The Day Before Thanksgiving

I wanted to get a few fresh vegetables for our salad tomorrow, so I went to the store early this morning. Well, I guess to some people, 9:30 isn't early, but it can be for us. I'm glad that's when I got there, we went by a couple of times later, and the parking lot was pretty full.

After the store excursion, I started in on the house cleaning. Jim needed a job so he could stay out of my way, so I asked him to wash the outside of the motor home windows. While we were working on the windows, Karon came by to see if I wanted to go to the park for a few minutes to feed the gulls. She'd been saving old bread for them. Of course, I'm always up for a break! I didn't take the camera, but I was so busy with the gulls I didn't miss it. When we first got to the park, the gulls weren't hanging out in the place Karon said they ususally wait for people to come feed them. She was driving, so I just tossed out a few bread crumbs and here they all came. We probably had 35 gulls and a few pigeons flocking around the car, waiting for their treats. When we ran out of bread, they all looked after us as if to say, "Hey! Where ya goin? We want more!" We might go do that again and take Jim so he can capture the moment with his camera. Back to work!

I got into the nooks and crannies in the motor home and was working hard again when Jim said he was hungry and wanted to go get something to eat. We tried a place called Alice Fayes on the Bay. The special was soft shelled crab sandwiches, so that's what we had. Boy those were good!

Break was over, and I wanted to get done with the cleaning, and Jim decided to go to the tackle shop so he could stay out of the way of the vacuum cleaner. Finally, done with the cleaning. I can just do a quick once over before our guests arrive tomorrow for our Thanksgiving get together.

Jim and I have much to be thankful for this year. Our dream of selling our house and becoming fulltime RVer's was realized. We have our health. We have wonderful families and friends. We have enough income to live comfortably and give back to the community. We live in a beautiful country in which we have the freedom and opportunity to travel and enjoy. We're grateful to the RV community, there are so many wonderful people to get to know, so many adventures ahead.

Since I didn't take any new pictures today, I thought I'd share a few favorites from some of our past trips.

We wish each of you blessings on this Thanksgiving. May you enjoy health, peace, and plenty!

From our campsite near Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, Colorado

Mesa Verde, Colorado

The desert outside Apache Junction, Arizona

Aransas Bay, Rockport Texas

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gone Fishin' and More Geocaching

Jim was really looking forward to going fishing while we're here in Rockport. Yesterday afternoon was the time. He was invited to go with some friends on a small boat out in the Aransas Bay. My assignment was to watch Monday Night Football for him. That normally isn't my favorite activity, but since the Denver Broncos were playing, I was ok with it. Especially since they won!


He took this shot of the sunset while twisting around in the boat, so it isn't very level but it made an interesting picture.



The fishing trip was a success, as Jim caught 4 speckled trout. One of the other guys caught the nice red. The largest trout was 20" and the red was about 24". Congratulations, guys!





With all the talk and my outings with Karon to go geocaching, Jim was curious to see what it's all about, and today he went with me.


Our first stop was a bust, since the area was closed today. The second stop provided a couple of good photo opportunities, but no cache was found.


If you're ever in the Rocport area, doing geocaching, this little plane might provide a hint about where we were.



Finally, a cache was found! We disturbed a spider (no picture of that, sorry!) and destroyed her web, but got the log signed and the cache returned safely to it's spot.

After a quick lunch at a local eatery, we crossed the Copano Bay Bridge and stopped for one more hunt. Jim found this one by himself and proclaimed the day a success.

Once we got home, I started looking for a good campground near Austin, Texas. My sister and brother in law will be on their way back to Colorado from Florida about the time we leave here for California. We're going to try to get together for a night so we can celebrate a late Thanksgiving and early Christmas together. Can't wait! We haven't seen them since June, and it will be close to May before we get back to Colorado to visit family and friends.


