Our RV Adventures

Well, it’s another Tuesday, so it’s another lunch/errand day. That being so, we left the rig a little before 1pm for another great meal at Gator’s Bar & Grill over in Dickinson.

We decided to start off with what Margie, the owner, says is their most popular appetizer, the Pickled Asparagus Fries.

Our verdict was that they were good, but not really order-again good. Maybe because neither of us are really asparagus fans. But if we had to eat it, this is probably the best way.

Love Jan’s cat shirt in the background.

We liked the appetizer we had on our first visit much better. The Pretzel Bites with Stroh Beer Cheese.

This time we both had Blackened Chicken Breast with Roasted Broccoli and Sweet Potato Waffle Fries.

Really good, as has been all of our meals here.

Well, I tried.

Our next stop was one that I had been putting off for a while, picking up a new Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G phone from the local Verizon store. I had made an appointment for 2pm today, and their website said they had the 256GB version in stock.

And they lied!

Turns out that they only had the 128GB one on hand. Actually I would have liked to have the 512 version, since these new ones don’t have a microSD slot. And I would have been willing to wait for them to order one, but it seems that Verizon doesn’t even carry these.

And I even had to order the 256GB one, which is supposed to ship on or before May 25th. But this did give me time to order a new Otterbox case and screen protector for it, which should be here tomorrow.

I’ve used Otterbox cases for my last 3 phones and they seem to be pretty indestructible.

And the reason I’ve been putting off getting a new phone is that it’s such a PITA to get them all set up. Yes, Verizon will copy over all my contacts, etc., but all the apps will have to be reinstalled and configured. The only redeeming thing is that will force me to cull the apps I don’t really use anymore, and only reinstall the others as I find I need them.

But it’s still a PITA.

Our next stop was at the Kohl’s right across the parking lot to drop off a bag of broken flamingo cup pieces. The young lady thought it was really funny when I jiggled the bag after she scanned QR code on the Amazon return email and wanted to know why I was sending it back.

Even Jan enjoyed the return, because the Amazon return receipt also had a 25% Off coupon for the things that Jan found in Kohl’s while I was doing the return.

Then, after a WalMart stop for a few things, we dropped some things off at our storeroom, and then finished up the day with a stop at Cowboy Coffee for Cold, Blended, Sugar-Free Hazelnut Lattes with Almond Milk and Sugar-Free Whipped Cream.

And as I’m writing this I’m thinking about Niles ordering his morning coffee at Café Nervosa.

Wrapping up, today we were supposed to be arriving in Fairbanks, AK for a week there before we started our 15 day Holland America Land-Sea Cruise next week. Since we spent 5 months up there in 2008, we wanted to have some time to explore our old haunts before we hooked up with the more-regimented cruise schedule.

Maybe next year.

Thought For The Day:

SpaceX seems to be on a roll with their Starlink launches with 3 in the last 10 days for a total of a 180 new birds. And two of them set new records, with one Falcon 9 successfully used 9 times, and the other one a total of 10 times.

And of course, the more birds up there, the quicker we’ll get our Starlink Internet service.

Jan and I were really surprised at how busy Galveston was yesterday. Jam-packed, bumper to bumper people and cars, and hardly a mask in sight. And the beach was just as busy as the streets.

It also didn’t help that it seems like Galveston Island has legalized golf carts on the streets now. Rather than just the pedal-powered surreys that people would rent to drive up and down the Seawall and on the sidewalks, now they can rent the carts and go zipping in and out of traffic, crossing from the street to the sidewalk and then back again.

No lights, no turn signals, just the big orange “Slow Vehicle” triangle on the rear. Certainly made driving along the Seawall a lot more interesting.

Jan and I started more detailed plotting of our upcoming Illinois/Alabama trip We plan on leaving here on Monday, June 7th, with our first night’s stay in the Jackson, MS area, about 470 miles along.

Then the next night, we’ll be at Jan’s sister, Debbie’s for the next 5 days, before heading back toward Houston by way of Alabama, seeing a number of relatives and old friends along the way.

We’ll be gone almost two weeks, not getting home until June 20th. So now it’s time to start booking hotels along the way. I need to get this done pretty quickly since we’ve got a very busy couple of weeks coming up.

This Friday we’ve got our monthly Alvin Opry visit, with next Tuesday and Thursday get-togethers with old RV friends. And of course our son Chris’ birthday is next week too.

So busy, busy, busy.

Well, Amazon finally got it right today, but I’m not really sure how.

As I mentioned before, after receiving the first two flamingo cups for Jan that I ordered from Facebook like this.

I found the same ones of Amazon and figured they would do a better job, but I was only half right. In fact they weren’t packed as well as the FB ones, but amazingly, only one was broken this time.

I asked them to send me another one, and to pack it better this time. Well, it seems their idea of packing it better was just to put it into a Larger paper shipping bag. No bubble-wrap, no padding. Just the flimsy box with the cup inside.

So I was really surprised when I shook the bag when the Prime guy dropped it off, and it didn’t rattle. So now Jan finally has her set of two flamingo cups.

Thought For The Day:

There’s a difference between hate speech and speech that you hate.