As I’ve mentioned before, though I started out just doing IT support at work, somehow Dr. Heimlich discovered I can fix things, mostly the used epilators that he buys, I refurbish, and he resells.
Normally I can crank them out fairly quickly, but sometimes actually finding the parts can be a challenge. For example, this SE-5 dates back from the late 90’s, and came in with a bad THERM switch on the front panel.
These are very unique switches and it took me almost two months to locate some, finally finding a dozen of them in Greece, of all places. So I bought them all.
So yesterday I was finally able to get back to the unit and replace the switch.
This is one of those units that pretty much has to be completely disassembled to get to the circuit board. And it’s always a relief when you take something apart and it still works when you put it all back together.
Tomorrow we’re heading to the Houston Medical Center for Jan’s 2-week post-op checkup after her Parathyroidectomy back on Aug. 2. Jan’s had to keep the bandage until now, so she’ll be glad to get it off.
But first up, we’ll have brunch at our favorite Katz’s Deli once again, one of our go-to places, along with Cleburne Cafeteria, when we’re up in this area.
Always delicious.
Thought For The Day:
Not Sure This Is The ‘Happily Ever After’ She Was Imagining.
Your Retro-Preview Highlights –
2009 – America’s Hometown
2011 – Pistols and Potato Salad
2013 – Rain and Idiots
2014 – Gulf Coast Memories
2016 – Getting The Taste Out
2017 – Governmental Dumbness And More Unintended Consequences
And Now On To today’s Retro-Blogs.™
August 13, 2009
America’s Hometown…
Today was our day to tour Plymouth, which calls itself “America’s Hometown”, which I guess is true since it was America’s first town.
After making the 40-mile trip, we first decided to have breakfast at the All American Diner in downtown Plymouth, and it was excellent!
Leaving the diner we drove down and parked along the waterfront.
Plymouth Harbor
The first thing we came upon was the Plymouth Rock monument.
Plymouth Rock Building
Plymouth Rock
It’s amazing to stand over the Rock and imagine almost 400 years ago the Pilgrims landing here.
Next, we walked a few blocks away to where the Mayflower II is docked. Built in England in 1956 from the original plans, it made the voyage to America in 1957 and was given to the Plimouth Plantation group for display here.
Mayflower II
And then of course we had to hit the gift shops. Here’s Jan modeling the latest in holiday attire.
Heading home we stopped off at Target for more ‘stuff’ and then made the drive home.
The park we’re staying in is really nice, probably the nicest one we’ve ever stayed in.
And the landscaping and flowers are really something.
Today is our last full day in Massachusetts. Tomorrow we head north to Saint Johnsburg, VT for a few days at Moose River Lodge.
As it stands now we should be in Nova Scotia within the next two weeks. We’ll see.
More tomorrow from Vermont…
August 13, 2010
How Much is that Doggie in the Window?
This morning started out with a pot of SnickerNut Cookie coffee and a pineapple-orange muffin, and a nice quiet time was had by all.
We have been on the road almost continuously since the 15th of February, and have put a little over 10,000 miles on the coach, with another 1200 to go before we get back to Houston.
It’s really nice to just sit around and do pretty much nothing, except for going out to dinner.
Since we’d had coffee late in the morning and knew we were going to have an early dinner at Ryan’s (Hmmmm ! Fried Chicken !), we just had chips and dip for lunch.
The dip was made with one of the dip flavor packets we bought from Dip’n Good Dips at The Rally in Louisville, KY last month. This flavor was Jalapeno Veracruz and it was really good. We’ve still got Hot Habanero left to try, and I predict we’ll be ordering more when these are gone.
Jan spent the afternoon working on a craft project gluing seashells on some things and I caught up on some orders and straightened out a problem with our MyDakotaAddress mail service.
About 4:30 we headed out a few minutes later, stopping off at the park office to pick up our mail, and then it was off to Ryan’s.
Getting back to the rig we noticed this “doggie in the window” in a rig back behind ours. When we first saw him he was standing up in the window just about filling up the entire dashboard.
Tomorrow I’m going to a gun show in Shipshewana and Jan’s going to check out an Amish Farmer’s Market.
