Still Hot: ABQ is Not Any Cooler

At Enchanted Trails RV Park, Albuquerque, New Mexico...

We launched successfully from Fort Worth on our way to Colorado, stopping the first night in tiny Crosbyton, Texas to visit friends and then on to Albuquerque. Crosbyton has a nice city-owned RV park that is free for the first two nights and $10 thereafter. Can't beat that deal, although they have only 30-amp service. We made do for one night without all the A/Cs running, but that's not something we would want to do any longer than that in the summertime.

Enchanted Trails is a Passport America park here in Albuquerque that is very nice for $20 with the PA card. (Good for two nights only.)  We enjoyed this old (Packard, I think) pulling a camper trailer as a piece of yard art:

It was 105 degrees here when we pulled into register, so I haven't made much progress in getting out of the heat, have I? They say it's dry heat but, guess what? I still sweat! My tolerance for heat never was very good, but it is definitely getting worse. I hope we find a cool place where we're going.

Not wishing to cook anything, we elected to try the Frontier Restaurant near the UNM campus for dinner. This place has been around forever, and it is always crowded with a line to order at one window and pick up at another. It's a rather large restaurant, having started as a single room many years ago and gradually expanding into a couple of side buildings. We had read that the food was good, plentiful and cheap, and that proved to be true.

We had a plate with a taco and an enchilada covered in red chile sauce, a green chile cheeseburger and a cup of green chile stew, followed by a killer cinnamon roll. Fresh flour tortillas were hot off the griddle. It was all delicious, for only a little over $20. What a deal! I like Tex-Mex, but I'm really enjoying the New Mexico version, too. I had forgotten how good it is.

 I didn't show photos of the green chile cheeseburger or the green chile stew; They were probably half eaten by the time I took the photo. Suffice it to say everything was wonderful. This place will definitely go on our favorite restaurants list. Besides, any restaurant that sports a life-sized portrait of John Wayne can't be all bad. (Reminds me of a time in our country when things made sense):

On this trip, I'm trying to focus more on parks that give good discounts, like Passport America. They are not everywhere, but the price is right when you find them.

Tomorrow will be a down day, as we rest up from the 350-mile drive here today. That's just too long a leg, in my view, to be much fun, although Phannie purred flawlessly all the way.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Yes, Stuff Breaks...It's How You Deal With It That Matters

At Northlake Village RV Park, Roanoke, Texas...

One of the things RVers have to accept is that there will be things that break from time to time, especially on a motorhome, where you have a house and vehicle combined. Such is the case with Phannie this week, just as we were getting ready to raise the jacks and head north to find cool surroundings (please God, let it be soon). 

In this case, a couple of unrelated things conveniently broke about the same time. A check valve near the water heater failed, leaving us with no hot water, and a leak developed in the gray water system. The check valve was an easy fix for Barry, the local tech whom we called: 

He found the gray water leak to be caused by the washing machine drain line's having broken at the point where it enters the gray tank:

It's not surprising that a few things come loose from time to time. Driving your house down the road for tens of thousands of miles tends to have that effect. It wasn't long until Barry had fashioned a new drain line section and secured it to the tank. Problem solved!

Fixing things that break seem to fall into three categories: 1) Minor repairs that I can do myself, 2) minor repairs that I can't (or don't want to do) and are done onsite by a tech, and 3) major repairs that require a shop visit. Most of Phannie's fixes have fallen into the first and second categories. Only on a couple of occasions has a shop visit been required. And only once in the five years Phannie has been with us has a tow been required--for a broken accelerator link. There has never been a problem with the engine or drive train, thankfully. All things considered, we think we have been very fortunate; in all that time, Phannie's downtime in the shop has been no more than a few days.

To give you a sense of the kinds of things I'm willing to repair myself, here is a list from the last few months:  Several burned out bulbs (that I've replaced with LEDs), a broken tail light assembly replacement, a broken bathroom light switch, some broken drawer latches--well, you get the idea. If it's much more than that, or the weather isn't just right, or if it's something really dirty or smelly, I'm calling for a mobile tech. And yes, this can be a little pricey, but tech guys have to eat, too, and I don't think I've ever seen an armored car following a hearse to the cemetery. I may as well spend it now; my comfort is worth something.

The dentist installed my new crown yesterday, and I think we have taken care of all the incessant medical appointments. Mae has had an oil change and a wash job, and she will get her tires rotated today. Tomorrow will be departure day on our way to Colorado. Yay! These posts will be a bit more regular with the change of scenery.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Ugh! We're Stuck Here in the Texas Heat (But Not For Long)

At Northlake Village RV Park, Roanoke, Texas...

One of the things we had been looking forward to after jettisoning the house was escaping to cooler climes for several summer months before the unrepentant Texas sun begins its fiendish rendering of my ample adipose tissue. Well, that escape hasn't happened...yet. We're sitting here in north Texas for a while, working on a special project that, hopefully, will delight grandsons Mason and Pryce. I'll tell you about the project a little later; certain things have to fall into place for it to happen as hoped. We were planning to have made our trek to Colorado before now, even having made reservations at Mountaindale RV Park near Colorado Springs. We were to join several of our friends there in the cool mountain air. 

