March 6, 2015 Well, here we are back in TN. We arrived back here on Feb 1st and I guess we came back a month too soon. Haven't seen weather this cold in a long time. The first thing I thought while unhitching the trailer was "what were we thinking". For the first time in three years we got to see what winter could be like but, seeing the conditions around the rest of the country, we got off easy. It is great to be back home in TN back with family and in familiar surroundings. We love the travel aspect of this lifestyle and have made some good friends in TX, friends that live all over the country and even some from Canada. Home is always home though. OUR TEXAS ADVENTURE, We left TN on July 9, 2012 because it was 115 degrees and it was cooler in south Texas than it was in TN. We were planning on being there at the end of the summer anyway and were a bit anxious to get our new life started on the road. We had purchased a 26' K-Z Spree used and are pulling it with a 2004 GMC Yukon Denali and had no trouble with either during the trip down south. We already had reservations at the "Canyon Lake RV Park and Resort" in Mission, TX. We liked this park a lot. We made some wonderful, hopefully lifelong, friends there. There are plenty of activities to keep you busy day and night. I particularly liked the bi-weekly Texas hold em, tournaments. During the "season" we would have over 20 people participate in them and there were plenty of fun conversations and times had by all. We got involved in the activities of this park even more when Karen started working in the office. She later became the co-director of the activities dept. and so we became even more involved. We loved the bingo, she played and I called, the pot-luck dinners, and especially the Karaoke. There were live music events and jams that were always hopping. All were great ways to get to know your neighbors. A great place to stay if you want to winter in the south. In the summer of 2014 we were asked to be summer hosts of another park "Seven Oaks", which was owned by the same person. This was just one more experience that we would have. I really can't say much about activities at this park since we were there during the summer and the park was pretty much empty except for a few sites and park model homes. There were no regular activities scheduled. Our biggest adventure there was trying to keep the pool usable. I did manage to learn a lot about pool maintenance during our time there so, as I said, just another adventure in our life. When that adventure was over Karen was offered a job at Fig Tree RV Park to work in the office. The park had just recently been bought and new management and all new work campers were on the job. I volunteered to help out until I could find an LPN job and so I worked there, mainly painting, until Nov 1st when other work campers were supposed to come in. They never did and right after that I started having some health issues that kept me in bed for quite a while and still have some trouble walking any long distance. Some day they will figure out what it is. Went to Drs in Harlingen, TX starting with a GP and ending with the orthopedic surgeon. They started with bursitis and that led nowhere. After a couple of weeks of steroid treatment the pain was still the same. This pain totally incapacitated me. I was unable to even get out of bed, I couldn't walk at all. I would just hobble from bed to the table. Luckily, I guess, we live in a very small space and I didn't have to move very far. It didn't matter really because it hurt just as much sitting down or laying down. I finally got some relief through medication for the pain. Eventually I have gotten to a point where I am able to get around pretty good and take care of small things that need to be done, although I still do not feel that I can take on the responsibility of patient care. Finally they were able to do an MRI of my hip. The Dr said that there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hip. Before we were able to get any further Karen lost her position with the park and we were forced to move on. This is when we decided to move back to TN. Now that we are here it starts again. We'll get through this adventure also. Before we were able to move on we had to get the Denali fixed, the transmission wasn't working properly. Thanks to the help of family members we were able to come up with the cost of that. After that was complete we were on the road again. The next problem was that after getting everything hooked up and ready to go the electric in the trailer blew out. All that was left to do was get the slide in. The electric slide (wasn't that a dance?). We ended up, again with the help of friends, being able to manually crank the slide in and finally we were on our way. BACK IN TENNESSEE

We got a work campers position at Texas T Campgound in Cornersville, TN( www.texastcampground.com ). As stated earlier it is good to be home, cold weather and all. Even coming out of a bad winter the views are incredible. First things first, the electrical problem. I didn't want to have to manually crank the slide back out, We were able to get the converter at Camping World and, unexpectedly, it was an exact fit, wire for wire, and we were back in business electrically. Actually it has never worked this well so I guess the converter has been having trouble all along.

