And so it begins.....

We left Monday Oct 17th from John and Wendy's driveway around noon. We were delayed about an hour and a half because of a light issue. It seems our Jeep rear turn signal was not working when we hooked the "towed" up. Thank goodness for "MaGyver" John Dreese. He had it fixed in a short  time and we were off. Our first destination was Jackson Springs North Carolina. We planned on taking our time getting there since we had been stationary for 3 months. We stopped at "Camp Walmart" in Harrisonburg Va and Statesville NC, arriving at Sycamore Lodge on day 3. We always like coming here, especially in the fall. The weather has been in the high 60's during the day with plenty of sunshine and low 50's at night.... just perfect.
This resort is mostly inhabited by North Carolinian's... very few long distance travelers.  Everyone is super friendly.
Each year the membership puts on an event to raise money for Multiple Myeloma research. They have a "Haunted Forest". This event brought in over $10,000.00 last year. This year they are staging the event for 2 weekends instead of 1. It is a major undertaking. There are over 50 volunteers involved as actors, ticket takers, security, and so on. We caught some of the actors preparing their costumes and makeup before the Saturday night performance. Here are the pics...

These people are really dedicated to this fundraiser and do a wonderful job.

I was sitting having my morning coffee the other day and what did my wondering eyes find....

This camper reminded me of a series of e-mail jokes I periodically receive. An older women in her nightgown, slippers, bathrobe, sunglasses and coffee cup in hand. She always has something to say about everything. For the life of me I can't remember her name...can anyone help?

Our next stop......  Willmington, NC to visit with John's daughter Corinne.

Summer Sumary

Theme this summer..... Rain, Rain ...... GO AWAY!! I think I can count on one hand the number of days that were sunny and warm for the last 3 months here at home in Central Pa. Everything is damp, muddy or moldy. We went through a flood and are well on the way to set a new record as the wettest year on record .... and it's only October.
Despite the miserable weather we stayed active. Here is a picture summary of some of our activities and the people we shared them with. These are not in chronological order..
A party with an Italian theme at Paul Hardy's home.... wine, pizza, stuffed shells, wine, meatballs, baked ziti, and wine just to name a few...

My son Jeremy bought a site at a campground. His very first camper !

A family gathering at my brother Kevin's......

A trip to an Apple/Cheese festival..... in the rain of course.

A chicken Bar B Que with the local fishing group...The Lip Rippers....  I wonder if the fact we had chicken speaks to their fishing abilities.... hummmm. Great people and good food !!

A yard sale with John and Wendy at their home... a lot of work to get ready... but got rid of stuff..... mostly mine or ours..... just a little of John's.

A trip to the wineries around Seneca Lake in New York. Short trip when fun people are in the vehicle with ya...

And baby sitting Lukas. He asked me if I had ever fed a kid before.... I didn't do a very good job of it....  he had more food outside than inside........out of practice, I guess...

And of course, pizza night every Friday with John and Wendy. I did a little posting on my face book the week the grand kids went with us.

My John, Wendy's John and Paul formed the "3 Old Men Construction Company" and worked at fixing things around the 3 homes. Our house now has 50 amp electric service and water at the RV pad as well as a new electric service box in the house. John and Wendy's rental property has a new roof and Paul has an addition on his woodworking shop.

Looking back, I guess we didn't let the bad weather keep us down. We enjoyed ourselves.... BUT IT'S TIME TO HIT THE ROAD !!

Goodbye old friend...

Today John and I said goodbye to a dear friend and faithful companion. We learned last week that Holly's arthritis which has been getting worse had spread to her spine. We have been helping her up stairs, watching her struggle to stand and hearing her moan softly as she layed down or stood up. The medications to lessen that pain are harmful to the liver and kidneys, so John made the decision to let her go in peace and comfort. It was a hard decision to make but we feel she is in a better place..... beyond the rainbow bridge playing with her friends that proceeded her.... Sam, Rusty, Sierra, Luke, Cooper, Bullet..... and others.

Here is how we will remember her...

Goodbye old friend....  happy trails and digging.

