the motorhome next to us and back up the road behind me.
    We went to look and there was a whole flock, more than 20 turkeys. They were just across the road from us. This flock wanders through the park on a regular basis. I got up early last to play golf and looked out the window and they were moving through the empty space right next to us.
    Louise and I played golf at a golf course near Valley Springs one morning last week. When we reached the 14th tee, there across the fence from us, less than 50 feet away, was a flock of turkeys resting in the shade. We teed off and they didn't move. We had a great time playing golf.
    At our daughter's home there are turkeys in their yard almost every day. The other day, Louise and I were there in the afternoon. Our granddaughters weren't home, so we settled into a couple of chairs on the back yard patio. There was a small flock of male turkeys (gobblers) in the back yard. They moved away from us but didn't leave the yard. As we sat quietly, they moved back and forth through the yard. They left the yard after about two hours.
    We went bicycle riding yesterday. We did 17 miles on the American River Trail in the Sacramento, CA, area. At the western end of the trail is Discovery Park. Discovery Park is right across the river from the location of Sutter's Mill, which is where gold was discovered in 1849. That started the California Gold Rush. I knew the history, but never knew where exactly Sutter's Mill was located. It turns out we've been by it many times. It is almost directly under the I-5 bridge over the American River where it meets the Sacramento River. We had great weather, cool and sunny.
    Louise blew a tire shortly after we turned back toward the car. Fortunately I had the tools to change the tire and a spare tube with us, so it just delayed us for a little while before we were back on the trail. As we returned to the car, a flock of 20 hens crossed the trail in front of us. We were less than 15 feet away and they calmly kept crossing the bike trail.
    I've seen flocks of turkeys in other parts of the country but they are always wary of people and sightings are brief. In my experience, turkeys are seldom observed at close range. It is certainly not true here in this part of California.
  11. tbutler
    I've been up on the roof washing and cleaning for the last few days. The experience brings to the fore one of the conflicts that plagues me. At heart, I'm a big advocate of trees. They are essential to our existence. Trees are beautiful and useful. Trees are also a nuisance.
    On the good side, trees provide shade and keep our motor home cool. We're in San Andreas, California, and the forecast for the next two days are temperatures in the 100s, so I'll really appreciate the trees around us. I have many favorite memories of trees, but one of the best was in 2003 in northern California, riding my bicycle on the Redwood Highway. To ride along through a forest of these giants was inspiring. It was early morning, there was little traffic, so most of the time it was me and the trees. I've stood in awe looking up at limbs on a Sequoia that are the size of other large trees. Trees anchor the riverbanks on streams I've canoed. Trees and other plants made coal that provides much of our electricity. So what could possibly be wrong with trees?
    A year ago we were parked under the tree from h*ll. It was early spring and the leaves were popping out. With each leaf came a few fragments of the bud packing a very sticky sap. They covered the ground, stuck to our shoes and showed up on the carpet in the motor home. Unfortunately, they also fell on the toad and on the roof of the motor home. A year later, I'm still trying to get the sap off the roof. There are a few spots that won't come off. Fortunately, a year of sunshine had dried most of the sap and it's chipping off a little at a time. I know that the trees contributed only a small amount of the dirt on the roof, but still, I hate to park under trees.
    We stayed at a park in Golden, Colorado, recently. It was a park without trees. I really enjoyed the stay. The sites were side-by-side sites with about 6 feet between us and the neighboring RVs. We had large 5th wheels on either side, so they provided good shade for the morning and afternoon sun. It was life without trees and I enjoyed not worrying about what was dropping on the motor home. One afternoon I helped my brother-in-law clean the leaves and maple seeds out of his gutters.
    At our current park, we cut tree branches to get into our site without scraping the paint off the motor home. Once in place we carefully located so we could put our slides out without having branches in contact with the sides and roof of the motor home. Today on the roof, removing dirt and sap, I'm ducking branches. There are two large oak trees to our west that give us some great shade in the late afternoon. We didn't park under them because we listened to the acorns dropping on the roof of RVs in those spaces last year. Tomorrow I'll tackle the air conditioners. I need to blow the leaves out of the cooling fins.
    I love trees.
  12. tbutler
    I've enjoyed reading a number of recent BLOGs from fellow travelers. It is good to see so many continuing stories. We each have different stories that illustrate the joy of traveling in a motor home. For our part, we have been "stuck" in one spot for two months now with just a short trip for a break. Stuck really isn't the proper word. We are at my daughter's home in Foristell, in eastern Missouri. We have attended my son's wedding, tended my mother after a fall in her home, returned to Texas for three weeks of construction on our new home and done babysitting duties at my daughter's home. Through all this our motor home has set motionless, parked, waiting for our command to roll forth on our next adventure.
    Last week we spontaneously put together a week trip around the area. I called my son and we joined him his new wife and two of our grandchildren for a float trip on a central Missouri stream. They drove to Ozark Outdoors Campground Friday morning, taking a tour of Onondoga Cave on the way to the campground. We left in the late afternoon after leaving my orthopedist's office about 2:30 p.m. We arrived in the campground at dark and hooked up water and electric before hitting the sack.
    Our float trip on Saturday was the first for our grandchildren and Jeff's new wife Melissa (and her two dogs). Our float trips normally occur in the spring or fall when temperatures are cooler and the crowds are smaller. This was a completely different trip. The wildlife we saw on this trip were in rafts sipping from aluminum cans of brewed beverages. It wasn't really that rowdy, just not the usual quiet trips we're used to where we see an occasional deer, a constant parade of ducks and herons, turtles, snakes and other living things.
