November 28th-30th - Thanksgiving and Repairs

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Mountain View. It is great to get the whole family together.

Kelly’s family has a tradition of giving a “Jack Horner “ gift before dinner. Here is a picture of everyone opening their gifts.

Here is a picture of my gift.

Here is a picture of all of us after dinner.

Friday morning Adam and I decided to tackle a couple of kitchen projects. The first was installing new LED lights in the kitchen. There were three two-foot fluorescents, one of which didn’t work at all. Here is a picture of the new lights. A major improvement. Adam will have to do a little patching on the ceiling.

The next project was replacing the thirty year old faucet. Of course being that old the mounting bracket below was rusted beyond recognition. There was no way it was going to come loose as intended. I ended up carefully prying on it from below and bending it until it finally came out above through the hole. The installation of the new faucet was then a piece of cake with no leaks. Here is a picture of the finished installation.

Today we wrap Christmas presents we brought out with us then we fly home. It will be a long day because we don’t land in St. Louis until midnight. We won’t get back to Perryville until about 3:00 a.m. on Sunday.

November 25th - Flight to Oakland

Yesterday we left Perryville at 3:30 a.m. for our flight to Oakland, California. We had to change planes in Salt Lake City. As we were approaching the runway a small plane flew into our airspace and the pilot had to pull up hard and circle around 25 miles to make another approach. That was the first time that has ever happened to us. When we landed in Salt Lake City it was snowing. We originally had an hour lay over but by the time we did the second approach and landed we were only at our gate ten minutes and they started boarding.

The plane left the gate on time but because of the snow the plane had to be de-iced. I never was on a flight before that had to de-iced just before take off. Here are two pictures I took of our de-icing at the end of the runway. It was interesting to see how the equipment worked it’s way around the plane.   It delayed us about a half hour.

We arrived in Oakland and after visiting for a couple of hours went and picked up granddaughter, Violet, from pre-school.

Here is a selfie I took with her this morning before she went to pre-school.

It is supposed to start raining this afternoon and throughout the night. They need rain badly here. The last rain they remember was in March. When we drove Homer out to California in 2016 it rained so much it broke the state drought and flooded many of the areas around us. In fact we had to get out of a campground because part of the road washed out. I think California should hire me to come out more often and bring rain!!!!

Tomorrow we will shop for Thanksgiving dinner. We are all assigned dishes to prepare. Grocery shopping and cooking should be fun.

November 23rd - RVs in Storage

Thursday we got Homer out of the storage shed and put Marge in. This is the first winter in the eleven years that we have owned Marge that she won’t be making a trip to Florida. Sad for her and for us. We all enjoy the warmer weather there, as well as our many friends in the park.

We found another place to store Homer inside for the winter which is about eight miles out of town. Here he is on a rainy and cold Saturday morning awaiting his fate to be put up for the winter as well.

After he was backed in I pulled the chassis battery out and brought it home. I put it on a trickle charger in the garage for the winter along with his house batteries.

Monday we fly to California to spend Thanksgiving week with all the kids and grandkids. We are excited to go. I may blog about it even though it isn’t an RV trip.

In January we booked a week in a condo in Gulf Shores. Our friends Carlene and John will be in the same building. We have never been to Gulf Shores so it will be an adventure and we will have a great time with them.

These two trips, along with Erin and Kellen flying in for a week at Christmas, will help break up the long, cold Missouri winter.

November 3rd - Marge and Moe Sitting It Out

For the first time in seven years Marge will not be making a winter trip to Florida. She and Moe look so forlorn sitting here in the driveway waiting patiently for winter to come and pass.

Both are winterized, as is Homer, who is in the storage shed with his batteries here in the garage on chargers. I will run the generator in Marge monthly to keep it in shape and to keep her batteries charged. I will probably drive Moe around once a month to keep him limbered up as well. Hopefully by spring things will improve and we will be able to hook them up and head out somewhere.

Normally this time of year we would be planning a summer RV trip with grandson Kellen. Things are too tenuous at this point in time to make such plans. This is a constraint we have not had to deal with since the last kid left the house twenty years ago. Times change and we are rolling with them.

Since we will just be sitting at home this winter there will be limited, if any blogging going on but don't think I've given up on it. We still have places to go and things to see when things improve.