First Travel Day of 2013

Yes, the wheels are still round!  We managed to get ourselves together and on the road at a respectable 9-ish this morning.  First stop was at the Rainbow Plantation Office to pay out.  Escapees parks are a little different, we don't pay up front to stay there.  Instead, we pay at the end of the month, and when we leave.  The rate at the Plantation is $95 per week plus electric - 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Our second stop was up the road in Robertsdale at the Gulf Shores Home Center where we got our onboard propane tank filled - 23.5 gallons worth.  We found out during this stay that Alabama has a law that propane trucks are prohibited from filling RV propane tanks unless the RV is tied down.  We ended up buying and setting up a 40-pound stand alone propane tank this winter so we could take that and get it filled and not have to unhook the motorhome and drive it over to Robertsdale to fill the onboard tank.  It worked out fine for us, and we're storing that portable tank with our friend, George, who has a house at the Plantation.

 By the time we got to Loxley, it was raining.  I guess we were lucky that it wasn't raining when we got up and left, or when we got propane.  We had a rainy drive to New Orleans,

On Interstate 10:

Across Mississippi:

Into Louisiana:

Across Lake Ponchartrain:

but by the time we got to downtown and took the turnoff to come across to the Westbank area, the rain had stopped.  I wanted to take pictures as we came by the SuperDome, but I was too busy making sure Jim was in the correct lane to change highways!

We're now settled in for the next few nights at Bayou Segnette State Park.  We met our friend, Rosalie, for dinner this evening at a very good restaurant, the Sun Ray Grill, and made plans for what we'll do in the next couple of days while we're here.  I first met Rosalie when I worked for the school district in Colorado Springs in the 1980's.  She's moved around the country several times since then, and has settled back in her home town, New Orleans.  We had a good visit.

This is our first visit to Bayou Segnette, it's a nice state park with water and electric hook-ups.  This is Spring Break time, so there are many families here, I think the park is almost full.  I know parts of it were closed last fall as a result of Hurricane Isaac, but it seems most, if not all, of the campground sites are open now.  I didn't get pictures of the campground yet, but I will before we leave.

It was hard to leave this morning, and I already miss Alabama, but we're also glad to be back on the road!  And we're also very glad that our first 2013 travel day went smoothly - even if it was wet.

Hope The Wheels on The Phaeton Are Still Round - It's Time To Go

Well, that was a quick six months!  It seems like we just got settled in and started having fun, and already it's time to get going.  We'll be pulling up the jacks tomorrow morning and heading towards New Orleans for a few days of visiting with our good friend, Rosalie.  Then it will be on to more adventures down the road.

We've had some fun times here at the Rainbow Plantation!  Way too many to go into detail, but here are some of the highlights:

A Christmas Parade with "Santa"

A lunch on the beach with a group of friends, with some lounging around afterward in the restaurant's great beach seating:

The Big Event - Mardi Gras! Peggy and Mike Everingham were here to enjoy the festivities, and there's Jim standing behind Darrell and Judy Patterson:

Darrell was crowned King of Rainbow Plantation's Mardi Gras:

We got to do a tiny bit of line dancing at one of the Mardi Gras parties, here are Barb, me, Ann and Joan doing the Cowboy Charleston around the room.

The theme this year was the Roaring Twenties, and here are Janet and Al Whitney portraying a gangster and his gal:

 I'm not sure anyone ever found out who was hiding in this scarecrow costume!

Line dancing has been an important part of my time here.  I facilitated the Tuesday/Thursday classes which have been designed for people who've had a little more experience with line dance to continue improving their skills by learning new dances.  We have had a great time, and the class showed their appreciation with a little going away party after our last class this past Thursday.

 Starting In the lower center and moving clockwise,  is Joan, Ann, Renee, Madonna, Me, Muffy, and Donna.  The class presented me with a very generous gift card to a local favorite grill - Big Daddy's, where I had my birthday party.  I'll miss this group!

 In addition to these classes, I talked a few of the ladies into joining me at the Foley Senior Center on Wednesday afternoons for another line dance class, and I attended a Monday evening class in Fairhope several times.  I'm looking forward to picking all these classes back up when we come back later next fall.

We had a few days where our RV site became "lakefront" property and we had the opportunity to catch up on reading, napping and a few inside projects.

But in spite of some cooler, wetter weather then we might have wished for, it's been a beautiful time here in Lower Alabama.  Of course, we didn't do everything we thought we might, maybe next time!

We're looking forward to our return to the Plantation, but we're also excited about new adventures coming up.

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....