August 13, 2011
Pistols and Potato Salad . . .
Breakfast again started out at Robbi’s Restaurant about 9 and once again ended up with trips to Rural King and Wal-Mart before heading down to Debbie’s for the day.
We mostly just took it easy enjoying the great company and talking, talking, talking.
Gwen, Tana’s daughter spent the day again, and was really good helping out and keeping tabs on Landon.
She’s cute as a button and smart as a whip, a deadly combination when the boys start hanging around in a few years.
Later in the afternoon Lowell, Brandi, Tina, Tana, Jim, and I went down to his target practice area and fired a couple of his pistols for a while. We punched a lot of holes in the targets and everyone had a good time.
Around 6 pm we headed out to the fire pit to roast hot dogs over the flames, to have along with a big batch of Debbie’s potato salad.
Landon made himself right at home,
even kicking back and taking it easy.
In fact everyone did.
We had planned to roast marshmallows, but by the time we were finished with the hot dogs, the thunder, lightning, and then rain moved in, so we all moved inside.
After a long, fun day, Jan and I headed back to the rig about 8, ready to do it all again tomorrow.
August 13, 2013
Rain and Idiots . . .
After a great time catching up with all my relatives here in Athens, we pulled out of Northgate RV Travel Park a little after 9:30. Our goal was Meridian, MS 230 miles away, but our first stop was a Pilot/Flying J about 20 miles away.
I was looking forward to trying out my new RV Plus Card.
I got a letter about this from the Good Sam’s people a couple of months ago and thought I’d give it a try, It turns out to be a Pilot/Flying J charge card for merchandise, gas, and diesel. Depending on your level of Good Sam’s membership, you get from 3 to 7 cents a gallon off the CASH price on unleaded, and 5 to 9 cents a gallon off the CASH price on diesel.
If you want to pay manually every month, you get a $1000 credit limit, but if you allow auto-debit from your bank account, you get a $2500 limit.
But the first use of my new card didn’t get off to an auspicious start. What’s supposed to happen is that you swipe your card, enter your code (a 4 digit number that you can choose) and you’re off and running. But after swiping my card, the system stuck on ‘Authorizing Card’ for about 30 seconds and then said “Please See Cashier”.
Bummer.
So inside I went. And found a long line of other upset people. Turns out that Pilot’s TCH network was down, They could still process regular credit cards like VISA, MC, etc., but any of their own cards, like the RV Plus card, and their commercial trucking cards could not be run.
That explains why all the truck fueling lines were stacked up about 4 deep. They said the network had been down for about 15 minutes, but had no idea when it would be back up. About that time I noticed that the guy standing in front of me was parked a couple of spaces over from me at Northgate Park in Athens. He was parked in the next lane over in the RV fuel area.
He was holding an RV Plus card so I asked him how he liked it. He said it was great and that this was the first time he’d ever had a problem. He went ahead and used his VISA card, but since I wasn’t really hurting from diesel and wanted to try out my card, I thought I’d just head on down I-65 to the next Pilot about 70 miles away. just north of Birmingham.
This time things worked perfectly, just swiped my card, entered my PIN, and started pumping. The other nice thing about the card is that there are no credit card limits like with VISA, etc.
If you want to sign up, you can go here: RV Plus Card, It doesn’t cost anything to get the card, and there are no additional fees, monthly charges, or anything else. You must be a Good Sam’s member to sign up for the RV Plus card, but if you’re not, you can sign up for them at the same time.
BTW if you do decide to sign up, and you’re nice enough to enter my code 1060986 in the PROMO CODE box, I’ll get $5 credited to my account. Thanks.
Leaving the Pilot, it was getting hot and sticky so I started up the generator and turned on the house A/C’s. Since it was somewhat cloudy it cooled things down pretty quick.
Things went pretty smooth until about 20 miles from the AL/MS border when the grey clouds we’d been seeing in front of us turned black and the bottom fell out. The rain was coming down in sheets and traffic slowed to about 30 mph.
