Friday March 7, 2014-Montgomery KOA

At least freezing weather with some sort of ice is not the big thing in this post! It has still been cold at night and in the morning, but thankfully, little ice to speak of. Friday morning I went over to Rayford Crossing to have coffee with Tommy and the guys and had a thin film of ice on the windshield but it didn't last very long.

Our friends Ted and Donna came in on Thursday from a trip to Florida for their daughter's wedding. They will just be staying a couple of days to unload some of their belongings and for Ted to clean the trailer. They bought a new Mobile Suite last year and we wanted to see it. Pretty...!

Stella fixed a big pot of chili and we invited Ted and Donna to come over, so we got a nice visit in with them while we ate supper. We realized that their floor plan is very much like ours, with two large slides on the back side. We have an L-shaped counter and theirs is an island. 

Friday night we rode with Ted and Donna to meet Tommy and Susan at the Sweet Tomato restaurant. This is one of my favorite restaurants in the area and I was glad we got to go there. Ted and Donna couldn't eat meat, so a salad with pastas worked out for them too. We went to eat early and beat the crowds and had a chance to have a nice chat before we went home. We'll likely get together with them again before we leave here. It's so great to be back with our home town friends!

So long.

Tuesday March 4, 2014-Montgomery KOA

I told you on the last post how cold it had gotten, and it has stayed extremely cold (28 degrees Monday morning) until today (Tuesday evening). I woke on Monday morning to fine a large Warning on my computer, telling me that everything would be erased if I went forward. I simply closed it without turning it off or doing anything else until I could take it to my friends at Rhino Computers in Spring. They told me to bring it in and they would check it out. Based upon what I told them, they warned me that it sounded like a bad hard drive. Having gone through another one on another computer, I knew it would be expensive, but fixable. Luckily, I later learned that it was only some malware that I had picked up and after doing a deep scan and adding some new anti-malware software, I was fixed and ready to go.

After dropping off my computer, we rode over to Rayford Crossing where we toured some new Mobile Suites' that belong to some of our friends that still stay there. They are beautiful units but I think we'll stay in our Landmark. While there, we ran into some other old friends that were also visiting, Andy and Sherry from Michigan and Keith and Connie from Canada. Our friend Tommy was staying in the park, but he wasn't at home while we were there. We'll see him later.

Monday night, it got very cold again and rained most of the night. I have never seen this much ice on any truck or trailer that we have owned. The rain from overnight turned into a light rain/mist this morning, which just piled even more ice on everything. Our neighbors on either side of us woke early and started their trucks but apparently got word that work was postponed because they were still here later in the morning.

Look at the icicles hanging from the awning! the entire door side was covered in thick ice, with long icicles all around the bottom of the trailer.

Look at the amount of ice in the windshield wiper trough. When I took this photo, the truck had been running for about 40 minutes and about half of the front windshield was thawed. 

Here is a better shot of the windshield and the ice on the wiper blade.

The front of the truck was also covered in ice because it had been facing into the rain. When we drive into Spring to pick up my computer, huge pieces of ice blew off and across the windshield, startling both of us. 

I know that people from Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and other cold-winter states that are reading this are probably laughing at me being upset with the cold weather. I have lived in the Houston/Galveston area all of my life, and have NEVER seen this much cold weather and ice! Somebody needs to call Mother Nature and tell her that Al Gore said we have global warming...

So long.

Sunday March 2, 2014-Montgomery KOA

I'll start out today's post by showing you our site in Montgomery. As you can see, the sites are not too level, although the portion of the site where the trailer sits is relatively level, the approach has a slight curb and then an incline into the site, so it's not too bad. I'm still not too impressed with this place any more but that's another story.

And to think that we went from a pretty level site with lots of trees at Inks Lake! 

Friday we had to make a trip down to Texas City to work on our storage unit to get it cleaned out. We began our trip with good intentions of getting some errands run while down here; going by the Manvel Police Dept. to have a chat with their new Chief of Police to find out what I will have to do to re-certify with my handgun to satisfy the requirements for the federal law and to go meet the old Chief, Ralph Garcia, who now works for AT&T to get a new I Phone for me. We had already made arrangements to meet our friends Tommy and Susan for lunch at the Top Water Grill in San Leon, one of our favorite seafood restaurants, so in an attempt to save some time, I decided to leave here and travel over to state hwy. 6 to go to Manvel. Bad Mistake... Lots of traffic and having to drive through several big cities threw us way late and we had to call Tommy and Susan to postpone our lunch. I also called Ralph and learned that he would be in his store and able to help me out.

