A Walmart Night

We don’t stay in Walmart parking lots too often, but sometimes it just fits. Here we are at Walker, Louisiana spending a quiet night. For some reason, our Datastorm dish didn’t want to connect to the Internet … it seems to have something to do with the power provided by the generator. It’s working fine now that we’re back on electrical hookups. We’re in Alabama now.

Well – not as quiet as the Thousand Trails park the previous night! I posted some more photos of that stay on our Picasa Web Album. It was so nice!

We left the Walmart at 8:30 am – that’s REALLY early for us! Hey, without Internet there was nothing keeping us. So now it’s early afternoon and we’re already parked at our next destination – Styx River park, we’ve been here before. It’s a Resorts of Distinction park, so no charge! And, there’s a hot tub & pool here.

Which is where we’re going right now.

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Thousand Trails: Colorado River

We try to take advantage of our Thousand Trails membership whenever possible. The Colorado River TT Preserve is just about 80 miles south of Austin – right on our route. It’s so peaceful and quiet. Lots of green. Being in the desert all winter, I’ve missed green!

We always feel welcomed when we check in at a Thousand Trails, but the welcoming committee here was special! There are deer all over the place. Odie wants to run and play with them – but we’re keeping him on a leash.

Using Google Earth, we mapped out a nice 1 mile circular walk.

We’ll stay here a couple nights. Lots of email to catch up on.

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Austin and Frank

We only planned one specific stop in our current journey from Arizona to Florida. We had to go thru Austin and visit with Frank. Our RV travels are responsible both for creating this friendship and for giving us the means to keep it. We met Frank through our work with Wi-Fi and Frank’s company, Coach Connect. Because of that work, we have spent quite a bit of time in Austin, Texas. It has become one of our favorite cities, with one of our favorite RV parks, and one of our favorite friends!

Here’s our site at Oak Forest RV park:

And here’s Frank with his new girlfriend, Beth. What a treat to meet her, and to get to spend some time with Frank. They came out to our motorhome and Jim cooked chicken on the grill. The weather is *perfect*.

Then the next morning we met up with Frank and his parents for breakfast at the Austin famous Arkie’s. This is our Austin family!

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Oasis in the Desert

What a perfectly lovely travel day. We got up early enough – 7am – to read a little email before partaking of the park’s free breakfast in the clubhouse. Then a little more email before hitting the road at 11.

I drove the first 110 miles. I hardly ever drive, Jim does about 95% of the driving, but it seems I always drive thru El Paso, Texas. Geez that place is huge! Jim drove the last 120 miles, then we stopped for the night at Balmorhea State Park. We lost an hour with time zone change and still got parked by 5. What a nice place! It’s one of those special finds that define why we love this lifestyle – and that gets passed on by word of mouth from one RVer to another. See the post on Andy and Diane’s blog. There are about 50 RV sites – each one with it’s own covered picnic table.

Then there is the pool – made to contain the 22 million gallon/day flow of Solomon Spring. What beautiful, crystal clear water. And it’s a refreshing, but not cold, 75 degrees. Jim wanted to jump off the high diving board. I said, ‘you’re kidding, right?’ But he wasn’t. He even convinced me. I jumped 3 times.

woo hoo

More photos on the web album. Clicking on any of the photos above will take you there, then just use the arrows or click on Slide Show.

Oh yea – and we got a call from Bob telling us that the next time he tried his Datastorm system, it raised, locked on to satellite and got him online in 3 minutes! Yes … a perfect day.

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A Cosmic Plan

I love planning. Looking at a map, looking at a calendar thinking about our life goals.

BUT

I rarely follow a plan. Plans are meant to be discarded. Except the cosmic plan. Go with the flow and you’ll be amazed at what happens.

Like yesterday. Bob called us in the morning because he was having some trouble with his Datastorm satellite dish and was hoping that Jim could help. I asked where they were and he said, “Benson, Arizona.” Really?! Do you know where we are? I asked. He didn’t. (the last time we saw each other was in Wyoming last summer)

Benson, Arizona!

Turns out we were about a mile from each other. We met and went out for a very nice Easter breakfast. We laugh a lot when the 4 of us get together.

