We stopped in Destin, to see my aunt Lorene. her daughter, Shirley and her new husband Ed. (Ed's mom Yvonne, is also living there). They live in a nice house on the water, with a boat dock. We had a nice visit, they fixed dinner, and then we went back to the bus for the night.

Well....off we go on the next big adventure! We left on Friday, to go to Summerfield, Florida for our friend Kaye Stevens' birthday bash and her show "Bob Hope and Me", where she was going to sing and tell stories of her days in the USO with Bob Hope in Vietnam.

Along the way, we stopped at the rest area on the border of Mississippi and saw the Lunar Landing vehicle...there's a NASA building and museum there. We drove on to Pensacola and spent the night. Then, while I was on Facebook, chatting with my nephew...he reminded me that our cousin and aunt had just moved to Destin, Florida and "wasn't I going to visit them?".....ha!ha!

that wasn't the plan then...but it was now!

We have been home all week, getting a lot of paperwork done and still dealing with the insurance company about the lightening strike (on May 2nd). All said and done (that we have found) the damage comes out to some $13000.00! Let's see if they cut us a check.....don't ever use SAFECO...Liberty Mutual bought them and they have been a bear to deal with! As soon as this is over, we're changing!

We plan to leave on Friday to go to our friend Kaye Stevens' birthday and a show that she is performing in, in Summerfield, Florida.

Then, Jimmy wants to look at another boat, we have a friend that would like to buy ours. I'll write more on that, later. Not sure of our schedule....kind of depends on the trucks and drivers.....I think we've just about gone through all the vacations, this year, so we should have a full crew, now....allowing us to be gone for awhile. We have to be in Bristol, Tn. for the NASCAR race by August 19th....so don't know if we will come home, between, or just stay gone.

Today was spent in the pool, since the heat is sooooo unbearable....102 degrees!!

Click on this for a great fireworks show at Possum Kingdom Lake!

Well... 4th of July weekend got here! We had some friends, Janet and Robert Spracklen, come out on the 3rd and we had a nice day to hang out, before the madness of the 4th took over. The doggies enjiyed floating on Jimmy's Island too!

My brother and his wife came out to visit, from El Paso, for a couple of weeks. It was a nice visit, we did all the usual things, rented some movies to watch, went to Cabela's and Bass Pro Shop and then he had go to bike shops, etc. We went to the lake for 3 days...they slept on the couches in the front of the bus...they fold into beds. And we had all the animals with us....along with their little lhasa apso....and had no bad happenings! (she and Nikki don't get along). Then they went home on the 3rd.

AHHHHHH.....boats! Or should I say AUGHHH! June 13th weekend, we headed out to the lake,and our friend Alan came out in his motorhome. Once we were set up at the campground, we headed to dinner, then the next day, out to the lake on the big boat.

One of the two engines had some kind of coil or module problem, but we could still go out on the one engine. We went to the popular hang out, called Hell's Gate, and dropped anchor. We jumped into the water, and in a few minutes, noticed that the boat was leaving........Possum Kingdom is a rock bottomed lake and pretty impossible to get an anchor hooked, as opposed to mud. So.....load back up and move to another spot to drop anchor. Well....after 3 times!!!!!! we finally got it to catch. We swam most of the afternoon, and while Alan was looking around at the engines (as guys do) he asked Jimmy where the prop shaft was. Jimmy said " It's right.....there...." Yep, you guessed it....missing. It had slid backwards due to the water pushing on the "non-moving" prop when we only used one engine! Now, we decide that we need to ease back home and pray we don't lose that prop shaft.

Easier said than done...NOW the anchor won't pull up! We tried driving forward, backward, sideways....slowly, faster, Jimmy pulling on the rope and wrapping it around the cleats on the boat each time. After about 45 minutes and going around in circles (and half the people in the lake watching) Jimmy was on the nose of the boat, Alan was driving and I was sitting in the back.

POW! the nose of the boat went up about 3 feet in the air....the rope broke and the anchor is in the bottom of the lake!

So....here we are, one engine, prop shaft almost fallen out and no anchor....so we headed home. The wind was pretty bad, so when we got to our boat slip. it was quite interesting, backing in. We went back out and dropped a small anchor with a float tied to it, so that the scuba divers that we asked....could possibly retrieve our big anchor.......when they went to get it....someone stole the float!!! People!!

After the satellite dish, new trac lighting was called for. Once the work was done, we headed out to swim. The doggies have a new ladder, called "Paws Aboard" and they can swim to it and literally walk up onto the boat. Pretty cool!
Then on Sunday... I stepped on the boat from the dock, lost my balance and fell backwards. Hit my head on the concrete dock behind me and fell down the steps, twisting my back.....MAN! did it hurt! needless to say, I spent most of the day inside, lying down.
Saturday afternoon, I noticed that Shadow (my poodle) seemed to be feeling bad. He started vomiting and had diarreah. then on Sunday, he wouldn't eat. So, on Monday, when we got back to town, we went straight to the vet.
After several hundred dollars worth of tests, they figured out he had Pancreatitus!! They immediately checked him in and put him on plasma and a bag of fluids. Three days of antibiotics, injections and fluids....poor baby! I finally got to bring him home on the third afternoon...a little scary.