Sure enough, after a spring that was about three days long, the summer sun has begun its usual microwaving of the north Texas plains, and here we are, reluctantly, in the middle of it. It's easy to tell when the temperature outside approaches 100 degrees: All three of Phannie's air conditioners are humming during the daytime.

But not for long. The things required of me--routine medical tests, mostly--will be finished in a couple of weeks and we will then launch for Durango, Colorado just after the July fourth holiday. Mindy and Tyler and the grandsons will fly into there later in the month; we will see them along with Bubba and LouAnn, who will arrive in their motorhome. We have tickets to ride the old steam train from Durango to Silverton. Grandson Mason--and his brother, Pryce, to a lesser extent--are batty over trains, and they will have a grand time doing this.

We are set up pretty nicely here at Northlake Village, north of Fort Worth, for a month. This is a nice park, and we were lucky enough to get perhaps the best spot in the whole place:

Here's a photo of the park office:

Another real plus is the park wi-fi, which is remarkably fast, unlike the dreadful drip of bandwidth of most other RV parks. This proves that good internet can be had, if the park owners are willing to spring for it. Good for you, Northlake.

During this interlude, Sandy and I went to our dentist, Dr. Novo Cain, for a cleaning and checkup, only to find that I had a small cavity beneath an old crown. Sandy, who has had almost no cavities in her lifetime, also had none this time, of course. I went back the next day to get the cavity fixed and a new crown installed which, of course, made another payment on Dr. Cain's Mercedes. I grumble about our constant visits to health professionals but, by golly, I haven't been around this long without doing something right, I guess. I'm glad they found the cavity on the routine x-ray before I even knew there was a problem. By the time it would have begun to bother me, it would likely have been much worse. 


How about an update on our new residential refrigerator, now that we've had it for a couple of months? Well, I can report that this upgrade may be the best one we've done so far. It would be difficult to describe what a profound difference it has made, especially since we are fulltiming. It was one thing to put up with the old Nevercold while we were part-timing but, somehow, the new fridge makes Phannie much more homelike than we ever imagined it would. If this upgrade is something you may be contemplating, I think your reaction would be no different from ours.

I'll close with a shout out to my friend Ed Dray, another fulltimer whose new book, "My Journey to the Clouds," is now available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book and soon will be available at Barnes and Noble for those with Nooks. Ed asked me to edit the book, which I gladly did. Although I've done a good deal of writing, this was the first book I had edited. I am grateful to Ed for his acknowledgement of my effort, one that turned out to be an enjoyable and illuminating experience for me. Ed also asked me to provide an introduction in the book, which I was happy to do. If you enjoy reading, I think you would find Ed's book to be an interesting perspective of the life of a corporate pilot and the value of perserverance in pursuing your dreams. There is much more, however, in terms of personal stories and the value of faith, family and a positive attitude when terrible things happen. You can find out more here.

Since we're largely in a holding pattern here in north Texas, posts will be a little more sparse until we start moving again. But never fear, I'll be back soon.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day. 

Homecoming: We Visit Our Folder

At Escapees Rainbow's End RV Park, Livingston, Texas...

I know I was going to talk about an average day as a fulltimer, but I've changed my mind; It just doesn't interest me very much. In fact, it's because of do-nothing days that I am not a daily blogger. I just think that if I'm not interested in what I write about, the readers will be disinterested as well. I have evidence of this in reading the blog statistics. When I publish under a post title that sounds interesting, I get a lot more hits, and vice versa. And frankly, I have difficulty making something interesting out of, say, vacuuming the car. Now, that's not to say anything against daily bloggers, some of whom are good friends. (I can hear you typing your snarky comments now.) Curiously, I enjoy reading a daily blog; I guess I'm just too lazy to write one.

I will say a couple of things about our routine days: 

1) Our habit patterns from pre-fulltiming days haven't really changed much, and I doubt if yours will, either, if you're thinking about doing it. For example, we like to sleep in in the morning and stay up late at night; we always have. We will get up and get going early for special occasions, like going to church or going with friends on an adventure, but we're not sure what kind of company we are when we do that.

2) If we have a do-nothing day, we always try to do something productive as well, so as not to feel that it's  a wasted day. Since the RV is our house, there's always some small household chore that needs to be done; it's just that we don't spend much time doing these. In a tiny house, chores are tiny, too, but they still give a sense of accomplishment. Then there are all the entertainment resources, books to be read and the Internet. How in the world could anyone be bored?

Okay, that's about all I'm going to say about do-nothing days; my eyes are beginning to glaze over. Instead, lets talk about our trip "home" to Livingston, Texas:

We have returned to our current residence of record, the sprawling Escapees complex in Livingston, Texas that houses our mail folder--that serves as our "home" at 237 Rainbow Drive. Our folder is quite nondescript among the 15,000 other folders of fulltimers and, although Sandy would like to spruce it up a bit, maybe by adding a plastic flower or something, I don't think they would go for that here at Escapees Mail Service. They're pretty serious about their business.

Escapees Mail Facility in Livingston, Texas

We are not here merely to pick up our mail, which is usually sent by Escapees to wherever we tell them. Our mission is to get new registration stickers for Phannie and Mae, an annual obligation that requires us to return here once a year. Obtaining a sticker requires a vehicle inspection, and we will have to get that, too, while we're here.

