December 22 - Yuma

Well, we finally made it.  We are safely ensconced in the Desert Holiday R.V Park in Yuma and no more driving for 2 full weeks.  It is nice to go into the cupboard and get a cup out that is not wrapped up for travelling. 

We have 2 days to get ready for Julie and Gerry Jackson.  We heard from them last evening and they will be arriving sometime on the evening of the 24th.  A lovely present from Santa.

Hopefully we will be having so much fun the next couple of weeks (or at least as much as a Hagell can stand) that I won't be writing any more posts until we head to Palm Springs with a side trip to Blythe, if our friends the Hawes' are home.  If not, I am sure we will see them at FMCA in Indio.

That's all for now, and for those folks who are reading this:

HAVE A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS AND THE HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS!

December 17 - Still Texas

We left for Fort Stockton which is a dirty little desert town, didn't even bother with the hook ups, only used their power.  You felt like you were in the middle of the desert but there was nothing appealing about the place at all.  Glad we were only going to be there overnight.  They did have a large Roadrunner in the middle of the town dressed in a Santa suit.  I didn't even take a picture, however, I should have.  I feel bad about it now, too late...

Texas is a very large State with miles and miles of nothing to see, at least along Hiway 10.  Gas prices are getting higher - $3.29.

December 18 - El Paso

Knowing that we were going to be in El Paso the next day, that night I could not get the Marty Robins' song out of my head.  If I could have thought of all the words it may have helped but I was missing a few lines and it drove me crazy...

Texas also has very small Rest Stops, they also have picnic areas in the middle of nowhere but no bathrooms.  The State that brags the most keeps coming up short in my estimation.  Good roads though.

We pulled into the Mission RV Park in El Paso, it is an Escapee park, got set up and then took a tour of the area.  We tried to get to the Old Town, found it was a tourist trap, old, deserted and dirty.  700,000 people all doing their Christmas Shopping - no fun fighting traffic.

December 20 - to Tucson

We tried to leave yesterday but high winds and blowing sand kept us here - we went to a Shopping Centre close to where we are parked and just walking to and from 3 stores, we got so sandblasted we had to come home and wash our faces and clean out our ears, our glasses didn't even keep it out of our eyes. 

Oh well, we got an early start today, heading to Tucson.

Right where our street meets the frontage road a semi, a half ton and a tow vehicle had an altercation, the tow vehicle took the brunt.  A block down the road from that three more vehicles had collided.  Everybody here drives too close and they don't pay attention, at highway speeds the result is not pleasant.  It is a beautiful, clear and sunny day so there is no excuse to not see the person in front of you.  Texas is definitely not on the list of places we would want to move to.

Gas at a Pilot we came upon was $2.79 - the lowest we have seen on this trip.

The Rio Grande river is nothing but a trickle - how disappointing.

I am sure there must be some beautiful areas in Texas, unfortunately we haven't seen any of them.

We stayed at Casino del Sol in Tucson.  We arrived in the afternoon found a nice space, they have a huge parking lot with quite a few RVs parked there, some look like they are there for the long haul.

We thought we would have dinner in the Casino so decided it was too early to go in.  We napped and read until it was time to go inside.

I found a really fun machine "The Beverly Hillbillies" I must have played it for 1 1/2 hours - doubling my money, it has quite a few games on it so you are not just putting your money in and pushing a button with no result.  It also shows lots of video clips of the old TV series which brought back some fond memories and with it lots of cash.  It was a good thing that I came out ahead as Dalton did not.  Anyway, we decided to go back to the RV for dinner and finish off the fantastic Butter Chicken that Dalton had made the night before.

The wind had been blowing ever since we arrived but by evening it was really gusting, blew most of the night but by morning it was lovely and sunny and only a gentle breeze blowing.

Tucson is a beautiful city, not many highrises and all the overpasses and berm fences are painted with beautiful Aztec art.

I had no idea that cotton was grown in Arizona.   I am sure learning a lot on this trip.

In my humble opinion, Arizona is a beautiful State.

  

December 15 - Beaumont, Texas

Yesterday we drove around Beaumont, Texas - a clean little town, but appears to be totally deserted.  We went to find the Post Office to mail our Christmas parcels, it is located in the downtown area, you could have shot a cannon down any of the streets and not hit a soul.  Many of the buildings are vacant, however, it is very well kept which is totally surprising as usually deserted places gather derelicts.

 This is the world's largest fire plug it is across the street from the Fire Station in Beaumont and is a salute to Disney's 1001 Dalmatians.  I thought it was cute.

We are staying in the Gulf Coast RV Park at the west end of Beaumont, a very nice park and if even offers free breakfasts every day from 7 - 9.  What a nice touch!  They even have bicycles for their guests to borrow and it is a Passport America besides.

