Schulenburg, Texas

I took a picture a few days ago that I forgot to post. Some residents of a neighboring park have for years kept this family of skunks in their side yard. They move them periodically, but always the babies are following the mama. The other day when I rode by on the bicycle, I noticed they all had sombreros and serapes on! How cute.

We left our lot and Mom and Dad this morning at 7:35. We will see them again in about a month when they arrive back in Indiana and we get back from Virginia. We drove longer than we normally do for us, but we got into our camp in Schulenburg, Texas, at 1 p.m. The dogs made the drive without problems, even Bailey, whom we thought we would have to stop and let out. He was ready when we got here, but he was able to wait. This is a nice park, but we are pretty much packed in. All sites are pull through.


Shortly after arriving, there was a bit of excitement. Across a meadow sits a large elementary school. Apparently there were some acitivities going on there and someone got hurt. There were several emergency vehicles, but before long we heard a helicopter. It landed over at the school and they picked up a gurney with someone on it and took off, probably to Austin. Certainly hope the victim is okay.


The neighbor across from us had an interesting three-wheeler in front of his motorhome. How cute. We thought it was a motorcycle and it is actually tagged as a motorcycle. But it is built with all Ford parts, the engine is in front, it has a gearshift lever like you find on a floor console, and it has a steering wheel. It also has an accelerator and a brake pedal. Too cool. It was very interesting. Fortunately the guy did not mind our interest and allowed me to take pictures. I want one. . . and what Dale wants. . . . . . ???????


Schulenburg, Texas, is home to the painted churches. The congregations date from the 1800's and the churches all display beautifully painted artwork and stained glass windows. They have tours of the churches, but we cannot take several hours out of the day, so I'm not sure we will be able to see inside. They are beautiful on the outside though. We saw two tonight and will try to see the others tomorrow. We are here for a mail drop, then we will continue to make our way to Canton for First Monday.

Till next time. . .


Dale

Getting ready to roll . . .

Our plans here are to leave around 8 a.m. Sunday morning. We will be spending two days in Schulenburg, Texas, then make our way up to Canton, Texas. Canton is the home of "First Monday" which is a very LARGE flea market known as Canton Trade Days. We have tried to schedule this into the calendar for quite some time either coming/going to Texas, but this is the first time we have been able to do it. We have a campsite very near or on the grounds itself with a shuttle, so we should be able to visit at our leisure. We are planning on being there several days. I think it runs from Thursday through Sunday.

We have been getting things picked up here at the lot and we are in very good shape there. Yesterday Mom and Dad helped us empty the freezer by participating in a fish fry! They were fish left over from our off-shore trip with Gary, Terry's cousin, who owns "Lewis and Harp" coastal fishing guide service. We also had cole slaw and potato salad. What a feast!

We are winding down with our list of things to do. I plan to bathe the dogs tomorrow and get their bedding all washed up. That will just about finish everything on my list.

I have one project still unfinished from this winter. I brought quilt blocks I had cut out this summer to make us a "rag quilt" for the bed. It is quite an undertaking, but I have finished all I can do at this point. I am using flannel as the "batting" and I ran out. I can't remember how much I bought originally, but it wasn't enough. It is navy blue and I cannot find it down here anywhere. There are no JoAnn's down here. I did find a couple very, very nice fabric stores in Old Town McAllen, but I guess navy blue flannel is not real popular down here. So I am finishing up the quilt portion I have completed and then will add the rest when I find the flannel. I have to clip all the seams now. If you don't know what a rag quilt is, it has fringed seams which ravel and fuzz up when it's washed. While browsing in the fabric stores, we did find the fabric our new recliners are covered in. We bought several yards and have recovered our table chairs, We intend to get two matching chairs and have enough to recover them as well.

Till next time. . .

Dale

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day and the park celebrates by putting on a hotdog and beer feast. It is free to the residents of the park and so we were there. They started serving at 3 p.m. and if you weren't there by 2, you didn't get a seat. Mom and Dad went over early and saved us seats, then we went later after letting the dogs out.

Terry is gradually getting things back into the motorhome basement from the little barn. We keep a lot of his tools and assorted items in the shed while we are here to make everything a little more accessible. There will be things that we leave here this year, but not too much, because Mom and Dad put the golf cart in our little barn. Eventually, when we build our Texas room, we will have a storage area, including a golf cart garage.

Bailey, as I have mentioned, has been diagnosed with heart problems and he is having good days and bad days. He is reluctant to take his meds. I have been putting them in braunschweiger or cream cheese and he is now refusing that. Then he quit eating. It didn't take long before he started coughing, etc., so I boiled him some chicken and mixed it with rice. He is eating that and I hide his pills in the chicken. I am now mixing his regular food back in. Neal is now on a special liver diet which he does not seem to like. The vet insisted I couldn't give him anything else, but at 13, Neal is gonna get his treats. He lives for them and I won't deny him.

Last week we had some really cold, wet weather that came through. We managed to get through it and the chilly temperatures, and now we are rewarded with hot humid weather in the high 80's. It has been cloudy and humid today, so a trip to the pool may be in my future.

Our visit to the valley ends March 29 when we leave here and head north. We have reservations for First Monday, the giant trade days in Canton, Texas, for that week. It should be fun and we are looking forward to it.

Till next time. . .

Dale

Puttin' on the Ritz!

Today was the Ladies' Luncheon here at the park. We had a pot luck lunch and then a style show. Anyone could be in the style show, but you must have purchased your clothes from one of the many "ropa" stores located throughout the valley. Ropa is the Spanish word for "clothes" and in these "stores," clothes are piled high on mounds and you plop yourself on top of the mountain and start sorting through. Everything is sold by the pound and it was interesting to see what the ladies came up with on their forage through the ropa.

As it turned out, there were several beautiful dresses. I'm not sure what you would wear these dresses to, but they were beautiful and colorful neverthe less. Here are some of the items modeled by their owner (the last black/white gown won the competition):

It was a lot of fun and I am ready to go shopping!

Till next time. . .

Dale

Veterinarian's revenge!

A dog on a diuretic. Yep, that's what I call it, the veterinarian's revenge. I guess it could be worse . . . that would be a dog on exlax. Although at 3 a.m., it's hard to think that way.

We discovered when we were in Kerrville and had to rush Bailey to a vet that he is suffering from an enlarged heart and fluid around the heart and lungs. He still had some infection in his lungs, so the vet prescribed high powered antibiotics for that along with a heart pill and a diuretic. In fact, the two heart pills are two of the same ones Terry takes.

Bailey is finished with the antibiotics and the heart pills seem to make him lethargic and he has very little energy. On his own, he has started to refuse his morning pills, but takes the ones at night. I have tried braunschweiger and cream cheese, his two favorites. He refuses it in the morning, along with eating very little; but hungrily gobbles them up at his evening feeding along with most of his food. He doesn't seem to be having problems, in fact, he seems to be in good spirits and is even back to doing his little trot with spring in his step. At 13, Bailey seems to have decided what is best for him and we have accepted that. It does appear that Cushings syndrome is not what we were looking at, but heart disease. That is good in that Cushings is much, much harder to treat.

Till next time. . .

Dale