North to Michigan

Here we go again! Yay!

It all started when our friends Teresa and LeeRoy bought a 'new to them' motorhome and wanted to take a road trip. They had been campers years ago but never in a motorhome. They had camped in tents, motorcycle campers, tag a longs and fifth wheels but never a motorhome and they wanted company to travel with and show them travel tricks they hadn't learned with their previous modes of camping. We knew they would be fine but we jumped at the chance to take off.

We took off the Wednesday before July 4th headed to Eastern Michigan, a place we had not been to before. Since it was holiday time campgrounds along Lake Huron were full so we stopped in Northern Indiana for a few days to visit the Surplus and Salvage stores and enjoy the Elkart/Goshen area and all the Amish influence and great food.

We started in Elkhart at the Elkhart Campground for one night and it was good we did. As it often happens in this lifestyle, you run into old friends when you stop somewhere where RVers are. Terry and Nick Russell were staying at the campground and we had a nice visit before we moved on.

We moved to Goshen the next day to the Elkhart County Fairgrounds and based ourselves there while we took in the whole area. This is a huge,beautiful and well cared for fairgrounds and they had plenty of empty spaces and lots of area for long walks. We stayed there until Sunday, July 5th when we left for the Lake Huron area. We had lots of good food and good times while in northern Indiana and even took in a large car show in Middlebury and enjoyed the Bluegrass music being played there.

We stopped in Au Gres, Michigan, a quaint little town close to Lake Huron. We stayed in a city park for a couple of days while we explored. Terry and I usually try to taste the local foods when we go to an area new to us and so near Au Gres we stopped at a little seafood restaurant on Lake Huron where they served Smelt among other foods. Terry and LeeRoy chickened out but Teresa and I ordered the smelt. Well....hmm...let's just say maybe it is better when it is caught fresh! We ate it but it may be a long time before we order it again! But we tried it!

We visited the lighthouses in the area and found them pretty darn interesting. We enjoyed learning about them and the people who manned them. We will move on up the lakeshore tomorrow and see what sights await us.

Busy Spring

Wow! June 1! Where has the time gone!

Things are drying up around here, thank goodness. Our garden is out and the plants are growing very well as are the weeds! We are keeping them at bay though so it's not too bad.

With working in the garden and flowers we are also keeping busy getting ready for our county's Relay For Life. Our team, Team Chemosabies, is in charge of the concession stand again this year and that requires a lot of work, but we are up to the task! I have been out gathering donations and Terry has been cutting wood! Our daughter, DeAnne is over the concession stand and has already purchased 95 pounds of pork butt which we are smoking for pulled pork sandwiches. They went over really well last year so we are doing them again! There will be other food as well but the pulled pork is the main attraction.

Terry got up today at at 5:30 to start the smoking process and it sure smells good in this neck of the woods! He has our smoker and our daughter's going. We utilized both the house kitchen and the bus kitchen to prepare all that meat to smoke and it's a good thing we have two kitchens! This will be an all day process and then we have to do it again in a couple of days to get the rest of the 95 pounds done. The pictures show how much we are smoking today.

We have been going to a lot of Bluegrass jams and have one to go to this week-end where we will take the bus and camp there for 3 days as long as it continues to dry up so we don't sink! We had one over Memorial Day but it was too wet to take the bus so we just went on day trips. It was close to us as is the one coming up this week-end. The one this week-end is a Festival but there will be a lot of jamming too. I played along at the last one and really enjoyed the fun. I can't wait for the next one!

I had better check on Terry and take him out some lunch. Gotta keep him workin' on keeping those smokers up to temp!

Mushrooms, Bluegrass, track meets, and Krazy Joe's

Well we are home in Indiana and I am finally getting a minute to blog!
It feels really good to be home around family and friends. We are enjoying the grandkids and their activites. Our grandaughter Grace runs track and we have enjoyed watching her run and jump in the long jump event. It is hard to believe these kids are as old as they are! Two of our grandsons are now driving and have cars and that REALLY makes us feel old!
We got home to southern Indiana just in time for mushroom season and didn't even have to comb the woods to find them. As we were cleaning up the yard from winter storms we found them growing in the side yard and had a mess of them for the next day's breakfast! Nothing says welcome home like a 'fungus sandwich'!!
Where we live in Indiana is in an area of rolling hills,farmland, small towns, and the Hoosier National Forest. And it is very appealing at this time of year with everything turning green and in bloom.
Since we've been home,we have been going to some music jams near us and the most recent one was at the edge of the Hoosier National Forest at a little store/restaurant called Krazy Joe's Trading Post. This place has quite the personality.The restaurant part is in a corner of the store and has about 5 or 6 tables with cozy plastic tablecloths and I think it used to be an antique store because there are still antiques scattered throughout the place. It is located on the south side of Lake Monroe and just spitting distance of Hardin Ridge, a National Forest campground. The store is rustic and inviting and has supplies for campers and boaters and the restaurant serves hot meals and also hosts music jams every week. Very much country. Just our style. The owner, Krazy Joe met me at the door and when I asked if they served food he said "yep, it ain't good and the service is lousy but the beer is cold'! Well, the food was good as was the service but I don't know about the beer, whether it was cold or not since we didn't have any. It was a neat place and we enjoyed the drive through the forest.
Hopefully the ground will dry up some around here and we can get the garden out. Terry is getting antsy. He did put a few broccoli plants out since they need to be out early but the rest will need to wait on dryer soil. So I guess we will wait. Terry is not too good at waiting so maybe we will just have to scout around and find more music jams to keep him busy.

I have included some pictures of our wet but green yard and woods!