One thing that drives me crazy in situations like this is when people start putting their emergency flashers on and keep driving. First thing is, on most vehicles, if your flashers are on, you no longer have turn signals since they’re usually the same circuit. The other problem is that in rain when you have a number of vehicles in front of you with their flashers on, it all just mixes into a smeared multi-colored blur. It becomes almost impossible to know how many cars are ahead of you, and more importantly, you lose your depth perception. It becomes very hard to tell how far ahead they are.
I was about 50 yards behind a semi and could keep him in view so I just kept moving. Finally getting into MS I thought I’d try to wait it out at the Welcome Center lot, and the semi in front of me had the same idea. But we both ended up just passing through since the lot was full.
Getting back on the Interstate it looked like I could see a little blue sky ahead so I kept going since we only had about another 15 miles or so. And by the time I had turned off the highway toward our RV park, it had really slacked off.
Getting close to our park we were on a nice divided highway, and I ended up stuck in the right lane when I should have been the left, but the heavy traffic behind me kept me from getting over in time to make my turn-off. So finally getting into the left lane, I had to go another 1/2 mile down the road before I came to a crossover that would let me make a U-turn. I already had my turn signal on, and as I approached the turn I moved over to the right so I was now pretty much straddling the center line for about 50 yards. Hey, I’m 65 feet long and making a U-turn.
There was nobody behind me in the right lane, and several behind me on the left. And as I slowed to start making my turn, THEY STARTED PASSING ME INSIDE MY TURN ON MY LEFT!
I came very close to turning in a big yellow school bus, the first vehicle to pass. But what really stunned me was that two tractor-trailers followed the bus by me. I could maybe understand the bus driver not realizing what I was doing, but two semi’s as long as I am?
The third vehicle, another semi, held back and let me finish my turn. I knew my turn signals were all working because I could see them reflecting in the water on the road.
Finally about 3pm we pulled into Benchmark RV Park, a very nice Passport America park with 50 amp FHU sites for $18 a night. And even better with all the rain, gravel access roads and concrete pads.
The office was closed until 4:30 and since it had started pouring again, we just sat inside with the generator still running and waited out the storm before plugging in.
A little before 5 we headed out to have dinner at Weidmann’s, known as The Oldest Restaurant in Mississippi. It opened in 1870 in the Union Hotel here in Meridian, and moved to its present location in 1923. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to learn more because it’s late and I’m tired.
August 13, 2014
Like, WOW!
After coffee and cinnamon toast this morning, I finished mounting a voltmeter to keep better track of my house battery voltage, since I’ve already got one up front that monitors my engine batteries. I was able to just tap into the power bus of the lights overhead so it was pretty easy.
After doing pretty much nothing the rest of the afternoon, we headed out a little after 4pm for dinner at Lulu’s at Homeport. But we first made a detour to stop at Tallulah’s Treasures, one of Jan’s favorite gift shops in this area.
We’ve been coming here for a lot of years and Jan always finds something there, and today was no exception with a new addition to her octopus collection.
Then it was on up to Lulu’s on the Intracoastal Waterway. The ‘Lulu’ in question, is actually Lucy, as in Lucy Buffett, Jimmy Buffett’s older sister. She’s had a restaurant in this area for quite a few years, first on Weeks Bay, and then in its present location since 2004. It’s one of our never-miss places when we visit Gulf Shores.
We got there a little before 5pm so we were able to get a table right on the water without a wait. Which wouldn’t have been possible 15 minutes later. The place filled up fast.
Jan tried something different this time, the Blackened Shrimp Tacos.
One bite and Jan said, “Like, WOW!”. She said it was the best seafood taco she’d ever had, shrimp, fish, or otherwise.
I started out with a cup of Seafood Gumbo, and then went with my tried and true Half and Half Loaf, which is Lulu’s version of the half shrimp, half oyster Po Boy.
But we were careful to save room so we could split an order of their Bread Pudding made from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
Can’t miss that.
As we were leaving, I saw something I wish we could have for Gate Guarding.
It’s a high-capacity misting fan, one that would really keep us cool on the gate. Bet it works a lot better than the one we have.
Leaving Lulu’s we spent some time just driving around the area, checking out all the places that have changed, and the occasional place that’s still the same since I lived here 50 years ago. Finally, after a Wal-Mart stop, we were back at the rig by 7:30.