I can't believe there is no recycling here - one place we stayed at least collected bottles and cans but no cardboard or plastic - Every place we stayed all the way to Arizona have no recycling.  Unbelievable.  However, there are more gun shops and pawn shops than grocery stores.

Lots of concrete roads and cheap gas at least along Hiway 10 - $2.98 - $3.25 a gallon.

We left at 8:00 this AM after breakfast.  Fist big town was Houston which is not very appealing as you approach it, all you can see is oil refineries and cranes.  There are 5 lanes of traffic going in and around Houston as well as 1 exit lane so 6 lanes of steady traffic, sure glad we don't live here.  I got a feeling of claustrophobia sitting in the passenger seat, I am glad I am not driving.

We stayed in San Antonio for 2 nights, parked beside a couple from Nanaimo.

Sunday we toured the Alamo and did the River walk, when we had enough we went home and had  Happy Hour with the neighbours.

The above 2 were taken on the River walk

These are all that is left of the Alamo

I thought this was just about the ugliest Christmas Tree I had ever seen taken outside the Alamo

December 11 - New Orleans

The weather turned colder so we had to "rug up" before heading to the French Quarter.  The park has a shuttle so we hoped on - it was great not having to worry about traffic and parking, which is very expensive, $5.00 per hour. 

We found a nice place to have dinner "Desire".  Strange name but the food was great.  Dalton had a bowl of Gumbo to start and he is still talking about how good it was and I, trying to be adventurous, had pasta with Alligator meat balls and no, it didn't taste like chicken.  It was mixed with beef so...

We went into a Jazz Bar, they didn't play Jazz, which was good for me, but Dalton was disappointed as that is what he was there for.  The band playing was a group called "Siren", they played all the music that we both liked, we even danced a little.  We stayed so late, missed the shuttle and had to take a cab home.  We really enjoyed ourselves, the first time we had been out so late in a long while.

Going to the French Quarter and having drinks in an Irish Pub.  This is O'Brien's' patio

They are famous for their Hurricanes, they are very good, potent too!

Dalton enjoying his beer

Siren in action

Dalton got dragged up on stage, he had some good moves!

December 12

We took a riverboat trip on the Natchez, a steam driven paddle wheeler.  The sun was out and it was a lovely day.  I did expect that we would go down the Mississippi River but as it was so slow we hardly made it out of the harbour.  We did have a guide that explained lots and pointed out all things of interest, although the levies are so high so you could only see the tops of the homes. 

After arriving back at the wharf we decided to go exploring some of the places we saw from the river.   One of the things being "Harrah's Casino and since we haven't been in one since Ontario, we decided we should give it a shot.  Lucky us, we came out with what we went in with plus a little more.  Today we are not as energetic as we were last night, I wonder why, anyway we had dinner back on Bourbon Street, not as good as yesterday and for some reason the music seemed extra loud so tonight we were in time for the shuttle.


December 13 - Leaving Louisiana

We had an easy drive today, roads were pretty good, and not much traffic.  There is a lot of water in this State and therefore many roads are causeways,  quite an engineering feat to say the least.  We arrived in Beaumont, Texas in the afternoon and booked into the Gulf Coast RV Resort, nice place, well kept and they have free breakfasts every morning from 7 - 9.  It is a Passport America Park which makes it even better.  Half Price.

December 9

Dalton golfed at an Arnold Palmer designed course today and I got to go to a Factory Outlet Mall.  We were both totally exhausted when we got home.  I am really out of shopping shape, can't wait to get to Palm Springs to get my shopping Mojo back.


December 10 - Leaving Alabama for Louisiana

Before leaving we fed the goats at the farm across the road from us.  Twin kids were born about 3 - 4 hours earlier.  they are sure cute.  Dalton agreed to part with some of his celery so we would have something to feed them. 

We arrived at Pontchartrain Landing at 6001 France Road - the address is there because we might want to go back, it is a really nice park right on the water.  They have a shuttle to take you to the French Quarter twice a day and pick you up twice a day also.

Had to take the computer back to the Apple Store, hopefully this is it this time.  We only had one person working on it this time.  When we went to Charleston we had about 4 people looking after us and it definitely proves that too many cooks spoil the stew.

Gas prices are really good here. $2.99 a gallon WOW!

December 8th - More of Bellingrath

I have now downloaded Dalton's camera and he had some shots that I wanted to get in.  I am not showing any of the parade as everyone has seen a parade but Bellingrath was really spectacular and there are some shots that he got and I didn't:

We took this picture to show how the entire plant is made out of miniature lights, there is one on my last showing this one lit up

The Courtyard attached to the house

This one and the one above is an underwater scene, pretty neat, eh!

