How quicky the summer passes

Hi
The summer is moving along very fast, already it is Mid August. We are back at our son and daughter in laws house in Woodstock, IL. This next weekend is another club weekend, our next to the last one of this year.
I keep talking of being back in our sons, or my brothers driveways, and finally took a picture of them

This is at my brothers place. After pulling off of the highway, we have to pull into a bank driveway, back out going the other  way and back down 1/4 mile of road and make the turn into their drivewayl

and this is our son's place. They added the new parking area this year, widening out the old one and adding electric and water for us. Plus a hookup for their trailer as well.

Before we left South Bend this last time our sister in law Peggy made us a traditional Polish wedding supper. This consisted of Polish sausage, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and Polish noodles with gravy, sweet and sour cabbage, and rolls.Thanks Peg for a great meal.

South Bend has/had one of the largest Polish communities in the US, second only to Chicago in size. Over the years we went to a lot of Polish weddings, including my first wedding, and this was the traditional meal served, family style. There used to be several butchers in South Bend that made Polish wedding sausage, but today there is only one. As the old Polish die away, the traditions die with them. Now all of the Polish bars and restaurants are closed or reopened as Mexican bars and restaurants.

Linda and I went to the RV hall of fame and museum a couple of weeks ago for an rv show. The admission price included the museum which I have wanted to see for a very long time. It was well worth the wait. It was laid out in an camping setup with rv's on both sides of an aisle that meandered thru the building, with picnic tables and bushes scatterd around. They had the very first rv's to the latest and greatest and a lot of them were open to go into. Quite an experience to go into some of these very small rv's after living in a very large one for so many years.

In two months we will be heading back to Texas to start gate guarding again. Hope to do about 5 months this time.

It has been an unusual summer, what with the drought and all, with no mosquitos or other flying critters that bite. It has been nice to sit out and enjoy the outdoors without tons of bug spray on.

Hope your summer has been good.

Love to all of ya

Jim and lInda



Hi
Long time no post.

   The summer is moving along very fast. Lots of things going on. We had a great vacation, altho Cedar Point was a little disapointing. I was too fat to ride 3 of the coasters. The seat belt on 3 of the rides that have the over the shoulder bar with a seat belt connection were too short for me, as well as a lot of other men and women. I could fit into the seat ok., but the shoulder bar would not lock in place.
   We had good weather thru the two weeks until the last few day in the Detroit area. Luckily the day we did Greenfield Village it was overcast and not bad out.....the rest of the time it was HOT.
We had a great time with the kid's and grandkid's. Niagra Falls was as touristy as ever, as was The Henry Ford(that's what they call the museum/village/Ford Rouge plant/imax theater these days). We did the factory tour where they build the F-150 pickup, but the plant was shut down for vacations, so it was pretty boring. It was part of a package deal.

   We are currently in my brother's front yard and will leave here next Wednesday to go back to the kids driveway for a few days before heading to Wisconsin Dells for a weekend of boating
.
   We have been having problems with the Verizon Mifi that we connect to the internet with for some time now and ended up taking the device and our computer to a Verizon store. They spent over an hour removing old software for the first two devices and adding the latest upgrades in softwar to the device and also some to Vista that I had not installed. So far it is working fine.

   Other than that, just trying to cope with the hot, dry weather. My brothers yard is brown, and like most areas we are under a no fire ban.

   Hope all is well with you, write when you can and let us know how your life is getting on.
Love to all of ya,

Jim and Linda
  

Home again

After an uneventful trip, we arrived safely at Blackhawk campground in Illinois where we spent the Memorial Day  weekend with 7 other couples including our son and daugher-in-law and grandsons. Monday morning we left and drove to South Bend, IN. to my brother's house where we spend time in his front yard.

Linda and our grandson Jordan, and her mom Maggie left for Washington D.C. Tuesday morning at 5:50am and arrived safely about 12 hours later. They spent a week and returned back to South Bend on the following Wednesday and we left for Illinois on Saturday morning.  Jordan had a great time in DC and is anxious to go back and spend some more time with his Uncle Danny and Aunt Dee Dee.

