July 2010 Travels (2)

Well, I guess it’s time for another update.
Since Belinda and Bryan both had to work on Thursday and Friday, we had planned to go in on Saturday. But Belinda called on Friday afternoon and said that we should come then so we did and spent the long weekend with them. We had a great time. On Saturday morning, we went to the pool again. There weren’t many people there because it was cloudy. Bailey brought a paint brush with her – the kids like to “paint” the wall.

On Saturday night we went to the Nashville Sounds baseball game (AAA team affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers.  If you enlarge this, you can see that it is the scoreboard:

Some of us watched the game while others were busy eating!!!

 It was crowded because they had fireworks after the game which were very good.

On Sunday we went to the movie in the afternoon and saw Toy Story 3. It was Bailey’s first experience ever in a theatre and she really enjoyed it. That night we went to some friends of Bryans and they shot off their own fireworks. It was pretty neat because people all around us were shooting them off.

Sorry, no pics of fireworks!!

On Monday we got a call from Kathi Compton saying that she and Louie were in town for a Moose Lodge convention so we met them and went out for lunch and got caught up on everything.

In case you can't read Kathi's shirt, it says "I'm not a NAG, I am a motivational speaker."

Afterwards, Louie and I did a little fishing and had good luck in a short time:

On Monday evening Pete (our nephew – Carol’s son) and Mandy and the kids came to Belinda’s from Columbia, TN. which is about 40 minutes south of Franklin. Mandy is real nice and the kids are great too.

This is Luke who is about 5 months old:

This is Logan:

And this is Lileha:

The kids had a great time together as you can see.

Later that night we said our goodbyes and drove back to the CG for the night.

July 2010 Travels

Well, we are now officially back on the road. We left TX this morning and drove about 250 miles to the DeGrey Lake State Park in Arkansas.

Very nice park; lots of trees, and the camp sites are far apart and in trees so it’s almost like you are here alone. And because of the trees, there is very little breeze so it is quite warm. It was difficult to get backed into the site due to the trees but we made it OK. Here are a few pictures of our site and the surrounding area.

This is called a "Yurt" and you can rent them.  They are made of heavy vinyl and have windows on all sides that can be zipped open for air flow.  It even has a wooden door that locks.

On Monday we drove by Little Rock and then Memphis on into TN. We stayed at a TN State CG for the night. This one was old and but decent. Tuesday we drove to a Thousand Trails CG near Hohenwald, TN. We encountered one road obstacle about a mile before the CG:

Did not expect to see that!! It looked like it was at least a couple of feet lower to the left of the road so we tried it. We are 13 ft high.

Anyway, we made it and got to the CG. After checking in and getting some of their brochures, we found out that the bypass, which we took, was 13 ft. 6 in. high so we had 6 extra inches!!
At this CG we are about 65 miles from Belinda and Bryan’s unfortunately and it takes about an hour and 20 minutes to get there. Here are a couple of pics of the CG:

Had to stop while a "gaggle" of geese walked accross the road:

We drove in on Tuesday afternoon and spent the rest of the day with them. Belinda took Wednesday off so we went in early and were there the whole day. Went to the pool with Bailey and had a great time.

Thursday and Friday they both had to work so we stayed at the CG and hung out.

We plan to stay thru the 4th of July and then on the 5th we will head out toward Sioux City, IA to meet up with Judeen, Katie and Tim, and Alison and Eric (just like we did last year – should be fun). After that, we head to Pipestone for a few days and then on the 17th we go to Big Stone Lake near Ortonville, MN. Hope to get a little fishing in. From there we go to MPLS to see Pam and Steve and, later in the week, Nancy, Diane and Neil from CA. More later.

March/April 2010

Now that it is a month later, here is another update: Judy finished her 4th week of radiation without many side effects at all. Her eye is sore and the tissues around it are sore as well but she has some cream for the eyelid which is helping. She had another MRI about 2 weeks later and it does show some improvement. However, it takes about 5-6 months for the radiation to do its job (which we didn’t know). The Eye DR wants to see her again in June and then the Oncologist wants to have another petscan run in August to make sure that the cancer does not come back somewhere else. SO, with those appointments ahead of us, the Alaska trip has been postponed again. (But, seriously, which is more important!!).

This year produced some joyful events for our family – mainly a couple of milestone birthdays – Ken’s was on February 23rd and Julie’s was on April 18th. So, to celebrate, we had a party for them on April 17th. Belinda, Bryan, and Bailey and Larry came for the event too. Here are some pictures:

Julie and Ken really didn’t want to tell how old they are now so I won’t mention it either, but a good time was had by all.

Ken got a nice hooded sweatshirt from Larry and Jacky:

They both opened many other gifts:

I'll publish more pictures later when I get them from Julie.


On Wednesday, April 21st, Judy and I left TX for a trip to MN to see Judy’s niece Lauren, first baby which was born on April 23rd. First, we traveled to Tulsa to Dean’s RV have the wheel bearings on the RV repacked – spent the night in their parking lot and got the work finished the next day.

From there, we drove into MO. and spent the weekend in Lake of the Ozarks at a campground in Lake Ozark.

It was a nice CG with a site right by the lake (10 acre private lake). Our very first visitor came to the door and was mad because we either parked in their site, or, they wanted us to feed them

(not sure which it was!!)

It was a very interesting campground in that it had tree house cabins that you could rent:

They even have an island where you can tent camp:

They had a nice 10 acre lake which I wish I could have used one of their boats to do some fishing, but the weather didn't want to cooperate.  Here are a couple pics of the lake:

I did a little casting along the shore between rain drops one day.  Otherwise, it drizzled/rained most of the time.  Judy took a nice picture of a tree blossoming:

Someone had their own "cabin" along the shoreline here:

We left there on Monday, and, on our way we spotted this house that has a rather unique paint job - it would certainly be easy to give directions to your house if you lived there!!!

We drove to Des Moines, IA to spend the night, and on Tuesday we drove to Prior Lake, MN to the Dakota Meadows CG where we will sit now for the next two weeks while visiting Pam and Steve and everyone else here. This CG is located on Mystic Lake Casino property and is very nice.