Update

We pulled out of Buckhorn RV Resort on the 28th of March heading for Round Top, TX. This is a picture of our vacated site.....I really, really enjoyed this park!
This is a picture of the office at Buckhorn RV Resort. Everything here was so convenient, clean, and nice!

We headed for Round Top, TX, and he biggest Antique Show I've every seen.....this is a picture of a church I thought was cute on the way there.

We had reserved an RV site in Brenham, TX, for two nights and this is a picture from the truck as we were sitting in traffic trying to get back to the Antique Show to look around on Saturday afternoon. We could have looked for two weeks here and still not seen everything! It was fun walking around with Carla though.

Back at the RV, we just sat around the rest of the afternoon until I went to pick up Carla so she could spend the night with us in the RV. Here's where I really lost track of things! Around 4:00 a.m., Nolan woke up not feeling well......couldn't talk him into going to the hospital but around 7:30 a.m., he finally decided we needed to go. Doctors determined that he had a mild stroke and we spent the next 3 1/2 days in the hospital getting all kinds of tests done. They could not find anything major wrong and recommended he see a doctor when we got back to Missouri. Thursday we took off for home and arrived Friday afternoon. We got parked in my sister's backyard and have been catching up with everyone since!

Catch Up--Long Entry

25 Feb, Wednesday: Moving day and as usual, we were on the road around 9:30. Very uneventful drive and kind of boring since this was our third trip on this road....once to check the place out, once down to Big Bend for our stay and now on our way up to Alpine, TX. We had checked out the Lost Alaskan RV Park in Alpine on our trip last week and at that time they had tons of empty sites so we didn't make a reservation. Almost a big mistake. Guess lots of people come into town for the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering which is 27 Feb - 1 Mar. This is one time it was a good thing we left so early in the morning. I don't think if we had arrived in the afternoon that they would have had a site for us. Nolan backed into a pretty good site. There's plenty of room and a row of pine trees behind the trailers. I'll get around to taking some pictures and post at a later date. After Nolan got us parked, I started cleaning......wow there was a lot of dust!!!! We decided to just hang around and rest. Sure glad they had room for us!

24 Feb, Tuesday: We had basically seen everything that we knew to go visit and I think we both were kind of tired of the long drive into Big Bend National Park every day. So, today we just hung out at the trailer, except for walking up to the restaurant at the park and having a banana split....mmmmm it was good!!! I gave the dogs baths after our last outing and washed clothes all day. Life is rough!

23 Feb, Monday: Today was a big outing day.....lots of pictures. This was probably my favorite place in the park that we visited. We started our drive to Santa Elena Canyon, a 30 mile drive with lots of places to stop on the way or on the trip back. One of the stops was a the Sam Nail Ranch. Nolan tried to walk through the brush/cactus to the creek....he finally made it there and there was no water.....I didn't even attempt to get through the brush!
This is the remains of the ranch house. This is one of two wind mills on the ranch and this one is still working.
There was another ranch that was the Homer Wilson Ranch....I think they said this was a replica of the bunk house or something like that. It was kind of in a valley. Very pretty if the desert can be pretty. This is a close up of the building in the picture above.
This is just a cool picture I thought.
Then we got to where the canyone was!This is a picture of the canyon from an overloook on the way there. See the gap in the middle of the picture behind that flat mountain..... This is a close up from the same overlook.This picture was on the road a little closer.This is the canyon from the parking area.This is the canyon from the river access up the road a little.Nolan looking up river at the canyon from a sand bar. There is a path up the side of the mountain on the right that we went up. Nolan went all the way and I went almost all the way.This is the path.This was taken from the mountain path at the side of the canyon.This was also taken from the path on the mountain.....see the canoe?This is a close up of the canoe.Wow.....that was a great drive!!!

