Visiting

Here in the Dallas area, we got to visit...

... and this time we remembered to take pictures!

 

It was great to see Peggy and Bill!

 

"The Middle Wife"

I saw this on Facebook on one of the groups that I belong to, and thought it was funny enough to share!

The Middle Wife 

by an Anonymous 2nd grade teacher 

I've been teaching now for about fifteen years. I have two kids myself, but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own second grade classroom a few years back. 

When I was a kid, I loved show-and-tell. So I always have a few sessions with my students. It helps them get over shyness and usually, show-and-tell is pretty tame. Kids bring in pet turtles, model airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that. And I never, ever place any boundaries or limitations on them. If they want to lug it in to school and talk about it, they're welcome. 

Well, one day this little girl, Erica, a very bright, very outgoing kid,takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class with a pillow stuffed under her sweater. 

She holds up a snapshot of an infant. 'This is Luke, my baby brother, and I'm going to tell you about his birthday.' 

'First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their love, and then Dad put a seed in my Mom's stomach, and Luke grew in there. He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord.' 

She's standing there with her hands on the pillow, and I'm trying not to laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me. The kids are watching her in amazement. 

'Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts going, 'Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh!' Erica puts a hand behind her back and groans. 'She walked around the house for, like an hour, 'Oh, oh, oh!' (Now this kid is doing a hysterical duck walk and groaning.) 

'My Dad called the middle wife. She delivers babies, but she doesn't have a sign on the car like the Domino's man. They got my Mom to lie down in bed like this.' (Then Erica lies down with her back against the wall.) 

'And then, pop! My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case he got thirsty, and it just blew up and spilled all over the bed, like psshhheew!' (This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming water flowing away. It was too much!) 'Then the middle wife starts saying 'push, push,' and 'breathe, breathe. 

They started counting, but never even got past ten. Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother. He was covered in yucky stuff that they all said it was from Mom's play-center, so there must be a lot of toys inside there. When he got out, the middle wife spanked him for crawling up in there in the first place.' 

Then Erica stood up, took a big theatrical bow and returned to her seat. 

I'm sure I applauded the loudest. Ever since then, when it's Show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case another 'Middle Wife' comes along.

Back to National Indoor RV Center

On Thursday, we drove from Livingston to Lewisville, TX, arriving mid-afternoon at National Indoor RV Center.

The Garmin took us north to I-20, rather than west to I-45, to get to the DFW area.

We got to see some areas of Texas that we haven't seen before.

View from Love's Lookout - there was a rest area at this overlook off of US-69. It is rare in Texas to have overlooks like this, so it was neat to be able to see out over a long distance.

 

Carl is always amazed by the interchanges around Dallas

This is the interchange where the 121 toll road intersects with I-35E -- it *is* pretty impressive!

We're hoping to get several things accomplished this week while we're here!

From Wednesday

On Wednesday...

... we got to visit with our friend Marjorie!

... we let Miss Kitty try on one of the "gators" (gaiter?) that we had purchased on Tuesday.

She was NOT impressed!

... Carl put our new temporary tags on the Jee-rage...

... and on Gracie.

 

On Tuesday, we had called the Polk County Tax Office to try to determine if we had correctly figured out what forms we needed to fill out to (1) change the ownership of the Jeep from only Patti to both Carl and Patti and (2) to get Amateur Radio customized license plates for both the Jeep and the motorhome. After talking with the lady at the office for a few minutes, I said, "Is it possible that we could come into the office and complete the forms there to make sure that we have everything done correctly?" The lady said, "Sure! Come on in!" We were SO grateful - we had about 75% of it figured out, but, it probably would have taken multiple mailings for us to get it completed correctly if we'd done it via mail. We came to Livingston expressly so we could get this completed, but had read online that they encouraged folks to do all their business via phone or mail... so we were trying to comply with that. For what we were doing, being there in person, being shown which parts of which forms we needed to complete, going out to the car to complete them, and then returning to have them enter the information into the computer and tell us what we owed -- wow, were we ever glad to be able to do it in person!

The new permanent plates should arrive at our Livingston address in the next few weeks, and we will be able to have them forwarded to us in Mesa, or wherever we are at the time! A big to-do moved to our already-done list!

Continuing West on Monday

After Sunday night spent at the Walmart in Walker, LA, we continued west to Livingston, TX, where our mail service is located, Escapees headquarters, and Escapees Rainbow's End RV park.

We stopped for fuel at a Petro Stopping Center near Egan, LA. Carl mentioned that he wondered how the vehicle next to us managed to not bottom out as it was just a couple of inches off the ground. My picture doesn't show it very well... we could see the logo on the front vehicle that was parked in the "load" above the cab of the tractor, and it was a Mercedes. I don't know whether it was transporting new Mercedes or privately owned vehicles.