We normally stop on the Indiana toll road to dump our holding tanks, but they have closed all of their dump facilitys. We went on to the kids house in Woodstock, IL and than on to a state park to dump the tanks.

Jeff and Lorie suprised us by doubling the size of the camping pad and putting all new gravel in with a water and electric connection right on the pad so we do not have to run extension cords to get power or an extra 50 foot of hose to get water. Very nice. Thank you Jeff and Lorie.

We will leave on our family vacation next Saturday morning, driving almost 400 miles to Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, OH. to spend 4 nights before moving on to the Niagra Falls area for 5 nights. Than back, via Canada, to the Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village near Detroit, MI.

Hope all is well
love to all of ya
Jim and Linda

Free, at last

Jamie (our boss at Gate Guarding) called Thursday morning an told me we would be relieved at about 11:30 or so. So Linda got to sleep in until about 10am. We were all hooked up and sitting in the truck with the air conditioner running full blast when our reliefs showed up right on time.

By the time we got off of the site and they got on and we briefed them on their duties it was pushing 12:30 and we left and drove about 85 miles to the northeast side of San Antonio and got two nights at a campground. We rested up, took showers, and went out to Red Robin for an early dinner/late lunch and went back home.

Friday about 1 pm we went over to our niece Ally and her fiance Paige's house to visit. Ally gets off at noon on Fridays and we spent time visiting with her. Than we drove into San Antonio to the river walk and wandered around, stopping at the Hard Rock Cafe for some souvenirs. We met Paige about 5:30 at an upscale Mexican restaurant for a great meal and than moved on to our trailer for more visiting and to show Paige the rv lifestyle. He had no idea about  the size of our trailer and wondered why we did not park in their driveway.....our truck barely fit!!!

Today (Saturday) we drove a little over 360 miles to Mt. Pleasant, TX where we are spending the night and will move on to Tunica tomorrow after another 360 miles. That's a day early, but the driving has been easy with a tail wind most of the day (that's very rare for us).

We will spend two nights in Tunica now since we are getting in early and leave there on Tuesday morning with a two day trip to Rockford, IL to camp with the kids and some friends (about 5 couples) from our old camping club. We were hoping for cooler weather, but it looks like it will be in the high 80's for Memorial day weekend.

Have a great day

love to all of ya
 Jim and Linda

Another close call

Yesterday it rained almost all day in varying intensity's. Including hail, severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings. severe wind warnings, flash flood warnings.....By early afternoon it came down by the bucket including hail about half the size of a marble down to pea size.

I had tripped the breaker on the generator and pulled the electric plug out of the trailer. The dish was down. All electrical things I could find were unplugged. Not taking any chances this time......lol

Somewhere around 4pm the company man sent a man down in a truck to tell us to follow him back up to the "safe house" at the rig as there was a tornado. By the time we had gather up the dogs and the safe w missed seeing what building he went into so we sat there in the truck. We found out later they were all in  the crews changing room which is an all metal trailer with no windows.

Later reports from truckers and people on the rig were that a tornado did touch down about a mile from us. Between us and Karnes City which is about 7 miles away as the crow flys. We could not see anything because of the rain. Finally the safety man came out and said it was all clear and we went back to the rig about 4:30 and put the slides back out, turned on the breaker and put the power cord back in but did not plug in all of the electrical stuff or put up the dish until later.

We sat and read very apprehensively the rest of the evening as radar off of the computer was showing strong storms still coming at us.I finally went to bed about 10pm and Linda woke me up about midnight to plug the stuff back in so she could put up the dish and turn on the tv.

She had a very quiet night and morning and when I relieved her at 6am it is pretty foggy. They are predicting more rain today. And flash flood warnings have been going on since yesterday afternoon.
Have a great day
remember we love ya
Jim and Linda
6 days and counting
p.s.  Just saw on the weather channel that there were 7 tornados touching down from the Mexico border and our area during the big storm yesterday (7:03am this morning)