FROM GEORGIA HOME TO TEXAS - JUNE 2009

We had a beautiful time in Southern Georgia during the last few weeks of May. We had a very private secluded campsite, so quiet and serene. It turned out to be a peaceful spiritual retreat for us. After the first week, a medical crisis occurred concerning our Sarah in Colorado. Sarah, as most of you know, has had systemic Lupus since she was 14 years old. She has been having some unusual and unexplainable symptoms for several months and has seen several specialists. Recently, she has been having severe headaches and strange visual disturbances and loss of portions of her visual field at times. Finally, she got in to see a neurologist who sent her for an MRI of her brain. It was discovered that she had multiple tiny in her brain and was immediately hospitalized for further tests. It was feared that the Lupus was attacking her brain (a life-threatening condition).

Karen flew out to Denver to be with Sarah and Daniel during her hospital stay. As it turned out, the lesions were mini-strokes, also Lupus related due to a clotting disorder, but a controllable condition with the use of blood thinners. The doctors said that she would completely recover from the mini-strokes.

In addition, on the MRI a cyst or tumor was discovered on Sarah's pituitary gland which is located in her head just below the brain. This explained the still intractable headaches. This cyst is going to have to be removed. Surgery was scheduled for Aug 28.

Karen stayed a week with Sarah, then flew back to Georgia. We hitched up and started rolling toward Texas and home. It always feels so good to cross that Texas state line when we've been away. You have to be a Texas to truly understand that.

Karen will work part-time at the hospital through the summer. Her old job always is waiting for her when we come back. Mel has seversal preaching opportunities. All our travels have reconfirmed that God is not through with us yet in His kingdom work. Mel will be seriously seeking a church to serve as Pastor in the future. We both sense God has something specific in mind. Our hearts are being drawn toward the Western Heritage Movement in a big way. Don't know how that will play out.

Abigail Loves Papa and Memomma

It doesn't get any better than this! Papa is loving it! Amy and Josh did a little canoeing while Papa and Memomma stayed on shore with our the sweetest little camper there ever was.

We stayed at a travel resort campground for the last few days we were in North Carolina. Josh and Amy and Abigail were able to come out on Saturday for a little fun. It seems there is just never enough time to be together. But we tried to make the most of it knowing that our visit was coming to a close.

Opryland

On our way east this spring we stopped in Nashville and spent a couple of days sightseeing. A guided tour of Nashville and a visit to The Country Music Hall of Fame was most memorable. We both love country music and thoroughly enjoyed visiting all the historic places where famous country artists and some rock 'n roll artists got their start. Yes, even Elvis was there.

We went to the Grand Ol' Opry Saturday night. It was a dream come true for Karen. She has dreamed of going since she was a little girl. It was a great show with lots of well known country artists performing with Carrie Underwood being the featured star of the evening. It was just a week later that she was honored as the female vocalist of the year at the Annual Country Music Awards for the very songs we watched her perform on stage in Nashville. It was an experience of a lifetime.

Unfortunately, our visit to North Carolina is coming to a close. We hope to be back in the Fall. We have obligations in Georgia once again this month for a couple of weeks and then in Rockport, Texas before returning to Lubbock.

Grandgirl Abigail likes to wear her Papa's hat!

Ft. Mountain State Park - Georgia

Georgia is a state where neither of us have ever spent any time. Driving across the corner of it or flying in and out of Atlanta airport is about it. We have always known it was a beautiful place just from those glimpses. Now we are having the opportunity to experience it first hand camping out at Fort Mountain State Park. I must say that I am very impressed with Georgia State Park system. The state of Georgia has invested a lot in making them great places for families or retirees to spend time. The campgrounds are well developed, campsites are level, well drained, with all the facilities in top condition including a laundry in each campground. At the same time, they do not take away from the natural beauty of the forest. There are lakes, beaches, picnic areas, mini golf, hiking trails. The area is also steeped in history dating all the way back before the revolutionary war. I have included a picture of part of an old fort that was built around the top of the mountain that pre-dates even the earliest Cherokees in this area. No one knows who built it, but the tower remains and the ruins of the stone wall circles the entire mountaintop. It was a mile hike uphill to this fort if I look a little ragged...well.

Mel has spent his weekdays working with park directors and the local merchants to produce their annual site map and tourist guide. They seem to appreciate him. I have done a few projects around the house, cooked three meals a day and enjoyed the park. I realized the other day that I haven't even listened to much music during my days at home because the sounds of the woods all around us is the most beautiful music. The birds singing and the breeze through the pines, well it just doesn't get any better. On weekends the park fills up with families and children. Mel and I rest and play and go sightseeing. It would be a perfect world if we had our families around us. Black bear are active in this area, but we haven't seen any so far. That's okay with me, Mel is a little disappointed.