. The couple that own this park are the nicest people you could meet. The park is well kept and maintained and for Tennessee incredibly flat. We are glad to be home for a while and get to know the kids and grandkids again. They grow up so fast. As with all our adventures so far this too has been a learning experience. Karen has known how to use Campground Manager, the computer program for registrations, sales, etc.. but it is new to me. I have also learned how to pump propane. They have kept us busy here when the weather will allow. It is finally starting to warm up even if we are getting a considerable amount of rain. See you down the road, Don & Karen

Week 1

   Well, it;s been a week now and we are settling in.  I have found a job with an immunization clinic.  Everyone has probably seen one, they are set up in all the Walmart and Sam's Club locations around the country.  It sounds like a good job and I will actually be making more than I was in TN.  I get to choose my location and hours and there is a Walmart about one mile from us.  I am waiting to get the online training program from them and I will begin work on Aug 1st and it will run through November 1st, by then I will have reached the limit I can make according to Social Security.  Karen has her name in at several temp agencies but they  haven't yet come up with an actual position for her.  It will be nice to get back to work.  This whole adventure would be a lot more interesting if we had a little money to actually do something with.  There are many things around here that we would like to explore but have to put that off for awhile and get back on our financial feet again.  The rent is paid and there's food on the table so life is good.
  Karen and I have been looking into churches in the area and went to mass on Saturday night.  We figured we would try several and then settle down on one that we could get involved in.  After hearing the list of the names of the different parishes I told her we have to go to Our Lady of Perpetual Help,  that is the name of the parish I was baptized in, although that one was in Brooklyn, NY.  It was a nice service and in English.  They have 5 masses there including the Saturday night mass.  The Saturday night mass and the 9 & 11 O'clock masses are in English.   We will try a different parish next week and since there are about 20 Catholic Churches listed we should be able to find one close that we feel we can fit into and contribute to.
  The RV park we are in is on summer hiatus you might say.  There was a landslide so they had to empty the pool to keep the pressure off the walls since the landslide involved the earth wall that supported the pool.  That is all fixed now and they have refilled the pool.

   It really looks nice and should be open in a couple of days.
The lake, right now, looks like a barren wasteland.  It is in the process of being filled again also.  Apparently, because of dry conditions, during the summer they lower the level of the lake.  You can hear the water pouring into the lake  and it seems like it is a lot of water being fed into it but the level of the lake barely changes day to day.  I have picked out a landmark so I can see if it is rising each day.  It is going to be beautiful when it is full.

 Karen says that she is becoming addicted to watching the palm trees sway in the wind.  It is always breezy here from a light breeze to really gusty conditions and it is somewhat relaxing to just sit there and watch it.  The climate here has really been nice.  Like I said there is always a breeze and the humidity never gets that high so it is pleasant most of the time.  the people that we have met here are very friendly.  There aren't too many that are here right now and we are waiting to see what it is like when the park is full.

See  you down the raod,
Don & Karen

Mission, TX ... finally

  I will try to keep all the info correct and in order, it has been a long four days.

  We finally got on the road Saturday morning.  We made it to Harrah's in Tunica, MS without incident.  They have a really nice RV park there and with the Good Sam discount it is about the most reasonable place you can stay.
  We went into the casino only for the purpose of visiting Paula Deen's buffet.  What a meal, the food there is unbelievable.  We both had the prime rib and it was just wonderful, melt in your mouth beef.  OK, I got $5 in free slot play and used it all at the rate of a dollar a minute.  Karen and I both tried our hand at some games for $20 and well that was all we really had to spend there.  Back to the RV and get some rest for the road the next day.
  Sunday we left Tunica at 9:00 AM heading for Bryant AR to see Karen's brother Kenny whom I had never met.  We got to mile market 213 on I-40 in AR.  A semi-tractor had flipped over and blocked the lane.  The bad part of that is that it happened at the exact spot where the roadway narrowed to one lane for construction.  We were stuck in that traffic, at a complete standstill most of the time, for almost three hours.  Karen had to call her brother and let him know that we were not going to be there for lunch.  Arkansas has some of the worst roads I have driven on so the fact that they were working on it was a relief and except for the accident it moved pretty freely the rest of the way.  We had been planning on having lunch and then continuing on to Dallas that sameday. Well, all that construction put us so far behind that we decided to stay overnight in Bryant AR.  Kenny was nice enough to call ahead for us got us a spot at the I-30 RV park for the night.  We didn't even bother to unhitch the trailer.  We just hooked up the electric so the girls (Prissy & Duchess) could have the air on while we were gone.  We leveled the trailer and went with Kenny and his wife Janet to their home.  We had a really nice visit it was great to get to meet them and their three sons, catch up on some news and leave some history, in the form of old photos, with them.  Thank you Kenny and Janet for your hospitality.