WATER !! WATER !! Everywhere

Between Hurricane "Irene" and Tropical Storm "Lee" we had a solid week... or more ... of rain. This resulted in widespread flooding of our creeks and rivers in Central Pa. In an attempt to give you some perspective, try to picture this description. About 30 feet from the side of our home the Lycoming Creek runs toward the Susquehanna River about 15 miles downstream. There is a 4 foot high bank from the water to our yard. The yard is now about 25 yards wide and flat. Then there is another bank up to our deck and house. Going up the bank are stairs to get to the deck. There are 22 stairs which makes the height of the bank 22 feet. At it's highest point the creek was flowing over the third step from the top of the stairs. In other words it was 2 feet from flowing over the deck and 24 feet higher than normal. Here is a picture of the side of the house prior to our journey last year.

Here is that same area with the high water

John says he felt like he was on a cruise ship. When he looked out the windows all he could see was rushing water. More pictures....

As the water started to recede, we were able to see some of the yard landmarks.

We were much luckier than others. Our friends John and Wendy lost a basement wall in their rental property. Ray and Kay, my friend Helen's parents, had 6 feet of water in their home. Since it is a one story home they have lost everything. We spent 3 hours last evening washing dishes, pots, pans, glasses and anything else that could be salvaged from the mud.

Even the creek wildlife was displaced. We have a family of beavers in our section of the creek. They took refuge by our house when the water was ranging.

We consider ourselves very fortunate and are thankful we were spared. We have been helping those we know who were affected and ask for your prayers for them during this difficult time.

Feeling Like the Stock Market

Over the past several weeks, I have felt just like the Stock Market......  UP....DOWN.....UP.....DOWN.....UP..... DOWN....... and out of touch with reality. Why? As we turned things back on at the house it would start then stop. First was the electricity.....we turned it on.... no problem, then the living room fan and ceiling lights would not go on. We turned on and off breakers... no luck. Our Macgiver friend John came over, flipped the same breakers and they worked.
Next, the water pump. Same thing, at first it worked then it just stopped. John redid the start up process all over again and it wouldn't start. Frustrated, he hit it with a wrench .... it started and hasn't stopped again. 
Following that was the refrigerator. A week after turning it on, the refrigerator section kept changing temperature settings by itself. The food was either frozen or warm. Of course I thought John was fiddling with it and he thought I was doing it. $193.00 and 2 repairman visits later we had a new motherboard installed and it works fine.
But most frustrating of all was the computer. It started giving me fits... freezing screens... a gazillion pop-up "somethings wrong" squares. My geek friend Wendy looked at it and said the hard drive was dying a slow but sure death. She downloaded all my files she could, we ordered a new hard drive and recovery discs (since my computer came pre-loaded I had no software/operating discs). A week later it arrived and we started the reload process. HP was kind enough to not charge me for the recovery disc but unfortunately it contained the 4 year old software present when I bought the computer. For the past 2 weeks I have been downloading updates. The frustration of knowing which to install prior to another has been turning my hair gray.... but I've gotten far enough to do a blog posting so all's not bad. Wendy installed a new program that will enable her to access my computer when I'm on the road to help me if something goes wrong again. How cool is that! It's like that commercial on TV where this computer geek rides on the back of the kids going to college, so that they have computer help.....  but Wendy is just a click and pass code away.
Our friend Ray had some surgery in Indy after we left him. I was in touch with Millie on a daily basis for a while but Ray is now home (motor home, that is) and improving daily. We were worried but he's getting back to normal..... he gave me a trivia challenge this week.... the origins of the seventh inning stretch.
There are some other bright spots too. Sydney got his summer haircut...... oh I forgot.... his clippers died and I had to order a new pair. Here he is on his morning constitutional on the path along the creek. He acts like a puppy again when his hair is short. It's sure nice when he goes swimming.... he doesn't drip water all over the house.

Some of the local wildlife are still around. Here are the Merganser Ducks and the Great Blue Heron frolicking in the creek beside our house.

We went for a music cruise down the Susquehanna River on the Hiawatha paddle wheeler with our friends John and Wendy (Hottie redhead according to my friend Ray). We always enjoy their company.

And of course.... I've been able to spend some time with my new boyfriend. Yes you heard me right. Every chance I get, I'm swooning over this guy.