Tomorrow is our last full day here in Gulf Shores, and the week has sure gone fast. We’ll leave here Friday morning, taking two days to make the 600-mile trip back to Houston for Jan’s checkup visits and Landon’s 4th birthday.
Speaking of Landon, Brandi sent this over.
Cute, or what?
August 13, 2015
Gumbo . . .
We reluctantly pulled out of our site at the Gulf State Park a little after 8:30 this morning. I say ‘reluctantly’ because we always really enjoy our stay here and it’s never long enough.
For me it’s like coming home, since I lived here from the time I was two until I was thirteen and we moved to Colombia, South America, When we moved to Gulf Shores in January 1951 and my parents opened their motel, the main beach road had only been paved for about six months. There was one restaurant, four motels, and a lot of empty beach.
I used to know every building, and every family here. Now there are so many condos and multi-story hotels that it’s hard to get my bearings.
They say you can’t go home again, but it’s always fun trying in Gulf Shores.
We got hitched up in one of those semi-circle pull-thru’s they have here and headed out for one last drive along the beach road a little before 9. And by 10am we were turning onto the I-10 washboard and headed west.
On a quick segue, who is this guy, and why is he on every billboard in Alabama?
Well, almost every one.
We started to see his billboards up in north Alabama, and saw them all the way down to Gulf Shores. I have never seen so many billboards for one thing.
In some cases, he has billboards opposite each other on both sides of the road. In other cases, you will be passing one billboard and you can already see the next one further down the road. One time I counted 10 billboards in a 5-mile stretch.
I can only imagine how much he spent on this media buy. I guess he’s hoping for a lot of accidents. Maybe from motorists staring at the billboards.
We pulled into Poche’s RV Park right at 3pm and got set up in our usual site. They have several corner pull-thru’s reserved for over-nighters right on the lake with a really nice view.
About 4:30 we headed out to have dinner at Pont Breaux nee Mulate’s. We’ve eaten here for about 30 years, mostly just for one thing, the gumbo.
Their gumbo here is the standard against which all other gumbos are measured. The only other gumbo that equals it is at Floyd’s Cajun Seafood in Webster, TX. And that’s probably because the ‘Floyd’ in question is Floyd Landry, one of the brothers who started the Landry’s Restaurants chain before they sold it off.
Note two things here. It comes with potato salad, and the gumbo looks kind of green.
The potato salad is one of those regional things you find around the country, like some areas put Cole slaw on their pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. In fact some places serve their gumbo with the scoop of potato salad already in the bowl.
Different strokes, and all that.
And the gumbo has a green tint because of the filé powder I sprinkled on it, because you can’t have real gumbo without filé.
For dessert we had our usual Bread Pudding with Vanilla Rum Sauce.
I don’t think they cook all the rum out, or maybe they add more rum afterward, but the sauce has a little kick to it. Really good.
Tomorrow we’ve got another 300-mile run, this time to the Colorado River Thousand Trails west of Houston in Columbus, TX. Really looking forward to seeing the kids and grandkids again.
August 13, 2016
Getting The Taste Out . . .
Jan and I were up and out the door by 9:45 this morning, heading over to my cousin (2nd Removed) Anna Jean’s. We missed seeing her last year, so it was good to get together again, and talk over old family stories.
Later, her sister Marjorie and her husband Walter, showed up to add to the fun.
We ended up spending about 3 hours reminiscing about family members, both past and present.
And Anna Jean’s still pretty spry for 91 years young.
Hopefully we won’t have to skip another year.
Finally saying our good-byes to Anna Jean, Jan and I headed down to Decatur to get that bad taste out of our mouths. Specifically, the taste of the BBQ we had a couple of days ago.
So to take care of that problem, we went right to the top . . . well, one of the Top Five, anyway
A while back the Food Network did a series on the Top Five Restaurants in the US in six different categories: burgers, steak, pizza, tacos, barbecue, and ice cream. And we were really surprised to see the one on the Top Five BBQ Restaurants in the US .
