A friend of Karen's (Mike), took this video of the Hauler Parade, with his iPhone! Pretty cool looking!

Drove into Bristol, Tn. for a weekend of NASCAR racing,
on Wednesday evening. Tonight (Thursday)is the Hauler parade....the infield is so small, there is no parking, except for the haulers of the cars, so they make a big deal of the trucks going into the infield!

More Hummer pictures. Chris and Vanessa broke a ball joint on the front wheel, so everyone pitched in and fixed it on the trail. Then.... I HAD to show my "Hummer-dogs".
Notice where they like to ride when we're climbing rocks!

August 6-8, we drove up to Aztec, N.M., near Farmington, and met a bunch of friends from all over the country.Kansas City, St. Louis, Illinois, Las Cruces, N.M. and the mileage award goes to Jerry and Tracy.....from Minnesota!!
We spent the day, Saturday, playing on the trails, then Tracy called (not planned) and said that they had been up in Silverton, Colorado and were on their way to Durango.....
I beat them up and talked them into coming down to Aztec. They had been off-roading up in Moab, Utah with their new little Polaris Razr.
We decided that all future Hummer Trail rides needed a Razr for the re-con vehicle!! ha!ha!
Spent Sunday on the Secret trail, but then we had to leave on Monday.
Some of them stayed and went to trails in Farmington, Grim Reaper, etc. Lots of fun, we had no breakage (better) and got home for a few days, before we head off to Bristol, Tn. for the NASCAR race!

Here is my park bench!! Refurbished from an old splintery weathered POS.....lime green....pretty cute, huh?

It's rainy day in the mountains....55 degrees! It was a "frog strangler" and rained 4-5 inches in a hour, so our neighbor, up the hill had the ditch break and flooded his house with about 3 inches deep of mud!! Jimmy is up there, helping several other neighbors with buckets and brooms and mops!

Just sitting outside, with a camera!

Here is Jimmy's latest project.....extending the roof of the deck in Alto, N.M. The original deck is long enough for a 40' motorhome, so, after raising the roof a foot...( 1" clearance), he has extended it an extra 10 feet! (really only needed 5, but the extra really makes it nice.) He's pretty handy, like that! (sigh) At least it keeps him busy!! ha!

Well, we have escaped the heat of Texas and hustled to the mountains! Today, Jimmy played the Kokopelli Golf Course, in Alto, N.M......Wonderful, 72 degrees! The scenery was really beautiful and we finished just in time to go in the clubhouse for lunch, when a huge rainstorm blew up! By the time we got back to the deck, it was pouring and the rain on the metal roof sounded wonderful!

This is a picture of fireworks with he Dallas skyline in the background.......A picture I really thought was neat! Not much going on here, just hiring more truck drivers and getting them set to go out next week. Jimmy has been working on fixing one of his satellite dishes.....taking it easy, enjoying the rain and "a little" cooler weather! Plan to head west soon, for a few, and a Hummer rally!

July 5th....
Jimmy, Bill, Chris and Casey are going to play a round of golf, before we leave the Cliffs to go home.
Ought to be a hoot, Chris has never played this course before (very hard)......I'm waiting to hear how it went, when they get back to the clubhouse!! ha!ha!
Apparently, lots of 4 letter words were used!! ha~

4th of July, 2010!!!

Another cloudy start to the day, but it turned out great.. We had heard that The Harbor ( a new resort area on the lake) was going to have fireworks on the lake for the first time, this year. Apparently, either people had gone home, were up at the Possum Hollow fireworks show (way at the other end of the lake) or just didn't believe it, so we went out in the boat with our friends Janet and Robert and just sat in the water until dark. There were no other boats (maybe 3) and we were just a few hundred yards off the shore.....Well, it did not disappoint! beautiful, non-stop and there were other fireworks everywhere you turned on the lake.(fireworks are a big deal here!) Got home about 11:30 pm. Nice evening!

Friends Janet and Robert came out for the Fireworks on the 4th.

July 3rd, we headed out to Possum Kingdom lake, even though it was still being inundated by the rain bands coming up from Hurricane Alex in the Gulf, in hopes....and (it held true) the sun comes out! We went out to Hell's Gate (the local party cove) and dropped anchor right outside the Gate, because it is a Zoo on the inside and we have already lost 2 anchors over the last year......hundreds of boats come out for the show!