The Escapees headquarters is about six miles southeast of Livingston on state highway 146, identified by this sign:

While you're looking at that sign, take a look at the original photo below from which I removed some unwanted objects with a really cool program called Movavi. (I've mentioned this before in the blog, but for you new readers, you need to see it again; you need this. It's not nearly as complicated or expensive as some other programs. By the way, I have no connection to Movavi other than as a customer.)

Notice the overhead wires and the speed limit sign above. These are not to be found in the preceding photo. Removing them with Movavi is so simple; you just highlight the areas to fix and click on a button, and the program does the rest. It seems to know what is supposed to be in the background behind the objects removed; I can't imagine how it does this. Yes, there's a small cost for Movavi Photo Editor--about forty bucks. But that's not a lot, considering what it does. I haven't even gotten into the other editing features; just the unwanted object removal is more than worth its cost to me. 

We have a nice shady parking spot with just enough of an opening for our dish to see the satellites it needs. The concrete pad is still wet from where I gave Phannie a bath. It wasn't a full bath; she was only dirty from about her waist down. Saved myself more than a hundred bucks.

We're parked very near the RV park office:

It contains a very nice laundry room:

Here's the main headquarters building where the mail service is:

Here's our house:

The inspections and the sticker acquisitions went off without a problem, except that our bank account is nearly $500 smaller.

We ate at a very good catfish joint just south of Livingston on U. S. 59. Here's a photo of Hughes Catfish Inn, and I'm adding it to our favorite restaurants list.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Fulltiming: Things That Didn't Surprise Us

At Sunset Shores RV Park, Willis, Texas...

The simple life. Before we pulled the trigger on fulltiming, we already knew that we were going to simplify our lives dramatically. Having owned Phannie for over four years while part-timing, we knew, for example, how easy it was for me to maintain the coach and for Sandy to do housekeeping chores. And so it has been. There's really not that much to do, maintenance-wise, other than keeping the tires aired up, the fluids checked, the tanks dumped and the occasional wash job (often done by mobile wash services). Oh yes, and then there are the minor things that break and that can be fixed by someone inept like me. We occasionally need the services of a professional if we need some work on the entertainment system or the house electrical or plumbing systems or something like that. Other than regular maintenance visits--for which I am fanatical in their accomplishment--I can think of only one time in five years that Phannie had a mechanical problem that required her to be towed to the shop, and that was because of a broken throttle link. 

Sandy is equally delighted with the ease of housekeeping. Vacuuming takes all of ten minutes, and the rest of the inside chores about twenty more. When we think about the large houses we've owned, one with acreage, our mind reels as to what we were possibly thinking back then. God was good finally to give us clarity of thought.

Accepting, and even celebrating, change. Sandy and our daughter, Mindy, will admit that they were never very fond of change. I think women, especially, need to feel secure and are leery of anything that threatens that security. Change can certainly do that, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the individual. 

Change, however, is inescapable. In a preceding post, reader Bob made a comment about the inevitability of evolving in our thoughts and opinions over time. He reminded me that the only thing really constant in life other than our faith and devotion to each other and our family is change. When I look back over the ten years represented by this blog, I am astonished at how radically our thinking and our circumstances have changed. Who would have thought that someone like us would be our happiest living in less than four hundred square feet when we once thought we had to have four thousand? The fact that we were able to make a change like that is evidence that we had finally obtained the wisdom that maturity is supposed to bring. We were not surprised, then, when we drove away from the stick and brick house with no regrets. 

We celebrate change now, even though every new destination represents the unknown and the unfamiliar and yes, change. Not everyone is comfortable with that, but we see it as new opportunities for learning and adventure. I can't imagine staring at the same four walls day after day instead of experiencing the excitement of what the view might be like around the next curve.

We knew the RV community.  I can't tell you the number of folks who, when we told them of our fulltiming plans, wrinkled up their noses as if they smelled something unpleasant; or worse, they audibly gasped, as if we told them we had leprosy. One thought we had fallen on hard times and were being forced to go and live in "one of those trailer parks." Little did he know that our financial circumstances were probably much more solvent than his. Indeed, at the time he was making his sneering comment, he also revealed that he was about to spend tens of thousands on repairs to his house. Pity, I thought.

The fact is that the RV community, like the rest of society, is diverse. There are some parks in disrepair or in scary locations that cater to a questionable clientele, but these are the exceptions. RV parks, in the large majority, are patronized by folks just like us. Some of the nicest, most well-adjusted (and, dare I say, well-heeled) people we have ever met in the last ten years have been found among the RV community. So we weren't surprised at this aspect of our new fulltiming life either. We were going to be among our own kind (except for the well-heeled part).

Okay, there you have some of the things that didn't surprise us. Next time, we might talk about a typical day when we have no outings planned. That should put you to sleep, if nothing else will.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Fulltiming: Things That Surprised Us

At Sunset Shores RV Park, Willis, Texas...

At nearly five months into this gig, we could hardly be called 'old hands' at fulltiming. However, we've found out a few things that we didn't anticipate before we launched.

Being forced to plan ahead. It was John Lennon who said, "Life happens while you're making other plans." Woody Allen said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans." Maybe that's why I'm not a planner by nature; I just don't see the point. 

