Still At It!

Help! We’re in Lafayette, LA and they’re trying to kill us…seriously, it’s some kind of southern plot against the rest of the US. Luckily, however we’ve armed ourselves with statins, Aciphex & Mylanta so they’re not going to get us! Check out the picture of our dinner last night, and breakfast & lunch looked exactly the same. The good news with dinner, at a popular place called Mulate, was the great Cajun band and dancing. We met some of the locals and had a rousing good time doing the two-step……very fun indeed, as the picture indicates.

But we have lots to report before we even hit Louisiana:

Before we left the Texas Hill Country we self-toured the LBJ Ranch, now a state park, and his Library which nicely chronicled his life from his youth at the ranch to the end of his own term. A large part of the library was dedicated to Kennedy’s assassination and LBJ’s following time in office, the Viet Nam war, our space efforts, and Lady Bird. After 5 presidential libraries, we are finding most of them to be very comprehensive and remarkable in their use of modern technology to project the often tumultuous issues facing the presidential office. Plan to spend a minimum of 4-5 hours per library if you go!

We took the short drive to Austin for 3 nights. There are several nightclub areas in Austin but the venues (lots of variety) don’t start up until about 10PM and run until 3AM before the town empties out. However, after a super Italian bistro dinner, we did find a place - the Club Continental - where they were playing just the best swing dance music and we watched some very talented dancers……you know, like the guys tossing the gals off their knees or over their shoulders – the good old jump & jive days of the 40’s & 50’s! We took one whole day to drive up to College Station (100 miles from Austin and the home of Texas A&M) to visit the GHW Bush Library. It’s yet another elaborate compound of information about his term in office but doesn’t have the same completeness about it that other presidential libraries have had.

Upon leaving Austin we took the very short drive to San Antonio where we stayed for 4 nights. We were in an RV park 5 miles from downtown SA right on the bus line. If you are over 62 and go to the transit office, they take your picture and you get a great souvenir, a free plastic all-over-town ½ price bus/trolley pass good for 4 years, yes, years – just what we need! Anyway, SA is a really wonderful town, the Riverwalk (8 miles of it) probably being the star attraction. The main portion is circular, maybe 1.5 miles, and is lined with restaurants & boutique hotels, ferns, flowers…..really pretty. We went up to the top of the Tower of America to get a bird’s eye view of SA…..it’s huge! SA also has a mission road with 6 fairly intact missions, San Jose being the most renovated (see pictures). And one cannot forget the Alamo! Right in what is now downtown and full of history that we had forgotten about over the years. One of the best SA things...the bus we took from the RV park into town had a seat dedicated to Rosa Parks (see picture)!!

Leaving San Antonio took us to delicious seafood gumbo & fresh shrimp land, the Texas gulf, where we stayed in Rockport/Port Aransas, about 35 north of Corpus Christi which appeared to be one long mall…..maybe we missed something? The coastline around Port Aransas is awesomely long with a pounding surf and beautiful white sand. We may go back for some R&R at the end of our 10 months.

So at that point, we took off for western LA, one long refinery until we left Lake Charles. Now Lake Charles has a choice of 4 RV parks; one upscale that was full, two that looked like a scene from Tobacco Road, and the stupid, overrated, expensive Yogi Bear Jellystone RV Park – the lesser of the available 3 evils. I awakened in the middle of the night smelling gas….it turned out to be burning petroleum towers……..surrounding us. One thing though, they are strung with lights so at night it looks like a huge city with miles and miles of little white lights! And we did have a great etouffee (shrimp, crawfish & rice) and gumbo dinners at Steamboat Bill’s.

Oh yeah....we almost forgot.....if you'd like to move to Louisiana you can get a 6 bedroom, 5 1/2 bath, 5 fireplaces turn-of-the-century home on a beautiful cultivated acre (hot tub, gazebo) in the rather nice upscale town of Rayne ("frog" in French)for $379,900 and we've included a picture for you!

We drove 65 miles to Lafayette which takes us back to the first paragraph. We planned a swamp tour today but the humid rain took care of that so maybe we’ll have to go have a fried lunch!

More later……miss you all but we are having a super time!
d a seat dedicated to Rosa Parks

TEXAS !!

