Thanksgiving preparations

Wednesday we prepared some cranberries and a pumpkin pie.  While the pie was baking I found a bottle of wine and relaxed for an hour.

Buster is asleep somewhere, but the pie is cooked and turned out great.

See how cold it was today (Wednesday), Phil and Chris were crazy enough to go out walking in the frosty morning and I have to go too.

Here is a poor little frozen leaf, the frost is really thick here.

Thursday morning we were all up preparing the turkey for roasting.  Can't wait for dinner!

 Stuffed, into the oven and ready to cook.  Wonder if I can find another bottle of wine?

While the turkey roasted I found a few more photos of our trip to Chicago. 
 That's me keeping an eye on everything we pass from the big window of the RV.

We saw a lot of these grain silos and grain farms in Illinois.

 Now...where is that wine?

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from Buster, Phil and Chris

Los Banditos

Buster has been so odd since Texas.

Heading north in the RV

 We stayed at the Buffalo River National Park...great spot, wish we could have stayed longer and done some of the hiking there.  During the warmer months they have canoe hire and rafting on the river.

 Not exactly the hillbilly example I was looking for, but a picturesque country scene somewhere in Arkansas.

 Back to the concrete jungles of the city.  We stopped in St Louis Missouri to see the Jefferson Memorial Gateway Arch.  Driving the "bus" through the city and finding parking was a little challenging, especially when the sign in front of us says "max clearance 11ft 9 inches" and the height of the RV is closer to 13 feet.

After finding a suitable place to leave the RV for a while we had a look around the city and visited the arch.  It is really huge!  They didn't allow bears so we didn't go up, but spent some time in the museum beneath the arch.

 So that was our quick visit to St Louis, perhaps we'll be back.

New RV

They found an RV for our little Road Trip adventure.  Once we checked it out at the dealer, we drove both RV's back to El Monte and returned the rental.  The rental was a gas (petrol) engine, and very thirsty.  Our RV is a diesel and not so thirsty.

We were ready to head north with the goal of getting to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.  When we left Texas Phil and Chris were both wearing shorts.  I was fuzzily naked, because that's how it is. One day on the road however, and warm clothes were required for the humans!  Brr...they really complained a lot about the cold. 

A scenic route was chosen away from the interstate and through the western part of Arkansas into the Ozark mountains...hillbilly country.  We stayed at a couple of National parks which were closed for the season, and most of the facilities were shut down (electricity, showers and toilets) however there was running water.  With our little RV we are self contained and happy to camp in the desolate parks.  Hiking is always planned in these great places, however we realized that it was hunting season here which curtailed some of the walking.  There are deer, and one hunter said they are trying to increase the number of elk and even mountain lions in the area, but we didn't see anything like that. 

Last rays of sunshine

Today was sunny and warm so I was chilling with a beer and caught a few rays before we head north.

Had some time to look at some of our photos from the Texas part of our adventure, and even though we've been pretty busy trying to locate the RV which will take us on the rest of the roads, we had some time to visit some of the Texas State parks.  The parks we've visited are really nice with great camping facilities.

We've visited two parks near Fort Worth, first, Lake Mineral Wells where we saw a number of deer, birds and an armadillo.  We also have been to two sections of Ray Rogers Lake State Park, where we hiked for about 8 miles but didn't see as much wildlife.  I think our favorite thing about TX so far is the Mexican food and finding Shark Lager.

Our route north is designed to take us through the Ozarks (hope we don't run into to many Deliverance types out there) and then into Missouri, but we need to sort out the RV and then pay attention to the weather.

A Texas sized anger!

When Phil and Chris told me about the big adventure, they left out a few details.  Several days before our departure Phil took me over to Deb's to do some canvas work.  I got to sew what I thought was going to be my travel bag.

Clearly they had a different plan.

They stuffed me into my bag and I had to fly with the rest of the baggage!  Can someone adopt me??!  I was outraged.

I was stuffed in that bag from Tuesday afternoon until Thursday morning when they finally decided to release me.  Things have improved since then, so I guess I'll stay around and see what they get up to.  So far we've done some camping and hiking.  One morning we were out for an early hike and spotted an armadillo, in addition to a many deer (yum!).  When I get over that clausterphobic flight, I'll write some more.