After a great lunch with our friends and catching up on each others lives, we again took off for our errands. Since Ralph's store was on the way to Manvel, we stopped there first. Of course, when we stopped, Ralph had just left for lunch, so we had to come back. We went over to Manvel but when we got there, the Chief had left for the day, 3:30 on Friday afternoon! Just sayin'...

We went back to Ralph's store and he had returned from lunch but was very busy with other customers. After a long wait, I was sad to learn that they have changed their policy of trading phones and I must do it online. Dang, two wasted trips! Any, I now know what I need to do to get a new phone.

We got to Kim's house with no problem and got all settled in. We got to meet Tyler's girlfriend Loren before they went out. We also met Loren's parents, Joy and Danny,and were invited to meet them later tonight at Louis's Bait Camp in Hitchcock where there is a bar/restaurant. They do karaoke and have a good time. Kim took Cameron to baseball practice, which lasted until 9 o'clock, so I told Kim that we probably wouldn't make it out to meet Joy and Danny. We just hung out, and when Kim got back home, she and Cam were going to meet them, so I changed my mind and off we went! 

Let me tell you, that was the first time in a looooong time since we've gone out to a bar, probably the only time since we've been married, and that's been forever! This is a family-type bar with lots of people that are just having a good time. I sang a couple of songs and we really enjoyed ourselves. Everyone had a very good time but I didn't like all the cigarette smoke. Cameron had a good time playing pool and Tyler and Loren had a good time being together. Joy and Danny know everyone that works there, so there was no chance of any of the kids getting into trouble and getting the wrong thing to drink. We all had a great time and will probably go back when we can.

Saturday morning, we woke early to get started working on the storage unit. Both Tyler and Cameron had said they wanted to go eat breakfast and would help us with moving stuff, so we took them to the IHOP restaurant for breakfast. We all had a good meal and were soon at work. We got about half of the "stuff" moved, working until about 3 o'clock before knocking off. 

Tyler went to a performance by the drill team that Loren is a member of, so we were pretty much on our own Saturday night. I conked out in one of the recliners pretty early, especially since we had been up late the night before. 

PePaw knocked out in a recliner with one of Cameron's blanket covering.

I must have looked cold and Kim covered me with Cam's blanket. It's actually a good picture of him on a small blanket. 

Sunday morning, we woke pretty early and found out that winter will be arriving later today, with rain and possible sleet soon to follow. We packed up and left pretty early to try to beat the weather. We made good time, even though traffic was pretty bad from people leaving Mardi Gras weekend in Galveston. I watched a little TV and drank a cup of coffee-Kim doesn't have a coffee pot- and packed up my computer to go to the office to catch up on my computer work. It was so good to be home! My own chair, a coffee pot, the dogs are happy to be back in the trailer, and it's my HOME!! I love visiting my family, but we normally take our home along and it works better that way...

The news I told you about a couple of days ago was announced while we were gone. The HOC Central Region has been split and we are now the directors of the South Central Region and our good friends, Dan and Karen Halvorsen are the North Central Region directors. Maybe that wasn't such a big deal to some, but it will ease our life a lot. We will have a much smaller area now and will free us up a lot! We're looking forward to working with Dan and Karen!

When I left home the temps were in the 60's and I wore the same shorts and tee shirt that I wore on the drive home. When I left the office to come home, it was raining and cold again. Winter is Back!!! and I don't like it.

So long.

Wednesday February 26, 2014-Montgomery KOA

I want to make a few comments on the weather this year. Wow, will winter never end? After nearly freezing at Inks Lake, it has turned cold again here in Montgomery. I have a lot of respect for the fireplace that Heartland put in this trailer because it did a LOT of work for us this winter and it's working again right now! 

I had plans today to go out and capture Munzees all day, but the rainy and cold weather is going to prevent that. We'll be here for awhile, so I'll get 'em another day.