I have always done just enough planning to make certain things happen, but that's about it. I knew I wanted to fly airplanes for a living, so I planned successfully for that career, and I knew I wanted to have a decent retirement, so I planned for that. Most everything else that worked out well I consider good fortune or gifts from God. My wonderful wife and family fall into that category, along with friends, good health and what few talents I have.  

So, where am I going with this? 

Well, I've found that fulltiming requires some planning--mostly about where we are going to park ourselves. It was a little disconcerting to realize we no longer own any real estate with Phannie's own driveway and garage always available for parking. We are vagabonds, paying strangers as we go to let us park on their real estate; if we don't pay, we don't park. 

Unless we're on a trip where we do single overnights along the way (we really don't like single overnights), we often find ourselves in RV parks for several days or weeks. While it is usually no problem to get a space for a night or two, it is sometimes iffy to find a spot for a longer stay in the parks we patronize. We don't do boondocking, and we prefer nicer RV parks, but so do a lot of other RVers. Now that RVing is more popular than ever, it is not always possible to get a reservation in a nice park for a long stay unless you make it well in advance. So that's where the planning part comes in: To get into popular parks, it is often necessary to know where and when you're going weeks or months ahead of time. So, I reluctantly do the planning required, but I don't particularly enjoy it.

Being careful with grocery shopping and cooking. In the RV, we have become much more discerning about the amount of groceries we buy at a time. Since there are only the two of us, and we do a lot of eating out, we don't need a lot of perishables on hand to go stale. We keep some canned goods and staples in the pantry, and our new residential refrigerator (which we love) isn't crowded at all. We're not all that fond of frozen dinners, so we tend to rotate the fresh foods we like, buying no more than we can use in a few days. We are never parked far from a grocery store, so we buy small quantities more frequently. Yes, it's a bit more expensive, unitwise, than buying larger amounts, but having food go bad and tossing it out is really expensive. Farmers' markets and roadside vegetable stands are favorite stops to check out the local products.

We tend to make simpler meals like salads, sandwiches, tacos and the like, unless we're cooking something to take to the kids. Then we're able to dust off old family favorite recipes we know they will enjoy. Although Sandy is excellent at baking (I don't even try to compete), she doesn't do much of it any longer, much to my anguish; it's just not good for our waistlines. For just the two of us, we've had to adjust all of our cooking to make smaller amounts, and sometimes that takes a little guesswork if we're trying to modify a recipe. I'm trying to use the Weber Q grill more often; George Yates, a former chef and RV blogger friend, has some great healthy grilling ideas and recipes on his blog, Our Awesome Travels. I need to do more of what he does.

Less TV watching. We are surprised that we don't watch TV as much as we thought we would. I suppose that's not only because of the constant barrage of bad news but also because we often find interesting things to do and see wherever we go. There's also more time to read, and we find we spend more time with friends and relatives. One could argue, then, that we didn't need the latest and greatest in satellite and local antenna technology on this older coach...nah, that's silly; once a gadget freak, always a gadget freak.


The laundry. First, you have to understand that Sandy has always been fanatical about doing the laundry to meet her exacting standards. She has never allowed me near any laundry equipment of ours since she saw how I was doing laundry as a bachelor 40 years ago. In the intervening years, I have come to the realization that my display of appalling incompetence then was quite a blessing, if not a stroke of genius. I think she sweetly doesn't consider the the fact that, since I was able to learn how to fly a jet airliner, I could probably be taught how to use a washing machine. But I haven't mentioned that, and I don't intend to.

But I digress.

Sandy was convinced that trading her residential laundry equipment for the Splendide all-in-one unit in Phannie would be totally unacceptable. Frankly, knowing her as I do, I would have put money on it. She pronounced that one of the first modifications she would require would be for Brannon to install new stackables in place of the Splendide the next time we were in Red Bay.

Now here's the surprise:  She has actually made peace with the Splendide! She says they're not friends yet, but well...baby steps. She says she can make do for now in order to retain the extra space that would be required for the stackables. She's come to grips with the nuances of small-load laundering, probably because we really don't have that much laundry to do any longer. The Splendide will not handle our king-sized bed linens, so she occasionally has to go to a park's laundry room for that, but that doesn't seem to bother her too much. If she decides differently in the future, she'll get whatever she needs. In any case, I just nod and smile sweetly; that's worked pretty well for 40 years.

We don't miss the house.  When it came to ditching the house, I think we were the ideal candidates for fulltiming; we just didn't know it. I knew I wouldn't miss the house--even though designing and building it was such a labor of love. I came to see it as an albatross, something that was forever making nagging demands on my time and money when I wanted to be elsewhere. It was Sandy who I feared would fall prey to her female "nesting" instinct and find after we pulled the plug that she was homesick; but that hasn't happened. In fact, when she learned the subject of this post, it was she who suggested that I include this as one of the things that surprised us. Go back to the way we were? Not on your life.

Our old friends are still our friends, but we also have new ones.  We worried a bit that our longtime friendships might suffer if we weren't around as much. But that hasn't happened--largely, I think, because of social media. In fact, our circle of friends seems to have expanded as we have reunited old ties with friends from growing up long ago and take into our circle new RV friends we meet during our travels. Being a blogger also helps; most of our friends and relatives read our blog, so they generally know where we are and what we're doing. And some of our new friends who have now become old friends we met through our respective blogs.