From Desert To Seashore

Well! I am finally updating this blog. We have been so dang busy there is just not enough time to do everything!

We left Quartzsite about 10 days ago and came to Aransas Pass, Texas which is in an area we learned to love a few years ago. Aransas Pass is on the mainland along Redfish Bay and just a short ferry ride to Port Aransas on Mustang Island.

When we wintered here previously we stayed on the island and would take the ferry over here for Wal-Mart visits, different restaurants, fresh seafood, a bigger full service grocery store, and different kayaking trails. Now we don't have to do that because we are here! We take the ferry over there to see old friends and go to the beach.

It has been 7 years since we have wintered here and there have been so many changes. The Conn Brown Harbor is just 5 minutes away from where we are parked and is in the throes of a big revamping phase. It is the homeport for dozens of shrimp trawlers who fish the Gulf of Mexico and have earned Aransas Pass the title "The Shrimp Capital of the World". It is fun to go there and watch the boats come in and out. A few days ago we took a picnic lunch and sat and watched the boats, the sea birds, and the fishermen. The weather was beautiful for that sort of thing because it was in the low 80's the first 8-9 days we were here.

Yesterday we started getting some much needed rain and since we couldn't do much outside activity we headed to Corpus Christi just 20 miles away. We enjoyed the day just checking out all the changes there and we also ate at one of our favorite restaurants The Bayou Grill and had some delicious jambalaya. We made time to go see our friend Shannon Taylor who we hadn't seen for years and had a great visit. So it was a great day even if it was rainy off and on.

Since we started traveling during the winters 12 years ago we have been looking at each area we stayed in to see if we would want to return there often. We knew we liked the desert and all the ATV trails it provided and we knew we liked this area with the Gulf and all the water opportunities. And now we think we are ready to leave the ATVs at home next year and come back here again and bring our kayaks! When we had our kayaks here 7 years ago hardly anyone was kayaking and now there are tons of kayaks out here! And lots more kayak trails we haven't been on and are anxious to try. So maybe we have found a "home" for a while!

I have posted some pictures I took from the ferry and from the fishing jetties in Port Aransas and will take many more. Our weather is supposed to get back to being sunny and in the high 70's by Monday so in the meantime we will be thankful for the rain that the area needs so badly.

Don't forget to click on the photo to get a better view and then click on the back button to go back to the post.

A wonderful week

We have had such a nice week! The temperatures have been in mid to high 70's every day and the sun bright. Just what we drove all this way for!!

We started the week off with a trip to Bakersfield, California, almost 400 miles from here , to get the bus tuned up. It may seem like a long way to go to get that done but Terry wanted to go to a Detroit diesel man that he trusted. It was a great drive to Bakersfield too. We started off from Quartzsite at 820 feet elevation and had to go thru the mountains with one of the passes being 3800 ft elevation. That was the Tehachapi pass and once we topped that mountain it seemed like we were in another world! Everything was green. Lush. It was gorgeous. Going down the other side of the mountain was like being in the Swiss Alps or somewhere.(I have never been in Switzerland butI am sure it looked like this!) Beauty everywhere. It had been a long time since we had seen so much green!

We stayed in Bakersfield for a couple of days and headed back on Wednesday. The bus ran great and we had made some wonderful new friends. We loved being around buses and other busnuts!

Back in Quartzsite we took advantage of the great weather to do some quad riding and geocaching in our mountains. We also stayed busy meeting up and eating out with friends and going to music jams. I will include a photo of one of our geocaches hidden deep in the mountains.

Yesterday Quartzsite had their 4th annual Bluegrass Festival and it was great entertainment. It is a three day event but we probably will only go the one day since we are preparing to leave.We took our lawn chairs and sat out in this wonderful sun from 9:30 to 5:45 listening to a lot a great groups from Arkansas to San Diago. At the end of the day we were sunburned, a little tired, but had an awesome day. We ended our day with our friends, Rose and Phil, that we may not see for another year or so. We are both pulling up and leaving Quartzsite in the next couple of days.

Today we will load up our quads, see some other friends and get ready to pull out tomorrow. It is always a happy/sad time. We are excited to get back on the road and see what other adventures await us but we are a little sad to leave Quartzsite and our friends Barb and Bill.

Hitch itch setting in.

We are still in Quartzsite but we are getting the "hitch itch" so we don't really know how much longer we will be here!

We have had nice sunny days but sometimes the temperatures have not been conducive to ATV riding. But we really really enjoy the sunshine. We keep busy riding in the desert and mountains when we can, going to music jams, playing our own musical instruments here in the bus, and walking.(that is....Connie walking, not Terry!!)

I think I am finally getting my dental work completed in Mexico. We have been there a lot this season. Yesterday I got some fillings. Algodones was VERY busy with it being a holiday so there were lots of people. We got ready to get in line to go through Customs around 3:30 and the line was backed up to where we knew it would be at least a 3 hour wait so we went to Plan B. We decided to just eat supper while we waited for the line to get shorter. My feeling in my face and mouth was starting to come back and I was getting hungry so why not. We had a good meal and got into line about 5:30. The line was still long but shorter than it was. We ended up waiting an hour and 45 minutes. And we didn't have any purchases! The wait went pretty fast though since we were visiting and joking with the other people in line. We usually meet some very interesting folks in line!

The desert and mountains are getting green...well, green for here and it really is very pretty. Some purple and yellow flowers are starting to show up along with the green follage. I did snap some pictures on one of our rides last week but I don't know how well the colors will show up. The cacti will start to bloom soon but we may not be here to see it.

Better go. I need to practice my guitar. I won't get any better if I don't! Don't forget to click on the photo to enlarge it and then just click on the back button to return to the post.