Winter Solstice --- Two Peggies

Winter Solstice

Today is the day of the least sun here in the northern hemisphere. Up north it’s easier to be aware of this. In the place where I grew up it is quiet, covered with snow and plants are dormant. A few hearty animals are out and about in search of food. People are spending more time indoors near their heat though there is much to do outside as long as it isn’t too cold, like below zero. Here the sun sets early but things are still green and there is the noise of road construction going on in the background. It’s nice enough that people are out walking about and the swimming pool was busy this morning with aquasizers. It’s easy to forget that this is the time of year for quiet contemplation and that tomorrow the time of light will begin to gradually increase ushering in a new season of growth and beginnings. For now though it is time to be quiet and listen.

Tomorrow, I will get on an airplane and head up to Minneapolis. So much for quiet contemplation. I will make snow angels with Edie, drink wine with my sisters, eat good food, celebrate the holidays with my favorite people and then come back home to Palmdale ready to begin a new year.

Two Peggies,

On the day after I arrived in Palmdale, I went to the walking exercise class that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There, I was greeted by a small group of familiar faces. One such person approached me with a full smile of welcome and I searched my memory for a name to go with her somewhat familiar face. I came up with Peggy… thinking, I’ve seen her picture on Facebook a couple times. Peggy was so surprised that I knew her name. She was really impressed because she hadn’t been here last year but was here the year before that I should remember her name. I said that I had an advantage because I was friends with Peter on Facebook. We walked back towards our RVs together and she told me that they had replaced their motorhome. That didn’t fit with what I had read on FB because I know that Peter and Peggy were looking at buying a mobile home here. There were a couple of other things that weren’t congruent with what I’d heard but I figured I must not be up to date. So I went home and told him that Peggy Pazucha came to exercise class and I pointed to the motor home that they live in. Don said, “That can’t be them. They bought a mobile home.” I doubted him and said they must have changed their mind. He said, “That’s not where they are parked.” Maybe they moved, I thought, but doubt was beginning to form in my mind. I looked at Peter’s blog and I knew that the Peggy I met couldn’t possibly be the same Peggy. But they are full timers and they were here 2 years ago but not last year. That’s about all they had in common. Peter and Peggy are from Wisconsin and they didn’t travel all over the country this year. The other Peggy is Peggy Pendill and is married to Dick and they are from Maine. I introduced Peggy to Peggy the other day after the children’s Christmas show and they have a little resemblance in that they are both white, about the same age, and not much difference in size. One has gray hair and one is more blond. One is very talkative and outgoing and the other is more reserved. One is at almost every event around here and the other I will need to go seek out so I can get to know her better

Good to be home

Here is where we’ve been since the beginning of November.

11/1 – 3/2016 – Army Corps Springhill Campground, Fort Smith, AR – Great place
11/4 – 5 - Home Sweet Home RV Park, Texarkana, TX  - not very sweet and definitely not homey
11/6-7 – Margaritaville Casino, Bossier, LA
11/8-9 – Diamond Jacks Casino RV Resort – so we could have cable television to see election results. What a waste.
11/10-11 – Timberline RV Park, Marshall, TX (another Passport America bust)
11/12 – Walmart Parking Lot in Henderson, TX – so we could go to the Syrup Festival
11/13-17 – Tyler State Park, Tyler, TX a great stay to see the Supermoon
11/18-24 – Rainbow’s End RV Park (Escapee’s Headquarters) in Livingston, TX for Thanksgiving.
11/25-26 – Lazy Longhorn RV Park, Victoria, TX (great stopping place)
11/27-30 – Mustang Island State Park, Mustang Island, TX – beautiful Gulf shore stay. Windy and salty.
12/1/2016 till 3/31/17 (planned) Palmdale RV Resort, Los Fresnos, TX – Good to be home with friends.

It’s good to be back at Palmdale. This is our 3^rd year and it has the feeling of coming home.

I haven’t written since the election. Actually, I did some writing but didn’t post it and don’t know if I will. I wrote it out of the anger I felt about the election outcome. My thoughts going forward on that subject is that our priorities need to be to protect the civil rights of those who might be vulnerable to the new government and work to take the House and the Senate in the midterm elections in 2 years. Other than that I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the subject.

It took almost a month for us to get here to the Valley since we were in Shreveport the last time that I wrote. We spent a couple of weeks in the Piney Woods of Eastern Texas on our way here. One of the highlights was Tyler State Park where we spent a week. The campground consists of a clearing in the woods with a circle road with campsites on both sides. There we enjoyed some “real” camping with campfires, walks around the lake and through the woods. We also had an awesome view of the Super-moon with very little light pollution.