Differing expenses.  Our expenses are greater than we like, and our outlays differ a bit from what we thought they would be. We find we spend about what we did prior to retirement, although that's not what we intended. (It's harder than we thought to pare down our lifestyle.) We are spending less for fuel than we thought, but more than we expected for food and overnight parking. The latter two things have a lot of room for improvement; we could trim our eating out a great deal, and we don't use as many low-cost parks as we could. We're working on those things. On some forums, we have read a number of newbie questions like this: "How much money does it take to do fulltiming?" Most of the time, the answer comes back, "Whatever you have." We tend to agree with that.

Okay, these were the things that were surprises; next time, we'll talk about the things that weren't.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

At Sunset Shores RV Park, Willis, Texas...

Well, this part of Texas has had its share of rain lately, but we're not alone. Several of our Rving friends along the Mississippi River have also been pretty well housebound by rains and flooding, too. After two days of downpours, Lake Conroe--on whose shoreline Phannie is, well, moored--is above flood level and continuing to rise, even though the floodgates are releasing 20,000 cubic feet of water per second. We took some photos of some of the waterside RV spaces (thankfully, we are on somewhat higher ground):

The water you see below is supposed to be a grassy park area. The normal shoreline is beyond the fence:

The bright evening sky in the photo above is the first break in the clouds we've seen in two days. We were glad finally to get outside and take a walk to get the photos. Afterward, we came back in and had a bowl of chicken and dumplin's that we had plenty of time to put together, cooped up as we were. (Here in the South, it is improper to pronounce the "g" at the end of dumpling.) If you do that, you will instantly be identified as a carpetbagger, or worse. By the way, I make a mean pot of chicken and dumplin's. Cutting no corners, I start with a dead chicken, bred specifically for my pot, boiled and deboned by me personally. Using Sandy's homemade dumplings (the best) and a gob of butter dumped into the broth, this stuff is nothing short of legendary. I only wish you could smell it; tasting it might be too much excitement for you:

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Fun at Jellystone, Then to Our New Home Base

At Sunset Shores RV Park, Willis, Texas...

As we did last year, we treated grandsons Mason and Pryce and--oh yes--their parents, Tyler and Mindy, to a long weekend at Jellystone Park in Burleson, Texas. This was, of course, part of our master plan to spoil the boys to the greatest extent possible. Why, you ask? Because we're grandparents; that's what grandparents do, silly! Here are a few photos of the fun times:

Mindy and Pryce need their shades in the bright sunlight at Jellystone.

Mason and Yogi 

Pryce is not what you would call a photo hound.

After closing down the water park and saying goodbye to Yogi, we drove down to Sunset Shores on Lake Conroe where we will spend a couple of weeks. We really like this quiet and shady RV park built right on the lakefront, not too far from Tyler and Mindy and the boys. This will probably serve as a sort of home base for us when we're not roaming the country. 

One of the things we like to do for our busy offspring is to take over a home-cooked meal now and then. Today was one of those days, and we provided dinner for them consisting of some of their favorites: Smothered steak, fresh creamed corn, green beans, crescent rolls and strawberry pie. Here's a photo of chef Pryce helping with the rolls:

We wouldn't take anything for the privilege of being a part of their young lives. They keep us laughing most of the time, and we think that's a big part of keeping us young at heart. 

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

The "End" Justifies the Means

At Jellystone RV Park, Burleson, Texas...

This will be a short post with a simple message having to do with one of the most important things you can do for your health: A colonoscopy. Mine has been done now, as it has been done periodically for 25 years, and it is no less disgusting than it ever was, but it is a life saver. 

Physicians tell us that we should consider this procedure once you reach 40, with more regularity after you turn 50. My first one was at age 43, and I probably would have ignored this advice then, had it not been for bleeding episodes. I won't go into the details, but the physicians at Scott and White, an acclaimed Texas-based hospital, said they barely caught it in time. Once this stage has been surpassed and metastasis has occurred, the outcome can be bleak. 

Having had beloved family members perish needlessly of colon cancer through inattention, I believe I would not be a friend to my readers if I didn't bring this up, even though most people I know don't need reminding. I think my life was one that was saved by prompt medical attention. If I had it to do over again, I would have had my first colonoscopy at age 40; then they would have found the offending polyp before it became serious.

Think about this: There is a long list of famous people who died of colon cancer, among them, Audrey Hepburn, Farah Fawcett, Jack Lemmon, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Ertha Kitt, Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Schultz, Vince Lombardi, Tip O'Neill, and the list goes on and on. As you can see, the disease is no respecter of gender, race, fame, power or wealth; it can strike anyone.

There. That's all I'm going to say about it; my latest report was good but, in five years, I'll be having another of these inspections with its lovely night-before preparatory experience, and I won't bother you with this lecture again until that time. But bother you I will!

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

San Marcos to Burleson

At Canyon Trails RV Park, San Marcos, Texas...

We have enjoyed being with our Tiffin owner friends for the past few days at our rally in San Marcos. This was a rather low-key event with little in the way of an agenda. That was fine with us, as we had some things to do in our spare time. Sandy noticed that Mae was not yet full of stuff to take to grandsons Mason and Pryce next weekend, so she elicited my aid in driving her around San Marcos, New Braunfels and San Antonio, dropping her off at various shops. After she made some additional purchases, the kids' loot apparently reached a level in the car that satisfied her, that is, taking up virtually all of the interior volume in Mae that is not already occupied by things like passengers or, well, air.  

