Kitchen Floor

The new kitchen floor was immediately tested for bounce by Red and her tennis ball. It passed the test.
I had to stop and enjoy the August lilies that bloom in the side yard.

Happy Birthday Aunt Ellen

The lady in the middle in celebrating her 100th birthday. Her neice, me, is standing in back, her great-neice is sitting on her right, her great-great-neice is holding her great-great-great-nephew on her left. The boys in the back are her great-great-nephews.

I know it isn't a direct line of 5 generations but we will take what we can get. She still is in her own home although she needs lots of help lately. She came to her party with a walker.

When I was a kid I saved the best school papers or craft projects for weeks to show her. She really looked at things and appreciated them. No pat on the head with a "that's nice" from her.

We love you Aunt Ellen.

Natchez Trace

The sign says the trace is 200 years old but one theory is that it was an animal trail way before that. Having grown up on a small dairy farm I quickly learned that if you follow the cow paths you get there in the most efficient way.

These small Indian mounds were thought to be where the chief built his home but I thought if that were true they would have been flatter on top.

Sometimes the trace was narrow and had cut quite a deep way into the ground. How many feet did it take to do that?

Sometimes it was more like a highway.

This is a picture of the Meriwether Lewis monument. He died, whether suicide or murder, along the trace. It was a dangerous trip with a few crude waystops along the way. When the mail was carried from Natchez to Nashville by horse (pony express has nothing on the east) a man would start from each end and they would meet in the middle and exchange mail bags. The trip took 2 weeks.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a 2 lane 445 mile highway from Natchez, Mississippi to near Nashville, Tennessee. It passes through Miss., a corner of Alabama, and Tenn. There are no trucks or commercial signs allowed. I drove 347 miles of it from Jackson, Miss. to the north end. The speed limit is 50 MPH and there were few cars on it. Every 10-15 minutes I met a car and every hour or so a car would pass me. There are many historical markers and places to stop and take a hike. Sometimes there it passes through farm fields but it is mostly through forest.

Near Koscuisko, Miss. I saw a sign for a museum so I stopped to check it out. It was all about Oprah Winfrey's birthplace. The road to it also led to a busy road. I didn't stay long. Many state highways cross the parkway so you can get off if you need anything. Many of the campgrounds they show on their map are commercial ones near the parkway. There were 2 short detours for road work.

It's was a beautiful drive, the dogwood and redbud were in bloom. I would recommend that someone plan ahead where they want to stop as they only give you 1/2 mile to decide whether you want to stop and you don't know what it's going to be if you don't have a navigator.

Now I want to tell you about Time Warner Cable company. I made the mistake of having my cable service turned off while I was away. That included my phone as well as my internet and TV. I requested service to be turned back on while I was still in Texas. They called me while I was driving at 70 MPH on the way home and I told them they would have to call another time. They called the afternoon I got home and scheduled it for April 3rd. When they didn't show up I tried to call their automated answering service to find out what happened. I am afraid I got abusive on their recorder. Only after 6 calls when I agreed to accept a call to evaluate their service did I get a real live person to talk to. Until then I got a recording saying they couldn't take my call and to call later. So if I wasn't going to tell on them they weren't going to take my call.

The reason they hadn't shown up was that they had been calling the phone that they disconnected in Nov. and when it didn't work they decided they didn't need to show up.

They got an earful. The real live person asked for my home phone number at least 3 times then he got tired of me yelling "I DON"T HAVE ONE".

Today I got phone service as well as a fancy new box on my TV that will pause and record TV shows. This was something that I had been paying for for a few years but had never gotten. They tell me I will have a free month of phone service. When that is up I think I will change my phone service.

I'm just glad to be back in communication with the world. Also sad to hear that one of my faithful friends and readers has passed away this week. A moment of silence for Jon, you will be missed.

Home

We arrived home last Sat. about 1:00 p.m. EST. It's nice to be home but I need lots of naps between unpacking the RV.

I will tell about the Natchez Trace Parkway later when I can put on some pictures. Right now I am at the public library using their computer. I have no internet, no cable TV, and no phone until April 4. Add to that the fact that one of the outlets in the kitchen isn't working and every time I use the microwave I trip a circuit breaker. Hey, this house is over 100 years old so what do I expect.

Scooby went back to the rescue people on Monday. He dragged me all the way from the car into their building. They tried to put me off but had no luck. So I have a peaceful house with 3 dogs who do what dogs usually do - bark when someone knocks on the door, ask to go out now and then and expect doggy treats on a regular basis.

I got to see the Grandkids and Greatgrand kid on Sat. afternoon. Carson is 9 months old and crawling and squealing and grabbing and waving. Normal kid.

