Palmdale - IV

Jett - 2 months

It must be time to write again. It’s been a while. We’ve been back at Palmdale for almost 2 weeks and I thought that I would have plenty of time to write once I got here. Today I’m making some time. Yesterday there was something on Facebook about it being time to get Christmas cards in the mail so I started addressing envelopes today. Not having a printer to make address labels I have to write using that antiquated cursive that I learned in grade school. Things are so much harder nowadays.

The good thing is that winter is over and the snow is gone.

The winter day at Palmdale

Don can get back to the golf course tomorrow. Yesterday we introduced our new friends, Frank and Connie from Iowa to the Don Wes Flea Market, a cultural experience not to be missed by Winter Texans in the Valley. Tonight, is potluck and there is a big vote coming up about how best to serve our food. The Palmdale TRADITION has been to form the tables into a horseshoe or square and place our food in front of us. When we all get seated on both sides of the tables we stand, push our chairs in, take our plates and circle to the right serving ourselves until we return to our seat which pretty much gets us all back to our seats at the same time. Apparently, there are those who would rather have a buffet table in the middle with all the food on it and we go around it. Hopefully, we can get the vote over without much discussion so we can eat before the food gets cold. The only upside to the buffet table concept is that I can distance myself from the store-bought pie that I brought instead of having it sitting right in front of me and everybody can tell that I went to the beach while they were cooking.

Foll moon over SPI

The Boat Parade on South Padre Island

It’s good to be home among familiar faces with things to do. The Red Hats are not at Palmdale anymore and instead we have the Ladies Social Club and I went to their first get together 2 days after I got here. The only red hat that I have is Don’s old St. Louis Cardinal’s baseball cap so I never felt like I could join before. I have other plans for expanding my horizons this year but I haven’t gotten around to those things yet.

I’ve listed the completion of our 2017 travels at the end of this post. Some of our most memorable highlights include…

Landry's Vineyard

Children playing in the background

Landry’s Vineyard is a Harvest Hosts venue. We pulled in there on a Saturday so that we could attend the last of their seasonal concerts. A group of musicians played on a stage that was placed at the bottom of a hill in front of the grapevines. A large crowd gathered on the hillside in lawn chairs and on blankets with their families to enjoy the beautiful fall afternoon. Children were racing around behind the stage some of them tossing footballs back and forth.  All of this combined with their good wine made for an very enjoyable afternoon.

Diamond Jack’s Casino where we relived last year’s election at the place in which we experienced the original trauma. It seemed with our timing the way it was that we couldn’t avoid returning at the same time of year to this site.

Sutherland Springs

This has been the year for us to pass by and visit the sites of some of the worst tragedies that have occurred during our lifetime. Last spring while driving to Hartford, CT, we passed the sign on I-84 to Newtown. We didn’t stop but we visited our friend who was a school teacher and she remembered that day vividly. When we drove to Kelly’s in September we stopped by the crash-site of Flight 93 on 9/11. That is memorialized in Somerset County in Pennsylvania. Coming through Texas this year we came through Waco and took some time to visit the memorial at the Branch Davidian Compound. Depending on who tells the story, it was either a massacre of a stand-off that ended in a mass murder-suicide. Then while we were staying in Pleasanton, TX we took a day to go and pay our respects at the Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. They have done an amazing job of covering the evidence of that recent horror and turning the building into a memorial for those who died that horrific day. Grief is still very fresh there.

Cruise-ship Christmas Tree

One week before Thanksgiving we decided we better find some place where we could spend that day and enjoy dinner with a group of RVers. Unfortunately, every place that I called was full and we began to think of alternatives. Don suggest that we might be able to find a deal on a last minute cruise. We found some good deals but needed to have a place to store the motorhome with electricity during our absence. That took the better part of a day and by the time we had things arranged with the Gillespie County Fairgrounds in Fredericksburg, there was nothing available. So we woke up Saturday morning not knowing what we were going to do. I contacted Royal Carribean one last time to see if there were any last minute cancellations. It wasn’t as good a deal as we would have wished but it was leaving out of Galveston the next day and we could make that. So we packed up the RV, moved it to the fairgrounds, plugged it in and set off for Galveston, about 290 miles. We stayed in a motel and were on board the ship shortly after noon. We spent 2 days at sea. Then stopped at Costa Maya, Mexico; Roatan, Hondurus; and Cozumel, Mexico.

11/4-5 Landry’s Vineyard, Monroe LA

11/6-8 Diamond Jack’s Casino, Bossier, LA

11/9-14 Tyler State Park, Tyler, TX

11/13-15 Airport RV Park, Lake Waco, TX

11/16 Royal Palms RV Resort, Austin, TX – just about the worst and most expensive place we’ve stayed

11/17-18 Lady Bird Johnson RV Park, Fredericksburg, TX

11/19-26 Gillespie County Fairgrounds, Fredericksburg, TX (during which time we drove to Galveston and boarded the Royal Carribean Liberty of the Seas and traveled to Costa Maya, Mexico; Roatan, Hondurus; and Cozumel, Mexico

11/27-28 Bar M Mobile Home and RV Park, Pleasanton, TX

11/29 – present Palmdale RV Park, Los Fresnos, TX