Here I am AGAIN!

So, I got a total reality check from Judy about my lack of mojo on my blogging. As she put it, “Oh come on now, you can post every three days, How about some more pictures of the campgrounds you're in? And where are those 'stylish' ensembles? Is MacGyver not grilling out for you? :) I gotta say that I have been lax in my creativity due to a general lethargy about almost everything.  Judy is correct.  I should be able to post more often now.  After all, I AM ON THE ROAD, for God’s sake!!  It seems that the down turn of events the last 6 months had finally caught up with me, and yes, my mojo had abandoned me. (Mr. Mojo probably didn’t want to hang around Nancy Negative either!)   Suffice to say, I found no zest in writing…and my “get up and go” just got up and went…Having said that,  I am trying to get back to that “ happy place”. I know I can find it…and only I can control that. Thanks, Judy, I needed that proverbial “kick in the ass!”. Gotta count those blessings, and… a good knock up along side the head is sometimes needed…Thanks, girlfriend.!

OK , enough boring psycho-self analyzing…(THAT was a mouthful!).  MacGyver and I are getting closer to Florida..I can almost see DisneyWorld from here. (with apologies to Sarah Palin) .We are currently camped in Twitley Branch Army Corps campground in Collinsville, MS.  Collinsville is just North of Meridian, for all you Atlas home gamers.  We are almost in the movie “Deliverance”.  NO!!, I was just KIDDING!   However, it is very quiet here most of the time. We even heard a Screech Owl the other night sitting by the fire..creepy but somehow calming. 

This loop is the only loop open here this time of year…loop LobLolly..Yeah, I know..perfect for me..I can be a little “lobLolly” on occasion.

  

On the left is the shower house, which we never use..BUT, in the middle door is a small laundry…1 washer and 1 dryer…This was the first place I visited when we got set up…One week,  and we both run out of underwear…Maybe that was TMI , huh?

Out of 30 sites in this loop, we are one of four RV’s here.  Normally I find this wonderful, but I got a little paranoid when I drove up to this laundry BY MYSELF (Dennis was hooking up the Direct TV).  I threw in a load, went up and signed us in, then drove back to the laundry to sit outside and do a crossword puzzle till time to rotate said laundry…As I was sitting  all alone on the little park bench you see outside the building, it came to mind that someone could whisk me away to places unknown and no one would be the wiser. (except me, I can be a wise ass if driven to it!)..I REALLY need to stop watching re-runs of Criminal Minds on the TV!..but it did unnerve me slightly.  Note to self..you really should carry mace, a whistle…or borrow a “billy club” from Detective Heiser!!

 

The weather has been 70’s and I have coffee outside…LOVE IT!! Right is my view from my coffee spot yesterday AM..not too bad! Well, those garbage cans might be a stretch!

Last evening, MacGyver and I were sitting by the fire and it was just very quiet and hazy. The moon won’t be full until Dec. 6th (tomorrow), but as it was coming up just behind the pines I had to get a picture…

Left, it wasn’t quite dark…I took above photos with the camera on my phone…I do believe I caught that hazy moon peeking and winking at me from behind those pines.

What a difference the good 35mm digital camera makes, right??

We have had a campfire here every evening, and a nice brisk and warm walk in just jeans and a T-shirt in the mornings…

Those Cypress knobs look like this tree has claws!..I saw something across the river and zoomed in with the good camera…Couldn’t have caught the “masked marauder” with my camera phone!

Well, that is about it for today…Oh, …to answer the question if Chef Dennis  still grills out for us…YES! Tonight is chicken quarters on the little Weber charcoal…I am marinating…Let me rephrase that, it’s  not ME marinating, but the chicken. (I’ll be marinating myself about 5PM).   Later this afternoon, the chickens get my rub, and soon they are ready for the Chef to work his grilling magic.  Chef Dennis has been my official “griller of choice” for 45 years now…He thinks he needs a raise….fat chance.