We had decided that we would go back to Terlingua Ghost Town to eat at the Starlight Theater. Nolan had talked to our neighbors who have been coming to Terlingua for over 10 years and they had said it was pretty good....especially on Monday when they have two hamburgers for the price of one. So off we went. Parking lot was busy and inside was almost full. For some reason Nolan decided to order tacos but I still ordered the hamburger. When we finally got our order.....a very long wait.....there was plenty of food but it was cold....not a great experience, but probably at times a great place to eat. Certainly was a different kind of place.

22 Feb, Sunday: We thought today would be a good day to go check out the Ghost Town......what ghost town.....there are some adobe ruins on a hill, the gift shop by the Starlight Theater restaurant that doesn't open until 5:00 p.m. We were there in the middle of the day and started looking for some place besides the restaurant where we were staying to eat. We didn't find anything around that looked open or some place we might like to try. So, we drove down the road to the town of Lajitas that looked a little more prosperous but couldn't find anything there either.....so, it was back to the trailer for sandwiches.

Later in the afternoon, Nolan decided we would walk the dogs back to the golf course and I got a few pictures of our trailer on the way there. Our trailer is the second one on the left side of the road.

This is looking back at the trailer park from the golf course.....nothing but lots of dirt and dust! Road we walked down to the golf course....the golf course is actually on the right and left of the road.This is one of the greens.....not the prettiest golf course I've ever seen!Back at the trailer we just watched TV and knitted (me not Nolan).

21 Feb, Saturday: We had watched the weather and they had said lots of wind today....boy were they not kidding!!!! This is a picture of the landscape on our drive to Rio Grande Village in the Park. Picture is not blurry.....that's dust in the air!!!This was not a good day for an outing and we sure didn't stay very long....we drove through both the full hook up and no hook up RV parks and then down to the river.....Nolan drove there at a river access area.....I didn't get out....it was too windy. We couldn't hardly even stand up! All the wind didn't put Nolan in a very good mood....back to the trailer to watch TV and knit!!!!

20 Feb, Friday: Hiking was on the agenda for today....I was kind of excited! We hadn't decided exactly how long of a hike we thought I good do so we started out on the small one that has great views of the "Window".

The "Window".That was a very short walk so we took off on the Lower Basin Loop which led to another path that led to the South Rim which later we found out was 6 miles......Nolan thinks we probably walked about 1.5 miles down or I should say up that hike. It was really going up a lot and I ran out of energy so we started back down and went the rest of the way around the loop for a total of around 3 miles.....I was pretty proud of myself. We picked an excellent day, not too hot!

This is one of the park resident houses on the mountain that we could see from the path.This is Nolan waiting on me after we had gone uphill for a while and I needed to rest.This is looking down from the path at the path below.....it's kind of hard to see but it really is a path.

This is where I got to and rested while Nolan went farther while I rested.This is Nolan walking backing down the trial.....what a fun day!

I sure was glad to get to the truck and a cold soda after drinking the bottle of water I had brought. Then it was back to the trailer and the Taco Soup I had in the crock pot. It was really good....thanks Linda for the receipe from the RV-Dreams web site.

Well, I think that catches us up....I'll try to do better.

Marathon RV Park and Moving

As usual, I didn't get around to taking pictures of where we stayed in Marathon until we were packing up to leave; but, I did get some pictures. This is the view out the back window of the RV. Not bad....
They had a beautiful courtyard and the next two pictures are of that.

Now the not so good, that is our trailer, the second one from the end that you can see. There were two rows of 8 trailers. The trailers on the left looked like they were permanent or those of workers in the area that weren't moving anytime soon. In our row there were also 2 of those. So, that only leaves about 5 or 6 sites available to rent. It was just a gravel parking lot. They were not too close together but not very appealing.

Now the second bad thing. In the middle of this picture, you can see a train bridge and the train goes through quit often and at 4:00 am in the morning. Along with the train at 4:00 am in the morning the guys working get up and start banging things around and starting their trucks getting ready to leave......