OK then….., after an eventful 3 days driving we are in, what we thought at first was fake, the German town of Fredericksburg, TX…….but it turns out it’s pretty real. Some of the first immigrant Germans, feeling opportunities would abound, made their way to TX in the early 1800’s where parcels of land had been granted to them. As the immigrants got settled on their various acreage and Fredericksburg grew, the travel by horse and wagon into town was often a long day’s ride. So those farmers built tiny little limestone houses in town called “Sunday” houses to stay overnight when they came in for church or business. There are many of these still inhabited and they are really charming!

There are things to do here! We spent 4 hours at the Pacific Wartime Museum, also known as the Nimitz Museum because Chester Nimitz was born as 4th generation here…..fascinating place with great exhibits. We’ve spent some time driving around the Texas Hill Country and tasting some pretty good wines. There are many wineries in this area of TX ….grapes grow well in the limestone hills where the stones are quarried for the many stone houses in this area.

A big treat not to miss is a short drive to Luckenbach. Some guy named Hondo Grouch, a humorist and real Hill Country character bought the old 1850 town (3 old wooden buildings) and turned the PO into a general store with a bar and jammin’ room in the back. We spent 2 hours, Texas Longhorn Beer in hand, listening to these old, and not-so-old, guys singin’ & pickin’ their original songs (see pix). Hondo’s good buddies, Willie & Waylon, spent a lot of time there after Hondo purchased the “town”, hence their world-renowned song “Luckenbach, Texas”.

Ah yes, the eventful drive……… First, the water pressure at the RV park in Las Cruces has a pressure of 150 psi (45 is about normal) so no way could we hook up for water so had to rely on the few drops in the tank which we forgot to fill before we left. Then next morning we leave (sans showers or anything else that requires water), get down the road about 30 miles, gas up and our tow car – my precious Jeep Wrangler X – comes loose! Fortunately, it made a clunk against the back of the RV and Peter saw it hanging out in the side mirror and, very luckily, we were not yet on the freeway. However, we did have to travel back to an RV dealer in Las Cruces who replaced the whole tow unit……fortunately on warranty…..a total 4 hour ordeal. We arrived in Fort Stockton 290 miles later to literally freezing temperatures. We waited until 9:30A the next morning to leave to avoid the icy roads then ended up 300 miles later in the above-mentioned Fredericksburg, the Texas Hill Country, also freezing and it was only 3:30 in the afternoon! We hustled, hooking up all the stuff outside in the freezing cold, while fortifying ourselves with quick swigs of Southern Comfort. We’re headed for Austin tomorrow (Saturday) and for 3 nights will take in all that good TX music….remember “Austin City Limits?”…..it’s still there!

More later……we feel like we’ve been out here for months already!!!

Here We Go Again!!

Sung to the tune of “Taking A Chance On Love”: ♫ Here we go again, we’ll hear the highway sounds again, on the road again, spending a lot on gas! ♫

We’re fast tracking to the Texas Hill Country via overnights in Las Cruces, NM and Fort Stockton, TX. We’ll stay around Fredericksburg for 4 nights, tasting wine and sightseeing, then on to Austin for another 4 nights to hear lots of country music (remember Austin City Limits?). After all that we’re on to see more Texas landmarks via San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Galveston, Houston. We’ll cruise through Louisiana headed for a stay in New Orleans via Lake Charles, Lafayette, Houma, Baton Rouge….then on to Mississippi via Natchez, Port Gibson, Hattiesburg, Biloxi.
We’ll then head, via Montgomery and Atlanta, for our FMCA RV Rally in Perry, AL where we’ll be for 6 days starting March 12th. Then we’ll have 2 weeks to get all the way down to the end of the Florida Keys to our Allegro Rally starting April 5th for 5 days in Key West. After that we will be free to roam around, crisscrossing Florida visiting friends and family, truly RVing….with no time or place to have to be! We’ll hit Fort Lauderdale, Naples, Sanibel, Fort Meyers, Palm Beach, Cape Canaveral, Orlando before we head into GA/SC for Savannah, Hilton Head, Charleston. We’ll see Myrtle Beach and then on to Norfolk, VA on around mid-late June. Eventually we’ll be in RI, Delaware, Maryland and DC then meander home on a yet undetermined route!
More later,
We miss you all a bunch!

Sybil & Peter

PS….If you need us, miss us, or just want to chat, our cell phone numbers and email addresses are as follows:

Sybil 520-603-4330 desertqueensb@wbhsi.net
Peter 520-850-8615 phickey37@juno.com

We’d love to hear from you and what you are up to!