The first weekend of May, we were at the lake (of course) and it rained and stormed a lot.
We decided to come home on Tuesday (have to work, sometime) only to find that the garage door wouldn't open. No problem, probably a dead battery from a power outage. Then, when we got in.....I turned on the TV in the bedroom and it wouldn't turn on. So, I tried the living room TV, also wouldn't turn on. I walked into the master bathroom and saw several gold colored scorch marks on the mirrors, then I noticed that Jimmy's mirror was broken at the edge and there was a scorch mark on the wall! The house had been hit by lightening!!!I heard a faint whirring sound on the other side of the wall. Jimmy yelled for me from the back bedroom of the house. The treadmill was on and running full blast! I guess it had been on for days because the belt had begun disintgrating and there was a black rubbery powder all over the carpet.
As the days have gone by, we have found that the intercom system, sprinkler system,telephone system, doorbell, oven light stays on,
HDMI ports on another of our TVs, one of the small tvs in the guest room is fried, but the good news is that all the computers in the other end of the house (the home office) are fine. The unusual thing is that all of the electronics were plugged into Monster surge protectors and it still fried everything! Lightening is a bizarre thing.

After the Marathon Rally in Kerrville, we came home for a rather uneventful week, then we took off for the lake for Jimmy's birthday and the Memorial Day weekend.

Jimmy's present was a new "in-motion" satellite dish, that he wants to install on the boat (so we can watch the NASCAR races while we float in the lake!!) So we decided that this would be a "work on the boat" weekend. Jimmy ran the cables through the radar arch, then we took out the old musty smelling carpet and the boards that let you access the motor, etc. (Also added to the smell after they got wet when the boat was sinking, before we rescued it and bought it). He cut new wood panels and we cut fresh carpet that I kept when we re-carpeted my house a couple of years ago.

At the end of April, we had a Marathon Coach Rally for a week, in Kerrville, Texas. We stayed at the Buckhorn Resort and RV Park.
Lots of fun, got to see some friends that we hadn't seen since 2006 in Nova Scotia. Jimmy has recently taken up golf, so one day was spent at the nearby coutry club playing golf.
The next day we went to the Wildseed farms where there were fields and fields of beautiful Texas wildflowers and a Butterfly Haus. The next day we went to the Alamo (I had never been!) and then the River Walk in San Antonio, for a lovely lunch as we floated down the river. Each evening we were treated to dinner at the "Barn" at the resort followed by some sort of music or entertainment. One of the days we went to the owner of Marathon Coach's ranch. (Bob Schoellhorn). Another day the group went into Fredricksburg to go shopping and see a great theater production.

Our friend Babs and her dog Bleu.

I have been terribly remiss keeping up with my blog. Since the race in Bristol, we came home and went to the Texas race at Texas Motor Speedway.......Jeff Gordon won!!!! YEA!

We got back from the "Food City 500" NASCAR race in Bristol, Tennessee, on Tuesday. I love the giant shopping cart they drive around the track! We arrived there on Wednesday, after spending the night at our friends' Larry and Linda in Cookeville, Tn.
Friends from New Mexico...Peter and Neida were on the way, but he hurt his back, somehow, so she just drove them home from Georgia, where they were at the FMCA rally. Kelvin and Deann couldn't make it, either....so it was just Larry & Linda, Bruce & Babs, Ken (Kris couldn't make it ) Harriet & Stanley, Jim & Gale and a few people that Bruce Had as guests, that I didn't really know.

Just a short note....last Saturday was my birthday and Jimmy had a surprise for me. He had a Hummer H2 Limo come pick us up, take us to dinner a PF Chang's, then we went to the Majestic Theater in Dallas to see "The Rat Pack- Live at the Sands" ....great fun to see "Frank, Sammy and Dean" sing and tell jokes. It almost seemed like they were really there.

Being stuck in the ice on I-40, we got moving, after several tries.......went a few miles, then stopped again!

Once again....after sitting there several hours, traffic started moving. but we were stuck!

Jimmy tried rocking, back and forth, a hundred times, spinning the back tires so much that they were smokin'!!

We finally got to a spot where we could just stop and the rest of the traffic could go by, so we decided to stop until daylight. We put it in park and went to sleep about 2. When we woke up....the same cars that were next to us when we went to sleep, were still there the next morning! No one had moved!

The snow was nine inches deep, so Jimmy got out with the cat litter scoop, a screwdriver and a Tupperware container to get the snow and ice broken up and cleared away from the tires. (I was afraid he'd have a heart attack!) Nikki loved the snow,.......Shadow was not too thrilled.

Once we finally got moving, we made it to the Petro Truckstop, in West Memphis, Arkansas....pulled up to the fuel island, trurned the bus off, then tried to start it again to move up a little....and it wouldn't start!!! Out of Fuel!!Whew! What a trip!

Anyway, breakfast, then headed home!(click on the picture to make it bigger)

After hearing that one of our customers at K9 had a truck in Nashville with the rod through the block and the engine computer, Jimmy decided that we should go get it in the bus and tow it back. We arrived at the Freightliner dealership in Nashville about 12:30. We had until 4:30, when they closed, to get hooked up and leave......We pulled out just as the guy was locking the gate.

On the way! 2 hours to Memphis, fuel and something to eat.

About Jackson, Tn. it started freezing rain, then snow.then traffic stopped....big wreck ahead.

We noticed a lot of trucks on the off-ramps to the truck stops, some- three-wide had slid over into eachother on the ramps.

The wreck finally cleared up and we moved, a little, at 11 pm.....

When we got home, we noticed some new structures being built in our neighborhood.
OILWELLS! It seems that we are sitting on top of the "Barnett shale!" Pretty cool.....we will be getting a check each month...(not much) ....$150.00, I think...but it's something!

Next weekend, Jimmy has informed me, we are going to take the bus and go to Nashville to rescue one of RBX's Freightliner trucks.