We’ve eaten at The Bar-B-Q Shop in Memphis a couple of times, and have eaten at Big Bob Gibson’s a number of times over the years, since it’s only about 15 miles south of here.
And at the top of the list, Killen’s Barbecue, is only a few miles from our home in Friendswood, but somehow we’ve never made it over there. But hopefully soon.
Killen’s Barbecue
3613 E Broadway St, Pearland, TX 77581
The Bar-B-Q Shop
1782 Madison Ave, Memphis, TN 38104
Skylight Inn
4618 S Lee St, Ayden, NC 28513
Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q
1715 6th Avenue SE, Decatur, AL 35601
Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que
3002 W 47th St, Kansas City, KS 66103
Jan went with her usual Pulled Pork Sandwich and Fries, while I went with my go-to Combo Plate, with St. Louis-style Ribs, Beef Brisket, and Pulled Pork, along with Potato Salad and BBQ Baked Beans.
Although they’re also known for their Chicken and Turkey, I stuck with the BBQ standards, ribs, beef, and pork.
Everything was delicious, even the brisket. I had about resigned myself to not finding good brisket outside of Texas, but this was good.
A couple of years ago we were in Memphis and ate Central BBQ, one of the highly rated BBQ places in the area, and the ‘brisket’ I got was like thinly-sliced deli roast beef. Definitely not brisket.
The ribs were really good, juicy and meaty, with a lot of flavor. And that was before I added sauce. And unlike the other place, their sauces are really good too.
The one on the left is a very good (award-winning) conventional tomato-based BBQ sauce. The white sauce is another of those regional things (north Alabama, East Tennessee, South Carolina) for use on pulled chicken and turkey. Vinegar-based, it’s tangy and spicy with a little kick.
The reddish sauce on the right is another not quite as tangy vinegar-based sauce for pulled pork. Another one of those regional things.
And not only was everything delicious, but we had half left to bring home for later.
And besides their BBQ, Big Bob’s is also known for their homemade pies.
Mine, on the left, is Peanut Butter Pie, while Jan’s on the right, is Chocolate. Both delicious.
Tomorrow we’ll head out for Meridian, MS on our way back to Houston. We’ve already decided to change our route home, and stay on I-20W to Shreveport and then down to Houston, rather than going down to I-10 and all the flooding.
In fact, it seems that I-10 is closed at the LA/TX border anyway, so we’ll try to avoid all the trouble.
August 13, 2017
Governmental Dumbness . . .
But I repeat myself.
Kinda par for the course, right?
In a fantastic display of business acumen, the United States Post Office wants to raise stamp prices again. They’re losing too much money because fewer people mail letters every year. Well, that’ll encourage ‘em to mail more letters.
It’s called a death spiral for a reason, guys.
In other stupidity, the city of Philadelphia passed a ‘soda tax’ that took effect this past January. But unlike other cities that tax ‘sugary’ drinks, Philly is taxing everything non-alcoholic, fruit juice, diet drinks, anything with any sort of sweetener in it, artificial or otherwise at 1.5 cents per ounce.
In many cases, it more than doubles the price of the drink,
and makes ‘soda’s more expensive than beer.
The mayor in pushing this bill though assured the public and the city council that the beverage distributors would absorb the cost of the tax and the public wouldn’t see any increase.
Unfortunately, no one asked the beverage distributors about this. But even without eating the tax, they’re hurting anyway, with some reporting sales down nearly 50 percent, and both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo having to lay people off.
And PepsiCo is no longer selling 12 pks and 2-liter bottles because they’ve become so pricey no one is buying them anymore.
And now convenience stores and family grocery stores located near the city limits are starting to go under. If you going outside the city for your ‘soda’, why come back in the city for your gas, cigarettes, beer, etc.?
Oh, and the sales of alcoholic beverages have skyrocketed.
Who could have seen that coming?
Of course, not to be outdone, Cook County, IL (basically Chicago) had to get in on this largess of tax money. But they decided to cut the public a break and only tax ‘soda’ at 1 cent per ounce additional.
But then they already have a 3 percent soft drink sales tax as well as a 10.25 percent general sales tax. And it’s all cumulative. So you’re paying a tax on a tax on a tax.
