A Birthday, Mardi Gras, and Party, Party, Party!

Well, someone's got to do this!  You know, someone has to stay up North in the cold and snow, and someone has to be here in the South, enjoying the sun and warm weather.  Well, O.K., so we've had a few days with rain and wind and cooler temps.  But not one snowflake!  (When we sold our house way back in '07, the "his 'n her" snow shovels remained in their assigned slots in the garage tool rack so the new homeowner could enjoy them.)

Since my last entry, we've been living our standard routine here at Rainbow Plantation in beautiful LA (that's Lower Alabama).  I'm up early most days for line dancing.  I'm leading the Tuesday/Thursday class, so I need to stay on my toes (literally) to keep up with the class.  On Wednesdays, I try to make it down to the Foley Senior Center for the class there each week.   Jim fits in a laundry day every week, and I still use that time to do some cleaning.  We had to do a little yard work here, borrowed the weed trimmer and trimmed things up a bit around our site.  The maintenance guys won't trim right up to the rigs, too much chance of some kind of trouble if they do.  That's OK with us, we'd rather do any close trimming ourselves.

On one of our outings to the water, we came across this fellow:

This picture was taken at one of our favorite spots along Mobile Bay - Mullet Point Park:

Oh, yes, I did celebrate a recent birthday.  Last Tuesday, about 14 of us gathered at our nearby favorite grill, Big Daddy's where we enjoyed a variety of shrimp, fish, hamburgers, and Philly style cheese steak sandwiches.  Our friend, Joann Forsythe managed to sneak a chocolate cake in to the restaurant's kitchen!  Not only was it my birthday, but it was also Ginny's birthday, the day before Roberta's birthday, and Al and Janet's anniversary.  All in all, a great day for a celebration.  Which birthday?  Well, there's a Beatles song that commemorates my age...  one line in the song starts off something like this..."will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm blank-blank-4?

Here's the group at Big Daddy's.  It's hard to see everyone, but starting at the right front, there's Ginny, Danielle, Darrell, me, Joann, George and Gregg.  On the left front is Jack, Judy and Keith.

Another view, in the lower left is Ginny, moving left is Jack, Judy Keith Roberta, Janet and Al.  On the right front is Danielle.

In this area of the country, at this time of year, we're all gearing up for the Mardi Gras celebration as well.  Saturday evening we attended our first-ever Mardi Gras parade over in Fairhope, Alabama.  This was a family-friendly parade with bands, floats and lots of beads, toys and Moon Pies getting tossed our way.  We had a great time and came home with a big bag full of goodies.

This was one of many very highly decorated floats.  We had to pay more attention to what was being tossed to us than how beautiful the floats were!

The rest of our celebrations will likely take place here at the Plantation, as there are dinners, lunches, skits and parades here.  Yes, I'm signed up to take a part in one of the many comedy skits that will be performed.  Maybe I'll be a famous You-tube sensation (gee, I hope not!).

Our friends, Judy and Darrell Patterson, have recently given up their ERPU lot here to take possession of their very own 1/2 acre lot.  With that and one other lot recently given up, we've moved up a whole 2 places on the waiting list - at last check, we're now #14 on the list.  We talked to one of the couples very close to the top of the list, they've been waiting 5 years so far.  Since we've just started our 3rd year on the list, it could be awhile before we make that #1 spot on the list.  That's OK, we'll just keep the wheels rolling for now.

Speaking of rolling the wheels, we're beginning to take a look at our spring and summer plans.  So far, it looks like we'll crank up the Cummins and head towards New Orleans and points beyond around mid-March.  Stay tuned for more details as we figure them out.  I think we've got some fun events coming up!

On the way home from the Foley Senior Center Line Dance Class today, I got a call from Mike over at the Patterson's.  Seems they were whipping up some frozen Margaritas and needed a little assistance consuming them.  Sign us up!  We made it before they melted away to nothing (the Margarita's, not the Pattersons or Everinghams), so we got to enjoy a chilled drink and some really entertaining company this afternoon.

Jim grilled salmon fillets on cedar planks for dinner this evening, just another great time in Alabama!

Starting a New Year and Very Sad News

We celebrated Christmas quietly at home, although we did enjoy a fun evening at the clubhouse on Christmas Eve.  They have a fun gift exchange for those who want to participate.  Everyone who brings a gift to exchange sits in a circle while a story is read.  Each time the words "right" or "left" are spoken in the story, the gifts are passed in the appropriate direction  The story goes quickly, and with 75 people or more sitting in a circle passing gifts of varying sizes and wrappings, things get interesting quickly!  But it all worked out just right, Jim ended up with a very nice LED flashlight, and I came home with a cozy lap blanket, which one of the dogs promptly claimed as their own!

I took a break from line dancing on Christmas Day, but otherwise continued with the routine of learning new dances and teaching them to our group about as fast as I could learn them.  I've been blessed to have both Danielle Mayer and Roberta Bisel here to help me learn some new dances.  Both of these wonderful women have danced and taught for many years and have a great store of dance knowledge to share.  They both know our good friend, Pat McFall, and Danielle knows good friend Dortha Hall as well.  I just love how so many of our friendships are enter-twined with each other!