It rained all day and was very windy. Our neighbor, the one that made us wait for 30 minutes while he came back from work to move it out of our site, lost his awning this morning while he was away at work. Even when I was the rawest rookie, I knew better than to leave my awning out when the weather was bad. Not only could it have filled up with water, the high winds would surely gotten it, and sure enough, when I went out to look at it, the fabric was torn all the way across and the arms had been town off the trailer. When he came home, he apparently just ripped the canvas off and rolled the barrel of the awning up against his trailer. I heard him banging around when he got home but didn't go out. The only times I've seen him, he just glared at me as if it was my fault that he had to come home and move his truck. Some People...

We just stayed inside, warm and dry, except for the three times that Stella had to get her gun and make the dogs go outside in the cold rain. There were reruns of NCIS on all day and then tonight, a new Duck Dynasty to watch. Oh and I can use the Internet again here. The WIFI usage had dropped back to normal again. It must have been something with all the trees around our site at Inks Lake that caused the excess usage. 

So long.

Tuesday February 25, 2014-Montgomery KOA

We had a very good day yesterday. Our friends Jim and Nancy worked on projects in their trailer and soon contacted us to go to lunch. We started out for a local barbecue place but changed our minds and ended up at Vernon's Catfish nearby. This was a great choice and we all enjoyed our lunches. The others had various catfish dishes but I had a great bowl of seafood gumbo. It was probably as good as I've ever had, with just the right amount of spices and a lot of shrimp and seafood.

We came back home and relaxed (napped) for awhile until time to go over to Navasota to meet with some other friends, Buddy and Maureen. Buddy chose La Casita restaurant, which is about half way between their home and the RV park, and the food was very good and the service excellent. We had a nice time catching up with our friends and we made plans for them to come over here for a few days before we leave. We will be meeting them again at our first rally in April in Santo TX. 

We are looking forward to beginning our travels in early April. We will have some news soon and I will share this as soon as I can.

So long.

Sunday February 23,2014-Montgomery KOA

First I want to tell you about a trip we took down to Texas City and then to watch Cameron play baseball in Hitchcock. We went by our storage unit first to see how much stuff we would need to remove to be able to close it. Kim and Jeremy had been sharing it with us and we found that Jeremy had removed a lot of their stuff but there is still a lot of work to do. We learned that we will not have to give a 30 day notice under Frank's new management policy. That's a relief!

We went to Jack Brooks Park where we watched Cam's Bengals team play a double header. They easily won both games (5-1 and 12-2) but Cam didn't play his best game. He made a couple of RBI's and was the pinch runner twice and scored on one, stranded on base on the second.

We went to Beyond Burgers for supper after the second game. It's like Fuddruckers on steroids. They have a large selection of burgers and great fries and onion rings. The best thing is that the boys love the place, so there is no argument over going there.

Today we heard from Kim that Cam had pitched the first game of the tournament and came within one hit of throwing a no hitter! I'm sorry to have missed his pitching today, but we had company coming in. Jim and Nancy B. came up from Rockport where they have been for the last week or so. Stella made some of her goulash and a pan of cornbread with some lemon bars for dessert. We know how it is to drive all day and then have to either fix something or go out to eat, so she had supper all made when they arrived. We had a nice meal with them and enjoyed the evening until it got too cool to sit outside any longer. I'll post more about their visit.

So long.

Thursday February 20, 2014-Montgomery KOA

I got up early this morning and drove down to Rayford Crossing for their men's coffee. When we lived at Rayford, I not only went to coffee every morning, but made the coffee many times. I was one of the first to begin the tradition, and was flattered when one of my friends invited me to come. I know it's a long way down there but I wanted to see my friends there and really enjoyed it. Most of my friends were there but there were a couple that didn't make it. I will go back one or more mornings and will try to see all of them.

When I came back home, I stopped in Conroe and captured some Munzees. You haven't heard me talking very much about Munzees in awhile and it felt pretty good to get back into the game. There are a lot of Munzees in the area, so I can keep busy.

I capped Munzees for an hour or so and quit because it started to rain. I knew rain was in the forecast and didn't want to get stranded way out in the parking lot when it started raining hard so I came on back home. It was just in time because I hadn't been home for long when it began storming. It rained hard and the wind blew for about an hour and I was glad to be home, dry and warm!

I went to the office and used their Internet service to get caught up with messages and emails. While having the data using problem that we did at Inks Lake, I hadn't opened any email attachments, so now I have literally hundreds of emails and You Tube videos to watch. It will make my time here go by so fast.

So long.