More Pix!

Few more pix from Nashville rich and famous.......Keith Urban & Nicole Kidman's one-of-many home (up on the hill); Alan Jackson's behind the fence; some plastic surgeon or insurance exec...who knows? (the FL Wright looking one); Peter at the famous Ryman....original home of the Grand Ole Opry and gospel church.

Hi, y'all!

Hi y’all…..we’re baaaaack…………..doing our RV thing in the “South”! After Peter’s 2 weeks of traveling without Sybil (who went to Marin for Zoë’s BD…..see pix at Pier 39), he ended up in Kansas City, MO. Before leaving for Tucson, he parked the RV in this most interesting underground cavernous industrial park, “Subtropolis Storage”, that covered 25+ sq. acres under a hill on which sat Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun, KC’s star amusement & RV park! After our beach fix in Puerto Penasco, we returned on 9/17 to KC where we retrieved the RV and stayed for 5 days in above-ground park……..and we loved, loved the clacks and screams from the roller coaster every 3 minutes from 10A to 11P (just on weekends, thank you very much!). It was a very fun place to stay….see pix. By the way, KC is a city of many underground tunnels dug early in the 20th century for the mining of limestone. We, of course, had to get in a KC Royals game and went to their great downtown stadium (more good polish dogs and beer for dinner!) to watch them lose to the White Sox……oh well. We toured the Truman Library in adjacent, historic Independence…..such a great collection of the memorabilia from our childhood era…all that 40’s and 50’s “stuff”! KC also has beautiful Country Club Square right downtown where we were lucky enough to take in a big street fair with some KC new RV friends we met in South Dakota.

We left KC and headed for Red Bay, AL…..400 miles via Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee….to have some work done on our RV at the manufacturer (Tiffin) who just happens to “own” the town. We were there for 10 days and managed to eat green tomatoes, catfish, chicken……all fried, of course. A steak dinner in Red Bay costs about $10 and the county is dry and religious….so, no alcohol is served anywhere! Staying at Tiffin’s on-site RV park (an old airport runway) was quite an experience as everybody had to patiently wait for their turn……sometimes 3 weeks! Needless to say, the no alcohol rule didn’t apply at the park, helping make good new friends.

All fixed up and spiffy, we headed to Nashville for 5 nights via the Natchez Trace Parkway. The “Trace” was the historical 445 mile footpath from Natchez to Nashville used by traders and farmers in the 19th century, returning to Nashville after hauling their goods to Nashville via river. It must have been a long, arduous, dangerous trip to do on foot or horseback……if they didn’t sell their boats for wood, they would carry them home! It is now a beautiful 2 lane tree-studded road that allows no commercial vehicles and has lots of historic markers…see pix of our RV picnic place.

OK, enough of that because we’re getting to the good part…….Nashville! Wow….what a city! We took a tour with a funny guy which included homes of the “rich and famous”….see pix; Keith Urban & Nicole’s place on the hill, Alan Jackson’s estate behind the gate. We spent two nights honky-tonkying on Broadway, going in and out of 42+ bars, listening to lots of good wanna-be CW and blues bands which included dinner with the blues at BB King’s place……see pix. In the midst of all this CW rock & soul, the 2nd presidential debate was just 5 miles away so many of the streets were closed……very exciting! Another highlight was the Grand Ole Opry…..all those great old over-the-hill but still going strong singers…Ricky Skaggs, Jean Sheppard, etc……plus some debuts, ie, Rory and Joey, a husband/wife team with a rousing CW song they wrote….goes like this: “Tell me….cheater, cheater….where’d you meet ‘er, that low class, white trash ho’” . And then there was the CW Hall of Fame. We loved it all! By the way, in suthen tawk “cawdy eggley” translates to “Coyote Ugly”…..it’s a place where ugly girl patrons get up and dance on the 50’bar!

And now we are in Memphis in an RV park across the street from Graceland where we spent yesterday afternoon. Such an icon was Elvis…..a must-see if you are ever this way!

Hope you are not getting cross-eyed from this long bunch of blab! Tonite we will go out to compare Beale Street here to Broadway in Nashville…..can’t wait!

We continue to share the driving….Sybil knocking over rubber construction stanchions and terrorizing on-coming traffic in small towns, Peter hiding under the passenger seat.

We miss you all but still love this stuff!