    Jeff and family left after the float trip, we elected to stay in the campground overnight and depart Sunday morning. Without television (too many trees) or Internet (too far from the interstate), we had a quiet evening and retired early for a good night's sleep. The next morning we were off to join friends near Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. Tommy and Terry are friends we met at our Texas winter retreat. They farm a sizable piece of land, some owned and some rented, in a valley near Montreal, Missouri. We arrived to find our friends Bill and Laura (also friends we met at our Texas park) hooked up to full utilities and there was a similar site for us on the opposite side of the driveway!
    Tommy and Terry are both serious enthusiasts of horseback riding. Tommy has been pursuing roping in the last few years and we enjoyed roping his metal "calf" in the front yard. Our friends Bill and Laura had been staying with Tommy and Terry for several days and they joined us Monday morning for a horseback ride. Tommy saddled up horses for all of us and we set out for a four hour ride. I said he was serious - horses, saddles and tack for six - no problem.
    I drew a very well trained horse for the ride. Fred was probably the best horse I've ever ridden. We reached a near instant understanding, I would let Fred know what I wanted to do and he would do it, all the time giving me the illusion that I was in control. We could stop, turn, stand still to take a picture, then rejoin the rest of the riders. Fred would even back up when I wanted! We rode to a cave so large that we could ride the horses into the cave entry for at least 100 feet. We rode past several old barns from the 20's and 30's and one farm house from that era. They are now so far off the road that no one lives in or uses them. In an age past, a long stretch of rough gravel and dirt roads was no inhibition to living in a location. People were simply more self reliant, less dependent on their community for food and supplies.
    We returned before an afternoon thunderstorm swept across the valley. From the vantage point of their home on a hillside overlooking the valley, the progress of the thunderstorm was an awesome sight. Then there was food, lots of food. Terry made it her mission to destroy any diets! We laughed, visited, shared pictures and generally had a good time. Terry would go to the hospital early Tuesday morning for gall bladder surgery. We would depart somewhat later on our way to the St. Louis area with our friends Bill and Laura.
    In St. Louis we camped at Babler State Park near Chesterfield, Missouri. The sites are just large enough for our motor homes and we will have 50A electric to keep us cool in the very hot summer weather. Upon our arrival, Louise and I head for our "last" doctors appointment for this visit. I pass the dermatologist's inspection, no skin problems. Louise has one suspect spot on her leg and a biopsy is taken. In one moment, our visit has been extended two weeks to wait for results and possibly longer for treatment. There is one more stop at a chiropractor's office to seek treatment for Louise's stiff neck. The doctor examines Louise and takes x-rays. A follow up visit is scheduled for the next day. We return to the state park discussing our changing plans.
    Wednesday, Bill and I played 18 holes of golf at a fine Gary Player golf course, Tapawingo. It was really hot and humid but we enjoyed playing golf together on a beautiful course. Louise and Laura went to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis and enjoyed their visit. On their way home they stopped at the chiropractor to get results of the x-rays. Louise called to discuss the chiropractor's plan for two weeks of visits. Since we were staying for several weeks more anyway, this worked right into our tentative plans.
    We BBQ'd steaks and played cards into the night. Thursday would be our last day together as Bill and Laura had to return home. We started the day with a trip to the chiropractor, Louise got her second treatment, noticing some improvement in her neck pain and mobility. We picked up Bill and Laura and headed for a St. Louis landmark, the Anheuser Busch Brewery. Almost 64 years old and a life-long resident of the area, I had never toured the brewery. We all enjoyed the tour. The brewery is an old structure which has been meticulously cared for. There are ornate features inside and out on many of the buildings.
    From there we headed to Laclede's Landing on the currently bank full Mississippi River. In fact the river covered the cobblestone parking lots which are normally accessible along the river front. Hannigan's Restaurant served up a fine lunch and we set out to walk the grounds of the Gateway Arch. From there we visited the Old Cathedral just to the south of the Arch grounds. We had tickets for a Cardinal's baseball game and spent a little bar time downtown near the stadium before the game. We all enjoyed wonderful tickets behind home plate (a gift from a season ticket holder to my sister). We all enjoyed watching the Cardinals put runs on the scoreboard and win the first game of a series against the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers.
    Friday morning we depart, returning to our berth in my daughter's driveway. Bill and Laura head on to Kansas City for a visit with his brother before heading home. Once more our motor home has given us a fine adventure. Family and friends, adventures and sightseeing, and sporting events all in a single week. Louise just got word from the dermatologist that the suspect spot is benign. We will head west to Colorado as soon as her chiropractor releases her.
  13. tbutler
    We've enjoyed the History Channel the last few days as they do their annual replay of US history. As we watch the programs it occurs to me that our experience traveling in the motor home for the last 9 years has given us a much closer connection to so many of the places that are mentioned on these programs.
    Our understanding of any idea or concept is easier and more complete if we've had some personal experience with some part of the background or context of the idea. When it comes to history, the most important connection to make is time. As we have aged, we get a better sense of time as it relates to US history. It helps that we have lived about 25% of the US history since 1776. Somehow it makes the past a little less distant.
    Another experience that helps understand history is to witness the changes that have taken place within our lifetime. To move from radio to HD TV, cell phones, twitter and e-mail is in itself a revolution. Of course, the history of RVs in our lifetime is equally as revolutionary. The difference of our lives today compared to what they would have been 60 years ago is startling. Having personal experience with this kind of change helps us understand the vastly different world in which our ancestors lived.
    But the biggest experience that helps understand the history of the U.S. is having traveled, lived in and explored much of the country. We've walked Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields and toured numerous military forts and museums. We've seen the gold fields and panned for gold. We've visited railroad, auto and aviation museums. We've climbed volcanoes and rafted rivers. In short, we've explored this great country from one end to the other.
