March 28th - Home Again

I don’t think I posted this photo on my blog. Lydia likes a little salad with her Ranch Dressing.

 

 

Wednesday

I think it only got down to 19 last night, still the coldest of any night we have spent in the motorhome. We stayed nice and warm inside and had no problems.

I cut down a couple of dead trees that were along the edge of the woods around the cabin, and cut them up into firewood length chunks.

Kathy and I did some kitchen layout planning and we went to Lowes and looked at some of their cabinets to get an idea of what we want.

Miss FixIt - We had some problems with the door handle. Lydia spent a lot of time working on it.

 

Thursday

I borrowed a trailer from Tom, loaded up the wood I cut yesterday and hauled it down to his house. We fired up his splitter and while he worked on lawn mowers I spent a little over an hour splitting what I had hauled down plus some wood he had in a pile.

Merv, Kathy’s Dad, invited us to go to the 19^th Hole, a restaurant at a golf course near Lillian’s, with Lillian and him. The food was good, and so was Lydia.

 

We started our packing for our trip home.

 

Friday

Finished packing the CR-V, we left the motorhome in TN, and after going down to Tom & Mary Lou’s to say goodbye we headed for MO. On the way to their house we saw that Mary Lou had been busy yesterday afternoon, she had stacked most of the wood I split yesterday.

We were lucky with our packing. It rained some during Thursday night and again on Friday morning. We managed to get all our loading done while it was not raining. We had the back of the CR-V packed full to the top of the head rests on the back seat. I even left some of my tools in TN because we needed the space.

 

It was a little after 9 when we left. We drove through some light rain several times during the morning. By afternoon we were out of the rain, it was just cloudy. Since we were heading west the clouds were a blessing because we didn't have to drive directly into the sun all afternoon. We arrived at our home in MO about 8:45.

 

It feels like a LOOONG trip, 580 miles (getting old is tough <grin>, we used to drive straight though from Niantic, IL to Tampa, FL, over 1,000 miles). We only stopped three times. Lydia slept a lot of the morning. Around noon we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s and then filled up with gas before hitting the road again.

 

Stop 2 was at a rest area along I57 in Illinois. Lydia loved the slide. She went down it MANY times.

 

Someone had cut down several trees in the wooded area at the rest area. The person was quite creative with the stumps. They sawed a chair into one of the stumps.

 

At another one they used it as a base for a bird bath and a eagle. The eagle was a little rough, but it was a lot better than I could have done.



About 30 miles west of St. Louis we made our final stop for some supper and another gas fill up. Lydia was getting pretty tired of riding by this time. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be strapped in a car seat all this time.

 

Once we pulled into the driveway at home she brightened up a lot. I think she got her "second wind". She was quite a live wire until they finally put her to be a little after 10.

 

Good news - Today Kelsey and Andy accepted an offer on their house in Russellville. That will be a load off their minds. A guy is supposed to come out and pay Andy for his other "toy", the black car, tomorrow. Now they can get serious about house hunting.

 

Time to hit the sack. Not sure what is on tap for tomorrow. High temp is supposed to be 58 and it is supposed to be sunny. Should be a beautiful day.

 

May God bless you and yours.