  Monday it was off to Dallas.  Of course Karen had been on the phone with everyone letting them know that we weren't going to be there and tell them our change of plans.  On our way there we were flagged down by someone in the next lane who we thought was telling us that our lights were blinking.  Everything seemed to be operating okay.  I tried the lights and they seemed to be fine and the brake controller was telling me it was connected but, the next chance we had to pull off I went to check the connection to make sure that it was secure and everything was working.  It was then that I realized he had been telling us that the license plate was loose.  I took it off and put it in a side window for the time being hoping we wouldn't get stopped for it.  That didn't seem to be a problem and we never did get stopped.  We got to the Destiny RV Park in Denton Texas without further problems and checked in to our site.  Again we parked, hooked up electric, and leveled the trailer and left it hitched to the Denali since we were heading out first thing in the morning.  We had now discovered that we had no money in our bank account.  Some unforeseen debits popped up and now we were traveling cash in hand.  This truly has been an adventure.  Our granddaughter MacKenzie and her boyfriend Evan, who attend University of North Texas in Denton, came and picked us up and we then all went to our friends Rose & Rod's house.  Everyone went in for a swim, well except Rose and me.  They have a wonderful home and it was great to see their daughters Rachael and Becky again.  After everyone got out of the pool and changed we went to meet Rod at Romano's Macaroni Grill for dinner.  It was a wonderful evening of catching up and getting to know each other.  Thank  you Rod & Rose for a wonderful dinner.

  After dinner we went with Evan & MacKenzie to see her new home.  It is a really nice house and we got to see her new puppy Domino. He is just big enough now to fit in your hand.  Thanks for chauffeuring us around town pointing out the highlights as we sped by.
  Tuesday morning it is off to San Antonio, whoops, I mean Mission Texas.  Since we were now lower on funds than we anticipated we decided to go ahead and make the long trip all the way to Mission and not have to spend money on an extra nights stay.  Before we left I decided that since the license plate still had the frame attached I would just duct tape it to the bumper of the trailer.  We repacked the trailer with all the tubs disconnected the electric and raised the leveling jacks and we were off.  Thank God for the Good Sam Club card for Pilot/Flying J we knew we would be able to have enough fuel for the trip.  Using this meant that we would have to alter our route a little bit so that those stops were within our fuel range.  This was nice though since we hadn't been to this part of the country before we got to do a little exploring.  We ended up going through Laredo and seeing some of that city since we were no longer on an interstate.  I will say that Texas has some of the nicest roads you could travel.  As is to be expected in Texas they are all big.  They are all well maintained also.  There was a lot of construction going on but most of it did not interfere with traffic as it was new construction of roads and not just repairs.  On hwy 83 after we left Laredo there was quite a bit of construction on that road also.  We ran into some very heavy rain right after dark that did slow us down a little bit but it ended soon and we continued on.  The speed limits in Texas are higher than "normal" and we had a lot of people passing us.  I tend to be a little on the pokey side and some of the speed limits seemed a little extreme.  At one of our many stops I thought to check and see how the duct tape was holding up and see if I needed to reinforce it at all.  The duct tape was in almost perfect condition,  there was no license plate attached to it but the tape itself was fine.  Somehow the plate had come off the frame.  Well, I guess we'll have to call and see about getting a new one sent to us.
  We arrived at Lake Canyon RV Park at about 10:45 that night.  Needless to say there was no-one in the office but Karen had called to let them know that we would be very late and they left our site location for us on the office door.  We backed into the site, emptied the tubs and set up what we had to and relaxed for a little while then off to bed.
  This morning we went to the office to check in and everyone seems so nice.  We drove around the park to see what it is like.  There are not a lot of people here at this time of year, about 20 according to Kelly in the office.  We have driven around a little to familiarize ourselves with the area and we like what we see so far.  Our adventure has finally begun and we are looking forward to whatever lies ahead.

See you down the road,
Don & Karen

Moving on

OK, so once again someone else is in control of our lives.  Finances have been probably cut in half for the rest of the year so drastic decisions have to be made.  We have decided that all the travel plans that we just finished "finalizing" had to be changed.  Our apologies to all the people that we made contact with and told them we would be somewhere at a certain time ... not going to happen. Because of the monthly fees that we can get we have decided to go directly to Texas rather than travel and end up there.  It will be hot in Texas but, it seems to be hot everywhere.  Checking Weatherbug, it has been just as hot here as it is there.  So, our time here in Dickson is up on July 5th and we will be packed up and heading southwest at that time.  While we are looking forward to just
'getting on with it" there is a certain amount of anxiety involved also.  Karen was commenting today that this will only be the second time in her life that she has moved.  I have moved several times but, I always took the family with me.  I have lived here In Dickson for almost 23 years, the longes I have ever lived anywhere.  I will miss a lot of things here, especially the kids and grandchildren.  It's kind of ironic that I prayed for so many years that Jennye and Michael, Ezra and Boaz would move back here from California and now that they have I am moving just as far away from them.   I have also had the good luck, by marriage, to have more family become a part of my life and I will miss them also.  We will end up missing a lot of things that we would normally attend, school functions and all that, but we just have to do this and do it now.
  We will keep in touch here while on the road.