    The History Channel programs continue ... buffalo, the Sioux Nation, Black Hills, more gold, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Manhattan and the modern skyscraper. Our motor home has made exploring all this possible in a way that no other means of transportation could. So today we celebrate the independence of this great country and we also salute the motor home and the independence it has given us.
  14. tbutler
    There must be a message here. Perhaps we should not be setting up household but should continue to stay full time on the road! We have had no end of weather delays this spring while trying to get our manufactured home on site and ready for occupancy.
    Each of three stages of concrete pour had to be delayed, some several times, due to heavy rain. Once we had concrete we had to wait several weeks for the ground to dry enough to bring in the manufactured home. Construction of an addition also has been delayed by rain. But finally after several weeks of construction we were just a few days from finishing the job. I left on Sunday the 27th to return to our motor home in Foristell, MO. It is a two day drive with an overnight along the way. I was driving the Trailblazer which is faster than the motor home but much less comfortable. By the end of the drive I was weary and also aware of the changing course of Alex, the hurricane.
    Monday morning I called our contractor to ensure that all the construction materials would be removed and the missing windows and garage door would be boarded up to prevent damage to the structure. Tuesday I watched the weather and worried about everything getting done while watching the developing path of Alex. For a while it seemed as if it was headed directly for South Texas. It ended up well south in Mexico but that put South Texas on the windward side of the hurricane where the heaviest weather would occur.
    Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment, routine check up. My blood pressure was a little higher than my normal good pressure. Meanwhile I was watching rain bands wind their way over South Texas, one after another.
    Thursday evening we finally got a report from friends at Sandpipers letting us know the status of the weather and our home. A total of seven inches of rain fell in the vicinity of the park. There is a field that floods with heavy rain and it was once again "Lake Sandpiper." The debris on our driveway showed that the lake shore reached about half way up the sloped section of the driveway. By the time the pictures were taken, the water had receded about 4 inches.
    Once the water recedes from the driveway and the road clears, perhaps by Tuesday, we'll be able to get the final windows and garage door installed. I called the supplier of the sun screens for our windows and he assured me he would replace the one which disappeared sometime during the storm. By the end of this week we may finally have a home. We can't wait to hear that the job is done. It will be October before we are able to inspect the final work and occupy our home.
  15. tbutler

    Heat Lightning

    By tbutler,

    I am at our new home in Edinburg, Texas. Louise is in Foristell, Mo., with the motor home. We've been meeting in the evenings via phone to catch up on the day's happenings. I was hoping to be able to tell her I would be leaving in the morning to join her, but construction continues on our home. At the end of the day when all has quieted down, I have been enjoying the evening on the porch of our manufactured home.
    We have been staying at Sandpipers Resort in Edinburg for nine winters now. They call us Winter Texans and it is not a derogatory term when people here in the Rio Grande Valley call us that. We are an essential part of the economy of the valley. Every year 50,000 or so of us assemble in a wide variety of RV parks. Many people have mobile homes here in these parks. Louise and I are now among them. We figured if we're going to keep coming back here we might as well live comfortably while here. So we moved a manufactured home onto our lot in May. We've been busy turning it into a home. Weather this year has been quite wet and this has delayed much of the concrete work. Anyway, here I am, no longer a Winter Texan; I'm a Summer Texan! Boy do I know it. I can work until about 2:00 in the afternoon and then I'm shot for the day. Anything else I accomplish is a bonus.
    Anyway, back to the porch. We have friends who have built porches on the front of their manufactured homes. We ordered ours with a porch. It's just 8 feet by 18 feet but it is a great place to enjoy an evening. This evening after talking to Louise I was thinking about sitting on the porch on a summer evening. I remember in my childhood, way too long ago, sitting on my grandparents' porch in the evening. We lived on the other side of town so we frequently spent an evening with my mother's parents. They lived on a farm north of Warrenton, Missouri, where I was raised. In those days, we had no idea what was happening over the horizon. The news and weather information was quite different from today. We used to see meteors, occasionally. Once in a great while we'd see an aurora.
    One of the things we saw frequently in the Midwestern summer was called heat lightning. I saw heat lightning this evening. It always happened on those hot summer evenings. You could see flashes of lightning in the sky, kind of like a flash bulb (remember those?) going off somewhere behind the neighbors house. I never knew it by any other name than heat lightning.
    This evening I checked the Weather Bug and the thunderstorm I was seeing was near Monterrey, Mexico. Almost 100 miles away, well beyond the distance where I would see clouds but the flashes of lightning were still visible here in Edinburg, Texas. I thought of the heat lightning of my childhood and how things had changed. Now I could look on the internet and find the exact location of that lightning I was seeing in the southwestern sky. But more than that, I realized why I enjoy sitting out on the porch and enjoying a warm summer evening. I was raised doing exactly that. What was a good experience in childhood remains satisfying in old age.
    Does anyone even use the term heat lightning anymore or is that a now extinct term? There really is no such thing as heat lightning. We're really just seeing the flashes of lightning from distant thunderstorms. I think of the term as a reflection of a time when things beyond our horizon were totally out of reach. It was an innocent age, those flashes of heat lightning could have been someones severe thunderstorm but we didn't know that. Nature's fireworks, heat lightning. Get outside and watch the evening sky. If you are in the Midwest, you'll see heat lightning!
  16. tbutler

    Stuff

    By tbutler,

    Do you have stuff? We have stuff! George Carlin used to do a routine on stuff. He had stuff, but he had another s word for other people's stuff. George was probably right, we have too much stuff. Andy Rooney, are you reading this?
    Louise and I are coming in off the road. In July of 2001 we moved into a 1994 Monaco Dynasty (no slides) and we've been living on the road ever since. This fall Louise decided we needed a home, so like a good husband I set about working on the project.