Currently we are getting ready for a yard sale in 3 weeks. John has been helping the other John, to put a new roof on his rental property. Both of them are also helping another friend, Paul, put an extension on his woodworking shop. My friend Helen is moving to a smaller place so we spent a morning moving boxes and furniture. Next week, we'll do some more. We're also looking forward to a visit from my sister Erin in 2 weeks. In October we will be joining several other couples for a trip to the New York wineries....  chauffeur driven.... we're not driving.

Who said retirement is boring?

First Time in Over 30 Years

I did something yesterday that I haven't done in over 30 years and thought I never would do again..... but I'll get to that later.

 I want to show you some pictures of Horseshoe Lakes Thousand Trails. It is a very quiet, spacious place with 11 different small lakes. There were a lot of walking trails through the woods around the lakes. Sydney and Holly found it a nice change from riding around in the jeep in Yellowstone and walking around WalMart parking lots.

One day when I took the garbage to the dumpster I found these 2 guys hiding out.

It seems they jumped in during the night and got stuck...it had been emptied the previous day and the garbage bag level wasn't high enough for them to get back out. John found a tree branch long enough to reach bottom to top and we left the top open. Within a few minutes the 2 scampered across the lawn into the woods.

We spent time with our friend Ray while his wife Millie was back in Mass visiting family and friends. Ray took us to Paris for dinner..... Paris Illinois that is. Once Millie returned, we headed back home. Since we were on the European track we spent our first night back on the road in London.... London Indiana.

Saturday around noon we pulled into the Trout Run dinner parking lot. My friend Helen joined us for lunch at the restaurant. We left the RV there and drove the jeep home. Thanks to our friend Darren Smith the driveway was repaired from the damage that occurred during the wet spring. Although he had also lengthened the RV pad, we decided to wait to park the Rose in the driveway due to the increased traffic on the road from the oil/gas drilling. We decided to bring the RV down to the next road from our home, Susqua Road, and park near the pavilion built by the local fishing group..."The Lip Rippers". She stayed there until Monday evening when the volunteer fire company came and stopped traffic so that John could pull across both lanes and back up into the drive. Our neighbor Dave Seeley choreographed it all. Living in a small community has it's advantages. Here is The Rose in her home.

And yes... I've seen Lukas. Jeremy, Chelsea and Lukas came on Sunday for dinner. We ordered Pizza since I wasn't done cleaning the kitchen yet. I have to wash everything before we can cook. John's son Chris joined us also. But here is a picture of Lukas after Wednesday movie and dinner. Harry Potter and Chinese.

He is such a good baby... smiling and cooing all the time. As for my opening statement...... I bought diapers to have at the house for when Lukas visits. Haven't needed to do that for a very long time and I never thought I would need to do it again. Guess you never know.

On The Road Again...

We left Yellowstone to start our return to Pa. Instead of going through the park again we went north to pick up route 90 and traveled through the southern portion of Montana. Then we went south on 25 through the eastern half of Wyoming. We ran into some strong winds and storms when we neared Cheyenne Wyoming so we pulled into a Sam's Club next to a WalMart to stay overnight. This was the sunset after the storm passed...

There were 11 RVs parked between Sam's and WalMart. The police came and knocked on all our doors asking us to leave. So we caravaned to the nearest truck stop, to spend the night. That was the first time in 2 years of traveling that we were ever asked to move. 

We traveled through Nebraska,  Iowa and into Illinois on 80 then headed south on 74 into Indiana to a Thousand Trails Park called Horseshoe Lakes. We are staying here for a few days to meet up with our friends Millie and Ray Surrette, touch base with John's nephew David, do laundry, and rest up for the next leg of the journey.

We drove 80 miles one way into the outskirts of Indy to spend a day with Dave, Debbie, Zach and Kaitlyn Pietch, the son and family of John's sister Bonnie. Zach just graduated from High School.

Millie and Ray told us about a Feline Rescue place nearby so we took a short drive to check it out. It's a non-profit organization that rescues and maintains these beautiful animals. They have over 200 cats from many different circumstances. Here are a few pictures.

A lioness......

A Cougar....

 A Bobcat.....

A Panther.....

Lions.....

A White Tiger.....

If you want to learn more about this great organization or see more exotic felines go to their website www.exoticfelinerescuecenter.org

We head back out onto the road in a few days...... but first a Lukas update.

Lukas got game!!!!

At least someone appreciates my sense of humor...