This shows the back of the enclosed car carrier still at the diesel pumps as we drove away.

As a side note - we have stopped at, I think, three Petro Stopping Centers in the past few months - one in Indiana (we stopped there twice) and two separate ones in Louisiana. They all have really bad driveways/parking lots - riddled with pot holes. The first one that we stopped at in Louisiana we tried two different pumps and couldn't get either to work, so decided that we weren't desperate for fuel and drove on. In the past, we have primarily used Pilot/Flying J or Love's, but there is a special card for diesel RVers that we're using (through TSD Logistics: https://www.tsdlogistics.com/services/fuel-program/ - if you end up applying for it, indicate "Carl Williams RVCW2665" in the "Referred by" field -- and Carl will get a $25 fuel credit if you are approved and after you spend $500 in the program!). Anyway... right now, T/A and Petro stations have the cheapest rates (we paid $1.656 versus the pump rate of $2.299), so we've been prioritizing stopping at T/A and Petro stations.

Continuing on west, we went through Lake Charles, LA, that was hit in August by Hurricane Laura.

One of the office buildings with what looks to be plywood in for many of the windows...

... zooming in on that building... wow! Look at all the windows that are covered with wood!

We saw a lot of damage along the freeway and piles of debris along the roads, lots of roofs with blue awnings over them (note: shingles and tile roofs were the most damaged, metal roofs seemed to survive much better).

By Monday afternoon...

... we arrived in Texas!

We are checked in to the Escapee's Rainbow's End RV Park and getting some Texas government tasks done before heading to the DFW area.

Sunday Afternoon Along the Mississippi coast

Back in February, we had driven along the Mississippi coast in Miss Doozie, and stayed overnight at the Walmart in Long Beach, MS. ( https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/02/pass-christian-and-long-beach-ms.html). During the time we were in Long Beach on that trip, we had heard from Blue Birding friends that it was possible to park along the beach for overnight, so we thought we would try that on this trip heading west.

When I was doing research, one of my sources for boondocking recommended a spot a little off the main drag that looked just about perfect - in fact, when I looked at it on Google Maps street view, there was even an RV parked there! So, we started by trying to park there, but... there was a "No Overnight Parking" sign at the entrance... we pulled through and went back east a little ways to see if we found any other likely spots. We found a spot that was not just a parallel parking area but a little pulled off from the main road and pulled in and parked.

Heading out to the beach with a big bowl of popcorn to snack on!

Gracie and the Jeerage

There was quite a bit of sand along the sides of the road and the side parking areas from the hurricanes that have battered this area during 2020.

It was getting later in the evening

Where we are parked compared to where we were enjoying the beach

We put our chairs near one of 3 palm trees

It was SO gorgeous at the beach

Looking down toward the palm tree (the furthest one) where we had our chairs -- you can see that there were pools of water in the sand up near the road not long ago.

Looking toward the west

My Carl enjoying the sand and the surf

The sun is about to go behind the clouds!

Sunset

Beautiful!

We had planned to stay overnight along the road with our windows open to hear the surf, but... the surf was not very high so we really could not hear it at the rig... *and* we could very easily hear the traffic on the main road along the beach. We talked about staying at the Walmart again where we had stayed in February, but it was a little ways (4.5 miles) further east, and we would be heading west to Livingston, TX on Monday, so it seemed to make more sense to drive a little further west to stop. We drove about 100 miles further west and stopped at a Walmart in Walker, LA for the night Sunday night, giving us only about 300 miles to travel on Monday.

Leaving Alabama

 We left Rainbow Plantation in Summerdale, AL on Sunday right around noontime...

At the entrance of Escapees Rainbow Plantation as we were leaving

Debris along entrance road

Gracie and the Jeerage ready to leave

How many pictures is Carl going to take?

You may be able to tell that there are lots of trees that have come down along the road here.

Gracie ready to leave!

Some of the debris along the county road...

There was debris all along all the roads in the county... a few places there were big trucks gathering up the debris. While we were in the campground, we would see those debris-gathering trucks driving by nearly continuously.

We enjoyed having a few days of "down-time" in Summerdale. Friends from the Escapees Christian Fellowship, Maurice and Shirley, arrived the same day we did, though they will be there into December before heading west to Arizona for the Christian Fellowship get-together in Quartzsite in January. We got to visit with them Friday afternoon, but... once again forgot to get pictures! We enjoyed riding our bikes around the relatively level paved roads in the campground and Escapees housing area. We also got a few loads of laundry done (how do we create SO much laundry?!?!?).