    We knew where we wanted to land. We had talked about it for years. We found the community -- RVers and people living in mobile and manufactured homes in deep south Texas. We were fortunate to find a place where we "fit" in to the community. It's always been a retirement community but one that is highly active. We've joined in the activities and contributed our own leadership to some of them. It is a community that thrives in the winter as flocks of northerners flee the s and c (snow and cold). Fully a third of our winter residents fly the maple leaf.
    Any normal person would just look up manufactured homes on the Web, pick one and have it hauled in. Louise calls my projects "a Butler." I like to plan out every detail and get everything right. Nothing just happens, I plan it. So I've had many episodes of planning at 4 a.m. The result is that everything (well, almost everything) is going according to plan. The schedule is way out of whack, but we're getting it done.
    So now we are accumulating stuff. I spent a day putting up towel bars, shower rods and other accessories. I needed a shop vac to clean up after myself. We are accumulating lawn and garden tools. I need plumbing tools that are different than RV plumbing tools. Every time I turn around, there is more stuff. Stuff we can't get by without. We're building an addition on the house for our stuff. The stuff needs shelves and closets.
    When we moved all our stuff that was stored in my daughter's basement for the last nine years, it filled a 5' x 8' U-Haul trailer. Needless to say, we're up to a U-Haul truck already and there is no end in sight. It is time for you to get back into the stock market. I'm buying stuff, so somebody is making money! A lot of this stuff is Hecho en China! They make lots of cheap stuff and we love cheap! The dining set is Hecho en Malaysia! The shop vac was assembled in the U.S.! Who knows where the parts were hecho. It's a fine shop vac though, a vast improvement over the old one that I had when we last lived in a house.
    So the anchor is set. We now have enough stuff to keep us tied to this location. We'll drift away briefly only to reach the end of our chain and then anchor will bring us back. We'll keep coming back to our stuff here in south Texas. Eventually we'll become feeble and we won't be able to drift away, and we'll huddle among our stuff to the end.
    It was fun being without the stuff. Well, we really weren't without stuff, but we had almost all of our stuff in a motorhome. We set our schedule to suit ourselves and the people we love. We would wake up in the morning and discuss our plans for the coming weeks, throwing in thoughts about changes. We were gypsies. Now we have stuff.
  17. tbutler
    Our house arrived on schedule and we are in the process of turning it into a home. Even when the house arrives fully constructed there is so much to be done to make it a home. I watched in fascination as the house was leveled and tied down to its foundation. Being a do-it-yourself kind of guy, I then set about hooking up the water, sewer and electric. To a specialist, these things go quickly. For me, they take somewhat longer. Not content to simply hook up water to the house, I planned a remote line to the front yard. Knowing that I will put in a tankless water heater and a solar hot water pre-heater I put in plumbing connections for a water softener to protect the water heating equipment. Each connection has its own master shut off so that any one can be shut off without turning off all the water to the house. Thus I can work on future additions without disrupting the water for showers or laundry.
    Electric connections are similar. An additional panel will accommodate the power loads of the motor home and the tankless water heater. A junction box provides access to the incoming line so that when it comes time for the additional panel the work will be easier and faster. The work could have gone faster but would have taken longer in the future and would have caused greater inconvenience. This was written on May 8.
    Picking up where I left off with this message, now a month later, we are living in the house. The whole process has been an extraordinary adventure. After getting the house up and running, there was a furniture delivery, then a concrete pour for a room addition. That pour like the first was delayed by the weather until I finally made the call and told the concrete contractor to go ahead a pour despite the forecast for rain. We got a two minute sprinkle just as they were finishing up the concrete. Nerves were on edge but everything turned out fine. The third and final concrete pour was for the driveway and was done while we were in Missouri for my son's wedding. True to form, it was scheduled to be done before we left but it rained again and we had to postpone. It was almost a week before the work could continue.
    About the time we arrived in Missouri for the wedding my computer just about died. The tech that diagnosed it said he didn't know why it was still running. Despite that, they installed a new hard drive with about 1.5 x the capacity of the old one. They installed most of my software, just a few things I'm still working on. I got the computer back last week just in time to return to Texas.
    Our return to Texas was uneventful. We rented a 5x8 foot U-Haul trailer and loaded all our possessions (other than the stuff in the motor home). We had a few things in the Trailblazer but all in all, I thought it was a pretty lean existence. Two days of hard driving and we were at Sandpipers Resort ready to go to work on the room addition.
    In the meantime, my mother fell and broke a bone in her leg. At 87, she is slow to recover. Right now she is in a rehabilitation facility and we, my brother and sisters are dealing with life changing decisions for her. Some of us think her days of living alone in her home are at an end. This fall was unnoticed for about 10 hours and she was dehydrated and hypothermic when she arrived in the emergency room. I stayed in Missouri until she was safely in rehab and hope to complete work on the house before she leaves the rehab facility. It looks like I'll make it, they told her 6 to 8 weeks. Now if the rain would just stop so we could get to work on the room addition. Thunderstorms this afternoon brought a halt to all work. The forecast is the same for tomorrow.
    At any rate, it is good to be back on board! The motor home is safely parked in my daughters driveway in Missouri and we are living in our stick house for the first time in almost 9 years. Can't wait to get back to the motor home! Will we hit the road at all this summer? I sure hope so but it looks like slim pickins (not the actor) this summer.
  18. tbutler
    There are just four days to go until our manufactured (used to be called mobile) home is moved onto our lot at Sandpipers Resort. I guess they renamed them because they tend to be parked pretty permanently once they arrive on their home location so they really aren't that mobile. Now a motor home, that's mobile! What a funny language we have. Here in the Rio Grande Valley the mobile homes do usually move one more time. Local residents, many of them recent immigrants will buy them for pennies on the dollar when they can no longer stay in the winter Texan parks and they become home to a dozen people in what are called the Colonias. These are small communities with minimal utilities and hardly any roads that become their dream home, getting a toe hold on the good ol' USofA. It's the modern version of a "soddie."