Wednesday we leave here to head back to Abigail-land. We will be back in Raleigh for about two weeks, then back to Georgia to "work" another state park.

We love and miss everyone. Hope to see you soon.

ANNIVERSARY WITH "OLD BALDY"

April 10 was our anniversary. We celebrated by visiting a lighthouse named "Old Baldy' off the coast of North Carolina. Pictured above is Mel standing in the doorway of its base. You can see beautiful pictures of the lighthouse and explore its history at the website http://www.oldbaldy.org/

We had some great seafood for lunch at Southport, NC. Then we rode a ferry across the sound (about 30 minutes) to Baldhead Island, given its name by ancient sailors who thought it looked like the top of a man's bald head sticking up out of the water. We both climbed to the top of the old lighthouse which is no longer being used and enjoyed the museum and history surrounding it.

The weather was perfect that day. We spent the afternoon walking around the island and had refreshments at an outdoor cafe. We were able to take our Nala and Gretel with us. Gretel enjoyed the outing and the attention from strangers and all the new smells. Nala was frightened by the ferry ride and did not enjoy it as well, but she got some good exercise. She was glad to get back to the haven of the truck when we got back to shore that evening.

For Easter, we went to an early church service with Amy & Josh & Abigail. Abigail looked like a little doll. The service was a very worshipful celebration with full orchestra and choir and message from the pastor. After church we visited the grave of our little Emma Cate. We look forward to that resurrection day when we can hold her in our arms and watch her grow up all because our Lord Jesus conquered death and the grave. He is our life and our sure hope of eternity. Hallelujah!

USS North Carolina

We have enjoyed North Carolina. Of course our number one reason is our little Abigail Joy. We are having a great time "spoiling her". But who can resist those big baby blue eyes. She is healthy and smart and beautiful and cute. She has a personality that won't quit at 8 months she can entertain a whole room full of adults for hours.

Recently we had the oppotunity to get to know a group of bluegrass musicians that love to get together at every opportunity. We have hosted them at our campground community room and have made fast friends. They love for Karen to sing with them and say that if we will only stay, they will make her a star. One guitar player threatened to let the air out of our tires. We have several guitar players, two banjo players, one ukelele, one mandolin, and a dorbo, in our group. It's great! We will miss them and have had such a great time.

We are traveling to Chatsworth Georgia next week to Fort Mountain State Park. You may ask "Why Georgia?" That is long story, but to state it as briefly as possible, we must have a way to supplement our income while traveling. That is especially true when we travel east or stay around any type of tourist area. We can work when we want to, for a publishing company that produces site maps and tourist guides for RV parks all across the country. These publacations have ads in them for local attractions and businesses. Each park's publication is renewed every year and advertising contracts sold or renewed for the coming year. We stay rent free at the RV park for two weeks, and armed with a list of businesses to call on, we make personal calls on the business owners. The company is Southeast Publications, Inc. out of Florida. It is very reputable and we both had to be bonded and trained. We have done two parks so far and will be doing two more in Georgia before we return to Texas. I promises to work out very well. Of course when we are in Lubbock, Karen still has a job at Covenant and Mel gets some speaking opportunities as well as working on call at Lakeridge Funeral Home.

That brings us to another RV story update from last October. We took our fifth-wheel and traveled to Las Cruces, NM for training with our regional supervisor for Southeast Publications. There were three route options from Lubbock to Las Cruces. One via Ruidoso, one via Cloudcroft, and one through El Paso. We wanted to avoid as much mountains as possible, not that our truck has trouble or anything, but it does use more gas when climbing. That ruled out the Cloudcroft route since we were informed by a couple of people that way has very steep, windey, narrow roads. We finally settled on the El Paso route, not much scenery between Lubbock and El Paso, but certainly more level ground, and away we went.

Much to our dismay, we still were getting terrible gas mileage, we did go through the edges of the Davis Mountains and really had some trouble pulling our fifth-wheel over some hills. We had not run into this before. Fuel-wise, we barely made it across the desert on fumes. There is a long stretch between gas stations between Carlsbad and El Paso! Traveling from El Paso to Las Cruces was less than 50 miles but we had to climb over a mountain range to get there. We crept up the long incline coming up out of El Paso. At times we thought we were going to completely stall. We finally made it to Las Cruces, parked for a few days and had our training.

We decided to return to Lubbock via Ruidoso. We wanted more scenery, we do so love the mountains! It seemed it would be more downhill than up. We also wanted to stop at White Sands. We did not have any real steep climbs like the one out of El Paso, but we were still chugging up even small inclines and getting terrible gas mileage. I thought we must have added much more weight than we realized to our fifth-wheel after getting back to Lubbock! I was contemplating what on earth else we could do without to lighten our load. We picniced and spent some time at White Sands National Park. See the pictures below.