Since there seemed to be little else to do besides shopping and eating during our rally breaks, I wanted to give some time to restaurant reviews. Cheri, a valued reader who commented on the previous post, recommended Hays County Barbecue, especially their brisket. So, I felt obligated to stop in and check it out. Sandy and I arrived just as they were opening for lunch, and we ordered a couple of sliced brisket sandwiches. I'm sorry I didn't take a photo, but the sandwiches were huge and chocked full of wonderfully smoky brisket with a terrific bark on the outside. We couldn't possibly eat it all, and we had some wonderful leftovers to take back to Phannie. Thank you, Cheri; you definitely know what you're talking about. We will put that brisket up against that of some really well-known 'cue joints in Lockhart, only a short drive from San Marcos. I can't wait to go back and try something besides the brisket. This one goes on our list of favorite restaurants (linked above).

We also found a really good little Mexican restaurant that has been an institution in San Marcos for decades--Herbert's Taco Hut. Everything we had here was good and it, too, goes in the favorites list:

Finally, something a little quirky (and you know how I enjoy finding this kind of stuff):

I don't think I've ever seen a bar with a name like this, but it is genius! The owners must have had in mind those guys who don't want to lie to their wives when they answer their question, "Where are you going?" The truthful, yet slightly evasive answer, of course, is, "I Don't Know." (We don't do bars, so it won't be going on the list...but it's still genius.)

We're heading to Fort Worth after this--more doctor appointments! (Good grief! Who would have thought how many of these you have when you get older?) Even more important, though, is Sandy's hair appointment; she'll have to work everything else around that.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

A Short Stop in Jackson

At Springridge RV Park, Clinton, Mississippi...

With only one day in a city the size of Jackson, Mississippi, one can't do much. Since it was Sunday, we visited the magnificent First Baptist Church of Jackson, whose 3,200 seat sanctuary is a sight to behold. We heard a good message celebrating mothers and especially enjoyed the 285-voice choir and the 155-rank pipe organ, one of the 25 largest in the world. For a city that's not all that large, Jackson Baptists take their church seriously:

Across the street in downtown Jackson is the state capitol building, also beautiful in a peaceful setting among treed grounds:

There are lots a friendly folks here in Jackson, and you can expect to be called "hon" and "sweetie" by perfect strangers who, if they hear you have a problem, will say "bless your heart." Having been raised in the South, I've had my heart blessed a lot. These affectations are comforting to me and, for a moment, I forget about things like what a mess has been made of our country. 

I also like to hear grand southern ladies drop the "r" on most words ending in that letter. For example, this is a place where butter is pronounced "buttah." Yet some words that have only one syllable anywhere else are pronounced here with two. For example, "car" is "caw-uh" and "well" is "way-ul." It's as southern as sweet tea, and I love it.

In a slightly negative vein, we were astonished at the state of disrepair of many of the streets and highways here in Jackson and elsewhere in Mississippi. I cannot tell you the number of times Phannie and Mae had to endure the seemingly endless bone-jarring potholes and patches of buckling or deteriorating pavement as we toured the city and state. Why, in Texas, someone would swing from the gallows for such nonsense! In all fairness, Louisiana was about the same; I'm not sure poor Phannie and Mae will ever be the same. 

Allow me to swerve briefly into technical matters: For my friend Craig who was wondering about how well Phannie's new upgraded jacks are working, you should know, Craig, that they are fantastic! We were parked in a heavily-sloped site here in Clinton, and one touch of the button leveled Phannie perfectly in just a few seconds. The upgrade is light years ahead of the old version; Atwood got it right this time. It was well worth the cost, in my opinion.

You knew I would not be able to deny you another restaurant review, didn't you? Well, here we go: After church on Sunday, we stopped at Mr. Chen's, a Chinese restaurant nestled in the corner of an Oriental grocery store in Jackson. Who would have thought that little unassuming place would serve perhaps the best Chinese food we've ever had?!!! I ordered black bean chicken, and Sandy got sizzling beef and vegetables, and both dishes were incredibly well prepared and flavorful.  The subtitle on the Mr. Chen's awning is "Authentic Chinese Cooking," and was it ever. 

Normal people would have taken much of this home for leftovers. We didn't. I'm not proud of it, but that's how good it was. Mr. Chen's definitely goes on the favorite restaurants list behind the link at the top of the home page.

We didn't have time to patronize some other restaurants that had been recommended, but finding Mr. Chen's more than made up for it.

We will be on our way to San Marcos, Texas tomorrow with an overnight stop in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.
  

Annual Service: Phannie's in the Pink

At Red Bay RV Park, Red Bay, Alabama...

Before I get started, I have to tell you of some kind of hiccup that has happened with Blogger and the comments to my posts. I get e-mail notifications when someone comments, but the comments aren't appearing on the blog for some reason! I'm trying to figure this out, but it's not easy to get in touch with anyone. In the meantime, please know that I read each comment via email and, when they appear on the blog, I try to reply to each one. I hope this gets ironed out soon, but don't stop commenting!

