Surgery Success, More New Friends and a Blast From the Past

At Lake Conroe Thousand Trails, Willis, Texas...

I'm hoping that the successful outcome of the surgical repair of my meniscus will signal our nearing the end of the medical and dental issues that have confounded our travel plans this winter. In regard to this procedure on my knee, I wasn't prepared for the dramatic improvement just one day afterward. Houston is not my favorite city in my beloved state, but this place does have some fine physicians. In the photo below, it's easy to see my pleasure at the post-surgical checkup by Dr. Launikitis:

This guy knows what he's doing. I was expecting a much more invasive procedure, but he did the work through two small incisions in the knee, into one of which was inserted a camera, and the surgical instruments were manipulated through the other. All of the work was done by the surgeon and an assistant while looking at the camera's image on a screen above the operating table. The incisions (one of which was still covered) can be seen below. The indentations are from the  bandage wrapping that had just been removed:

I'll be getting the stitches out in about a week and, hopefully, that will be that.

I'll be heading to the dermatologist next to have my yearly face-freezing to remove the little pre-cancerous lesions that seem to plague some of us with very fair skin. As far as I know, that will finally be the end of all this medical falderol although, for a while, my face will look like I have leprosy or something.

We had the good fortune to run into friends Dick and Judy again while we are here at Thousand Trails. We took them to Vernon's in Conroe for some good catfish one evening, and we had lots of fun talking and carrying on:

Then Dick and Judy introduced us to new friends Richard and Karen, who joined us for pizza on another evening. We do enjoy meeting such fun and interesting people in this lifestyle:

Since my posts seem a little sparse when we're not traveling, I'm going to fool around with posting some 'blasts from the past.' I'm sure few readers go way back in this blog 13 years ago when we first started RVing, so I thought I would post a few pics from the earliest years forward and say a few things about them. This first photo is from the very first day of our very first RV trip on May 13, 2005:

We learned so many lessons during our first few years of RVing. This was a relatively inexpensive Jayco fifth wheel that we grew to despise because of its terrible floor plan and single air conditioner! In Texas! What were we thinking?! What is not shown is a Jayco bumper-pull trailer that lasted in our possession for one day! That's all it took for me to realize that it wasn't something I wanted to hitch up and pull with our Suburban. The next day, I took it back to the dealer and canceled the sale, swapping it for this fifth wheel. I also scurried around and bought a Dodge diesel truck to pull it. The Dodge truck I loved and eventually traded for a newer one.

During that trip--to Florida--we stayed at the tony Emerald Beach RV Resort in Panama City and thought we were in tall cotton! It was a beautiful park, and in the post I complained about how unbelievably expensive it was--$40 a night! How times have changed!

I also noticed on that post a comment from longtime RV blogger friends Gordon and Juanita that I believe to be our first contact with them. We ultimately met up and became good personal friends years later.

On our way back from Florida, we also toured the McIlhenny Tabasco factory on Avery Island, Louisiana:

This was a really interesting stop, and I would recommend it for everyone. (As I look at this photo, I realize that I still have in my closet that shirt from 13 years ago; I'm not sure what to say about that, but I will admit that it's getting a little faded nowadays. You might say that I'm not much of a shopper.)

Well, what do you think? Does this old stuff have any appeal? It's fun for us to look back through 500 blog posts over 13 years, but I'm not sure that would hold true for anyone else.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I don't appreciate it as I should each day.

I had rather see the world and own little than to own the whole world and see little of it.  

--Alexander Sattler