Our campsite in Ruidoso was off the road and up the side of a mountain ---oh no!. We finally got into it after a couple of hairy encounters with large rocks and drop-offs we had to maneuver around. I'm not sure which one of us was closer to a heart attack. Karen had visions of our home rolling down the mountainside. It was worth it, though. We were in a remote area surrounded by tall pines and crisp, cool, mountain air. We stayed a couple of days and just relaxed. On the morning we were getting ready to leave, Mel happened to check all the holding tank indicator lights and "lo and behold", our fresh water tank was completely FULL! We have always hooked up to city water and never filled it up to our knowledge. We have a couple of theories as to how it happened, but if you know anything about RVing, you know that is a real NO-NO. Our fresh water tank is huge and I don't know how much all that water weighed, but apparently, we pulled a tank full of fresh water from Lubbock all the way to El Paso, across the mountains, and back to Ruidoso. Ooops!

Needless to say after we drained it, we were able to take any hill or mountain with no problem and got much better gas mileage the rest of our trip home. ---Lesson learned, always make sure all your tanks are empty before leaving on a trip.

God Bless!

On The Road Again

We are in North Carolina again. This is our BIG trip for 2009. Some of you have wondered if we dropped off the face of the earth. It is just that for the most part we have been living in Lubbock and working since last September. Not much to blog about and too busy to do postings. We have taken several short trips and yes we do have some stories which we will share with you bloggers now that we have some free time when we are not sightseeing or playing with Abigail.

Below is Mel with confederate soldiers at the Battle of Bentonville Historical Site. It was the largest battle fought in North Carolina during the civil war in March of 1861, between General Sherman's union army and various confederate battalions led by General Johnston. We saw a musket firing and artillery demonstration and as well as an authentic confederate camp, and a farm house that was occupied by the union army and turned into a hospital. Over 80,000 soldiers fought at this site for 3 days. Over 500 union soldiers were treated in the "hospital", mostly amputations. Patients with "mortal wounds" such as head, chest, or abdominal injuries were kept comfortable with Morphine outside on the ground until they died.

After the battle was over and the union army left, the Harvey family took back possession of their wrecked home. They searched for wounded confederate soldiers left to die on the battlefield and brought them into the house and did the best they could for them. The house is restored to what it looked like as a field hospital complete with makeshift operating tables and surgical instruments. Very interesting.

Abigail Joy is almost 8 months old now and has she ever got an exuberant personality... Nothing gets by her and she wants to be a part of everything that is going on around her. We thank God every day for her and are especially thankful that she is healthy. She is strong and well nourished and the cutest little southern belle that has ever graced this earth.

After we left North Carolina around the first of September last year, we traveled across the South, taking 5 days to return to Lubbock. We've learned lot about getting out of tight spots, setting up camp and breaking camp in the pouring rain, avoiding or being divinely delivered from severe weather and the wide variation of quality of RV parks.

I guess I will start bringing you up to date with a tornado story. We were traveling west on Interstate 20 near the Georgia-Alabama line. It had been raining all around us all day. We were trying to avoid the worst of the bands of rain being thrown across the southeast by a hurricane in the gulf at that time. We stopped for gas and lunch in our RV at a large truck stop. Karen was driving when we got back on the road giving Mel a much needed break since he does 90 per cent of the driving. We had been on the road for about 20 minutes when we crossed the Alabama line. Suddenly, Karen switched from the CD music we had been enjoying to the radio. There was no reason, nothing had changed in the weather that we could see, and we generally prefer the CD's. When her finger hit the seek button, the first words we heard were "TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!" The broadcast went on to say, "IF YOU ARE HEARING THIS AND YOU ARE ON INTERSTATE 20 NEAR EXIT 10 IN ALABAMA, GET OFF THE ROAD NOW AND TAKE COVER! THERE IS A TORNADO ON THE GROUND MOVING NORTH EXPECTED TO CROSS INTERSTATE 20 IN FIVE MINUTES!" We looked up and saw we were approaching exit 5! We would have been at exit 10 exactly when that tornado crossed if we had not heard that warning! We took exit 5 and waited for the storm to pass at the Alabama Welcome Center angle parked between two semi's. We got only small hail and some wind but felt safe in the arms of God knowing that it was His divine intervention that caused us to hear that message.

We continued to listen to that radio broadcast until we were assured it was clear to continue. Almost as soon as we got back on the road, we lost that station's signal. Does Heaven have a radio station? Hmmmm I wonder.

When we got back to Lubbock on Labor Day weekend, we were excited to attend South Park and show off our Fifth Wheel and get to see everyone again. We moved into Loop 289 RV park near our dear friend Virgie Cross and her family who own and operate the park.

We took a short trip in October to El Paso Texas, Las Cruces, NM, White Sands and Ruidoso, I will tell you about next week. We spent two weeks in Palo Duro in December. There is more to come.