Sunday February 14 through Saturday February 20, 2010-Mission West RV Park

I am sorry for getting so far behind in my blog entries, so today will catch me up for the last week. When you're busy, as all retirees are, there is little time to sit down at the computer and make an entry.

On Sunday morning, we went into Donna with Ted and Donna to eat the breakfast at Furr's Fresh buffet. The food was very good but we came in at the end of the breakfast serving, so they ran out of food a couple of times and made little effort to refill. Bill and Ornell arrived in the afternoon, having driven in from Lakeview RV park in Houston where they had been visiting with Tom and Judy and Jim and Sheila. They had gone to the Houston RV show yesterday, but they all had been strong and resisted the impulse to buy a new RV. They were tired from driving all day, so we decided to meet Ted and Donna at Cheddar's restaurant. Today was Valentine's Day and the restaurant was packed with people standing outside so we decided to go back to Furr's in Donna. It is very quick to eat and the food is good, so thats where we went.

Monday, we stayed around here because Bill and Ornell were still kind of tired. Around eleven o'clock we went out to ride around the area to go to the Ropas to show them to Ornell. Bill and I just looked a little bit but didn't buy anything. I used this time to drop off some more fliers on the Heartland events this week at some of the local RV parks. We did a little grocery shopping before returning here for the hamburger meal in the afternoon. The burgers are great and CHEAP! After the burgers, there was a jam session in the rally hall. Many people from here in the park as well as others that like to play music get together to play and sing. Some are very good and others, well, not so much. It was still fun but we didn't stay too long.

Tuesday, Bill and I went to Airhorns of Texas to get my air horn looked at. The horn hasn't been sounding too good for awhile and I could tell that one of the trumpets wasn't working. Jason, the owner, was out but as soon as he returned, he slid under the truck and found that there was oil and junk in the horn, so he had me blow the horn and he held the diaphram open manually and blew the trash out. He also found that one of the trumpets was loose and tightened it up. The oil leak that we had was the cause of the junk accumulating on the horn. We are fixed up now! I dare you to cut me off now! We returned home to rest up before we went to the Heartland "meet and greet" at Retama Village. The meet and greet was a great success and we had about 45 people in attendance. After it was over, many of us went over to the site where Jim was parked to look up close at his new demo rig from Heartland. The paint job is absolutely beautiful but Stella is unsure of the floor plan. Our friend Buddy and his wife Maurine arrived here at the park. Sadly, they were too late to come to the potluck dinner at Retama, but we are glad they got here.

On Wednesday, we went out to eat breakfast with Jim B. and Kathy A. and Bill and Ornell at the IHOP. We stayed about two hours, just talking and visiting with Jim and Kathy. When we left, we drove to Progresso to the border crossing where Stella and I went to buy some more medicines. We weren't over there very long, and when we came back we went to the Don-Wes flea market. I bought a few more tee shirts because some of mine are looking kind of threadbare. We came back home and fixed some mexican food for supper. While sitting outside, Jim and his wife Bette came over. They had arrived earlier in the afternoon to go to the luncheon tomorrow. We had a nice visit with them before turning in. It had been a busy day.

On Thursday morning, we got up and fixed some biscuits and gravy with Bill and Ornell before we went to the luncheon at Ron Hoover RV in Donna. We had a great turnout of about 200 people including over 150 Heartland owners. It was very nice to meet so many people and we got a free lunch to boot. Ron Hoover has a nice facility in Donna and we are planning to do this again next year. We stayed there most of the day and returned home to rest.

We woke to more rainy and cold weather on Friday. Bill and I went out to see if we could help Buddy get ready to leave, but he had gotten everything done before we got out. Buddy is the Pastor of a church in north west Houston and also a retired Houston Police officer. He had to get back to prepare his sermon for Sunday. We had planned to drive over to the hand-pulled ferry near Los Ebanos today but wanted to do some other thing first to see if it would quit raining. We went over to eat at Gonzales Burgers in Donna. These burgers are HUGE, with almost a pound of meat in each hamburger patty. Bill wanted a double meat/double cheese with bacon and believe it or not, he actually ate all of it! None of us, Bill included, could believe he ate all of it. After lunch, we went to a Croc's show store and bought some more shoes. We had heard that they had some very low prices but we didn't find them. We then went to the ferry, but when we got there, it was not running in the rain. We were not even allowed to go out to the dock area, so we weren't sure if the river was running high or that they just don't run in rainy weather. We came on back home and didn't eat any more after the burgers. We also saw that Bob and Pat had arrived.

Saturday morning began very nice. The weather has warmed up some and the sun came out, making it typical Valley weather. We were sorry to see Bill and Ornell leave, but she has to go back to work (ugh, that word!) on Monday and wanted to stay overnight in Victoria which is about half way between Mission and Port Arthur. We had learned that Jim B. wanted to meet with some of us for lunch before he left on Sunday. Stella and I, Jim and Bette and Bob and Pat as well as Lenny and his wife from here at Mission West all met Jim at Tio Chuy's restaurant for lunch. We had a long lunch and visit afterwards, and after handshakes and hugs, we all left. Stella and I went to Ron Hoover RV and got the Heartland banner that we had used and then went to the Don-Wes fruit market and bought some more fruit. I bought a large bag of oranges and grapefruit to take back to Stephen F. Austin when we return there on the 1st of March. We stopped off at HEB to buy a few groceries and came back home. We invited Jim and Bette and Bob and Pat to a concert tonight at the rally. There were two groups, Keith Ross, a fiddle player and his band and the Wes Thibodeaux and his cajun band played and everyone enjoyed the music. We walked back home and everyone turned in since it was so late. Not much sitting out up here.

So long.