Breakfast was great, the satellite stuff … not so much. Jim did some standard upgrade stuff, stowed the dish and brought it back up. Nothing. Now he’s kicking himself for touching it at all. It was actually online when he started … it had taken over an hour when it should only take 10 minutes … but it was online nonetheless. He did some work that should have improved it, now it’s not online at all. AAAAaaaarrrrggghhhhh computer stuff takes so much time. We considered staying over another night and working on it again in the morning, but Bob and Polly seemed more concerned with holding us up than they did about their Internet access. I hope they’re still lauging?

We got on the road about 3 and headed into New Mexico, stopping at Las Cruces for the night. See the map at top right of this blog for more details. Click on ‘View Larger Map.’

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On the Road Again

It feels so good to be on the road again. We’re headed east.

When we got our Thousand Trails membership, we also got a membership in Resorts of Distinction. We pay yearly membership fees for these (roughly $500 for TT and $200 for Resorts of Distinction) then we can stay at any of their parks for free. So – we found an ROD park on our way – in Benson Arizona. Nothing special, but it sure is nice not to have to pay. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s *not* free … it is prepaid. The more you use it, the cheaper it gets.

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A Fond Farewell from Jim

Sir Arthur C. Clarke died this week at the age of 90. His writings inspired me. BBC Obit.
Who doesn’t remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? Sir Arthur was quite a sci-fi writer as well as a true scientist.
In 1945 he wrote a technical paper:”Extra-terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?” In this paper he foretold the invention of the geosynchronous communications satellite.
A satellite orbiting the earth at a distance about 22,300 miles over the equator will seem to stay in the same spot relative to the earth’s rotation. Ground stations point to this satellite and relay signals. That is how our wonderful MotoSat Internet dish is able to post this blog entry. This orbit is now called the “Clarke Orbit.”
He predicted space stations, cell phones, and much of the Internet in his writings. He was the recipient of all the important science fiction awards and he was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1994.

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The Last Day

Continuing on my theme of the importance of the last minute … here’s what we did our last day:

We actually played Pickleball! Actually, it’s because one of our computer service customers – Ann – is an avid pickleball player. When she heard that we liked pickleball but had not been playing, she said, “I’m going to sign you up for the free class that is held on Friday at 4. BE THERE.”

uh …

ok …

It was SOO fun. Thanks Ann!

Then … doesn’t it always take the last minute to clean things up? Our cabover area is called the ‘Loft’ and it is the one area of our motorhome that is multipurpose. Therefore, it is almost always a mess! I cleaned it up yesterday. And, Jim washed the outside of the rig – so you could actually see out the windows.

Then, Saturday morning, we had our last class.

We taught how to use Photo Story 3 … check out the last couple of slideshows we’ve made with Photo Story 3:

Palm Creek Car Show
Home Office: Motorhome Office

Having checked everything off our list … we hit the road on Saturday afternoon.

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Computer Off

Must …

Turn …

Computer ….

Off …

It’s the *only* way I’ll get anything else done! And, today is the day to clean up and get ready to hit the road.

This is SO me …

“Last night my sister and I were sitting in the den and I said to her, ‘I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle to keep me alive. That would be no quality of life at all, If that ever happens, just pull the plug.’

So she got up, unplugged the computer, and threw out my wine. She’s such a bitch.”

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I Need More Last Minutes

Six months is the longest we’ve been parked anywhere since we started this adventure. We got here the first week of October and we’re leaving on Sunday. We did have a few trips for rallies, which was nice.

I’m in a bit of a funk – not sadness for leaving, but rather guilt for not having used the time to the best advantage. We said we were going to play a lot of pickleball and get in shape.

We played 3 or 4 times.

We said we were going to go with the hiking club every Friday and get in shape.

We hiked 3 or 4 times.

I think that’s why I like staying places one month or less. When the time is that short, you have no choice but to make the most of it. There are a lot more ‘last minutes’ when you have short stays. As I mentioned in my last post – I need ‘last minutes’ to motivate me.

We were also disappointed in the turnouts, and therefore income, for our seminars here. There were a few that had 20-30 people. But there were more that had only 5 or 6. I’m not sure why that was – maybe the other people here are playing picklebal and going hiking and golfing rather than sitting at their computers?!

This last week people have been coming out of the woodwork asking for Jim’s ‘Computer Cleanup’ service. He charges $99 to do a routine maintenance. If he’d had this many customers all year, we’d have plenty of money!

Well, speaking of the last minute … gotta go. I have my weekly article to write for RV.net’s blog, and I have to prepare for a presentation on Microsoft Word 2007 for the Computer Club here.

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