New Year's Eve found us at the clubhouse early for a gathering, but we were home long before the start of 2013.  Line dancing class occurred as usual on Tuesday morning, no matter that it was New Year's Day!  After class, I came home and we prepared the traditional Southern meal to start the New Year with good luck and prosperity.

A very tragic and sad event occurred on Sunday, January 6.  Our very close friend in Amarillo, Vickie, called last Sunday to let us know she and her husband, Don, found her son, Duston, deceased in his home.  These are the friends who have the full RV Hook-up at their house in Amarillo where we stay in the spring.  Jim went to high school with Vickie and reconnected with her a few years ago at their high school reunion.  Duston was only 36 at the time of his passing.  We packed up a few things, arranged to have our neighbor watch the rig, loaded up the car and left very early last Monday morning to drive to Amarillo to be with the family and help with cooking, cleaning, organizing and all the little things that needed doing with a house full of family at such a hard time.

I used my iPad to snap this picture of the sunset as we approached Amarillo around 8:30 Monday evening:

We stayed with Jim's cousins Shirley and Mike while we were there through the week.  The Celebration of Life service was held on Saturday afternoon, and there was a luncheon before the service which we helped prepare and serve at the church.  It was a very moving and beautiful service, but a hard day to get through.

During the week, there were warm days early on, but by Saturday the temperature in Amarillo had dropped dramatically and we even got some snow.  We left Amarillo to begin the return trip on Sunday morning when it was 10* with snow on the ground.  We spent the night in Shreveport and finished the trip today.  When we got back to the Plantation this afternoon, the temperature was 76*.  It feels great to be home, but we still send our thoughts and prayers to Vickie and Don, they have some very hard times ahead.

Now it's time to look forward to our very first-ever participation in Mardi Gras.  We've always left this area before the festivities, so this will be a new experience for us.  Rainbow Plantation goes all-out for Mardi Gras, plus there are numerous local parades and parties to consider.

It will take us a few days to get settled back into our routines and get the place cleaned.  We may have to borrow the mower and trimmer again, too, seems the grass has grown a bit....

Stayin' Busy

Our RV lifestyle involves a lot of socializing, which almost always means getting together for meals or happy hours.  We recently got together for lunch with neighbors Paul & Margery and Darrell & Judy at our nearby favorite, Big Daddy's.  Paul & Margery were getting ready to move on to Florida where it's warmer!  We enjoyed spending time with them and hope to see them the next time they're visiting this area.

Last Monday I joined about 45 other women from the Plantation for the annual Christmas lunch.  We went to a very nice restaurant in Robertsdale, Iveys, and had a wonderful time.

This past Thursday we joined 3 other couples to try out a new restaurant that recently opened on the beach, appropriately named The Gulf.  The menu is fairly limited, but the setting is wonderful!  Below is our group seated on the "lawn" (a patch of turf placed on top of the beach sand).  On the left are Judy, Darrell, and Jim.  On the right are Roberta, Joann, George and Keith.

Roberta and Keith are current property owners here at the plantation, but they are in the process of selling that property to our friends Judy and Darrell.  In keeping with the "small world" concept of our RV'ing community, I'll try to explain some of the connections!  George and Joann are new friends of ours (George was Jim's sponsor in joining the Elks Lodge).  They are long-time friends with Keith and Roberta, who also have property at North Ranch in Congress, Arizona, another Escapees Park.  Roberta knows our friend Pat McFall as they have line danced together at North Ranch.

Here are George and Joann standing in front of one of The Gulf's beach lounge chairs.

We had a fun time visiting and enjoying the beautiful beach setting of this unique restaurant.  We all decided the ambiance is fun, the food is nothing that special.  After lunch, George wanted to show us a local "institution" - a restaurant and bar located right on the Alabama/Florida state line - "Floribama".  So we carpooled over there and took a look around.  Everyone agreed to pose in this "beach" setting if I'd post a blog!  So here we all are:  George, Joann, Keith, Roberta, Judy, Darrell, Jim and me!

There's a new neighbor at the Plantation - Gregg arrived about a week ago in his beautiful 5th wheel pulled by a matching Volvo  - big truck!  Gregg is a friend of Pat and Mike McFall and also owns a lot across from friends Dortha and Mark at Retama Village in the Rio Grande Valley - see how the small world connections just keep happening!  Gregg is attending line dancing, as well as many of the other activities at the Plantation, and we're enjoying getting to know him.

Speaking of line dancing, I'm still going to class just about every day.  The M-W-F class is a beginner class, and the Tue. -Thur class is a little bit more geared towards intermediate.  We don't have a designated teacher for that class, right now I usually lead most of the dances unless someone else has a dance they want to teach.  I also found a local class at the Foley Senior Center that meets once a week.  I attended that class last Wednesday and found it just challenging enough!  That gives me plenty of opportunity to improve my dancing skills.