    Anyway, I'm in the process of running the utilities from the fence line through the conduit to the location where they will be hooked up to the house. Today I managed to get the water line connected and ready to hook into the house. There is a satisfaction that goes with getting everything to fit and work like it should that is hard to achieve in the more temporal occupations. I like building things. I'm not particularly talented at it, every project is a learning experience. I do love to learn!
    Today Tom and Adelle stopped by to watch me work and visit. I bowled (had my best ever game, a 255) with them several years ago and really enjoyed getting to know them. Tom offered any tool (no help but any tool) I needed. Since I was working on plumbing he offered to bring me his PVC pipe cutter. I had never seen one but, OK, I'll try anything once. He brought it and it looked like a giant scissors. Well, that is exactly what is was and it cuts PVC pipe like a scissors. Wow, I never thought this was possible. For years I cut PVC pipe with a saw. So, I learned something new. There's a tool I've got to have! But, hey, I've got friends and I do have that tool!
    I found that the main cut-off for our lot didn't cut-off anything, the water kept flowing so I had to shut down one whole section of the park and install a new cut off valve. Thanks to Tom's pipe cutter, I had it all done in 10 minutes. That was a snap! I don't think anyone even knew the water was off. There are only two other couples home in that part of the park. One helped me find the main shut off valve and the other was mowing his yard right by the valve! I guess they knew. Can't get away with anything in a close community.
    This evening I made a trip to town (Edinburg) to Lowe's to get supplies to keep a crew busy tomorrow. They will arrive at 7:00 a.m. to avoid the heat to the day. We'll put in a half day and by then the temperatures will be well into the 90's. That's why most everyone has headed north by this time. The park becomes a quiet ghost town. During the peak season in the winter, there will be over a hundred people at a feast. We'll be lucky to have 30 people at Cinco de Mayo. It is a quiet calm that makes the park quite enjoyable.
    Tomorrow I have several members of the concrete crew (see my previous post) coming at 7:00 a.m. and we'll work on some landscaping and final preparations for the arrival of the house. Half the lawn can be roughed in and that is tomorrow's agenda. I have all the "stuff" for the day. Some conduit and gutter drains to be put under the dirt fill. I also have a shopping list for the next day! I hope Lowe's is open late tomorrow night. My project for Sunday is to get the electric run from the main panel on the fence to the point where they will hook up to our home. Bring it in and plug it in! I've done that a few hundred times!
    I'm excited!
  19. tbutler
    For almost a month we have been trying to get concrete poured for a manufactured home at our winter home in Edinburg, Texas. Today we finally achieved our goal. We have concrete. It is curing and we will have our home moved onto our lot next Tuesday... if the weather holds. Heavy rains could still make the move impossible but we are looking at good forecasts with temperatures in the 90's, sunshine and low humidity.
    Meanwhile, we have picked out the furniture for three rooms and just went shopping for appliances. Almost as soon as the house is delivered we'll have the basics for living in the house. We won't be there long. We'll be departing for our usual summer travels as soon as we get everything set up.
    I really enjoy working with the crew that did the concrete work for us. There are ten workers, all speaking fluent Spanish if not speaking only Spanish. Luis and his brother Javier are the crew leaders. Luis does all the business end of things and Javier is the crew boss. The rest of the crew speak English in varying degrees. I was talking with Luis today before the first concrete truck arrived. He mentioned the language of the workers and commented on the attitude of many people about non English speaking people. I related to him our visit to Ellis Island this summer.
    One of the things that impressed me about this wonderful place was a room that had books brought by the European immigrants, some of their writings and one wall filled with ballots from many locations in the country printed in every language from Europe. Clearly, the ancestors of many if not most of us came to this country speaking a language other than English. Ellis Island should be on your list of places to visit. There are photographs of immigrants coming to America and the faces tell stories that are hard to miss. You can not look at the faces of these people and not feel compassion for them and their plight. What brave people they were and what wonderful contributions they made to this country.
    Immigrants have always looked different from "us." Immigrants have almost always talked different from "us." Immigrants have consistently enriched the United States of America even though the people who came to America weren't always the best educated, most upstanding citizens. Their experience and hard work have built the great country we have today. The concrete crew that did the work for us today is an example of the kind of immigrants we've had in the past. They came to America with one plan in mind, to work hard and to give their children a better life than they have had.
    I really appreciate the hard work these men did for us today and I don't care what language they speak, the language of their work is universal. They are recent immigrants to the United States of America and they are following in the footsteps of many of our ancestors. America has a bright future with hard working individuals like these men.
  20. tbutler
    We have been home from the sea for just over three weeks now. I had grand plans for our return. I had outlined on my calendar the progress of work that should take place upon our return. We are in the process of putting a manufactured home on a lot at Sandpipers Resort in Edinburg, Texas. The home was ordered in December 2009 and delivered to the sales lot in late January. The lot which would be our home was occupied by another couple who had decided not to follow through on their commitment to put a house on the lot. We negotiated a takeover of the lot as soon as they were going to return to Canada rather than waiting for their contract to expire.
    I had established the Monday after our return as the day for the concrete crew to show up and begin work for the concrete pad for the house. Eight o'clock came, Nine o'clock passed and still no crew. I called the contractor who was on another job and would be on our job Wednesday. Oh, well, I went shopping for a few supplies we needed and rewired the electrical outlet from a 240V 50A motor home box to a quad 120V 20A outlet box. I was now ready to operate any power equipment.
