Heading Home, April 2019

It is still snowing in Minnesota. It does not last long but still, snow. We left Fredericksburg and headed for Baytown, TX where Rudy and Carolyn live, stalling the inevitable. Their wedding anniversary was coming up so we wanted to take them out to dinner to celebrate.

We were hoping for a nice dinner at the Monument Inn on the Houston Ship Channel. We were disappointed to discover that it had been closed for some time because of a massive tank farm fire in Deer Park earlier in the year.

The ship in the background is in the Ship Channel. The Monument Inn is not far away and is at the end of a road which is now closed because of the fire. We went to Four Corners Barbecue instead. Very good. And leftovers too.

We stayed at the Houston East RV Park just a couple miles from Rudy’s. We have stayed at their place in the past but this worked better for this trip. Glenn and Amy in their Foretravel were there as well. They were on their way home to Maine after five months in Mexico. Glenn had Rudy help him fix something on his Aqua Hot heater. Rudy likes to help people learn how to fix things themselves so Glenn did most of the work. Rudy had replaced the bearings in the blower side on my Aqua Hot in January but it was still making more noise than it should so he decided it needed a new blower motor. I supervised, Rudy instructed, Glenn did most of the work, Rudy did the Quality Control. It is now perfect, we are very pleased with how much quieter it is now. Thanks Rudy and Glenn.

Kieth and Jo are another Foretravel couple who live “nearby”. They invited us all over for supper that evening. Rudy’s “nearby” was almost 45 minutes away. We had a nice dinner and a nice visit.

Kieth and Joe stopped by at the RV Park the next day, they wanted to see our windshield MCD shade.

We had to go have a bite to eat.

I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich from the Kids Menu.

We left the next morning for an overnight at the campground at the Foretravel factory. There were several folks there that we know. Mike and Jackie live in Nacogdoches and invited us over for dinner.

It was especially fun to see Don Hay (in the dapper hat). Susan and I met Don and Trudy on the upper peninsula of Michigan in Munising about a year after we bought our coach. It was a chance meeting, we drove in and both said, “There’s another Foretravel!” And next to Don, Ted and closer to me Chappell Jordan. Both Don and Chappell are woodworkers.

It was a pleasant evening on the patio.

Our plan was to take four more days to get home. The next day we headed for Maumelle COE park near Little Rock. The weather reports were for snow in Minnesota about the time we would have arrived home so we pressed on another hundred miles to a Walmart in northern Arkansas. The next day we drove past Kansas City to Eagleville, MO just before the Iowa border. We stayed at a small RV park that was on a small farm. They don’t farm any more but have plenty of work to do anyway.

A nice park.

And a lovely sunset.

The next day we pressed on toward home. Straight up I 35 towards Lakeville and east towards Hastings. We arrived about 3 in the afternoon. All was well at home. We turned up the heat, turned on the water heater and unloaded enough from the coach to move back into the house. The rest in the next day or so.

The overnight temps were supposed to get to 27° with rain and snow overnight and most of Saturday. Guess what, it didn’t happen. Forecasting the weather has to be the worst job in the world, rarely right and rarely praised.

Getting home opens the doors to a whole new pile of things to do, many put off while we were elsewhere, many scheduled for after we get home, piles of mail, yard work and lots more which all seem to speed up our lives. A couple days dealing with the immediate stuff and we are sort of back to something that seems normal.

We went from green grass and leaves on the trees in TX through fewer and fewer leaves and browner fields to brown fields and very few buds on the trees. Our Magnolia tree is blooming, always a sure sign of spring on the way. Some warm weather and some rain and there will be leaves. Our woods will fill in with green and our summer wrap closes in. Apple trees blossom and apples start to grow. We are waiting.

We are probably going to stay close to home this summer and enjoy it here.

More later, Much Love.

Roger and Susan