MORNING COFFEE WITH A BEST FRIEND & OUT TO SUPPER WITH ANOTHER GOOD FRIEND & NEIGHBOR

In my opinion I think weather forecasters do reasonably well with their daily & weekly predictions considering all the changing variables. And especially in this day & age with our wildly fluctuating weather patterns. Luckily they didn't get our weather right today. The big rainy Colorado low tip toed through our area overnight dropping a little rain. By noon we were once again into brilliant sunshine with clear skies & warmer temps. I love it when the weather folks get things wrong sometimes.

 

WHETHER SHUFFLING NOISILY THROUGH AUTUMN LEAVES OR WALKING QUIETLY ON A BED OF SOFT PINE NEEDLES IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO WALK IN THE FOREST EACH MORNING

OVERNIGHT RAINS HEIGHTENED COLORS ON THE FOREST FLOOR THIS MORNING
One of my 2 best friends & I Jeeped ourselves down to Grand Bend for a coffee this morning. I have blogged about Richard before over the past few years & we always have ourselves a great conversation every time we get together. Richard lives just kitty corner from us & he & his wife Gayle & their golden Lab are a very private family like Kelly, Pheebs, I. Maybe that's why Richard & I get along so well.

Trimmed a few trees & packed a few more things into the rig. Kelly landed herself a used free Blackberry phone over the week-end so busied herself this morning getting it all set up for our travels. I won't bother getting into all the technical things she had to do to reconfigure the phone because as readers know I am still back in the land of rotary dial phones. The Blackberry had belonged to her daughter Sabra & Sabra updated herself with a new Blackberry.

WHY SO MANY BICYCLES LINED UP ALONGSIDE THE ROAD?

A LARGE FARM FAMILY & A LONG FARM LANE WAY THAT’S WHY…KIDS RODE HERE TO CATCH THE MORNING SCHOOL BUS

GYPSY asked, "Do the border guards actually check your fridge & cabinets to see what food you are taking across"?....No, not routinely & most people cross the border without being checked. But if you are unfortunate enough to be singled out for a random spot check they will go into your coach & check through your refrigerator & cupboards looking for banned food items. If they find something which in our case was a simple orange one time then you have to line up, go inside a building, & have a bunch of questions thrown at you. By the way, when they are going through your rig, you & your pets have to out of the coach standing a certain distance away. If it happens to be snowing & blowing, too bad. You stand there until they have completed their search. If they find an unacceptable food item I am convinced they enter that into a computer data bank & you run a good chance of being stopped again the next year, & the next. I speak from experience because it happened to us. Don't run the risk of putting yourself through all that. Just because you have not been singled out for an Agriculture check don't be naive enough to think it can't happen to you. It can.

Craig from MERIKAY'S DREAMS commented, " You used to "travel with a big dish satellite system"? You mean like C-band? Those dishes were 8 to 20 feet across! You don't really mean "big dish" do you?………….. Well, just to keep things straight here I went out to the carport where we still have 2 of our old satellite dishes up in the rafters. No it's not the big 20' land based satellite Craig referred to but they are the bigger 2x3 (give or take a few inches) dishes that were popular a few years ago. They are big compared to the tripod mounted satellite dish we now use in Congress. I have no idea what C-band is. But then again I have no idea what calorie free chocolate fudge is either.

<<< BLUE JAY

Why would someone think about coming home from a lengthy trip when they hadn't even left yet. Well I don't know either but that thought did cross my mind this morning as I was standing in our driveway. It's a great feeling right now knowing we are about to begin our journey in a few days but it's also a great feeling at the other end of our long journey when we pull right back into our driveway here at home again safe & sound. I think most Snow Birds will understand my thinking on that:))

The word 'cancer' strikes fear into each & everyone's heart. And so it has over at fulltime RV'ers Jim & Sandie's house these past few years. Just a few days ago they were led into a room to have a talk with their Oncologist after Jim underwent a PET scan.  You can read Sandie's post at, FEAR, ANXIETY, WORRY, AMAZEMENT, RELIEF, JOY

Ok, Ok, not to worry........ I won't be taking that winter hat with me this year. But next week at this time I will once again have my big brown Tombstone cowboy hat planted firmly on my head until next April. I like when that happens:))

OUR LITTLE MUSHROOM FOREST IS QUICKLY SLIPPING THROUGH IT’S LIFE CYCLE

Neighbor & good friend Monica took us out for supper at THE DOCKS tonight. Like us, she is a Snow Bird but unlike us she is flying south instead of driving south. Monica is leaving Friday for Florida & we are leaving Saturday for Arizona. We will all be back here about the same time in the Spring.

OUR GOOD FRIEND & NEIGHBOR, MONICA

 

‘THE DOCKS SURE HAS A BIG MENU

Here’s a paragraph I wrote in June of 2009.  I call it, ‘THE OOOOOPS FACTOR’…… Last summer a pine tree jumped out from behind another pine tree in our driveway & OOOOOPSED off an open rear bin door. That little fix cost us nearly $500.  Two summer's ago while moving the rig forward our carport must have swung on it's cement post foundation & OOOOOPSED an open screen door into a twisted pretzel. Had to go all the way to Elkhart Indiana for another door.  Pulling out of a campsite in Silver City New Mexico last November I nearly OOOOOPSED a whole electric post right out of the ground with the driver's side of the motorhome. I have also pulled out & OOOOOPSED a couple of electrical cables. OOOOOPSED a rear hydraulic jack last November near Alamogordo New Mexico when I dropped the rig down too hard on an over extended jack. OOOOOPSED both sides of the rig with some nice desert pin striping while motoring through cholla shrubs in the desert looking for boondocking sites near Why, Arizona. Two years ago we OOOOOPSED both dual wheels on the passenger side into a ditch in Lindsay Ontario while trying to make a tight right hand turn into a darkened parking lot late one night.  Click here to read about our AWWW NUTS LINDSAY OOOOOOPS:(( OOOOOPSED our satellite dish in Quartzite Arizona by not anchoring it down properly & having a big north wind slam dunk it into the desert floor & if I were to think about it for a bit more I could probably come up with some other additional good OOOOOP's as well!! (Update-OOOOOPSED another satellite dish in January 2012 near Bouse Arizona)   Click HERE to read about how Wandering Willy & Ivan saved the day by putting our broken satellite dish back together near Bouse Arizona…………..

PHEEBS LOVES GETTING AFTER THEM THERE GRASSHOPPERS

 

 

PHEEBS JUST BEING HER USUAL SILLY SELF

Neighbor Monica bought us a nice solar yard light this past summer & we will be taking it to our Congress house & putting it in our cactus garden for the winter.  Thanks Monica:))

 GROANER'S CORNER:((

Did you know it gets so hot in Arizona that Roadrunners have to use pot holders to pull Lizards out of the ground & ranchers have to feed their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs. Yep, it’s true alright:))

A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, 'Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs !' The doctor replied, 'I know you can't - I've cut off your arms !'

An invisible man marries an invisible woman. And you know what, the kids were nothing to look at either.

A little boy went up to his father and asked: "Dad, where did all of my intelligence come from?"  The father replied, "Well son, you must have got it from your mother, because I still have mine."

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- Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
- Home is where your pet is:))
- "If having a soul means being able to feel
love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals
are better off than a lot of humans."
(James Herriot)
- The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails -William Arthur Ward
- The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.
- It is not so much having nothing to do as it is not having the interest to do something....AL.