    Shortly before noon on Wednesday the contractor showed up with equipment. Our first task was to do some digging to relocate a sewer connection to a more convenient place for the manufactured home. That turned into an epic adventure, exposing problems that would have haunted us for some time related to the plumbing. We dug and dug, some with the backhoe and some by hand. With the guidance and assistance of my friend Bill Fejfar (pipewrenchgrip) the main sewer line was replaced and connections for the home were installed. Bill was a plumbing contractor for many years and his knowledge was invaluable to me. Then we spent a day installing the feed lines to the sewer and another day putting in the sleeves for the electric and water. Finally, the connections were all in place and it was the weekend. The next week the crew began work on the lot in earnest. Being environmentally and engineering aware, I had the topsoil removed to be replaced with consolidated fill material which in south Texas is called caliche, a weatherd degraded limestone. We got some fine grained material and that was packed firmly in place and leveled by machine and then finally graded by hand. Forms were put in place and steel reinforcement added to reinforce and strengthen the concrete. By Friday afternoon I was on the phone with the dealer for the home requesting the tie down anchors be put in place in preparation for pouring concrete.
    Monday arrived and the forecast was for rain so no concrete would be poured. It did however pour rain, almost three inches. Louise and I went furniture shopping. We spent the day and found basic furniture for three of the rooms in the home. We set a delivery date for May 6 and congratulated ourselves for finding a good sale and furniture we liked. When we got home I inspected the forms and my heart fell. The rain had been so heavy that the caliche had washed into the footings and there was water standing in the forms. This would cause a major delay. Tuesday came and it rained another inch or more. More of the caliche slumped into the footings and water was standing almost a foot deep in the footings. This was disaster. We had a little more rain on Wednesday, then clear, warm breezy days for the rest of the week until Saturday night when we got another set of thunderstorms and an additional inch of rain.
    Monday I played golf. It rained Monday night. Today I played tennis until we got rained out. The forecast for the rest of the week is for partly cloudy to sunny skies and very little chance of rain. The crew showed up this morning to remove the iron and the forms in preparation for starting over with the grading, packing, forming and returning the steel to the forms. Meanwhile my son gave me a suggestion for getting the concrete trucks onto the soggy lot without getting them stuck. He is an engineer and worked for the electric company and the highway department. With luck, we might pour concrete by the weekend. I hope. My patience is wearing thin...
  21. tbutler

    The Year of the Puddle

    By tbutler,

    In China this is the year of the Tiger. Here in South Texas it is the year of the puddle.
    We are in temporary digs at our winter resort. We sold the improvements on our home lot for the last several years and moved to a different lot until we can get a mobile home on what will become our home address in coming years. So, we are right across the street from the office and community room near the entrance of the park. It is the "oldest" part of the park and the roads are beginning to show it. Now in a normal year, you wouldn't notice, but the winter of 2009-2010 hasn't been normal.
    If you haven't heard, this winter has been an El Niño year. A surface current in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean has disrupted normal weather patterns and everyone notices this in one way or another. Southern California gets heavy rainfall. There is flooding Las Vegas. Record snowfalls are recorded across the United States and snow is falling in unusual places.
    El Niño, for those who aren't familiar with it, is an unusually warm surface temperature that occurs every few years. This year, the outbreak has been characterized by a very strong (5 degrees above normal), long-lasting outbreak that covers a very large area. You can learn more about El Niño at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration web site. Click on the words El Niño in blue and you'll see a depiction of the recent activity.
    The good news is that the temperature difference is currently about 4 degrees above normal for most of the warmest area. That is a tiny bit closer to normal! Funny how all that warm water way out there in the Pacific Ocean could dump so much snow and rain on the U.S. It just illustrates the complexity of the climate and weather of this wonderful planet Earth.
    So all that has translated into this puddle in front of our motorhome. It fluctuates, one day small, the next day large. Once in a while it disappears only to pop up again the next day. The puddle comes from rain that doesn't drain away. Instead it drains into the road and there it sits in low spots. When we leave the coach we have to plot a course around the puddle or in some cases between puddles. This contrasts with last year when we had hardly any rain at all. We were constantly under fire hazard warnings and open burning was prohibited for weeks at a time.
    We've had plenty of rain here in South Texas this winter. Despite all the rain and the puddle, we know we have it good. A phrase often heard around the park is, "At least we don't have to shovel it!" As long as El Niño continues we can all expect unusual and extreme weather. It could be a real exciting spring!
  22. tbutler
    Winter is just about over here in the southern tip of Texas. We've recently had a flurry of activity which keeps our minds off the cool weather, wind and rain we've had for the last two months. Last week Louise and I led three excursions for our park. Each of these was a delightfully different treat.
    On Wednesday we escorted a group from the park to the Cowley Sugar House in Santa Rosa, Texas. The distance is a moderate 40 miles and the trip was relatively easy with local roads most of the way. A security guard welcomed us to the Cowley Sugar House, which is the only sugar cane processing plant in Texas.
    We were directed to the office, where we were met by the safety officer, Ramiro Garces. He outlined the sugar growing, harvesting and processing that takes place in the area. For years we've seen the sugar fields burning but never knew exactly how or why this was done. It turns out that the field is burned to make the harvesting easier and more profitable. The harvesting machines don't have to work as hard and the harvest goes faster when the field is burned. It takes just 20 minutes to burn a field of 40 acres. After the fire, the sugar cane is left standing without all the leaves. The cane is cut and shredded by the harvester, transported to carriers and then transferred to tractor trailers for transportation to the mill. At the mill the fiber in the sugar cane is separated from the sugar. The fiber is dried and burned to produce all the electricity needed to run the mill. The sugar is concentrated into raw sugar and the molasses, a byproduct, is sold to the animal feed industry. The raw sugar is shipped to a refinery in Louisiana.