We were really impressed with this system of waterfalls in the middle of the stairs

I love the gnarly trees with the Spanish moss, although we don't know why it is called Spanish moss, as it is neither Spanish nor moss

December 8 - Alabama

While checking out the area around Mobile, we came upon a little Town called Foley, there was a parade happening so we decided to stop and watch.  They had 45 entries, which we thought was quite a few for such a little Town.  We did enjoy it, Dalton took pictures but I am having enough trouble uploading my pictures that I decided to pass on his this time.

After the parade we headed towards the ocean.  We came upon a Fisherman on a wharf by the Ferry Terminal we were going to take, I know, taking a Ferry when we really didn't have to, but it was on the route we wanted to take and we also had a destination in mind.

Back to the Fisherman...he was fishing for Mullet, never heard of it, Dalton says it looks like a fish we would throw back..he was fishing with a net, don't know that there is any sport in that.  He did show us how to do it and it did look interesting. 

The ferry ride was very disappointing as it was so foggy, you couldn't see the front of the car.  It was a small ferry, holding 28 cars, and the trip was 35 minutes long.  Our destination on the other side was Bellingrath Gardens and let me tell you, it is a place you do not want to miss.  We arrived at 4:00 in the afternoon, we were there to see the lights, not so much the gardens as it is the wrong time of the year for that, although they are also spectacular, but the lights...3 million of them.  The house on the property was fantastic.  Mr. Bellingrath was fairly high up on the Coca Cola organization and the house is ofter referred to as "the house that Coke built".  The place has been kept up as if people are still living there.  It was the nicest house we have ever seen, the furnishings we all antiques.  Mrs. Bellingrath had very good taste.  Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside but we sure got a lot of pictures of the lights throughout the grounds.

This is only a portion of the pictures we took.  They are spectacular, especially the ones with the reflections in water.  We spent over 2 hours here and when we left the traffic coming into the park was incredible, we drove for 15 minutes and all the way the incoming traffic was bumper to bumper.  We obviously arrived at the right time. 

December 6 - Finally leaving Columbia, South Carolina

Leaving Columbia we passed 2 accidents on the highway before we were on the road for an hour, traffic was backed up for miles.  The funny thing is they were nearly across the highway from each other, one coming and one going.  It is not against the law to talk on your cell phone here and let me tell you, everyone is on the phone.  Everyone also tailgate, and I'm not talking about the parties.  Oh, I guess I should say that the majority of people who watch college football have tailgate parties, it is a really big thing here.  There is such a big following, the RV parks are filled with people coming to support their teams.

The weather in Columbia was 14 degrees, cooler than it has been but it was 21 when we reached Georgia. 

We came upon the third accident just outside of Savannah, a pick-up rear ended a Semi - now tell me he was paying attention!

Florida was 23 degrees @ 4:30 p.m. - gas prices are going up.  We paid $3.19 before we left South Carolina and paid $3.34 in Florida.

Highway 10  thru Florida, is a really nice highway, it has nice large Rest Stops.  There are also quite a few RV Parks right beside the highway, must be for easy access.  We stayed in a Rest Stop at Lake City, Florida.

We got no sunshine in "The Sunshine State", we did get rain.


December 7 -

Dalton said he wasn't going to be comfortable until we started heading West, after our long delay in South Carolina.  We want to take Interstate 10, it will take us all the way to Arizona.  Up until now we have been heading South in order to get to Highway 10.  Today we finally got to head West.
Tallahassee, Florida - gas is $3.20 and Diesel is $4.00, we can't figure out why diesel is higher than gas, I guess it is one of life's little mysteries.

When we got to Mississippi, we had a good laugh.  We came upon a sign before crossing a river...you guessed it..."The Historical Suwannee River" with musical notes on the bottom of the sign.  Of course we both started singing, however, we each had a different song relating to the river, who knew.

Computer problems again.

We arrived at "Azalea Acres RV Park" in Mobile, Alabama.  We didn't do a very good job of searching it out.  It is a lovely park, the spots are big, very clean and quiet, however, it is a long way from everything.  We stayed for three nights even though we had to drive a long way to get to anything it was very nice and cheap too.

December 3 -

I haven't been much in the mood for writing, with not feeling particularly well and being totally depressed (more like a murderous rage) about the fridge business, but I decided that today, being absolutely beautiful, sun shining and really warm, somewhere in the 70s, thought it would be a good day to add a few more items to the blog:

We went to a Christmas tree lighting downtown Columbia, didn't know it was such a big deal but lots of people were out, kids were dressed in Nutcracker costumes and the restaurants were giving away free food.  You would be surprised at the amount of people that eat shrimp and grits, one restaurant alone makes 80 gallons of grits, I shudder at the thought.  Anyway the town was very festive and we had lots of fun.

This wasn't even the tree in front of the Legislature and it still commanded an huge audience

One of the little Nutcrackers

Now this tree has the decorations I like