October 31, 2009 / HALOWEEN!

Left Carthage, Missouri around 8:30 and cruised right along I-44 again parallel to the old route 66! Stopped at a Knife/Gift shop where David bought me a gorgeous bowl carved from walnut wood. It is truly a masterpiece. Then crossed over the freeway to the other side to check out an antique shop. People, I have never seen a place stuffed full of sooooooooooooo much awesome old (very old) country stuff. They had some of those old enameled buckets people hung on the kitchen walls for salt, flour and such. Well those we saw today were all written in German which means that they were brought here from some German pioneers. Oh gosh, why didn't I bring a truck to fill with all this need stuff. David firmly forbid me to buy anything since we would have to haul it back to San Diego, then pack it to move it back this way. He promised me though that if I couldn't buy a similar antique baby buggy I saw for my mom's handmade dolls in the state we would move to that he would personally drive back here to get me this one. Yeah right!
Then just drove on and stopped tonight in Mt. Vermont, Illinois. Parked our RV at a dumpy RV park and then went across the street to check out this farm store. It was the most awesome country store I have ever visited. They had everything form wood burning stoves to goat feed, from carthart clothes to John Deer toy tractors for kids. I just loved the toys they had. No pink barbies, but stick horses, wood farm animals, any kind of little horses for girls and farm Lego kits. Then there was of course the plastic toy skill saw for the boys and the pink fake hunting rifle for the girls.
Tomorrow we will end up at our first destination for house hunting in Indiana. We will park in Marion and then hopefully by Monday check out the first 5 houses in and around Switzerland county. Yes truly, there is a Switzerland county and wouldn't it be fun if we would live there. There is even a town called Vevay which is the English version of a town in Switzerland.
That's it for tonight. Will try to download some pictures as soon as I figure out how.
And Michelle mentioned that I do make mistakes. She is right of course but I am writing much of the blog while driving and the bumpy road makes me miss sometimes a key. I DO spell check but am not to concerned about mistakes. All I want to do is let you guys know what we are doing and at the same time have a diary for ourselves. Time goes by so fast that I can't remember today where we were 2 days ago. So friends forgive me my mistakes as for my English composition of words or sentences there is no hope anymore!!! No matter how hard I tried, I never learned and now it is to late. Some people say that my English is charming. Well gosh I hope they mean it and don't say it just to make me feel good. I believed all those years so don't change on me now when I am going public!
Anyway, love you all. Till tomorrow!

October 30, 2009

We were getting up this morning a bit later after a warm night in a heated RV. I decided to go and have a shower in the RV park shower rather then heating up the water in the coach! Well I tell you, either the men here are using the lady's showers or the ladies have beards. The two showers were littered in the shower pan with disposable razor covers (those little clear plastic caps that cover the disposable razor blade) and soap bits everywhere. Closing the shower curtain you looked at black mildew covering the whole inside. Well I started to have some thoughts about life in Oklahoma. Probably not a place I would like to retire. After the mullet sighting at Walmart (even our cashier lady had a slight mustache) and hairy ladies I suddenly felt like a city slicker!
So on we rolled, through beautiful country sides with green pastures, cows, horses and hay fields. I felt my hart swelling and my body enjoying the sunshine and warmer temperatures.
The roads in Oklahoma were pretty bad though even the toll road we took was bumpy. But the scenery was priceless. What a difference after all the dry brown country in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
We decided to start taking it a bit slower and turned in to an RV park just a few miles into Missouri around 5:30 pm. While I cooked a nice spaghetti dinner David took Trina down to the park with a pond. Half an hour later they came back with Trina (I swear) having a big grin on her face dragging a big stick with her that she found in the woods. She definitive loves the country side.
I then started to write my blog while David was shopping on line for houses in Missouri.
We turned in early this night for an early start the next day.