And because many small businesses’ computer systems can’t handle all this taxing going on, people find that they’re paying the new tax on bottled water as well.
And now in one of those real ‘gotcha’ moments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is threatening to withhold $87 million in food stamp payments because of the new tax. Apparent food stamp recipients can not be charged this tax, since their purchases are supposed to be exempt from state and local sales taxes.
The city tried to have merchants charge the tax and then immediately refund the tax, but the Ag Department said NO.
So the whole thing may go down in flames anyway.
August 13, 2018
Last Minute Travels . . .
I know it’s been usually hot in other areas of the country, but here in Texas we’re really having a mild August.
For the last couple of weeks, the temps have stayed in the low 90’s, even dipping down to 88° this past Saturday. Of course, the night time temps are still in the high 70’s/low 80’s so not a lot of change there. But still nice.
We did get enough rain over the weekend for me to see that I still had two tiny leaks on my recently-caulked windshield. So while I could see the drips, I marked the spots on the glass with a black Sharpie so I can come back in a while and spot caulk the leaks.
As of right now we’re still on track to close on Thursday, but that’s not certain, so we’re still planning to be down by Wednesday night. I did stop off at the house this afternoon and picked up all the trash bags from the house to drop off at the dumpster.
Jan got a phone call from me this morning. My name showed up on the screen, but it wasn’t my number listed underneath my name. This was the second time this has happened in the last couple of weeks, so be on the lookout for this new scam.
I was looking at Google Maps the other day to see what county we are in here at Petticoat Junction. I thought we were probably in Galveston County but I wanted to be sure since the county lines run in some strange ways around here. But then I noticed this about the city limit line of Santa Fe.
The line passes right through the middle of our rig. So when we’re back in the bedroom, we’re in the city of Santa Fe. And when we’re sitting up front, we’re just in Galveston County. Who knew?
It’s amazing how much TV we’re not watching now. We kind of got out of the habit during our recent 3 week Illinois/Alabama trip when we were so on the go that we just never set up the sat dish. Guess that’s kind of going ‘cold turkey.’ But we’ll see how it goes during the new Fall season.
Several people commented or emailed about my gentle ribbing of Jan’s list-making for our upcoming European trip, saying that without Jan’s lists, I might not know what to pack.
I said it was a guy thing, but maybe it’s more a family thing. My family.
Back during the summer of 1964, we were living in Athens, AL after moving back from Colombia, SA the previous fall. We were eating dinner, my father, my mother, my 3-year-old sister, and myself. My mother commented, wondering about when we were going to take that ‘out west’ trip we’d been talking about. My father looked over and said, “What about now?”
And two hours later, about 8pm, we were on the road for an almost 4-week trip. We hit the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, spent a week staying at Disneyland (my fav), drove up 101 in California, Napa, a lot of the Spanish Missions, etc.
So I guess packing the day before we leave for our cruise is just in my blood.
August 13, 2019
Never Enough Time . . .
I had originally planned to pull a rear wheel this morning to check my truck’s brake rotors, but decided to wait until later this evening when it would be a little cooler, and if I pulled the passenger side, I would be in the shade.
Later, about 1pm, Jan and I headed out for breakfast at Snooze, and then a couple of shopping stops.
Jan got her usual favorite Bravocado Toast, along with a bowl of fruit.
When we were up in Waco a few months ago, we had breakfast at Magnolia Table, the Chip and Joanna Gaines place. And of course, Jan ordered her fav Avocado Toast, and was kind of disappointed with what she got.
Not what she expected, especially when compared with Snooze.
I got my usual 3 Egg Classic Breakfast, also with fruit.
Our next stop was at the office to pick up my Amazon order that finally got delivered today, with one of the items in the box was my Cummins oil filter.
The new gasket was supposed to be delivered by USPS yesterday, and in fact, it was shown as Out For Delivery. But it never showed up. And rather than coming today, the tracking shows it back up in north Houston for some reason. Hopefully, it will show up someday.
After that we made a couple of more stops, including a WalMart run, before finally heading home.
About 6:30 I went out to pull the rear wheel to take a look at the rotor. And as I thought the rotors definitely need to be replaced.
