Accident, Church and Storms (Livingston Dec 13-20)

Trees have been pretty here the last few days.  This is a picture of our rig with some of the trees that have changed colors.  It feels like we have followed the colors from Indiana down to Texas!

This past week has been relatively quiet except for last Wednesday.  Pat got up early to go to the grocery store and get gas at the station down the road.  At about 7:30, he called me to give me the news that he had a car accident.  :-(  He was waiting for traffic at the gas station to clear when another customer backed right into his rear.  She must have been going like a bat out of hell because she actually pushed him out onto the road into traffic.  Fortunately no one else hit him.  Anyways, Pat was OK other than being angry and the car had damage to one of the taillights, the fender and the bumper.  It is now at the body shop to be repaired--I am so glad it was not his fault since the repairs are going to cost the other insurance company in excess of $800.

We did take a trip down to Humble (just north of Houston) and stopped at an RV park that we might stay at in February so we can see Houston sites without leaving the four-legged children too long.  It's a nice park far enough away from the freeway so we won't hear the traffic noise.  The sites are concrete with concrete patios and the monthly cost is reasonable.

Sunday, we attended worship service at the First United Methodist Church.  This is a very large church with two services: one at nine is contemporary followed by Sunday School for all ages.  The second service at eleven is a traditional service.  We attended the early service and the annual children's program was held--nice performance and the service still lasted only one hour.  Several people fro the Escapees park were there as well.

Last night we were sound asleep when all of a sudden our emergency radio went off at midnight.  There was a report of a possible Doppler-indicated tornado to the west and north of us.  We decided that we were not in the tornado warning area and headed back to bed.  It continued to storm off and on all night which meant that Abby didn't sleep too well and kept us awake as well.  With all the rain, our roof leak came back--we woke up at 3 am to the sound of drip..drip..drip.  :-(  We think it is around the vent in the bedroom but haven't had any luck finding it or plugging it.

We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and remembers the true meaning of the season!!

EASY LIVING!!

New Friends and Christmas in Livingston (December 9-12)

The wonderful part about our RV lifestyle is that we don’t need to have big plans every day.  In fact, most days we just kick back and enjoy!

Friday night was our dinner out.  We went to Buster McNutty’s again and Pat had a steak and I had beef kabobs.  There was so much that I brought my leftovers home for lunch on Saturday. 

Saturday was the day of the Hometown Christmas celebration in Livingston.  We hooked up with our new friends, Judy and Tom, and headed to the festivities.  They had various food booths and craft booths along one of the streets downtown.  This reminded me of Harvest Homecoming in New Albany but on a smaller scale.  Just about every building is also decorated--what they miss in not having snow, they make up for with decorations.

At 6pm, there was a Christmas parade and every organization, store, and church was represented with floats all lit up with Christmas lights.  For a small town, they really do it up big.  Maybe that is what Texas is all about! After the parade, we headed to Shrimp Boat Manny’s for a light evening supper.  They serve mostly Louisiana Cajun cuisine which was good but a bit spicy for my taste-I think Pat liked it though.  We all had a good time laughing and talking for a few hours.

Sunday we bought a small Christmas tree at Wal-Mart and it is now set up in the RV.  Now it feels a bit more like Christmas!

Yesterday while Pat washed the RV and both vehicles, I cleaned the inside.  Every once in a while we have to do the more mundane tasks and we now have a clean RV on the outside and the inside. The weather has finally warmed up so we should be able to sit outside this afternoon.  The current temperature is 67°!

That’s about it for now.

EASY LIVING!!

Drive to Galveston (Livingston, TX December 1-8)

This week has been somewhat uneventful.  The main thing we had to do was to try to stay warm.  The low temperatures have been down to the mid-twenties so we had to start the furnace.  Hopefully the cold weather is gone and we will get back to more seasonal temps of 60’s during the day and 40’s-50’s at night.

We did go on one road trip on Tuesday.  We decided to start out driving south on TX146 to see where it goes.  Our intention was to drive a short ways and then turn around.  However, as we drove further and further, we decided to go all the way to the Gulf coast.  We had no idea what we would see and it turned out to be a pleasant drive of about 300 miles round trip.  We saw many oil wells--wish some of these were ours!!

When we arrived at the Gulf Coast at an area of Bolivar Peninsula, we saw the Gulf of Mexico which was quite rough that day.  We did not stop to walk on the beach because it was windy and probably only about 40°. 

As we drove further, we saw a lot of new construction of houses built on stilts and even saw a school built on stilts with the parking lot under the building.  We figured it must have been from a hurricane but didn’t know which one.  We finally found a gas station and I asked the attendant which hurricane had wiped out the area.  It was Ike—the same one that went through Louisville with high winds a few years ago that gave us a new roof on the house!  One of the houses under construction has stairs that retract. I guess that is one way to prevent unwanted visitors!

At the end of the peninsula, the road ends at a ferry to cross over to Galveston Island.  There is no cost to the ferry, so we decided what the heck we’ll ride it.  That was a fun experience—we passed several ships and saw a cruise ship in dock.  It looked like these seagulls wanted a ride too!

Galveston’s main street is very pretty with palm trees lining the street and lots of old buildings.  I am sure the residents of the city were relieved when Ike missed them and the heritage of the city was saved.

From Galveston, we headed home without having to go through Houston during rush hour.  It was 5:00 by the time we arrived back at the Escapees Park.  We were tired, especially Pat since he did all the driving.  Another day, we will venture back in that direction to visit the Johnson Space Center.

Last night we were prepared to attend the weekly potluck (sausage stew was my contribution).  We drove up to the activity center to find it dark and deserted.  We asked another couple (Tom and Judy) what the deal was and it seemed that the get-together had been moved and was not a potluck after all.  We did not attend any of the social hours this week or we would have known.  Anyways, we invited Tom and Judy to come over to our rig and share the stew with us.  We had a great time and learned that they just started full-timing this year also.  We shared some tips and tricks of the life style and Pat and I hope to see them again before they head up to Dallas for the holidays.

That’s all for now!

EASY LIVING!!