October 29, 2009

Happy Birthday to me!!! And another year has gone by.
David woke me up at 5:45 am! WTF! He wanted an early start, I wanted a birthday sleep in! So woke up grumpy. Then it got from bad to bader :). Cold motor home and sweet David made breakfast....cold Muesli. Got grumpier! The street was iced over and we had to drive over this bridge nobody else had driven over in the morning at 7! Was sweating bullets but we did okay. Then I started with this migraine. Got worse by noon and rotten by about 2. The road was....you are right again.....boring, boring, boring. Nothing was out there but dry brown dirt. Then we got some rain and finally snow. After an hour of that the sun started to peak through and BANG!!!!, this loud noise like we drove over a big rock or something. David stopped immediately on the side of the freeway (very narrow at this point) and went to check if we lost something! Yep!...we blew a back tire! There are dual tires on the back of the coach so we had one left. We started to call frantically our road service. "Do you have a spare? asked the friendly assistant. No of course we don't! So now I started to work the Internet (thanks good for my Verizon Internet stick) while David drove with flashers on s l o w l y to the next exit. After about 6 hit and miss calls we found a tire store who sent us somebody to check out the damage. We then slowly followed him 13 miles to his truck tire repair shop. Meanwhile it was 6pm. They started to work on the RV while we decided to go to Walmart a couple of exits away to get some stuff. David unhitched his car and oh s**t the battery was dead. Now they put me in the car and pushed the car backwards then around the RV to the front all the while I was trying to steer the dang vehicle with no power steering, hanging for dear life with my full weight on the steering wheel. Have you ever tried to steer a car with no power? Not easy especially if 2 strong guys push you and you have about 5 seconds to make a full turn. Phew!
Anyhow, got the car jumped from the motor home and headed to Walmart. There I finally got my birthday present...... a view of the most wonderful mullet hair cut I have ever seen. Long stringy hair to the middle of the back and a less then a quarter inch cut on top. Gorgeous! And dang if I didn't forgot my camera on the seat in the motor home. I ALWAYS have that camera in my purse but today. But even so, this was absolutely the highlight of the day. After this sighting and buying a new battery for the car because the old one wasn't holding the charge anymore, we went back to the tire place where our rig was waiting with a hefty bill attached.
Just then Gabriel called and lightened up my day with a sweet Happy Birthday call. Michelle text earlier and so my Birthday ended with a present of 2 tires and a car battery. On we went for a bout 20 more miles and pulled into a roadside RV park in Elk City. We then went out for my birthday dinner at Subway since it was 10pm by then and that was right next to the RV park. But the best thing was that David fixed the heater and and we crawled into bed in a warm 68 degree coach!

October 28th, 2009

We woke up around 7 am and got on the road about 8am after a hearty icy Swiss Muesli for breakfast! Our plan was to visit the petrified forest outside of Holbrook and also the painted desert. We arrived there just at opening time and after cruising the gift store at the entrance went to admire the forest. This is really an amazing place. It is so incredible to see those tree trunks on the ground with those beautiful gem like colors inside. It is a bit like a fairy place.
We then continued our drive through the forest on to the painted desert.
It is hard to describe the colors of those hills in soft browns, amber, red, greens and gentle blue/grey. It was a bit dreamy and very spiritual. I so loved that area. Sadly we didn't see it in its full glory since some snow stuck to the hills on the windy side. The lady at the gift store explained that it is rather seldom that they have snow and especially this early in the winter. So we went on on our trip with the emergency weather announcement buzzing in for more snow and icy condition. No kidding, David never warmed up on this day even the heater going full force (the car heater was working when we drove, just the coach heater was down).
We then continuined on I-40 with the famous old Hwy. 66 parallel to us! The rest of the drive was..... you guessed it right.....boring. High desert brown and dry!
Again we found a small frozen RV park just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. Meanwhile the weather had changed to a nice and comfortable 52 and with our trusted little heater we got it up to 57 which kept us going to bed early!

October 27, 2009

Rolling, rolling, rolling. We started out at 5:15am from home. David wanted to be out of the desert before it would be to hot. So we started going east. But once we got to El Cajon it just went up the hill and our huge rig and pulling the car slowed us down to a measly 40 mi/hr speed. Then came desert......, then high desert....., boring, boring. I was so tired and still a bit sick so slept most of the way! David went on like the Energizing Bunny. Trina was glued to the coach. We drove about 13 hours stopping at a small town called Wislow about 30 miles past Flagstaff, Arizona. It was freezing cold with an occasional snow flurry and the radio warned that the temperature would drop to about 26 degree. The emergency broadcast buzzed into David's radio talk show warning of extreme temperatures.
Well we found in the dark a RV park and hooked up just to find out that the heater didn't work. Thanks good we had a portable little heater with us and after hooking up had it blasting on full power which got the rig heated up to a cozy 42 degree! Thanks god we were tired and got into our flannel sheet covered bed and stayed reasonably warm while Trina was all swaddled up sleeping in my microfleeze robe.