Jim has started a new project too; he's learning how to cane chairs.  There is a group of folks here at the Plantation that refurbishes chair seats and backs using cane.  It's quite an involved art that has been passed down through several generations and is being shared with people here.  Many of the chairs will be auctioned during Mardi Gras here, with the benefits going to the Escapees CARE organization.  We've heard that last year the proceeds of this auction were around $4,000!

We are blessed to be able to enjoy this lifestyle!  More adventures to come....

"Just-Stayin"

Maybe I should think about changing the title of our blog, we sure aren't doing much of that "Justravelin" these days!  We arrived at the Escapee's Rainbow Plantation on September 10 and the only travelin' we've done since then is a move across the street to a different site, but I've already written about that.

Our days have become fairly routine, with a few notable exceptions.  I'm going to Line Dancing class three days a week, soon to be five days with the start of a Beginner 2 class this week.  There's a local restaurant nearby, known as "The Biscuit King",  that has a live country band several times a month on Friday evening; and a group of us goes for dinner and dancing.  Thursdays are usually laundry and cleaning.  Of course Saturday and Sunday are reserved for football!  Otherwise we fill our time with walking the dogs, going to the beach, shopping and all the other miscellaneous activities that seem to fill our days and weeks.

One day we were sitting outside, enjoying our beautiful weather, when a fellow rode along on his bicycle.  He saw us, and parked his bike, came over and said hello.  Of course we invited him to sit and visit.  Turns out he is one of the original builders of Rainbow Plantation.  He and his wife, JoAnn, own a lot at the Plantation, they've lived here since 1991.  We visited for an hour or so with George that afternoon.  He is quite involved with the Foley Elks Club, and we ended up asking him to sponsor Jim as a member of the Elks.  The start of a great friendship was created that day.  We've gone out to lunch and dinner with George and JoAnn several times since that day, and now Jim is an official Elks Club member as of November 15.

We've had visitors to the area;  our dear friend Carol and her sister Susan came down from the Birmingham area for a weekend.  We ate out, grilled at home, and shopped in Foley and Fairhope, it was a blast.

JoAnn Dubrouillet drove over from Panama City Beach, Florida in her new car and spent a weekend in Foley.  It was so good to see her and get caught up with her activities since we saw her in December last year.  While she was here Terry and Randy Guiler made a quick stop at the Plantation on their way to their winter work assignment.  We all got together with Judy and Darrell Patterson for a lunch in Fairhope.  Such a good time getting caught up with friends.

This is the group from left to right, starting with Judy (in the Aqua blouse), Jim, Darrell, Randy, JoAnn and Terry:

I drove up to Columbus, Mississippi for my Weight Watchers "Camp Taz" in October.  We rented a small car for Jim to use while I was gone.  I had a great week with my friends from all over the country, and I enjoyed the drive, about 4 1/2 hours each way.  We almost always get to kayak, and this trip was exceptional for that.  One run we wanted to make turned out to be impossible due to a huge tree that had fallen across the creek, so we decided to make a different run.  That one turned out to be about 5 miles and included a lake crossing.  Whew!  That was challenging, but truly beautiful!

This is Tibbee Creek, near the Camphouse where we stay:

Our good friend, Rosalie, came for a weekend too.  She lives in New Orleans, so of course she is a Saints fan.  She came to watch the Broncos/Saints game, too bad the New Orleans team didn't make the game, the Broncos totally dominated the action.  But, she brought a crock-pot of her authentic New Orleans red beans and we had that with rice, so it was all good.

We celebrated a special Thanksgiving with Judy and Darrell.  They arrived at their ERPU site not long after we did, and it was a special treat to spend the holiday afternoon with them.  They brought some delicious sweet potato casserole, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a spectacular apple pie along with their favorite wine, while Jim and I did a "dueling turkey breast" cook-off, a broccoli rice casserole and a squash casserole.  Jim also made one of his semi-famous "Bubba" pecan pies, with a recipe from Uncle Bubba's Oyster House in Savannah.  The meal was awesome, the company very special.

I've had to get some unexpected dental work done here, but that should be completed by the end of next week.  I broke a tooth, and when I went in to have that checked out, the dentist found another broken crown that caused the next tooth to become decayed.  The result of all of this is I will have three brand-new crowns and the dentist can pay for his Christmas vacation!

Our "Jell-O" plans called for us to roll out of the Plantation around December 14 to head over to the Aransas Pass, Texas area to spend the rest of the winter in the same RV park where Janna & Mike and Rollie & Gina will be staying.  Our hope was that our kids would be able to make a trip from Colorado and Amarillo to spend Christmas with us.  But that plan didn't quite work out. The kids are not going to be able to make the trip, and we have decided to stay here through February and then head over to the Aransas Pass area around the first part of March.  We're OK with that decision, we really love it here and feel very much at home.

That covers most of our highlights from the last couple of months.  We're looking forward to continuing to build relationships here in "LA" (Lower Alabama) as we enjoy the mild weather, beautiful beaches and great activities here at Rainbow Plantation.