In this age of technology, some of our closest friends are other people on the road that we may or may not have met in person yet. But through the internet, we keep up with them through our blogs and websites. So, I want to close today with condolences to two of our online "friends". Last week, Howard, of the RV-Dreams community, lost a cousin in a hunting accident. Yesterday, Froggi Donna, of "From the Lily Pad" lost her puppy, BoBo, when he darted in front of a car. We are sorry for both your losses! Our thoughts and prayers go out to you for peace and comfort.

A Walk in the Park

I woke up early this morning to the sound of water dripping on the roof. It took me awhile to become conscious enough to realize it was because of the fog, not that it was sprinkling or raining.

Laundry was on the agenda this morning. Jim went to the grocery while I got the clothes washed and dried.

After chores got done, the fun could begin. Jim was planning a fishing trip with Karon's husband, so she and I went out and about. We started at the Rockport Beach Park. This park is Texas's first certified "Blue Wave" beach, which is a designation to promote public awareness and voluntary participation in maintaining clean and healthy beaches. This beach area has many different types of facilities, including fishing piers, playgrounds, pavilions that can be rented for events, bird nesting areas and observation deck, public boat dock and a saltwater swimming area. It was warm enough today that we saw many children out playing in the water.

I had to use "my" old camera today, as Jim wanted to take the Canon with him, in case of a great catch. So today's pictures are from the Olympus. As Karon & I walked the beach, we came by these gulls, trying to get a little shade, it was warm out there on that beach!

Ducks and birds playing together in the sand.

This is a view across the Little Bay area from the pavilion deck.

After our beach walk, we decided to go back to the wetlands observation deck we'd visited last week. There's a geocache hidden here that we didn't find, and I'd seen roseate spoonbills here when Jim and I visited.

We still didn't find the geocache, but we did see some crabs in the shallow water below the deck.

We could see the roseate spoonbills, but they were too far away to get a good picture. I hope while we're here, I'll get to see them up close, as they are very interesting looking birds. They have long bills that are, surprise, spoon-shaped, and they have very distinctive pink coloring.

Karon and I called our husbands and found that they had gone out fishing, will probably be gone into the evening. I hope they catch some fish! My job is to watch the Denver Broncos and report on any spectacular plays.

Hanging Around In Rockport

I woke up this morning with no energy. If Jim hadn't pushed me out the door, I might not have even gone for my walk today. But it was good that we did go to the park and get a walk in. I even grabbed my camera in case anything looked interesting along the way.


Here's a picture of the rv park entrance, with the office building behind the fence


Here's a glimpse of part of the walking path through the park, which is about a block from the rv park. There are paved walking trails all around the park.

The walk didn't really get me going, so I decided to postpone doing the laundry and just hang out today. I think I needed a true hanging around day.

I started reading You on a Diet, by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. about a year ago, but didn't finish it. I brought it with me, thinking I'd have it read by now. Not. I picked it up and started in where I'd left off. It's written in a humorous tone, but the subject matter is serious. We haven't done as well as we could have with our eating and exercising habits since we retired. Time for me to make some changes. What I like about this approach is making small changes, like eliminating 100 calories a day, walking 10,000 steps a day and doing some kind of weight-lifting-type exercising 3 times a week, can make a lot of difference, healthwise.

It looked like rain, so we decided to go ahead and get our lean pork chops grilled before it was too late. Jim started soaking the sugar maple chips while I worked on preparing the inside stuff. By the time we were both done, we had a delicious and healthy meal of grilled pork chops with apple honey relish; stir-fried peppers, onions and broccoli; baked potato (sweet for me, white for Jim); fat free cornbread and salad.

After another walk around the rv park with the dogs, I decided to review my camera manual and see if I could figure out more about the settings. I played around with that most of the afternoon.

Here's a picture I took of our steering wheel table with my plants and Kachina dolls on it

Mr. Bo Jangles is having a day like mine.

Jasmine, getting a little scratching behind her ears

The last project I started was looking at our route to California. We don't leave here until Dec. 7, but I like to play around ahead of time with Microsoft Streets and Trips, experimenting with different traveling times and routes. We have about 12 days to get from Rockport, Texas to Paso Robles, California, so we might stay a couple of nights in a few places. We shouldn't have to rush.