Above….on the left…I present my Chef..Chef Dennis, assisted by his sous-chef (his cousin, on the right)…

This was taken in our driveway about 1982..Hmmm ..I wonder why he doesn’t cook in that little outfit these days! I really must see about his chef apparel!. (wink wink)…

“If you don't do anything stupid when you're young, you won't remember something funny when you're old...”

                                                                            ~unknown

Shock of shocks..only 3 days since my last blog!

  Yep, give me just a little spare time to sit at the computer and I manage to scrape some drivel together and call it a blog.  Currently, MacGyver and I are sitting on the North edge of Lake Grenada in Mississippi.  The campground is called North Abutment and the sites are just great here!

We stayed here once before in November 2011 and remember how wide open the sites were…That time, we were on a site in the woods, but this year we chose a site on the lakeside.

I took the left photo the day we arrived…still cool, but no snow…Right photo is when it warmed up to 70 degrees and I left our door open..( notice the “fan club” we had watching us.)

Yep, ahem ahem, got us a naaaaace pull through spot rot on the lake…Y’all ‘d lock it heya… OK OK, VERY politically incorrect, but I LOVE listening to that deep Mississippi accent they’all have here in the deep South!

We have been here in heaven for going on 6 nights, for the great price of $10 a night…and tomorrow we pull up stakes and go about 2 1/2 hours farther South, chasing the warmth, as it were.  We are staying 4 nights in Twitley Branch Army Corps campground at Collinsville, MS, another place we only pay 1/2 price to camp.  We have stayed there once before…Hmmm, maybe we AREN’T chasing the warmth, but chasing the CHEAPNESS of the campgrounds…tehee. At any rate, we leave Twitley on Sunday and go to Pensacola Beach for our first full week in Florida.  We were near there 2 years ago, before we prematurely got called home, so I never did get close enough to see that white sand beach…BY GOD, THIS YEAR I WILL SEE IT, DOGGONE IT!!

Got some garland up on the slide, and I’m sure it will do just that when I pull that slide in to travel…Right pic? Just in case our Santa is mini sized and missing his “fur from his head to his foot”…

I had to have a touch of “bling”, hence the glitzy bow..and …Frosty has quite the view out our back window…

I cannot remember when I have posted blogs 3 days apart, but don’t get too used to it, just in case I lose my mojo…Lord knows, that could happen most anytime at my extended years!!

Get in the GMC by 10AM tomorrow…it’s movin’ day! (Just shove the cases of Busch Lite over and jump in!)

Got my Christmas goin’ on.

My Merry ChristMoose lighted tree…

Yep, got the Lava Lamp going too…hey, after all, I am a child of the 60’s…

 

Gotta love my Moose/tree…I had to do something different this year…I am in the process of hanging garland…more later.

Well….we THOUGHT we were heading South!!

A quick thrown together blog (what else is new?) to let you know the Cave Dwellers finally got their act together and took it on the road.  We loaded the Hiker on Tuesday, and it sleeted that evening and the temp dropped to 19 degrees.  Needless to say, we had a little trouble with icing on the slides,…and the locks were iced up.  Not to be deterred, MacGyver and I got up at 6AM Wednesday morning and did the few last things before we pulled out of the driveway.  One funny thing (well, NOT funny to Den) happened. We learned to turn off the water in the house before leaving for the Winter…Dennis did that about 7AM…and about 7:10 AM he attempted to fill our fresh water tank…hmmm. Thinking that the water was frozen at the outside faucet, he even used a little torch on the faucet. That was when the light bulb went off in his MacNoggin…DUH..The water was turned off. As you can see, we were a little discombobulated and disoriented before we finally got the rig on the road.

Our first night was to be spent at Rend Lake in Southern Illinois.  We got in about 1PM and got all set up, cozy and ready for cocktail hour…

Just look how cozy we are!! Relaxed and enjoying our first night “on the road”…and the it began….

