Near the End of the Year

We are enjoying our time here. The weather has been great so far. Most of my work has been from the tractor seat, mowing roadsides, using the big tractor mounted blower to clean off the roads around areas that are going to be burned, and using the backhoe and grapple to tear apart some tree piles created by a bulldozer on a land clearing project. 

We have gotten reacquainted with some friends here from church and had a visit with them at the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The decorated sidewalk outside the parish center.

The inside of the parish center where we enjoyed a Mexican meal.

The local library had a raffle where you got a ticket for each book that you checked out. They called me the week before Christmas and said that I had won! The prize was a nice gift basket.

They had a nice Christmas parade here in Melrose but is seems strange to enjoy a Christmas parade when it is 75 degrees outside.

We had a quiet Christmas here and enjoyed facetiming with the kids and grandkids and sharing the day with them. Everyone here at the station has the week off this week, so we are catching up on few projects here and will probably travel to some nearby towns for some sightseeing.

Ordway-Swisher Biological Research Station

We have arrived at our winter volunteer site! We were met at the gate by our supervisor here and are looking forward to working with her. We are in the same site as the other times that we were here and are ready to start work tomorrow. Nice weather and smooth travels today. We met the other volunteer couple that are already working here. 

Tifton, GA

Our month in Carrollton went by quickly. As usual we enjoyed spending time with Janice’s mom, sisters, brother in law, and a niece and nephew. We spent a lot of time playing games at the table this year. Janice and one of her sisters got to spend some time exploring the capabilities of her embroidery machine and I completed a few fixit projects. I was able to volunteer for a few days at the county soup kitchen and visit with a few old friends there. Our granddaughter who works in North Carolina drive over to visit for a couple of days and her mom and another granddaughter surprised her by traveling down from Iowa to see her.

Today we left Carrollton and stopped for the night at a Walmart in Tifton, GA. Nice weather for driving today. We stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Waverly Hall for a delicious lunch. Tomorrow we should reach our winter destination in Florida.

Chattanooga and Carrollton

 We arrived at Chattanooga on Wednesday which was a day sooner than we had planned. We parked for the night at a Walmart on the edge of town and had a quiet night. The fog was so thick Thursday morning that we could only see part of the front of the store from the motorhome. We waited for it to clear up before heading over to Bulldog Jeep Hardtop company to spend the next night in order to be there for our installation appointment early Friday morning. They were really nice to work with and did a great job on the installation of our new hard top on the Jeep. Our old soft top had broken zippers on all of the panels and was pretty useless to us. So far, we are loving the new top with it's doors that open on the sides and rear. Much quieter ride too.

After the installation, we continued on to our rvpark at Carrollton. We are in a park that we had checked out last year. They added new sites and we are in one of them. The park is very hilly and most of the sites are uneven. I spent part of yesterday picking up some lumber and making some ramps and blocks to help us level up. Now that that is done we are pretty happy with the park.

Paducah, KY

Bowling Green, MO to Paducah, KY today. Staying at Fern Lake RV Park. We’ve been eating leftovers out of the refrigerator for two days, so we walked across the street to a Waffle place for Supper. Nice weather all day today.

Headed South Again

Yesterday after Mass we had lunch and said goodbye to our Sioux City family and drove to Des Moines. We parked for the night in our daughter’s driveway, and drove the Jeep across town to say goodbye to our other daughter. Today we have stopped for the night at the Cozy C Rv park near Bowling Green , MO.

Headed Back to Sioux City

We had to say goodbye to our families in Bismarck after a good month with them. It is always fun and relaxing to be there with them but we must travel on.

We have stopped for the night at a Walmart in Aberdeen, SD and should be back to Sioux City tomorrow. Wind was out of the northwest today which was nice.

Bismarck, ND

 We had a really relaxing trip coming up here to Bismarck. Both days with a tail wind, no mechanical problems and good weather. As usual, checking into the KOA here was easy and sress free. We have enjoyed the week spending times with the family members up here. 

In the afternoon of our last full day in Sioux City, having finished all of the projects that I could there, I decided to relax and fly the drone for a little bit. After flying for awhile and having it approached by a group of turkey vultures I decided to try out the automatic homiing switch since I had never used it before. It immediately dropped like a stone behind a large tree. Whoops! I had pushed the wrong button and shut off the props. I searched the hillside behind the tree for quite awhile and Janice came out and helped search for quite awhile. As we were giving up the search our grandson, Reed, came down and spotted it right away up in the tree. I called a tree service and they came out Monday and retrieved it for me. 

 Looks fine in the picture, we will check it out when we get back to Sioux City.

        

One of our granddaughters from Des Moines made us a hand painted slice of a log to decorate our motorhome entrance. It really looks nice. Thanks Larissa!

Looks like warm weather here this week.

Aberdeen, SD

We left Sioux City this afternoon and drove to Aberdeen, SD. His is one of the few times that we have headed to North Dakota with a tail wind. We are parked for the night at a Walmart and will head on to Bismarck in the morning.

Back to Wilson Mountain

Where is Wilson Mountain? After being on the road for a couple of years, we ended up buying a small acreage in the Loess Hills north of Sioux City, IA. We have a 40 ft shipping container here that we use to store a lot of our junk. No, not junk, important stuff that we can't let go of. Our youngest daughter and her family rent the house here from us and take care of the place when we are traveling. It is on a hill overlooking the Big Sioux River valley, their last name is Wilson, so it became Wilson Mountain. I installed a 50 amp outlet and we have a macerator pump and hose to empty tanks into the septic system so we can stay in the driveway here. We enjoy our time here, but I am usually busy working on a repair and maintenance list for the motorhome, Jeep, and the acreage. We also try to touch base with some old friends while we are in town along with appointments with doctors and finance people. We have been here since July 3 and will head off to Bismarck, ND in a couple of weeks. We enjoyed our time volunteering at Saylorville Lake again this year, but the time went by too fast. We try to spend as much time as possible with our two daughters and their families there, but this year we weren’t feeling well for the first few weeks and didn’t see them as much. Hopefully next year will be more relaxed.