    Sugar cane is a perennial plant and is only replanted when the production of a field falls too low to be profitable. There are 119 sugar growers here in the Rio Grande Valley. They are all members of the cooperative that owns the Cowley Sugar House. It was very interesting to learn about an industry that we see all the time.
    Thursday, we took a group of 24 friends to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. As zoos go, this one is small but it makes up for size with its displays which have some of the best viewing of any zoo we have visited. The animals were all active so we got to see plenty of action. We were escorted on a behind the scenes tour of the zoo by Emma Mitchell from the education department. We learned how the animals are fed and their cages cleaned. We were able to feed a pair of Galapagos tortoises and even pet one on the head. The whole group of tigers at the zoo are from discarded or confiscated pets. The island populated by spider monkeys is also a collection of former pets. It is good that the zoo is able to take some of these, but the discarded animals far exceed the capacity of the zoo. It is a sad commentary on human behavior. After a water break, we enjoyed seeing many of the smaller animals that are used by the education department and then the group dispersed to eat lunch and explore the entire zoo on our own.
    On Friday afternoon we traveled to Port Isabel to have dinner at the Port Isabel Yacht Club Hotel and Restaurant. We've visited the Yacht Club many times when we bicycle through Port Isabel. We've always said that we would love to eat dinner there some time so Louise took the lead and organized the trip.
    There were 16 people who made the 80 mile drive for dinner. Eight of us stayed the night at the Yacht Club to complete the adventure. Built in 1920, the Yacht Club has the look of a Bogie and Becall movie set. It hosted many distinguished guests, some notorious like Al Capone and others famous such as Lindbergh and Earhart.
    We arrived early and had cocktails in the parlor amid antique furniture and furnishings. The building is being restored by its present owner and has a long way to go but the restaurant serves up a fine meal and the staff is quite friendly. To say the rooms are rustic is to be generous. Still, if you enjoy the ambiance of an old resort with great character, this is a fine place to spend a night or two. Everyone enjoyed their experience.
    The trees in our park are breaking out in tiny green leaves and we'll have tons of flowers by the end of the month. Temperatures here in the Rio Grande Valley will be warming into the 80s on a regular basis soon and the winter will quickly be forgotten. One year we left the valley early to attend a convention in Philadelphia at the end of March. As we drove north we left the roadsides bursting with flowers behind. Driving north on the third day Louise turned to me and asked what had killed all the trees? I laughed and said, "They aren't dead, it is winter here." We both laughed. We had become so adjusted to the short southern winters that it was now a surprise to see all the leafless trees in March.
    The good news, my friends, is that the trees will be turning green further north soon. A wave of green will make its way all the way to the Arctic Circle and beyond. Daylight is getting longer each day and spring is on the way. It is time to start planning your summer travels and getting the motor home ready for the trip!
  23. tbutler

    Blogging

    By tbutler,

    BLOG is a contraction of the words weB LOG. Wikipedia says a BLOG is "regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video." According to Wikipedia, "As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112,000,000 blogs."
    So the idea here is to weave a continuous account of the events or activities of an individual, group or organization. Continuous is the tough part. We all have routine days when nothing seems extraordinary to us and so we don't think to mention what is going on. This describes our past month and thus I feel I haven't gathered enough to report on. While our life seems routine, it is far from that by any measure.
    I was on the phone talking to my insurance company today. A rock in the windshield brings a need for repair. In talking to the agent, I have to give my home address in South Dakota, my phone number from Missouri and my current location where the repair will be done here in Edinburg, Texas! I am so far outside the norm that I have to take charge of making sure that they understand all this. I've learned to do this over the last 8 years of living full time. Patience I tell myself, just explain it one more time. If I don't say it they'll schedule my repair for my home address in South Dakota... Who, after all wouldn't be at home in South Dakota? Have you looked at the weather there? This morning the temperature was zero, nada, zip, nothing, for the poor folks who live where my mail is collected and forwarded.
    I've played tennis Sunday morning and golf in the afternoon. Now I'm recovering from that burst of activity. Monday was cool and today we had a rainy day with temperatures in the 50's and we complain! We're looking forward to temperatures in the 70's on the last day of 2009 and slightly cooler to start 2010. At our park we'll dance until the bell tolls 12:00 p.m. then drink champagne with hugs all around. We are very much a family here at Sandpipers Resort. So much so that Louise and I are in the throe's of planning our residence here in the park. If all goes as planned, we'll have a grand mobile home (today they are called manufactured homes) set up ready for occupancy when we return in the fall. At that point I suppose we'll cease to be full timers in the strictest definition of the word. We'll still have the motor home and travel in the summers to escape the heat that no one who can afford to will flee. Someday when the motor home becomes more than we can handle we'll have to give up even that semblance of living on the road.
    And so my friends, I challenge you to take a minute to create another "regular entry" in your BLOG here on the FMCA web site. You are far from the ordinary person. You have discovered the lure of the road, the romance of travel, and you own a magical machine capable of transporting you in the comfort of home to the remote corners of our continent or beyond. What is your story? What have you done in 2009? Where are you going in 2010? So many BLOGS, so little activity. Let us resolve to change this in 2010.
  24. tbutler
    Louise and I were invited to dinner Friday night. The campground owners here at Sandpipers Resort where we have stayed each winter for nine years now invited 14 of us to dinner. It was seven couples who have assisted them in improving the resort in one way or another. Most of them were involved in the construction of a new shower house for the resort this past summer. Louise and I contributed other skills. Louise is writes the publicity materials for the resort and occasionally has articles published in magazines or newsletters. I have been the camp photographer for a number of years providing publicity photos and doing photos for campground documentation and history.
