Another Ebook Recommendation

Since getting a Kindle this past summer, I’ve been reading much more than usual since there are so many free and low priced ebooks available on the market.  This evening I finished reading a book by an author I’ve recommended in a prior blog.  Mortal Pursuit is the third book I’ve read by author Michael Prescott.  I really enjoy reading mystery/thrillers that catch my interest from the beginning and are the ones that I can’t put down until they’re finished.  This book is about a rookie patrol officer Trish Robinson who is in her first two weeks in a town without any high profile crimes…or so she thought.  Her day starts badly when she reports late for duty with things escalating when she and her training officer are caught up in a deadly home invasion.  Here’s a link to the book, and if you choose to purchase it through this link, it helps me buy another $.99 ebook in the next month or so. 

Wylie, TX to Killeen, TX

After leaving our campground in Wylie, we headed south through downtown Dallas.

Just before getting to where I35-E and I35-W join, we got into heavy traffic and that seemed to continue for the rest of our driving day.

We arrived at the campground in Killeen, got set up, drove to the store to get a few additional items for dinner, returned to the RV and crashed for the evening.  Tomorrow we will be visiting our good friends Don and CC and look forward to that.

Last Day in Wylie–11/26/11

McKenna and Kendall being teenagers have very busy lives.  They’re always on the go so we really appreciate and enjoy what little time we get to be with them.  Today McKenna and a friend drove to Dallas to watch their friend in her performance in the Nutcracker.  I was able to get her photo when she returned and before she headed out for the night with another friend.

Kendall was off to the movies with her friend, so Chris, Laurie, Ken and I were on our own and we went out to dinner at the Olive Garden and had a great meal before we headed back to the RV for the night.

Thanksgiving in Wylie, TX

We both brought cameras when we went to Chris and Laurie’s house for Thanksgiving, but we did a lousy job of getting photos.  I finally thought of getting some after dinner and even took some with my cell phone.  Here’s our son Chris.

and our daughter in law Laurie

our granddaughter McKenna

and granddaughter Kendall.

After dinner, the men did their usual routine of watching the football games.  Laurie and her sister and mother checked out the newspaper ads to plot out where they would go for the Black Friday sales, and later we played some games.

Go Away Black Cloud!

We didn’t have much planned for today other than re-packing some of the stuff we had picked up at Terry and Sylvia’s, but that black cloud continued to hang over us with different plans.  From inside the motorhome, I’m able to hear and/or feel the vibration of our freezer in the bay below the couch.  The compressor will turn on and run for a short while then turn off and not come back on for 15 minutes or more in it’s normal routine.  This morning, it sounded like it was turning off and on every minute or so which didn’t seem like a good sign.  I went out to check and noticed frost crystals forming on several of the packages in the freezer and I later put a thermometer in it to check the temperature.  I checked it again in the early afternoon, and temperature in it had gone up to 25 degrees…NOT A GOOD SIGN!!!  Knowing it would be a while before we could do anything to repair or replace the freezer, we bought a small freezer at the local Home Depot and set it up in the middle of our living area in the motorhome.  We got it plugged in and since the instructions said it would take at least 4 hours to get cold, we went on to visit with Chris, Laurie, McKenna and Kendall for the evening.  We called it an early evening so we could get back and transfer food to the new freezer.  It feels so much better to know that what we had left of our Alaska seafood has not gone to waste!

Van Alstyne to Wylie, TX

It was another no photo day and as it turned out they would have been very unpleasant reminders anyway.  We started the morning by finishing packing the dining table and chairs and patio table and chairs and other assorted stuff into the pickup.  We took a lunch break and then prepared to break camp for our move to Wylie.  Texas has been in a severe draught, but the last two evenings have seen heavy storms with a lot of rain…and I mean A LOT OF RAIN!!!!  We got to the point where we were ready to back the RV out, and it was not going anywhere.  Ken hooked the pickup to it with a chain and it still wouldn’t budge.  Johnny brought the tractor out and that didn’t do any good either.  So Ken drove over to the wrecker service on the next road and we were finally pulled out of the muck.  We had mud pretty close to our axels and it wasn’t a pretty picture when we finally got pulled out.  I followed in the truck while the RV spewed out mud and rocks for several miles, but we’re sure there’s still plenty of stuff underneath it.

We spent the evening with Chris, Laurie, McKenna and Kendall and will be visiting with them until we leave on Sunday.

Van Alstyne, Texas

We had about 130 miles to drive from Wichita Falls, TX to Van Alstyne, TX.  We’re visiting our friends Terry and Sylvia for a few days prior to moving to the East Fork Corps of Engineers campground in Wylie to spend Thanksgiving with our son and his family.  We around noon, got set up and visited a bit and we all went to the steak dinner at the American Legion on the road behind their house.  I believe that’s about the third time we’ve been to a meal there, and it’s always good and the price is right.  Terry and Sylvia have storage units on their property.

Terry and Sylvia and their Jack Russell, Keeper were getting ready to drive to San Antonio for Thanksgiving and then will be continuing to Rockport for a month before heading to Arizona this winter.  They had there train set up in front of the house and already to head out this morning.

Keeper, not wanting to miss out on a trip, was in the front seat of the pickup and ready to go.

Here’s Ken with Terry and Sylvia before they left this morning.

And there goes their train headed south to San Antonio.

In addition to the great visit with friends, Terry and Sylvia are sending us off with some stuff for our house in Arizona.  We’ve got a dining table and chairs, patio table and chairs, and some pots and pans and utensils for the kitchen.  What special friends…we can’t thank you two enough!!