In fact, it’s pretty much a shadow of its former self, and pretty scarred. If I had been able to replace the pads a couple of months ago like I had wanted to, but something, weather, traveling, illness, family, etc., always seem to intervene.
So I’ve got a pair of ACDelco rotors coming in on Thursday.
I’ve already got the pads, so I should be ready to go. But family, a get-together at Brandi’s this weekend, will put the brake job on hold until at least next week.
Along with the new rotors, I also ordered a set of 24 new lug nuts so I can replace all of them, not just the one that was rounded off.
Hopefully at some point here in the next week or so, I’ll be able to change out the oil filter gasket and get that out of the way at last.
August 13, 2020
A New Address . . .
One thing nice about Petticoat Junction RV Park where we’ve been for almost 3 years is that the owner, Rob, is always making improvements.
As sites go empty, he’s been expanding them to a full concrete pad. Not just a gravel pad and a concrete patio.
And now we’re getting locking mailboxes in the few weeks.
It will be nice to have a real address here.
August 13, 2022
So Good To Have Jan Back Home . . .
We headed up to Webster about 1pm to have lunch once again at Texas Huddle Grille.
And Juana, our usual waitress, remembered our order, and even remembered how we wanted it.
Jan got her usual Keto (no bun) Cheddar Bacon Cheeseburger with a Salad and their Grilled Veggies.
For me, based on the recommendation of a manager last visit, I got my PB&J Burger with a heaping helping of their Flaming Raspberry Wing Sauce, on the burger, and a side of it too.
Very tasty, though I wouldn’t call it ‘Flaming’, but more like Hot. But it will be a standard addition from now on.
But I still sprinkled on some of my Carolina Reaper flakes for a little extra zip.
Then it was home for the rest of the day.
We had our usual great time at the Alvin Opry last night. And we’re always impressed to see how Shalane Colston, the show coordinator, decorates and personalizes the tables.
And the stage is well done also.
But the big attraction of the evening, at least for Jan, was John Mark Davis, who’s her not-so-secret other heartthrob.
John Mark is the full-blooded son of the Chief of the Adai Caddo Indians of Louisiana, and has performed all over the country. He has opened for Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd, and was offered a slot opening for Dwight Yoakum on a recent tour, but due to a prior obligation was unable to accept.
He was also twice an award winner in the Nashville’s Music City Song Fest, and really knows how to work a crowd and keep you entertained. He’s also known for his hilarious versions of Kaw-Liga, Running Bear, and Please Mr. Custer.
We’ve been following John Mark for over ten years and he’s always a great act, and we look forward to seeing him again soon.
Tomorrow’s agenda looks to be Gators and HEB. But things can change.
August 13, 2023
Back From The Dead?
Yesterday afternoon they started trenching in the water lines to the new section of our RV park, so it looks like some headway is being made.
Still don’t have any idea what the time frame is going to be.
Today was pretty much back to our normal Sunday routine, with lunch at Denny’s and then HEB stuff from HEB,
Coming home, we made a quick Post Office stop and then back to the rig.
It looks like one of our favorite restaurants, Texas Huddle, may be coming back from the dead.
I mentioned a while back that they abruptly closed June 2nd, saying they had major A/C problems. And it dragged on and on with their Facebook page saying they would be back any day now. But commenters were starting to get suspicious, wondering how long it takes to fix an A/C anyway.
Then on July 3rd, after several people said they thought some of the furniture had been removed, Jan and I stopped by and found the door padlocked with the big lock and a note saying that they had been locked out due to non-payment of rent. And after I posted this on FB all of the encouraging comments from the TH management disappeared. And around this same time, other commenters said that many of the cooks and waitstaff were still owed wages from the closure.
Then this past Saturday, August 11th, the post resumed, saying they were reopening the next day, but for takeout orders only. The post said you could call ahead or just come in.
So maybe they’re back. We’ll see, I guess
However I told Jan that the only reason I could think of that they wouldn’t have table service is that they didn’t have any waitstaff. Maybe because they hadn’t paid them what they were owed.
Who knows?
Jan and I just hope that Juana, our favorite server, comes back.