We were out of there by 9:30 am. Stopped in Alpine for groceries at the IGA because there are no bigger stores in the Big Bend area where we were going to stay. Then on to the Big Bend Motor Inn and RV Park. When we arrived the staff was out to lunch and they told us to go ahead and pick out a site and then come back later to pay. We had trouble finding one....the one I wanted (don't ask me why, it's about the same as the one we're in), we couldn't put out the slide and that's hard to believe since there is not very many trees here at all. Again, I don't have pictures yet, but I will before we leave. We'll be here a week. Nolan grilled steaks and now it's another night of TVand knitting.

Catch Up--Alamo Palms RV Resort, Flea Market, Museum, Wildlife Refuge, South Padre Island

Saturday, 31 Jan: Leona invited us to their trailer in Adobe Wells Mobile Home Park in McAllen, TX, for a spagetti dinner and then we were going to go to the Citrus Festival Parade at dark. I think that has to be the longest parade that I've ever been to....we stayed for over an hour and they were not done yet!

Sunday, 1 Feb: On our way out of the park to visit the Museum of South Texas in Edinberg, I took a picture of our street at Alamo Palms RV Resort, Alamo, TX. Right at the back of our trailer is this orange tree....they are everywhere in the park and the oranges are really good.
Museum opens at 1:00 on Sundays and we arrived a couple of minutes early and the only vehicle in the parking lot. Went in and spent about an hour and half.....great museum!
Monday, 2 Feb: OK, today I finally got up enough nerve to go to the pool....spent 2 - 3 hours there.....very relaxing and I got some sun!!!

Tuesday, 3 Feb: Nolan suggested we go out to eat today so I said OK (not my idea). Again, we had trouble finding some place we wanted to eat. First, we tried Olive Garden but couldn't find a place to park so we gave up on that.....then on to some place else and got to Red Lobster. Good meal! Talked Nolan into stopping at Michaels so I could look at yarn and see if I could find another size set of knitting needles.....Nolan waited in the truck....big mistake! I spent too long in the store and Nolan called to say it was time for me to come out...NOW! I found lots of good stuff though.....

Wednesday, 4 Feb: We decided we would go out to the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge today and on the way I took these pictures of the Don Wes Flea Market that we went to early. Very fun flea market. Boy, were we glad we didn't have to pay to get into the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge (we used Nolan's Senior Pass to get in free). We had just missed the tram ride and the next one was not until 2 hours later so we decided we would walk one of the trails.....Nolan wanted to see the Rio Grande River. Our first mistake was not paying attention to the sign that said they had insect repellent for $3.95. The second mistake was not turning around and leaving after we had walked about 5 minutes. Mosquitos were every where....they just swarmed around me, especially my hair. Nolan finally got a palm leaf, walked behind me and swatted me the whole way.....about a mile! I had red welps all over my arms and legs. Needless to say we didn't see the wildlife!

I did stop for a couple of seconds to take this picture and the one below of the river!
Thursday, 5 Feb: Had an appointment to get Lucy's hair cut today so we got up and had her to the salon by 8:30....she was scared to death but I left her. Talked Nolan into trying to find the Hobby Lobby, I still needed one more size needle and some point protectors. He agreed and we started down 10th Street. I knew it was on that street but I couldn't get my map on the iPhone to work, poor signal, so I didn't know what the address was......we drove and drove and about 1 block from where the store is we turned around to go the other way. Just about half way back up the street, my iPhone told me the address and it was just past where we had turned around. I told him to forget it but he said we were going to find it!!!! I'm glad we did but I'm not so sure Nolan was that happy. DeAnn, Nolan's niece was coming in today to visit her parents and we met them at Lone Star BBQ for Lunch....good BBQ and glad we got to spend some time with her. While we were visiting the salon called and said Lucy was ready to be picked up. Picked her up and she was completely worn out....she laid down on her bed and slept on the way home.

Friday, 6 Feb: Today we decided to drive with Jerry, Leona, and DeAnn to South Padre Island. It's about 80 miles from here so we left around 9:30. Drove down the island and then stopped at the convention center where they had a walkway. This picture was taken from there....it was really windy. We stopped at several souvenior stores and then finally went to eat at Dirty Al's....excellent shrimp!