Peter and Sybil

More Pix!

Just in case 5 pictures weren't enough, here's some more.........enjoy!

1) Sybil in the big bass at Hayward....Fisherman Hall of Fame

2) Old Farmhouse in Duluth countryside

3) Penninsula State Park tower, Door County

4) Picnic on Apostle Islands Nat'l Lakeshore

5) Same

On the road again & again & again & again!!

Hey, it's been awhile! We have been in the relatively "wilds" of northern MN and WI where wifi (even Verizon) is, if available at all, slow and cumbersome.......so I just gave up on it! We are now just south of Milwaukee in the town of Caledonia, finding that the choice of RV parks is fairly narrow. We picked a doozey this time.....but should have known with a name like "Yogi Bear's Jellystone RV Park". If you have 8 kids and 2 dogs, are overweight and have a tent trailer and lots of tattoos, it's a very cool place to be! We've made it here from the last blog in beautiful Lake of the Woods in MN, where we did go fishing for a day out on the lake by the same name and caught a whole limit of walleye which they deep fried (of course!) for us in the bar afterwards. We stayed in a great place "Lake of the Woods RV Park" who our new best friend Earl had just purchased......very fun.....we were there for 5 days and did some sightseeing and bicycle riding and just sitting around our personal campfire (there is always a fire pit at each campsite made from an old truck wheel!) enjoying swatting the mosquitoes, which have abated, by the way.....we think they sufficiently poisoned our blood so no other insects want us! We left there drove to Tower, MN where we lost some $$ at the Fortune Bay Resort and Casino. The next day we took off on a terrifying but beautiful drive thru the Iron Range 75 miles on twisty narrow Hwy 1 with no shoulders and overhanging branches of big trees....Sybil driving, of course, she's a magnet for road peril! We emerged at Silver Bay on the shore of Lake Superior and headed on down to Duluth and stayed just outside in Hermantown. We drove to Hayward to see Ann & Niles Vernon, our buddies from SaddleBrooke who have a most beautiful house on Lake.......Something! We also made a stop at the Fishermans Freshwater Hall of Fame....see the big bass picture! We had dinner in Duluth (great city with one of the worlds best harbor/shore walks!) with more SB friends, Tom & Irene Perry after we watched the "big boats" come into the harbor for the weekend regatta. We left there and continued on to the most beautiful of all drive 95 miles around the Apostle Island National Seashore and down to Minocqua on Lake Tomahawk for 2 days before leaving for Green Bay and on to Door County.....out there on the finger in Lake Michigan. It's just like Cape Cod....with quaint farm houses, wineries, lots of dirt roads to explore. We took a day to take the car and bicycles to Washington Island, off the very tip. Highlight food was a "fish boil"....see the flaming pix above (hopefully, they will upload!). They use chunks of whitefish and boil them to perfection along with whole onions and potatoes......sound awful?......try it! It's just the best....they serve it all with cold slaw and cherry pie. This all took place in the town of Ephraim (but they have them everywhere....it's a tradition) which is a dry town so we drank lemonade with this great meal......sigh. We loved Door County, do put it on your travel list, we were there for 8 days then headed out for Milwaukee on 8/10 where we are now until Sybil flies out Thursday for SF for her granddaughter's BD and Peter takes the RV and car to Kansas City destination over a 10 day period. He will then fly to AZ and meet Sybil and we'll take off for Puerto Penasco for two weeks.

Yea! We've made it to 2 baseball games; saw the Twins beat the Rangers at Hubert Humphrey Stadium in Minneapolis and yesterday saw the Brewers beat the Nationals here in Milwaukee at their awesome stadium.

Well, vicarious armchair travelers who wish you too were spending $3.80/gallon for gas at 6.5 mpg, this will be the last blog until we return on 9/17 to Kansas City where we are leaving the RV and car for the month. We'll then continue south then west back home....somewhere around the end of October.

And, YES!, we are enjoying it so much that, despite the RV steering wheel locking up in Port Washington when we parked on a small hill and turned the wheels into the curb.......we had to unhook the tow car (lessening the weight on the front of the coach - from about 30,000 to 25,000 lbs!) to free the steering wheel and start the RV...........we are going to do it again next year!!!!

Our very best to all of you out there.....sorry this was so long but it's been awhile......hope the pictures upload...if not, we'll do a subsequent blog!

Sybil & Peter