I just wish spring was really here but it will be soon.

East of Shreveport, La

I decided to spend the day here at the same place and rest up and wait for the weather to clear. It has worked nicely. About noon the sky cleared, the rain stopped and the RV stopped rocking.

I feel much better with the extra day of rest also. I have even decided to try driving the Natchez Trace from Jackson, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. It is supposed to be a very scenic drive plus I cut out Memphis which is always a mess.

This may delay my getting home - oh well. I have to stop and smell the roses sometimes.

Somewhere east of Shreveport, Louisiana

What a couple of days, driving in the wind. It gusts from all sides, no way to prepare for it. I am afraid to even take one hand off the wheel to hold it in front of the air conditioner vent to dry the sweat off my palms. At least I am out of Texas tonight and have WIFI here at this campground.

Texas driving is interesting. Most of their roads have a wide apron, almost another lane. If you are slower than traffic (and I always am, even at 65 & 70 MPH) they expect you to pull over on the apron and let them go by. I have done this several times when I could see far enough ahead that there was no one stopped in that lane. They also have a system set up for evacuations. There are movable barriers in the middle of the thruway so you can move over to the oncoming lanes when that kind of emergency is declared. There are signs telling you when and how to do it. But the apron is to be left open for emergency vehicles.

Let me explain the picture at the top. Today I stopped at a Kroger to pick up some of my imitation cheese. As I passed the back of my RV I noticed that the spare tire was hanging way back from the bumper. The welded connections to the bumper had torn loose. It wasn't that way this morning when I started out. A wonderful Kroger worker came over and helped me take the spare tire and bracket off the bumper and put it into the RV on the floor. That was a new bumper last summer so it will go right back to Adventure RV and they will fix it.

Then the nice Kroger worker pointed out that one of my tires looked low. So I stopped at a tire store and had them check the air pressure and add air to all my tires. I run them 10 lbs. lighter than it says on them. Someone told me that was a good thing to do. Hope they were right.

Then there is my rattle. It started a couple of weeks ago on a short trip. When I stopped I noticed that somehow the vent fan over the stove was on. The last day I was with Linda & Bob, Linda took a short ride with me to try to find the rattle. I had stopped several times on my own but when you are stopped it doesn't rattle, when you are driving you can't find it. She determined that the rattle was inside the housing around the microwave and vent fan. So now that I know where it is and know I can't fix it I can ignore it - almost.

I got my fake soy cheese and had a sandwich for lunch. About an hour later I started feeling sick, very sick. I had just bought the cold cuts but they are going out tonight. I was in the middle of I-20 in Shreveport when it became intolerable and took a random exit and pulled into a liquor store parking lot and ran for the bathroom with a bucket in front of me and the back of me on the toilet. I was just in time. I'm feeling a lot better but will see how I do tomorrow. It was also very warm in the RV so I turned on the generator and the RV air conditioner the rest of the trip to this campground. A friend of mine named Jon suggested that with this size RV the engine AC might not be enough to keep it comfortable (it was 80 degrees inside). Thanks Jon.

I had planned to be home by the week-end but things can happen so I'm making no firm plans. Luckily I have my 2nd home right here with me - with a spare tire in the middle of the floor. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and laugh about it.

Austin, TX

I left about 10:00 a.m. this morning and didn't stop except for pit stops and lunch and gas until 5:15. This is a Federal Immigration checkpoint. It is about 50 miles north of the border. When it was our turn a car in the line beside us was stopped and a big beautiful Doberman held by a Federal agent was lungeing and barking at the cars trunk. I wanted to see what they had found but Scooby was going crazy at the window and I was waved through without any checking at all.

We ran into slow traffic at Victoria, San Antonio, and Austin. I thought Sunday would be a good day to travel but a lot of people were going home from a week-end outing. It is also spring break time.

These cactus grow wild in the fields and people use them in their natural flower gardens. The dogs got into one while trying to meet some other dogs. Red has licked all the hair off the top of one of her feet. Scooby has a scrape under one of his leg pits (?). I found 4 ticks the last 2 days we were in Los Indios. 3 were on me and one on Scooby.
The checkered flag is where I want to go, the green arrowhead is me, I don't understand the white arrow. Maybe they thought it was a divided highway. I found it in spite of the confusing instructions.

When I arrived at the campground I had picked it was full. I hadn't called ahead as I wasn't sure I would go so far. They were kind enough to fit me in between another RV and a pile of gravel. They even strung an extension cord from their shed so I have electricity. It is supposed to be very windy tomorrow and I had planned to stay here for 2 nights before moving on. I will look for something further along the way but not too far in case that wind gets really strong. There is always Walmart. Don't know if I will find any WIFI but I am enjoying it tonight.