WHAT THE HECK????? Who predicted this??? We checked Weather Bug and THIS was NOT in the forecast!!

So, this put a bit of a damper on the celebration of getting out of the snowy and frigid Northern Illinois.  We watched our outdoor thermometer continue to plummet…We have one of those clock/thermometers that projects the bad  news on the ceiling of our bedroom…and by 6AM it was 20 degrees. Yikes.

Our plans were to get on the road early..Dennis was determined that if we could get the slides cleaned off of ice, the interstates wouldn’t be very bad..So, he climbed up on top our Hiker roof (while I stayed inside and prayed to Murphy not to slap him to the ground).  Our broom wasn’t cutting it, so I handed him a long thin piece of wood from the back of our truck. We always take some to help level from side to side. He used that as a giant“camper slide scraper” and managed to get them clean enough to pull in.  And after prying, kicking and crunching the ice off our Direct TV setup, steps, and electric cord, we pulled out about 7:45AM…

Above is road leading out of the camping area to the highway….If I hadn’t been so scared I would have considered it very pretty….We came from Northern Illinois with no snow to Southern Illinois and icy, snowy nastiness..However, Den was right, I-57 S was clear when we got on it , and clear all the way..We ran out of snow after about 30 miles.

So, our first couple days of returning to the RV life was, as it usually is, a tug of war between Murphy and us…and we finally won. We arrived here at Grenada Lake, MS, North Abutment about 1:30PM and lovely site it is!!

That would be us…right on the lake…aaaahhh, yes.

They are predicting almost 70 degrees here this weekend, and our first reservation is not until Dec. 7th, so we decided to stay 6 nights to “shed the stress and decompress”…in a lovely spot..FYI, this is and Army Corp campground, so it cost us old farts $10 a night..Looks like we have a plan..and Murphy can take a flying leap!!!

Forty-five years…when the Heck did that happen?

Short blog…Dennis and I celebrated 45 years of marraige Saturday, November 22nd.  Time has a way of getting by too fast!!

Me and my Dad, left….middle is me and my sister, Darlene…and right, well…the whole damn wedding party…oh my!

 

Dennis was sporting his “Dracula hairline” back then, complete with  Brylcreem…”a little dab ‘l do ya!”

…yep, we had the traditional wedding and the throwing of rice..In that right photo, I just realized Dennis IS Dracula..check those canines!!

Anyway…our  kids were all home for the weekend to celebrate with us and I will post photos later..As for right  now, Dennis and I are packing the Hiker. We have to go up to our elders tomorrow and make sure they get some groceries. Our cousin is going to take over while we are gone..and by gone, I mean Wednesday  morning..However, the bombastic bumpkin weather forecasters are looking their crystal ball and seeing 3-5 inches of snow coming tomorrow night!…SAY WHAAAAAT??? We shall plan on leaving Wednesday morning unless it is just too bad, in which case my evil twin will take over and I will become the Wicked Witch of Center St. yet again…Stay tuned!!

Freedom Isn’t FREE!

I would like to thank all you brave souls who served proudly in our military through the years…You are ALL heroes and so,so many made the ultimate sacrifice..I would especially like to acknowledge some family members who stood side by side to protect our freedoms….

Our son, Kelly and my beloved “MacGyver” Dennis…

 

Den’s Uncle Clarence Bark (Uncle Jr.) and my Uncle Walter Fry…

 

My Great Grandfather, William Harnish (I have no photos, but he served in the 23rd Indian Battery during the Civil War…)

 

 

Though I have no photos of him in uniform, my second cousin, Eyles Harnish who served in WWII….and his father ,my Great Uncle George Harnish, who served in the Phillipine- American War 1899-1902..Nope, I had never heard of this one either, but it was nasty..see the link.

There could be more who served in our family, but these are the ones of which I am certain.  To All OF YOU who served, I humbly thank you for the life we enjoy today…

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”   ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy