Feb 28th - Arrived in Crossville

I said in my last post that we would be leaving Livingston, TX last Thursday. Thursday turned out to be such a nice day that we stayed there and did a little more sightseeing. We drove over to Lake Livingston and checked it out. It is HUGE.

When we left Friday morning we had sheet ice on one of the slide toppers. The temperature was 32 when we left. It has been below that until about 2PM today, in TN.

Friday we drove 580 miles and spent the night in Jackson, TN. We drove the final 260 miles today and arrived at our place about 3 PM. We did manage to stop at Demo's in Lebanon, TN for lunch. It is one of our favorite restaurants and we were not disappointed. Our meal was excellent.

The damage from last weeks ice storm is amazing. I copied the photo below from one of the neighbors Facebook post.

Over 30,000 people lost their power. A week later 7,500 still don't have power.

Our place seems to have "weathered the storm" with no problems. Since the heat is all electric I was concerned that some of the plumbing might freeze and burst, but it all appears to be OK.

There is a lot of clean up work to be done in the area. We plan on staying here for the next several weeks so we can help with some of it, and enjoy time with family and friends.

Time for bed. May God bless you and yours.

Feb 25th - Dreary Day

The past 2 days here have been pretty dreary. It has been cool with light rain a lot of the time. At least we are above freezing. I think today's high was 41.

Yesterday we drove down to Cleveland, TX to pick up a prescription at a Walgreens. While there we had a late lunch at D&M Diner.

My hamburger was great and Kathy said so was her BBQ brisket.

Today we only got out to make a run to the grocery store. Just to dreary to get excited about doing much.

In the morning we pull out and head for TN. Tom & Mary Lou have been without power since around 5AM last Saturday. The ice that has taken down hundreds of power poles, lots of trees, etc. As of this morning there were still over 20,000 homes without power, 17,000 of them are in Cumberland County (where Tom & Mary Lou live).

Our current plan is to drive half way tomorrow, take a rest day, and finish the trip on Saturday.

May God bless you and yours.

Feb 22nd - First Baptist Church

We attended a great church service this morning at First Baptist Church in Livingston. We attended the 10:30 "contemporary" service. The music was far to "contemporary" for me but Kathy enjoyed it. Obviously many others also enjoy it because there were a lot of folks in attendance. The Lord has led us to dynamic churches to attend while visiting Crossville, TN; Summerdale, AL and now here in Livingston, TX. It is exciting to see God's hand at work in different communities.

This church decided they had outgrown there old facility in 2004 and they bought 75 acres on the outskirts of Livingston. In 2008 they held their first worship services in the new facility. The 10:30 service filled up maybe 70% of the available seating. They already have an "overflow" area into which they can divert folks if the main sanctuary gets full.

The Pastor had a great message out of Luke 5. The passage tells about Jesus going out in a boat to preach because the crowds were so great. It goes on to tell about the fishermen, who had just come in from a night of poor fishing prior to Jesus making use of one of their boats, being told by Jesus to go back out and try again. They were tired and they had not caught anything during the prime time for fishing, yet they went out again their nets were filled to overflowing. The entire message was good but I thought the best point was when the Pastor suggested that one of Simon Peter's thoughts might have been, "I wish my net was bigger". The Pastor asked us to question if our "nets" were to small. He suggested that we Christians tend to think far to small. God is capable of filling the largest "nets" we can imagine. He related his own experience with "small nets". He had set a goal, in his head, that they would baptize and average of one person every week. While he was thinking about this someone came in his office to discuss the 2 people who wanted to be baptize this morning, the person noted that after these 2 baptisms they have baptized 31 people already this year. God planted the though in his head about his "small nets".

As we were leaving the service it dawned on Kathy that a miracle had occurred, we had attended a Baptist church service where they had not taken up an offering! There was a place in the back where people could put an offering if they so desired. Basically they don't expect "guests" to put money in the offering. Harvest Community, where I attended when we lived in Lebanon, was also like that.

After church we drove around looking for a place to have lunch. Kathy finally wheeled us into Shrimp Boat Manny's.

Kathy has a shrimp and oyster combo, which she said was good. I had catfish. I was a little concerned because the menu said something about mustard in the breading but I thought I would be adventuresome and try it. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY THE BEST CATFISH, MAYBE EVEN THE BEST FISH, I HAVE EVER HAD! The breading was good but the catfish was awesome. It was really juicy, and seasoned with something that made it awesome. There are several other places we want to try but I sure would not mind it if we have to go back to Manny's.

After watching the NASCAR race I had to force myself to go on a 2.8 mile walk around the campground to try and wear off some of my lunch. Walking 2.6 miles here, with the ups and downs, probably burns as much calories as walking 4 miles along the flat beach.

Temps are heading down. The high was 66 and tonights low is supposed to be 35. Colder tomorrow but then it starts warming up again.

May God bless you and yours.

Feb 21st - Pancake Breakfast

This morning I walked over to the Care Center for their pancake breakfast. For $4 you received a helping of scrambled eggs, a sausage patty, coffee, juice, and all the pancakes you could eat. You could have either plain pancakes or blueberry pancakes. The benefits were: 1. a good breakfast, 2. provide some financial support for the Care Center & 3. a nice walk, since it is a little over 0.6 miles from our site to the Care Center.

The Escapees campground in Livingston is the main one. One of the great things they do here is provide care for RV'ers who are having health issues. An area of the campground is set aside to provide services to those in need. People there can either go to the Care Center for meals, its a very short walk from the designated spots to the Care Center facility, or they can have volunteers deliver meals to their RV's. In addition volunteers provide RV cleaning and other services. There is also a handicap accessible minibus for those who need transportation.

Below are some photos of flowers in the park while I was out walking around yesterday and today.

It was quite windy yesterday afternoon and the magnolia tree lost a lot of blossoms.

You get to see some interesting "rigs" when you walk around. I didn't get close enough to check out the name tag on this truck but it sure doesn't look like something that would have enough guts to pull this 5th wheel.

This afternoon I was sitting outside reading. I was sitting in a lawn chair and had my feet up on the bench of a picnic table. Up came a friend.

She walked around a little and once she found out I wasn't going to pet her she flopped down under the table, went to sleep and started snoring. 10-15 minutes later a car returned to one of the RV's down the street and she jumped up to go check it out. All dogs in the campground are supposed to be on leashes, at all times. Kathy said she saw this one wandering around yesterday. She thinks the dog may belong to someone in a neighboring home. The dog has a collar but no tags on it.

We tried a Chinese buffet for lunch today, not so good. I'm sure we can do better tomorrow.

High temp was a cloudy 70 today. Last nights low was 62. The next several days aren't going to be as nice, but they will be FAR nicer than what folks in the frozen northland are experiencing.

May God bless you and yours.

Feb 18th - Another Nice Day

Yesterday the weather improved from Monday and it improved a lot more today. Today was one of the nicest days since we have been here. The sky was amazingly clear out over the Gulf today.

We haven't been doing a lot, just enjoying ourselves. Yesterday we dropped of some prescriptions for refills at the Walgreens in Clute, TX. We found a new place to eat lunch, Bella Roma's. I ordered the spaghetti with mushrooms and Kathy ordered a pizza. Note the rolls in the bowl between us. They brought them to us when they were fresh out of the oven. They were AWESOME!!! The spaghetti was good and Kathy said the pizza was very good (We did bring a lot of it home.)

I ate all my spaghetti. After we got home I went out and walked 2 miles along the beach.

Today's "excitement" was going over to a local dentist to have him check out a tooth that has been annoying me. He told me that he thought that it needed to be extracted but that it could wait until I got back to Missouri, since it isn't causing me big problems. We stayed at the campground the rest of the day. I took a 4 mile beach walk today. (I have to get more exercise since I'm eating so much)

We leave here Friday morning and start our trek into the frozen northland. Instead of going through Dallas/Ft.Worth we are going northeast out of Houston and we will go through Arkansas on our way home. Today I made reservations for us to stay a week at an Escapees campground in Livingston, TX. Livingston is about 75 miles northeast of Houston. (The place we stayed in Alabama was also an Escapees campground) We still plan to return to Centertown on March 3rd, no matter how cold it is.

May God bless you and yours.

Feb 20th - Surfside Beach to Livingston

As we left the Surfside/Freeport area I was again amazed at all the industry (jobs) down here. We have driven by Shintech Inc several times; it is a large facility. I looked it up on the Internet and found that it is the largest maker of PVC in North America. DOW's facilities down here absolutely dwarf the Shintech facility. There are hundreds, quite possibly over a thousand, of vehicles in what looks like DOW's construction parking lot. It looks like there is a fleet of old school busses that ferry workers to the construction site. On top of that, even with all these chemical and refinery facilities there are no chemical odors, nor smog. 40 years ago the refineries around the Beaumont, Port Arthur area were pretty stinky.

We saw a “Help Wanted” sign at one of the Buckees stores, they are similar to a Casey's. The lowest starting salary was $11/hour. Several of the jobs posted started at $12/hour. We wouldn’t have to worry about the government raising the minimum wage if it would just get out of the way and quit strangling existing business preventing the formation of new business because of all the regulation. More jobs equal higher pay for people who want to work and who are willing to learn a skill.

35 miles south of Houston, at 10AM, dash thermometer said 71. Now, at 2:30PM in the campground it is 65 degrees. Those of you up north probably think I’m nuts when I tell you that 65 feels cold because it is cloudy and windy. We will think we are going to freeze to death when the overnight low drops to 31 degrees Monday night.

May God bless you and yours.

Feb 16th - Alone Again

Everyone has left for home and the great weather has turned for the worse, although not nearly as bad as those north of us are enduring.

We took Kelsey and Lydia to the airport this morning. They should be home by now. Kelsey texted when they were within 30 minutes of Centertown and said all was going well. Doug and Anthony came for awhile and then they headed out about 3PM.

We will miss all our sweeties.

Lydia dancing at the wedding reception.

Doug & Lydia dancing.

 

Lunch at Pier 30 yesterday. Most of the Towers clan. Tom & Mary Lou left early so they weren't in attendance.

When we got back from Houston we took a short walk along the beach.

 It was 70 degrees on our way back from the airport in Houston. It is 43 here now, and a couple of degrees lower in Houston. The wind is blowing enough to make the motor home sway gently. We went out again about 2 PM and the surf is the highest we have seen by far.

 



May God bless you and yours.