Making syrup from ribbon cane

Before we got to Tyler State Park, we spent a night at the WalMart in Henderson, Texas after we enjoyed a day at their Syrup Festival. Years ago a major crop there was Ribbon Cane. The process was to press the juice out of the cane and then cook it in huge vats until it becomes a thick golden colored syrup. I thought it tasted kind of like Karo dark syrup. There were 30,000 people attending this event in a town of 14,000. Pretty amazing

Pressing cane using mule power

We went on to Rainbow’s End Escapee’s Park near Livingston, TX for Thanksgiving. This was our 3^rd Thanksgiving at this location. It was a good place to stay for the holiday. Then we moved south and after a couple of nights in Victoria we moved to Mustang Island State Park near Corpus Christi. While in Victoria we visited the important Texas sites in Goliad where Santa Anna won a battle against the Texas revolutionaries and then assassinated all the men who surrendered.

Don standing by the cotton gin

screw that was placed at the

site of the battle of Goliad

This, along with the Alamo helped spur the Texans to win their independence. Thus ends your Texas history lesson for today.
Mustang Island State Park was great. We walked on the beach and I got my fishing license and we fished off the jetty. Didn’t catch any fish though. It’s beautiful place with huge grass covered dunes between the campground and the Gulf. Then we readied the camper for traveling and hooked up the car and headed south to Palmdale.

Don has a question to which we found the answer.

“How long can you pull a car in first gear at 60 miles an hour before the engine explodes and it bursts into flames?”  The answer, “Somewhere between 1.5 and 2 miles.” Not much more to be said about that. There are excuses… we changed our normal hook up routine… I was distracted… Don didn’t ask if it was done…. And the outcome remains the same. We destroyed, or maybe I destroyed our 2014 Toyota Corolla that has been our loyal transportation since August 2014. We selected it specifically because with a manual transmission it was the recommended dinghy-tow car for that year.

Don first noticed a lot of smoke coming from behind our camper and pulled to the shoulder. I had been putting up the floor in front of the passenger seat and reversed that. He was urgently trying to get me to hurry that.  He was able to get out and I joined him as he asked finally double checked, “Did you set up the car?” All I said was, “Oh Shit!” Some nice people had stopped quite a distance behind us and were walking up to us. The first thing I noticed was plastic parts in flames under the car. We agreed that we had to get the car unhooked from the RV so it didn’t get burned up, too so we went to work on that. When our helpers reached us, they threw some water on the burning parts under the car. They noticed that the fire was burning under the hood and asked about a fire extinguisher. I told them where to find the fire extinguisher in the camper. They went to get it and came back and asked a couple of times to get the hood up. They put the fire out at about the same time that we got the car unhitched.  Our newfound friend looked at the engine and said, “Look at that. I’ve never seen anything like it. Your pistons are laying in the rocker panel.” They informed us that they had called the fire department and as they were leaving and we thanked them, they gave us their card for Lorelei Brewing Co. in Corpus Christi (www.loreleibrewing.beer) and invited us for a free beer. They thought we could probably use a beer about then and that was true but we decided not to take them up because it just wouldn’t be practical under the circumstances. But we owe them big time and the next time we get to Corpus we’ll pay for our beer. I highly recommend to everyone who goes to Corpus Christi to check out this micro-brewery.

The fire department went flying by us in search of smoke as we stood there in shock for several minutes. We waited, knowing that they would be back when they figured out that we were the fire. That happened. They helped us make the car towable by tearing off some of the parts that were dragging on the ground and improvising a hook that was lost from the tow bar. A fireman bent a S hook from a bungy with his bare hands so that it wouldn’t come lose. We drug the car to the Toyota dealer in Harlingen, TX near were we’re staying with some slight hope that it could be fixed. It was totaled so for the last 18 days we shopped for a car. Tomorrow we will pick up a 2014 Honda CRV which is another car that can be flat towed even with an automatic transmission.

I still mourn for that little car. Not the best ride but 37 miles to the gallon. Irreplaceable. No one gets a manual transmission any more. I had plans for that car. I figured we would give it to Edie in about 11 years and she would be the only person in her generation to know how to drive a stick. Sorry Edie.

Apparently, we still had more to learn about this lifestyle.

Our Toy Toad