Roswell, NM to Wichita Falls, TX

Knowing that we would have a driving day of close to 400 miles, we got an early start leaving Roswell.  There were several oil wells along the road through New Mexico.

After driving for an hour and a half or so, we crossed the Texas border and changed time zones.

Much of the area we have been traveling through in New Mexico and north Texas are harvesting their cotton fields.  This photo shows several large bales of cotton that has been harvested.

We even drove on a red brick road in one of the small Texas towns in our travels.

After a long day of driving, we finally arrived at the Wichita Falls Elks Lodge where we were able to boondock for the night.

Alamogordo, NM to Roswell, NM

We had a short drive of 120 miles or so from Alamogordo to Roswell, NM.  We saw fresh snow on a distant mountain.

We were slowed down for a short while in Alamogordo by an accident blocking a couple of lanes of traffic.

We arrived at the Elks Lodge in Roswell around 11am and while setting up had issues with the power not working correctly.  Apparently the Elks has some problems with the electric service and we received some damage to our transfer switch.  Since we had already put out the slides, we stayed in that site and just used the generator as needed.  Later in the afternoon, we went to the home of Ken’s high school friend Glenn and his wife Linda where we had a nice visit and dinner before heading back to the RV.

Arizona City, AZ to Benson, AZ to Alamogordo, NM

On Monday morning, we moved the cargo trailer back against the fence and turned off the water and power and were on the road not too long after 10am.  Our first stop was the Flying J in Eloy to take on fuel.  From there we made a stop at the Costco off Ina Rd in Tucson to stock up on a few items we needed and then we continued to the Escapees RV Park in Benson, AZ where we had a nice visit with our friends Bryan and Susan who we hadn’t seen since January or February.  We wish we could have had more time there, but we’re on our way to the Dallas area to spend Thanksgiving with our son Chris, and his wife Laurie and granddaughters McKenna and Kendall, so we were on the road again shortly after 9am Tuesday morning.  This photo was taken as we’re driving through Texas Canyon between Benson and Willcox, AZ.  It has some very interesting rock formations.

We stopped for fuel at a Love’s station on the west side of Las Cruces, then took Hwy 70 which took us around the city toward Alamogordo, New Mexico, our destination for the night.

After climbing the hill out of Las Cruces toward Alamogordo, we dropped down into the White Sands Missel Range.

Here are some of the white sands.

We arrived at the Alamogordo Elks Lodge at about 3:15pm and set up for the evening.  It’s a full hookup site so we’re catching up on laundry again.  Tomorrow we will have a short drive of about 120 miles or so to the Roswell, NM Elks Lodge where we will be visiting Ken’s high school friend Glenn and his wife Linda.

Preparing to Travel

We have been kept busy in Arizona City cleaning the house and slowly getting the cargo trailer unloaded.  The trailer was finally emptied out about a week ago.

That was a major task for us with the heavy tool cabinets we had to unload and we’re happy to have that completed.  We spent the last week taking things out of the RV to store in the house and we couldn’t believe all of the stuff that has been traveling with us!  Today we we put a few necessary items back into the RV and Ken got us to the point where we just need to disconnect from power before getting ready to leave tomorrow.  We’ll still have to do a few things to close up the house before hitting the road, but we only are planning a short trip to Benson, Arizona to visit friends who are currently there before continuing on toward Texas.

New Appliances for the House

Since other major appliances in the house were about 6 years old, we decided to take advantage of a Home Depot offer and ordered a new refrigerator, washer, and dryer.  They were delivered this morning.  The delivery truck arrived and unloaded on the street where they removed the cardboard.

And here are photos of the new appliances in their place.

I even tried out the washer and dryer this afternoon and they worked great!

Hopefully we will be able to finish unloading the cargo trailer tomorrow.

Major Dust Storm

The news has been reporting a cold front coming into Arizona with predictions of a major dust storm on Thursday, November 4th.  The worst of it hit around 3pm and gradually died down after a few hours.  This photo is not showing the worst of it, but it was still pretty dusty out there.

Busy in Arizona City, AZ

We arrived in Arizona City at about noon last Wednesday and have been very busy working on cleaning up the house and shopping for items needed for the house.  This shop vacuum is getting used a lot!

Some of our shopping took us to Mesa the other day and we found this Hummer H2.  It’s license plate is 1SICKH2…our friend Ken in Spokane really wants to add one of these to his collection.

We unloaded the ATV out of the truck and put it in the garage and have also taken some items out of the cargo trailer.

Our friends Doug and Marilee in Coeur d’Alene felt sorry for us when we told them we bought a house but didn’t have any furniture.  They started us out with this housewarming gift of a dining set.  It fits very nicely on one of the tiles.

We noticed what we were sure was new termite activity in the house since we had been here in the spring.  We called the termite control company who had done the work required prior to closing and they sent a technician out for a inspection.  We showed him what we thought was new and he drilled holes in the garage and applied the treatment and also dug a shallow trench outside the house and flooded it with the termidor.  We learned a lot in talking with the technician and we we did find out later in the day that our areas of concern were with good reason as we actually saw some termites in the wall.  There were no signs of them today, so we’re hoping they went back underground getting a drink of the termination sauce on the way.

Our good friends Glenn and Sheila also bought a house in Arizona City this spring and they have been working much harder than us so we figured they needed a break.  They were our first dinner guests in the new house.  Here’s Ken, Glenn, and Sheila eating some of our Alaska sockeye salmon.

All of us will be glad when the work is done!