At Saylorville, we park in our favorite site in Volunteer Village where the blue dot is

We put out our bird feeders there and enjoy watching them. 

We also enjoy watching the deer wandering around the RV sites.

A lot of my time there is spent on a tractor with a bush hog cutting down tall weeds and brush.

One of the hazards of cutting in brush as high as the hood of the tractor is not being able to see obstacles hidden in the brush. This is the result of cutting a firebreak near some downed pine trees.

And the one on the other side.

The reason for the flat tires. Yes, that is the end of a branch.

Our son in law’s new toy. No, we didn’t get to drive it, only sat in it.

Janice found herself in the midst of Star Wars one day

Our daughter has a lot of interesting chickens here on Wilson Mountain!

Saylorville Lake

 We stopped for one more night on the road at a casino rv park at Osceola, IA. We had been taking our time on the back roads and missed a turn resulting in a longer day than we expected so we stopped there rather than getting into Saylorville late. 

We have been here at the lake for three weeks now. Both of us have had a bad cough and allergies or colds for most of the time here. We pretty much stay home as much as possible as we really don't feel like doing anything. 

We had the oil and antifreeze changed in the motor home and are waiting for a new fan belt and hose to be installed here at the lake. Our grandson is going to install new shock absorbers on the motor home and our son-in-law is working on repairing the Jeep air conditioner.

Nevada, MO

We stopped for the night at a ... you guessed it! Walmart in Nevada, MO. Next door is Sharkey’s Pub and Grub. They had half price appetizers until 6:00 so we picked up some brisket quesadillas, spinach artichoke dip, and fried pickles for supper. Delicious and lots of leftovers.

De Queen, AR

Stopped for the night at the Walmart in De Queen, AR. We stopped for fuel and propane at a Flying J near Shreveport, LA and spent a lot of time there helping a lady who had locked her keys in her motor home in one of the truck fueling lanes and having lunch at Denny’s. Should have a scenic drive through western Arkansas tomorrow.

Nacogdoches, TX

We left the San Bernard NWR this morning to head up to DesMoines, IA. We enjoyed our work and accomplishments there over the winter and leaving the rangers and coworkers there was like leaving good friends. We left there a little after ten and stopped in town to say goodbye to the people at the quilt shop. We had a good day and stopped to overnight at the Walmart in Nacogdoches, TX. 

A Trip to Sargent

Last Friday we drove down to Sargent, TX, a little town near here on the Gulf. They recently built this bridge to replace the old swing bridge that they had to open to let barges pass through on the inland waterway. Last time we went down there it was still under construction, but now it is open so we crossed on it. There is a spiral ramp going up and down again on the other side.

The view from the top looking down on the inland waterway and you can see the Gulf on the right.

We stopped here for gas and lunch. Very interesting place...gas station, groceries, auto parts, hardware, lumbar yard, green house, and restaurant. The food was very good though!

Around the Refuge

My fellow volunteer, Kent, putting the finishing touches on our second replacement kiosk that we built.

We had to move this sign to here from a location abut a quarter of a mile from the road.

The office building here has a light that stays on at night and attracts quite a collection of moths.

Spyder lilies growing near the pond here.

One of the refuge trails near Lake Jackson had a small parking lot that was not large enough, so Kent and I were given the task of expanding it. We built a board fence arount the addition and leveled four truck loads of gravel to fill in low spots in the old and new areas.

 

The finished parking lot.

One day, instead of the usual alligator resting on this dock, a large diamond back water snake was sunning itself. 

After finishing the other parking lot, they gave us the task of fencing another one at a different trail.

One of the little lizards here.

Not sure what the name of this flower is, but there are several of them bloomiing around here.

This is a sign from the cemetery for the church that we attend in Brazoria. The parish of this church was the first parish established in Texas. 

We are finishing our last week of work here and plan on leaving for Des Moines on Monday.

Cold Spell Gone

 We had a few nights of 18 degree weather a couple of weeks ago. This was an unusual event for this part of Texas. It was accompanied by a few days of power outages. This wouldn't have been a problem up home, but here the water pipes are not buried very deep or insulated. We did some last minute preparation on the refuge plumbing but still ended up with some broken pipes in a couple of the buildings. We had our fresh water tank full in the motorhome and ran the generator for a few days until power came back on to stay, so we were luckier than many people in their houses.

The refuge had a couple of kiosks like this for posting informative signs. They were getting old a rotten and Kent and I were given the task of removing and replacing them. A few days work for each 

A few days work for each of them and this is what the new ones looked like.

Last Saturday we went out to some garage sales and ended up in Angleton, TX at lunch time. We tried out a Mexican restaurant there that we hadn't been to before. Food and service was great and I would highly recommend La Cosona. 

We have a couple of small alligators who live in the pond by the entrance gate here. Sometimes one or the other of them hang out on the dock.

There is another pond behind the shop here. We sometimes see a large alligator in here, but on this day we saw turtles!

A closer look. They looked to be about 3 foot across. The bright green on their backs is algae from the surface of the water. 

Driving around the refuge, we can usually find a few of these big fellows.

This area usually has a bunch of small ones like these.

Can you see the little ones here?

We watched the little ones for awhile and then the mom stuck her head out of the culvert.