A Texas RV Park Thanksgiving

Today was a new experience for us - Thanksgiving in an RV park.  The owners of the park provided two turkeys and a ham and everyone else brought a dish.  It's interesting to see what everyone brings.  What's tradition for someone in a certain part of the country is not always what we are used to.  For example, someone brought cabbage rolls - and they were delicious.  Our friends Gene and Linda, when back home in Pennsylvania, always have saurkraut.   Someone brought rutabegas, but I didn't have the courage to try them - too much other good food.

Wray and Emily (Wray deep fried one of the turkeys.)

A fruit turkey made by Linda and Maurice.

The club house, right before we all got our food.

We started eating just after 2:00pm, and by 3:15 the club room was cleaned up and we were all out walking off some of the 5000+ calorie meal we had just eaten.

We ended our last night by playing dominos and Joker with Gene and Linda and Linda and Maurice.  Around 8:30 we all went outside with our binoculars to check out the space shuttle going by. 

We're sad to be leaving Texas in the morning but are looking forward to seeing all of our family and friends.  For various reasons, we'll be bringing the trailer home with us and will most likely be spending our winter at home.  

If all goes well, we will be home some time on Sunday.  We plan on stopping north of Dallas tomorrow night, then somewhere between Springfield MO and home on Saturday night so we can winterize, then an easy drive into town on Sunday.

It's Beginning To Look Like..........

Nothing out of the ordinary has been happening around Victoria lately.  We have been golfing, playing ping pong, swimming, eating popcorn, and playing games every evening. 

Except for Friday and Saturday, the weather has been fabulous.  The weather people have been begging for cool weather (we have not). 

Mr. & Mrs. Claus landed at the local mall on Saturday.  I guess it's going to be Christmas soon.  When the highs are in the 70s and 80s daily, it's hard to grasp the "holiday spirit."   We've lost the holiday tunes station on the local cable, but found out on XM23 they are now playing Christmas tunes.  That will make the trip home fun!

Signs of the upcoming holidays are starting to show up around town.  We found this on the 17th hole today at the Colony Creek Country Club.

Another sign we've been seeing right down the road is this.  For some reason, it really bothers me.  Not that it's a Bud Light billboard; just the language on it.

Yes, there's a very large Hispanic population in Victoria, but aren't we in the U.S.A.?????

We're off to play Sticks.  Mark never wanted to play again, but he agreed to play tonight since we're running out of time.  Our final blog of the year will be posted on Thanksgiving evening. 

Happy Turkey Day to all.

Par For The Course

Since we're leaving here in just 12 days, I'm getting really bad at blogging; my interest is waning.  Now to remember what's been going on besides plotting our trip home.

The weather has cooled off finally.  The lows the past two nights have been in the upper 30s but fortunately, it warms to low 70s during the day. 

Sunday we loaded the bikes in the back of the truck and headed over to Riverside Park to try out their trail.  We rode for an hour but spent about 15 minutes watching a group of six guys playing "disc golf".  They were each loaded down with a backpack of at least 15 discs (look similar to frisbees), water bottles, a fold-up stool to either sit on or set their backpacks on while they are thowing. These guys were good.  It would take us at least 10 throws for each one of theirs, plus they were very accurate.

Further down the trail we came across a baseball game going on.  Baseball is a very popular activity in this part of Texas, and is played year round. 

As always, each day ends with popcorn at 3:00, hot tub, dinner, then an evening of Joker.  Sunday evening had the ice cream social at 6:00.  Quite the deal for 50 cents a scoop with all the toppings.

Monday Mark golfed while I caught up on my phone calls back home to the families. 

Tuesday we hung around the park; Mark waxed a little bit more of the trailer and gabbed with everyone.  Lunch was our favorite BBQ joint - Mumphord's.  Unfortunately they only serve sliced pork on Thursdays thru Saturdays.  Mark had the ribs while I had the shredded beef.  Yummy as always, but we'll now have to return this weekend for the pork one final time.

Today we golfed with Wray and Emily.  This was the very first time that Emily has ever golfed.  For those golfers out there reading this - you can imagine how it was, and you would be correct.  The real problem was Wray "coaching" the entire 4 hours!  The good part of this round was that we treated ourselves to a cart today, and didn't have to walk the 18 holes. 

I had lots of time to take pictures of this doe.  It was all over the place.  The deer are so used to the golfers, they don't even look up even if a ball is coming right at them. 

The diets are now off for a while.  We hadn't been to Sam's Club in a while and today they were giving out samples of pumpkin pie.   Yep - we got one, along with 3 cans of whipped cream.  We had to make sure it was good since we plan on taking it to the park's Thanksgiving dinner next week.  Unfortunately, this Sam's is a small one and doesn't bake in-house; every thing is shipped in frozen so some stuff is not real fresh.  However, the pie was fabulous!  We've deemed it good enough for the Thanksgiving potluck.

To further test our patience today, we learned a new card game with Linda and Maurice and Linda and Gene - it was called "Sticks".  Too complicated to explain, but we're sure we would rather play Joker.

Where Are We and Why Are We Here?

Friday morning we headed down to Rockport, which is about 80 miles away, but with my scenic route and poor navigational skills, in reality it was more like 110 miles.  Guess who wasn't happy.

We did come across this cool wind farm across the field.

Our trip to Rockport was to go to an open house at an RV dealer.  The funniest part of this was that at least 200 people were lined up for at least an hour, to get their free hot dog, potato salad, and a bottle of water.  I'm sure none of these people bought a thing in the store, much less a new RV.  We did not get in this line as I would never eat a hot dog, even if it were free.  We did walk through some of the trailers and also bought a light bulb and a fan for the refrigerator. 

