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.