On Tuesday night, Jimmy just decided that we should pack up and go see his aunt and uncle in Horseshoe Bay, Texas, for a couple of days. W actually arrived, undetected, backed the bus down the driveway, and got settled before they heard us! Had a great visit, ate hamburgers, solved all the problems of the world,etc.! Next morning, went to the famous "Bluebonnet" restaurant for late breakfast, then, when we got back to the bus, the neighborhood deputy dawg had stuck a note on it that we had to move! The house is downhill in a cul-de-sac, you can't even see it from the road! (I suspect the neighbor, up the hill, complained!) Anyway, we moved to the little RV park near the entrance of the neighborhood...quite a chore. I don't think they were used to having a 45' long,13'4"tall coach in their park. As we backed into the spot, a monster tree limb hit the closed Internet satellite dish, on the roof and bent one of the gears, so we ordered a new one, when we got home, it's already arrived and Jimmy is installing it now......no sweat.
Then we went back to Lil and Gerald's house and visited some more....had some wonderful dinner! Played some "Farkle " and after the girls won BOTH games, we said our goodbyes and headed off to the bus. Had to get back for a drs.appt. the next day.

Jimmy has reached his 15 minutes of fame!!!!

He is on the cover of Heavy Duty Trucking magazine.

Eventually, electronic logs will be the norm in the trucking industry, so he is working with our friend, in Houston, to get these developed to put in the Fedex trucks.......keep your fingers crossed!

Amazing!
Well, we decided to escape to the cool weather for a week, and Jimmy has decided that he is going to raise the roof on the deck in Ruidoso, himself, rather than pay the $6,000.00 we were quoted, to do it.
After, about $800.00 worth of lumber and 3 days of Jimmy climbing up and down the ladder to the roof, the roof is now 6 inches higher on one side and a foot on the other! The Coach BARELY fit before, only after he dumped all of the air and moved as far to the right (high side) as he could. Even then, the little antenna on the roof would "TWANG" with each beam it went by. the Satellite dish, on the roof of the bus cleared by about a half an inch!
Now, he is on a mission to remove one of the support beams, so that we can access all of the bay doors of the coach. Hence the double I-Beams he incorporated into the roof raising. He is replacing one of the support beams, because it is split in several places, so I'm sure it is weak, and totally removing another one completely. Before next winter, we are planning to have glass doors installed all along one wall, so that we can have an enclosed, heated space.
Anyway, he hopes to get the beams done by tomorrow, so we can leave.
Back soon, tho' because the hummingbirds, deer and pretty songbirds are starting to show up. We even have a bird's nest with mama and eggs, built in the rafters of the deck!

Talk about an exciting afternoon!......
We went to Wal Mart and I stayed in the car, listening to the race, while Jimmy went in. In a few minutes, I heard someone screaming for help and looked about 3 cars up, on the sidewalk, and a big black guy had thrown a woman (his wife) to the sidewalk, was standing over her and thumping her on the ground, demanding his car keys. Her arm was in a sling and she was screaming. About 20 Wal Mart employees came running and I grabbed Nikki out of the back seat and ran to help, yelling to leave her alone.
Of course he didn't stop...until he saw Nikki....then he backed off.
She got up, got in the car, locked the door, he was screaming at her, so all the people were telling her to leave, drive off. He threatened to kick in the window, but she sped off. In the meantime, they had called the cops and the guy took off, too.
Of course, I had to give my name as a witness, and everyone was talking about when I came up with my dog.....(the big wussie...she just stood there until I said okay"back in the car" and she was ahead of me to the car!)
But, it was nice to know that she was imtimidating.......

We went to the lake, for the weekend. Couldn't take the boat out, because it was being worked on, but we really enjoyed the bluebonnets everywhere. The lake was soooo overfull, they had the gates open and were releasing water in to the Brazos river, below.
Had a nice weekend, great weather, home Sunday night......bus goes into the shop at Marathon on Monday, to fix some electrical issues and I will be checking some doctors to fix my medical "issues".
More later.

Here's a picture of the Daddy duck sitting vigil!

Well, after being gone for the weekend, we came home to find only 3 eggs in the nest, but no broken shells! Then, this morning, there were only two......I guess I have to believe she is moving them somewhere. Darn it! I really wanted to see the hatchlings!