Giving Thanks

Lake Tawakoni Campground

Three more weeks in Texas, this time in the northern part of the state near Dallas. It's another Thousand Trails park on Lake Tawakoni. We can see the lake from our windows. The park is old and spacious, full of deciduous trees losing all their leaves. We opted for a spot out in the open instead of on the lakefront under all the trees...for satellite reception of course, which everyone knows is a necessity of life. (How do people function without TV?!)

The park is so old that none of the sites have 50 amp power, and many have only water and electric (no sewer). Beauty comes at a cost. In this case, the cost is 20 amps. Fortunately, the weather is cool and we don't need the heavy-duty air conditioner. As a matter of fact, it's been unseasonably cold in Texas this fall. As I write, at almost noon, it's only 47 degrees, and the high temps are expected to be in the 50s and 60s for the next couple weeks...maybe until spring. But we're heading south again before then, so I don't care.

Yarn, threatening to take over the house...

We have a lot planned for early next year, but November and December have been quiet for us. We've been mostly sticking close to home. Mark's fixing things here and there around the house, and I'm crocheting baby blankets that I donate to pregnancy shelters. My good friend, JoAnn, recently helped me with this project by sending me yarn. I usually have three or four blanket projects in the works at any given time. Below are some samples. My hope is to encourage mothers to see the new life they are carrying as a tremendous gift from God...regardless the circumstances.

Keeping busy when you're retired takes a bit of an effort, I've found, and some planning. If we don't plan activities as soon as we arrive somewhere, we tend to do what we planned....nothing! One of the places Mark wants to visit while we're fairly near is Magnolia Farms in Waco. For the uninformed, it's the home base of Chip and Joanna Gaines of "Fixer Upper" fame. It's a long drive, but we'll make it a day trip in the car.

Other than that, we'll be taking a few shorter car rides to see the scenery, check out the nearby towns, do our grocery shopping, and so on.

We're feeling a little remote as we approach Thanksgiving, when being around family is traditional and important. And it may be tempting to get a little melancholy, but for the realization that we are tremendously blessed. After all, are living our dream. It's impossible, and frankly wrong, not to feel thankful for that! (In spite of the occasional nightmare.)

So, at this special time of the year that Americans set aside for gratitude, we give thanks to Him from whom all blessings flow. In honor of that, I've decided to go all out with a turkey dinner and pumpkin pie, solitude notwithstanding. And we'll be thanking God for all of you -- our friends and family -- and His abundant blessings as we chow down on Thursday!

Happy Thanksgiving...and God bless all  y'all!

Home to Vote

As we were preparing to leave Fontana for Texas, Mark received news that his older brother, Merlin, whose health has been failing, had been taken to the hospital and was not expected to go home again. We visited Merlin and his wife, Maxine, at the end of June before leaving Minnesota. Being in his late eighties and suffering from emphysema, we knew that it could very well be our last opportunity. When Mark got the call, we cancelled all our stops and headed east as quickly as possible to get settled in our Texas campground so that he was available to fly back at a moment's notice.

Mountain View RV Park
Van Horn, Texas

Our original plan of a two-week trip to Texas turned into four very long days of driving. We discovered that Cracker Barrel restaurants have a corporate policy allowing RV parking overnight at any of their stores. Apparently you don't have to ask (as we were informed by the manager at one location). We made use of them at two of our stops. For the third, we found a wonderful RV Park, right off the freeway in Van Horn, with the most beautifully graded roads and level sites I've ever seen. On the fourth day, we arrived and set up in Lake Conroe RV Park, which is about forty miles north of the Houston airport and about forty miles west of Livingston (where we needed to vote). Merlin passed away that Saturday, and Mark flew back the following Wednesday for the funeral.

Lake Conroe

By November 3rd, Mark was home again, just in time to help me celebrate my birthday the next day. We went to the Texas Roadhouse for dinner. I've never had a meal at one of these restaurants where the steak was not cooked perfectly. I broke my gluten rule and had one of their delicious fresh baked bread rolls. Then after dinner, we stopped at a market for ice cream and a gluten free chocolate cake to take home for dessert.

Tuesday we drove into Livingston and cast our votes. Afterward we went to a movie** and then sat in front of the TV until midnight watching the House of Representatives fall into the toilet. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic. But I was sincerely disappointed in how things turned out overall. The next morning, however, I was reminded of a truth we sometimes fail to consider. It was put best by one of our early presidents.

“Duty is ours, results are God’s.” --John Quincy Adams

Our job is to do our civic duty and cast our ballots for the candidates we believe fall most in line with biblical values. And so we did; and life goes on. In the end, God is sovereign and in complete control. His will be done.

We're here in Conroe, Texas, through the end of next week. The RV park is very close to just about every kind of shopping -- about ten or fifteen minutes away. The nearest grocery store, Kroger Marketplace, is about five minutes away (in the town of Willis) and has a pretty good selection of organic and gluten free items. I was even able to find my brand of mayonnaise made with coconut oil (surprisingly free of coconut taste). Lake Conroe will probably be our "go-to" park when we're in the Livingston area for other things, even though it's an hour's drive away, since it doesn't cost us any money.

We're planning to stay in Texas for a little over a month, partly because it helps validate our Texas residency to be able to say we've actually spent some time here. Last week we purchased the EZ Toll window sticker and set up an account to manage our time on the toll roads. The last time we were in Houston, we got trapped into an "EZ Toll only" toll road lane that we couldn't avoid, and we expected to get a big bill in the mail. It turns out they don't really fine you when that happens, but before we could open an online account for that license plate, we had to call and resolve the toll charge. When we did, we discovered that the previous owner had incurred some toll fees from 2017 that were still delinquent. We had to clear those up too before we could register the license plate. Fortunately, it was only a few dollars.

The weather is cool and rainy for a few days. Mark and I will be looking to see what we can do on the cheap in Conroe and North Houston, but this week we're mostly chilling.

Lake Conroe

**The movie we saw was "Gosnell." It is the true story of the 2010 arrest and trial of the abortion doctor in Chicago who was convicted of murdering full-term babies born alive. In spite of the subject matter, the movie was not gory, though it accurately depicted the horrifying conditions of the clinic where medical "procedures" were done for something like twenty years. (Actual crime scene photos were shown in the credits.) I had no idea that such places would be tolerated in America in the twenty-first century. One wonders how many other "legal" clinics like this still operate in this country, ignored and unregulated - performing illegal late-term abortions in filthy conditions. Regardless of your opinion on abortion, it's worth seeing...if for no other reason than to give substance to your opinion.