This has been quite a week for Phannie. I don't think she's had this many upgrades since she was new to us. When we bought her, we added upgraded TVs, a TravLer satellite dish, an extra air conditioner, a surge protector and an electric cord reel. Later, we added MCD shades, upgraded cockpit chairs, cabinet modifications and retrofitted the lighting to LEDs. And there are still some things in the pipeline when we recover from the latest bill.

Phannie's poking and prodding ordeal came to a conclusion this week with her annual service completed at Bay Diesel here in Red Bay. We are very pleased with their work, as are all the other RV owners with whom I have spoken about them. They should know what they're doing, because they stay very busy servicing mostly Tiffin products, of course, due to their location near the factory. 

I spoke to the lead tech afterward, and he said everything looks good. Now, with fresh engine, transmission and generator fluids and filters, plus the other things done on the service schedule, Phannie is ready for (hopefully) another trouble-free year of travel. 

We will be leaving here on Saturday, headed for Jackson, Mississippi and then to San Marcos, Texas to attend another Tiffin Allegro Bluebonnet Club rally. 

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

New Jacks and Why We Keep Phannie Around

At Red Bay RV Park, Red Bay, Alabama...

Having not spent quite all of our cash on the upgrades already done, we decided that we needed to try harder. I had been wanting to do an upgrade of Phannie's leveling jacks for some time. The coach was manufactured with electric jacks instead of the much more prevalent hydraulic ones and, while they have worked fairly well with no problems, the automatic leveling feature has always seemed less effective than it should be. The manufacturer apparently thought so, too, because they developed an upgrade that has gotten numerous good reviews from other owners. That works for me, I thought, so here we are again at the huge Tiffin maintenance facility in Red Bay to get the retrofit done. In this photo, Phannie has been lifted without much dignity in bay 40, exposing her underside for all to see:

   
Then the old jacks come out and the new ones go in:

Next was some new wiring required for the leveling system's brain to send signals to the jacks:

This job took Tiffin about half a day, and the jacks now work like a charm. I think that, for me, the jury is still out as to which is the better system--hydraulic or electric. The hydraulic system is more powerful but also more complex, requiring a hydraulic pump and a goodly amount of plumbing to each actuator. These can be expensive to repair, to say nothing of the mess that can be made by leaking hydraulic fluid. The electrics, on the other hand, are simple by comparison, and repairs most often involve just the replacement of a relatively inexpensive jack; no plumbing or hydraulic fluid is required. 

So, this brings to a conclusion Phannie's upgrades for now (there will undoubtedly be more in the future). 

We are sometimes asked if we've considered a newer coach that already has some of the upgrades we are making. Well, yes, we have but, so far, we have resisted the urge for several reasons: 

First, Phannie's purchase price as an older coach was relatively small to begin with, but it had all of our basic must-haves (four slideouts, a king bed, a washer/dryer, lots of storage, etc.). Added bonuses were super low miles and good maintenance records. 

Second, it has been astonishingly reliable and trouble-free, and I keep it that way by being a bit OCD with its upkeep. I've come to know the old gal from top to bottom, and I can tell instantly if something is not as it should be. Who knows what problems we would inherit we were to buy a newer coach? (No, we wouldn't buy a new one; there's so much we would rather do with that kind of money.)   

The third reason is that, as fulltimers, we are traveling a lot. Living fulltime in a coach makes it look, well, lived in. Since Phannie is showing some wear here and there, we tend not to get upset if the carpet gets a stain or we ding something now and then. If we had something like a new Zephyr, we would probably need to see a therapist at our sight of the first blemish. Perhaps most important is a certain freedom we have in not needing to impress anyone. (It wasn't always so; it's a shame people have to wait until they're old to become wise.)

Fourth, the engine and chassis are designed for many hundreds of thousands of miles without a need for overhaul; we won't get anywhere near that number of miles before we're too decrepit to do this any longer. An added bonus is that the Cat engine mercifully predates the EPA's nanny-state regulations requiring DEF. My resistance to giving in to their scheme is a small thumbing of my nose to a bloated bureaucracy forcing on the country a solution to a largely-debunked problem. Don't get me started on this. 

The last reason is that the updates we've done on Phannie have been so numerous that there is little else left to do other than perhaps something of a cosmetic nature. If we were to buy a newer coach with all of these upgrades, the cost/benefit ratio calculation quickly becomes unreasonable. 

Tomorrow we have an appointment at Bay Diesel here in Red Bay for Phannie's annual service visit. We'll let you know how she comes out.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.

Upgrades, Upgrades!

At Red Bay RV Park, Red Bay, Alabama...

We had been trying to condition ourselves for what we knew would be an early wakeup today. Brannon Hutcheson starts work at 7:00 a.m. sharp, so that meant that we had to stumble out of bed at 6:00 a.m. It was not pretty; the alarm on Sandy's iPhone is not any gentler than the infernal alarm clock we once used back when we were w*rking. I spent a good bit of time sitting on the edge of the bed, remembering how I used to do this five days a week and being so grateful now that I escaped from that special hell nearly three years ago. It doesn't seem possible that I have been retired for that long; the time has just flashed by. Now for my retired friends who voluntarily arise even earlier than this when there's no need to, I say--as lovingly as I can--that you need help. But I digress.