    This was a gourmet dinner for 16 people. The chef for this magnificent meal was our neighbor in the park last year and we got to know him well then. Chef Robert is from Quebec. He and his wife, Lucy, have returned for their second year. Chef Robert worked for a major airlines at their Canadian headquarters, preparing food for the airline executives. He began preparing sauces and other parts of the meal on Wednesday. All day Thursday and Friday he was in the kitchen, chopping, peeling, cooking. When Friday evening came, the community room had been transformed into a fine restaurant. Chef Robert was busy making the final preparations for this nine-course gourmet meal. His assistants, Lucy, and another long-time campground resident, Marijanne, were servers bringing each course of the meal to us in turn.
    The meal started with a little wine and appetizers, an assortment of bitesize crackers, breads, cheese and various additions from peppers to seafood. Then there came Crouton with Camembert Mediterranean, which was listed as each item was on the menu in French with the English translation below. We had Les Antipastos "Sandpipers," Comcombre farci aux crabie et cury (Stuffed cucumber with crab meat curry), soup garnished with pears and carrots, asparagus au gratin. Then came the salade of Padre Pius. The main course was a choice of salmon with side dish, chicken with pink pepper or pork bourguignon. Finally there was desert, a bananas Foster, ice cream, cake combination.
    Just naming these preparations hardly does them justice. Each involved intricate preparations and were presented in a beautiful arrangement on their own plate. Sauces provided flavors that were spectacular. I summed it up at the end of the meal saying, "I have never had such a sophisticated meal." So this is how the other half lives! Wow! We were all satiated. The meal, three days in preparation, had been served over almost three hours and we had ample time for conversation in the meantime.
    I chuckled to myself as we left, thinking that most people would never expect to get such a marvelous meal at a campground. Even more amazing is that the talent for preparing such a meal was right here in the campground with us. But that was the point of the meal. Gary is a retired carpenter and contractor. He has his own wood shop here at the campground. He helped me with my TV remodeling last year. Tony and his wife, Sherry, are in charge of general maintenance, landscaping and mowing, etc. Jamie and Tonya have constructed a wonderful gate and entrance for our park. Jamie did much of the custom metal work, including custom made heavy duty stalls in the shower house. Tonya works on landscaping and grounds maintenance on a regular basis. Bill helped with the carpentry and his wife, Karen, has created a variety of campground logo merchandise. Garland was also a carpentry assistant. Together all the carpenters constructed and shingled the roof of the shower house, built storage shelves, etc. Roy has been the electrician for the project and for other work in the campground. All these amazing talents and more right here in this community of mostly retired people. What a wonderful community we have.
    The owners, Karen and Jay, have plans for more of these dinners for others in the park who have contributed their talents. It is a community where everyone pitches in to help with meals, entertainment, social events, recreation activities and so much more. There is the fudge lady, the blogger, the wine experts, the DJ, the bike ride leader, golf organizer, water volleyball leader, sound technician, plumber, computer expert, welder, truck driver, Spanish teacher, charity organizer, and blood drive organizer. Everyone brings talents and willingly shares them with the community.
  25. tbutler
    The giant sequoias and redwoods of California are trees without parallel. To walk in a forest of such magnificent size is a privilege that few people in the world have. There is no way to read about the sequoias and redwoods and truly appreciate them. Our base camp was at Visalia, CA. We hiked numerous trails in Sequoia National Park. To see trees partially burned out and still standing tall and strong was amazing. Realizing that the branches of these trees are the size of the trunks of what we would consider huge trees is also amazing. It is no wonder that loggers looked at these trees and immediately thought about the tremendous amount of wood they would provide. Unfortunately or fortunately perhaps, there is no way to fell one of these trees and get useful lumber from them. Walking up to a log in the forest provides another way to drink in the majesty of these giants.
    After admiring the General Sherman and Grant Trees, we hiked the Congress trail at a leisurely pace, learning more about the sequoias as we walked around and through them. The Congress Group is an impressive assemblage of giant sequoias. These trees reinforce each other through interlocking and sometimes shared roots. The Big Trees Loop Trail is a shorter trail among some very large trees. Finally one of the most spectacular view points in the park is at Moro Rock. There are rails all along the way for safety. The steep climb up stairs and ramps is not for the feint of heart. It leads to a windy spot atop a narrow bare rock. From there the view is shear rock faces and deep valleys. You get a real top-of-the-world feeling from that point. There are bears in Sequoia National Park, we saw one that retreated across the road ahead of us. We saw a few deer but wildlife is not the high point here. The trees are the stars here.
    In the Redwoods, we never made it to Redwood National Park but found plenty of redwoods at Humbolt Redwoods State Park and along the Old Redwood Highway. Our campground at Redcrest on the Old Redwood Highway was an excellent point from which to explore the entire Redwood area. We were in fact camped under a redwood tree in a grove of redwoods. We were a short drive from Humbolt Redwoods State Park. The redwoods are the tallest trees, towering over even the sequoias. I rode my bicycle along the old redwood highway in the early mornings feeling both insignificant and the luckiest person on Earth at the same time. We enjoyed a number of trails among the redwoods and learned much about their history and life cycle. We also drove our car through a redwood tree and explored a tree house in a redwood stump. Redwood trees can and are used for lumber so it is only through the efforts of conservationists and preservationists that the old large trees remain.
    There are small plots of land with redwoods throughout the area. We walked one small plot from one end to the other. Along the way there were interpretative signs. The trail was small and there were no other hikers. The feeling of being alone in a large forest all alone made one feel like a "hobbit," a tiny being in a much larger world. We saw fallen trees with new trees growing from the dead trunks lying horizontal on the ground. We stood beside root balls that were three times our height and walked along the tops of logs well above the forest floor. The scenes were magical in their beauty and we often walked in silence simply admiring the majesty of it all. The sequoias and redwoods are some of the most amazing living wonders of the natural world.
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