See you down the road,
Don & Karen

Dickson, week 3

  It's been a good week in Dickson.  It's been hot, really hot.  It has been in the upper 90's every day.   Sunday, Father's day was nice.  We had. Family day over at Donnie & Leshelle's house and everyone was there.  That was real nice.  All the guys went fishing including Tristan the 4 year old.  I think he managed not to throw anything in the lake this time but the hook.  I managed to keep my personal streak alive and not catch anything.

After a couple of hours we went back to the house the women had prepared a fine dinner, brats, hot dogs, hamburgers, several salads and all the trimmings.  It was truly a good day.  After we got home my daughter Jennye facebooked me to tell me she had gotten me a gift certificate at Amazon.com which I loved.  I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the musical "Porgy & Bess" and love the music.  While I was on the site I set up a cloud to load the music onto.  I can't believe I have a cloud, a week ago I couldn't figure out what a cloud was or why I would need one.  It saves me a lot of storage memory on my phone.  Love it!  On Monday, had such a good time on Sunday, my grandson Dalton & I went fishing again.  This time we left early in the morning and got to the lake @ Montgomery Bell State Park @ about 7:30.  It was beautiful and peaceful at the lake.  The ducks and geese were swimming by causing the only ripples on the water.  The only other thing causing ripples in the lake were the fish jumping.  I thought we might just get lucky that day.   I managed to keep my streak alive though and we didn't have to be bothered with cleaning a bunch of fish.   We really did have a nice time that day.
  Like I said it has been hot Karen has gotten to the pool every day for an hour or so.  We can't seem to get Bobby outside even to go to the pool.  He is content to stay inside all day and play his X-box.  We even went so far as to go his "pocket rocket", a small electric motorcycle, back so he would go outside and do something but, to no avail.
  I took the Denali over to the Goodyear store to have them check out the tires and found a nail in both of them.  $33 but it could have been worse.  There is a "service ride control" light on my warning panel so I asked about getting that taken care of.  I could not believe that shocks could possibly cost that much.  I will take it back to them next week to be sure that's what the problem is.  We haven't had any type of problem in the ride.  Check in next week to see what happens.

Still in Dickson

  Well the past 4 or 5 days have been very productive.  We look like we are having a huge garage sale but it's all progress.  We have found some uses for objects that we really didn't want to get rid of like this cute scarecrow. 
  I have lost track of the number of trips I have made to the old storage unit, the new storage unit, Goodwill & the dump, trying to sort things out and deciding what we really need and what is just junk. 
  Well, you don't see that often, a fire truck lights flashing siren blaring pulling into a campground.  Right behind it is an ambulance no lights or siren.  Of course I could always count on Bobby to find out what's going on.  No flames or smoke visible so mustn't be a fire.  Apparently a women had a stroke.  There are a lot of full time residents here.  I was on my way to take Donnie to get his drivers license taken care of but, I knew that Bobby couldn't resist running over and getting the lowdown.  He doesn't take no for an answer.  He would probably make a good reporter. 
  Well, as I was saying just a few more things to go through and we'll be settled in here.
    I'm still having trouble with the 7 pin connector that connects the car to the trailer.  It got cut during setup.  I have re spliced everything, pretty simple color-to-color.  The brake controller doesn't indicate it's connected and brake lights and directional don't work on right side of trailer.  If anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear them.
See you down the road,
Don & Karen

Dickson, TN

Well, after a rocky start we have settled in here and it is not too bad.  Still not level but not too bad.  Not sure I would recommend it to others or not.  It is convenient for us and the price is right so here we stay.
  Took a long walk this morning and felt pretty good.  It was nice to be able to go for a walk and not have to suffer from the hip pain.  Prissy seemed to like it too.
  Not really too much to say about this stay.  We have lots of things to do this week and hoping Bobby will be able to stay with uncle Tim & Aunt Renee and the boys this week.  We will be spending a lot of time at the storage unit, which doesn't have wi-fi and he would really be bored.  We're trying to get out of the unit that we're in right now and be able to move to a smaller (cheaper) unit so things have to go.  There are still things that we need to take with us, things to find new homes for and things to just get rid of.  Goodwill may be tired of us by Thursday.
  I will still add to the blog even if it seems dull, so is our life from time to time.

See you down the road
Don & Karen