Sure enough, it was almost exactly 7:00 a.m. when Brannon's white Ford diesel pickup pulled up to his Custom RV shop. This four-bay garage of his probably qualifies as a major industry in tiny Vina, Alabama, located about five miles from Red Bay which, in comparison, qualifies as a metropolitan area with its three thousand souls.  

I was sitting in Sandy's cockpit chair looking out of Phannie's open entry door at the time of Brannon's arrival, unsure as to why I was there. I muttered something to him that was probably inaudible and certainly unintelligible. Whatever I said was largely wasted, however, as he sort of grunted a greeting and proceeded inside. Brannon is not what you would call overly talkative. He doesn't seem to have much time for idle chatter, preferring instead to get to work and stay busy. That was fine with me, especially so early in the morning when perhaps 90 percent of my brain was still asleep and probably unable to form words.

Brannon returned momentarily and told us we could empty out our old Nevercold refrigerator (a much-deserved corruption of Norcold, the real brand) and put its contents in a refrigerator inside his shop. When he said this, another part of my brain woke up, and I suddenly remembered why we were there--to get a new refrigerator! 

By this time, it was also becoming clear that there was another person in the coach with me who seemed very familiar. Sandy had suddenly emerged from the nether world of Phannie's posterior area where she performs certain mysterious rites of preparation for the day that, to me, are at least as complex as a launch of the space shuttle. I try not to go near that area for fear of radiation or something. But I digress again; it's been a long day.

Having been out of sight during her launch prep, I greeted Sandy warmly and enlisted her aid in carrying several canvas tote bags full of food from the Nevercold to Brannon's refrigerator. That done, she collapsed on the couch in the customer lounge, and I unhooked the water and electricity at our overnight parking spot and pulled Phannie nose-first into one of the bays. Brannon and his helper, Jason, took it from there. 

The first item of business was to replace the old Xantrex inverter with a new Magnum pure sine wave (whatever that means) inverter that will have the muscle to power the new refrigerator/freezer:

Next was the replacement of all four batteries. The ones in the coach were five years old, and that's when they get replaced. I don't want things to go dark out in the boondocks somewhere:

Watching all this work began to make me hungry, so I grabbed Sandy and, somehow, we were able to find Mae and toodled off to Red Bay for some breakfast. We tried a new restaurant named the Mason Jar, and it was quite good. Arriving back at the shop, we watched TV for a while and probably napped a bit. In fact, it was more than probably.

I awoke in time to capture on camera the removal of the Nevercold:

In a few minutes, it had been passed out of the main cabin window that had been removed for that purpose and onto a forklift that lowered it to the shop floor where the old fridge joined a large group of other similar derelicts whose lives would soon be unceremoniously ended at the scrap yard. Good riddance, I say.

After that, Brannon and Jason loaded the new Whirlpool fridge onto the forklift and pushed it through the window opening:

In almost no time at all, the new fridge was hooked up and working great:

After re-installing the living room window, the guys went to work replacing both of Phannie's headlights with some smart-looking new high-tech models. I'm very pleased with the fresh new look it gives to Phannie's front end. Take a look at the difference between old and new:

Well, I told you that we were getting some upgrades, didn't I? But guess what--there's more to come, so stand by!

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day. 

A Flxible Experience

At Custom RV, Vina, Alabama...

Among the best things about being retired and roaming the country fulltime are the people we meet and the unusual things we see. Our visit to River View RV Park near Natchez offered up one of each. 

As we were slowly navigating Phannie between rows of parking spaces to find the one we were assigned, I suddenly brought her to a full stop. Parked in one of the spaces was a marvelous old Flxible bus that had been restored into service as an RV:

The owner and his wife were sitting outside and, after getting Phannie parked, I strode over and introduced myself, asking the gentleman's indulgence, as I knew he must have been confronted by hundreds of admiring strangers like me. He brushed off my concern, saying that he and his wife enjoyed meeting new people this way.

I probably asked him the same questions as countless other guys, but he had his key at the ready and happily showed me around all the bus and its compartments--except for the interior. (I didn't ask, but I wanted to.)

He told me the only question he would not answer is how much the restoration cost. After seeing many detailed photos of the project from the ground up by master craftsmen, I can only imagine that it was a frightening sum--maybe even embarrassing. If you would like to see some amazing homespun engineering by the firm that performed the restoration, you owe it to yourself to click here. 

This bus was manufactured by the Flxible company in 1950 and served for many years as a sightseeing bus in Colorado. The original had a straight-eight Buick engine that was replaced with a Cummins diesel and Allison transmission. That adaptation and retrofit was itself amazing to see in the photos provided in the link above. It has all modern electronics and appliances, as well as two "mini-split" residential air conditioners tucked into the lower frame.
The treble horns on the roof are from a locomotive engine and are unbelievably loud. 

Leaving Natchez, we had to backtrack a bit to get on the clearing west side a massive rain system that moved through early on departure morning. This added about 30 miles to our original 332-mile leg to Red Bay. But we stayed well out of the rain, aided in navigation through the weather by my trusty RadarScope app (see previous post). 

Here is Phannie in the photo below, all set up for the night at Custom RV, where the new refrigerator will be installed tomorrow. Alongside is another Phaeton, also awaiting the installation of new toys:

Stay tuned, and we'll show you how it goes.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.