After the open house, we headed south to get to the beach in Port Aransas.  It was such a beautiful day out, even the sail boats were out and about.

We walked down the really long walkway into the bay.  The walkway looked like it was made up of huge boulders of granite. 

We found loads of really cool jelly fish that we had never seen before on the Alabama coast.  After further research, I've learned that they are cannonball jellyfish. 

These were all wedged inbetween the boulder walkway.  Mark tried poking one with a stick - they are very hard. 

Today was men's breakfast day for Mark, I did laundry and vacuuming. After waxing a little more of the trailer, and grocery shopping we spent some time in the pool.  After a fabulous dinner at La Hacienda, I'm ready to crash for the evening. 

Home Brew

Not much going on in the park.  Yesterday was the "ladies lunch" at Halpaska's Bakery and Restaurant.  The soup and salad I are were wonderful.  Somehow I found the will power to avoid the bakery part of the place.  The cheesecake and cherry pie were screaming "eat me" but I just kept walking. 

We had been desparately trying to lose weight this winter, and had each managed to lose 7 lbs.  Unfortunately the cruise came and went; the 2 extra pounds have not.  Thus, I skipped the dessert at lunch.

Speaking of losing weight, we're still walking, biking, swimming, and now water aerobicsing in an effort to lose.  There are no snack foods, ice cream, etc. in the trailer.  Mark must now snack on Rice Krispies.  Ugh! 

After two golf outings in a row, Mark hung around the park today, at least until lunch time.  All of our friends in the park have recently purchased new trucks to pull their trailers.  This got us wondering about our next truck in a year or two.  Do we really need a one ton when the three-quarters works just fine?  Today we went in search of this info by visiting the local Ford, Chevy, and GMC lots.

For a mere $53,000, this bad boy could be ours.  None of the lots had what we plan to purchase in a year or two:  four door, diesel, 8' bed, 2 wheel drive, 3/4 ton, and no dualies!  The GMC salesman was extremely pushy- wanting Mark to test drive one of the two trucks he had; we finally just left.  We did, however, get brochures from every dealier because Mark wanted to research the towing capacity on all of them.  Now if we could just win the MegaMillions!

Tonight we sat up at the fake fire (propane) with the park's owner, Erik.  Mark and Erik were trying Erik's new beer he had made.  I took a sip because they assured me it didn't taste like beer - they were wrong!   I think this beer was 6.5% alcohol.  They each had 3 large glasses, and Mark is now in bed. 

Wax On Wax Off

We couldn't take the bugs and dirt any longer.  On Saturday Mark got on the roof and scrubbed the roof.  Next came out the ladder to wash the whole trailer.  Even though the guy who owns the storage lot in Eureka where we store it had been harrassing him to wax the whole thing, only the front end got the wax.  There was too much danger in hurting his back, thus ruining the next golf game.

While he was washing and waxing, I was at the Bed Bath and Beyond store getting the final three roman shades for some windows in the trailer.  The dreaded day/night shades are now cluttering up the local landfill. 

We did get in several games of Joker on Friday and Sunday.  As the park fills up with Winter Texans, more and more people show up for this game.  We also now get the "happy hour" free popcorn and soda every afternoon at 3:00. It's a perfect snack in the afternoon before a 6:00pm dinner.  We now must eat a little earlier though, since everyone wants to start playing games at 6:45. 

Sunday the rains came and kept everyone inside almost all day.  We ventured out for a trip to Sam's and Walmart.  Unfortunately our "business" card at Sam's hadn't been renewed and we left the store without the coffee, steaks, and gum.  It's now been renewed and we returned tonight for the same items.  On Sunday we got to eat all the free samples throughout the store so we didn't leave completed unsatisfied; no samples tonight.  This Sam's gives you "meal-sized" samples; not those wimpy ones back home.  Instead of a 1" x 1" sample of pizza, we get an actual real slice.

Today was my first trip to water aerobics.  The heated pool made it quite comfortable even though we still had all the clouds, but no rain.  While I hung around paying bills, cleaning, etc., Mark and Wray were golfing.  Since they both played so bad today, they're going back tomorrow to try and improve.

Tis NOT the Season Just Yet

We've safely arrived back to Victoria after the five-day feeding frenzy on the Carnival Ecstasy.  I took this picture a mere 5 minutes after we got on board which was right around 12:30pm. 

The food was wonderful.  Mark fell in love with the chocolate molten cake; I liked it all because I didn't have to make it.  Even though the ship made two stops in Mexico (Cozumel and Progreso), we were only off the ship for about an hour in Cozumel and less than 30 minutes in Progreso.  Instead of touring these cities, we just lounged in and around the pool and hot tubs.  The casino was also kind to us.

This is why I love cruising; nothing better than sunrise or sunset on the ocean.  Give me a book, comfy lounge chair, and a fruity drink with an umbrella and rum in it, and I'll be happy for days.

Once we got off the ship on Thursday morning, we drove down along the sea wall in Galveston to check out any Hurricane Ike damage from September 2008.  Apparently there is a lot of money in Texas and within the city of Galveston, because most houses along the beach had already been replaced.  There were large piles of brush piled up waiting to be burned, and we also saw quite a few boats on their sides out in the middle of cow pastures.

Instead of doing the laundry first thing this morning, we headed off to the golf course.  After golf we went to a laundramat and got all the wash done in under an hour.

Can you hear me screaming????  That's because Mark has discovered a "holiday season" cable tv station that is playing Christmas music (It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas) and he's listening to it as I type.  It's way too early for this.