I have been for a follow up with the doctor and am doing well. Still working on trying to recover my strength and making progress.
We have been working on getting ready for the holidays and, at the same time, getting the 5er ready for our trip to Florida the beginning of January. I just hope that it warms up there before we arrive. The goal is to get away from the cold!!!
Our plan is to stay in Florida until mid to late March 2011 and then return to SC for a brief visit before heading back out west. Have to take care of doctor visits during this time also.
Once we get back on the road I will get back into my routine of updating our blog daily, I promise!! I have been a slacker lately……
One thing that we did celebrate since my last update was our wedding anniversary on December 19. We have now been married 40 years!! And all of them happy ones!
Once again, Charley and I sincerely hope that everyone out there will have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!! And be safe!
Thanks to everyone for the very kind comments added to our blog related to my recent illness. I am continuing to recover and am doing well with a goal of getting back to as normal as possible by Christmas!!
We are still planning to head for Florida in early January. We just hope that the weather there will warm up before we go!!
It is unusually cold here for this time of year and we are staying in as much as possible, especially me. I plan to continue to do this until it gets a little warmer. In the meantime I will just continue to shiver.
We hope that all you RVers out there will have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
We have been out of commission for a couple of weeks. I have been in the hospital with pneumonia and Charley was with me almost non-stop for the 9 days I was there. But I am home now, as of Tuesday, 12/7, and continuing to recover, with lots of loving attention from Charley. Couldn’t do it without him!
Cheyenne was so glad to see us come home!! She stayed glued to us for two days before calming back down and getting back into her daily routine.
We still plan to be in Florida soon after the New Year arrives and will be at the Super Rally January 12-16 in Tampa as planned. We will then go from there to somewhere in Florida to stay until late March.
Our son, Jason, has teamed up with a friend of his to compete in BBQ cook-offs. They were entered in one on November 6 and they won first place in the amateur division. They won $500 and a huge trophy!! They entered another on November 20, here in Blythewood, SC, and they took 6th place. So they are off to a great start and seem to really enjoy doing it.
We have already begun to celebrate Thanksgiving. We had our family get together with my Mom on Sunday and everyone except my son, his wife and youngest daughter were there. Kaydee, our little 4 year old, was sick and could not go. We had a great time and lots of good food. I am so thankful that my Mom is doing so well even though she has many health issues. She did, however, overdo it while trying to prepare food and get ready for everyone to converge at her place!! Will probably take her a week or more to recover.
We are also invited to share a Thanksgiving meal with our son-in-law’s family on Thanksgiving day. We are looking forward to seeing them all again. Oh how I do love the turkey and all the trimmings!!
Charley’s Dad is visiting this week (93 years young, remember) and is currently at my brother-in-law’s home. He will be coming to spend a few days with us over the weekend before we get him back home. He is still doing very well.
We are so thankful that our entire family still remains in good health overall and seem to be prospering even in light of our country’s current economic situation. We do hope that this continues into the holiday season and the new year ahead.
Charley and I hope that all of you readers/followers out there will have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!
We had a nice dinner with our family last night to celebrate our grandson’s 11th birthday.
He has celebrated every one of his 11 birthdays by having dinner at Hooters!! Can you imagine? It is sort of a tradition with him. When he was a toddler he really loved having his picture taken with the Hooters girls. Now he is somewhat embarrassed by it all….but he was a good sport and posed for our cameras. 
He also has birthday parties and invites his friends and family.
When Jed joined us at Yellowstone in September he let us know that he wanted a western belt with a big cowboy buckle like his Pepaw has along with a western shirt that he can wear with his cowboy hat. So that is what we got him for his birthday. A black western shirt, black belt and silver buckle with a Texas longhorn on it. He tried it on and modeled it for us last night and he looked like a real cowboy!! He kept saying thank you over and over.
Not looking good for the trip to Florida before Christmas. More doctor visits to take care of.
Stay tuned!!
We are getting anxious to get on the road again! We are talking about a two week trip to check out an Escapees SKP park in Wauchula, Florida that Charley found out about. This will depend on my ability to rearrange a doctor’s appointment so it may not be possible. We shall see.
What we have been doing lately, other than spending time with family, is taking care of some reorganizing/cleaning of the 5er and trying to do some early Christmas shopping on-line. We have found, since we began our adventure this year, that we don’t need all the “stuff” that we started with. And I am sure that this will continue to change and require even more organizing.
And since I am not a person who enjoys shopping (yes, I know…. I am weird), on-line is the way to go for Christmas.
And the cleanup is not yet finished. That is moving very slowly but it WILL be done. We will not take the 5er back out on the road until she is completely cleaned up.
Charley and I were invited to have lunch with our two oldest grandchildren, ages 10 and 7, on Veterans Day. Charley was on stage for a few minutes in the 7 year old’s class to answer questions about his military experience. He retired from the SC Army National Guard with 20 years of service in 1995. The school served turkey and dressing and it was quite good. The grandkids seemed very proud that we were there for them.
This is about it for now. Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!!
We went shopping today for a new recliner for Charley and he found one. It is a LA Z BOY brown leather oversized wall hugger. How is that for a description??? Seriously, it is very nice. We had been planning on replacing the original recliners that came with our 5er with better quality ones. We just recently decided that we would go with one versus two since my perch is on the sofa. And I will steal the recliner from him when I need it. 
We hope to be able to pick up the new one on Friday.
Also had another doctor visit for a checkup today and that went well. So far nothing but the scheduling of tests that have to be done on a regular basis. All goodness!!
Still haven’t finished our cleanup chores yet. What can I say? We are retired you know.
We are still planning to become snowbirds and head for south Alabama in January.
I took on a huge project about 1 1/2 weeks ago. We had most of our pictures stored electronically, either from those uploaded from our cameras or stored on CD’s or scanned into the computer and then put on CD’s. You name it, we had it. Well, I decided that we needed to get these stored in a more protected way so we bought a 1 TB external hard drive to use primarily for this and then I got started. Well, needless to say, this became much bigger than I originally thought and I am still working on it. We had duplicates and I decided to try to find them all. I am also trying to group the pictures and name the files so that we know what they are. This is fun for me because I love organizing things. I am very close to being done with what we have. We still have a few photo albums stored somewhere (?) that we need to pull out so that I can scan and save those. Keeps me busy, you know?
More later.
We are still trying to get all of our cleanup activities taken care of. There have been a lot of unexpected grandchildren activities including one field trip that have prevented us from making a lot of progress but we hope to get on it soon. Aside from this we do not have much going on right now other than doctor visits and family stuff. Charley and I were talking just yesterday that we already miss being on the road and are looking forward to our next journey in January.
Welcome to the new followers that have joined us in the last couple of weeks. Sorry that the timing is not just right for seeing much about us right now but we will be back!!
Well, we are continuing to work on clean up activities from our two months of travel. Charley has started on getting all the bugs removed from our 5er but there is still more of that….. The truck has only had some reorganizing done so far, she still needs a bath! What can I say, we are both being a little lazy since we returned but we will get back on track soon. We did get some much needed cleanup finished inside the 5er this week.
For those of you who kept up with us throughout our trip, our grandson’s name is Jed (nickname that comes from his name - Jason Edward Dilworth, Jr). He was apparently a big hit at school when he returned from Yellowstone with all of his pictures, brochures and stories. Even though he enjoyed the horseback riding the most it seems :-)…..
The fall weather is beginning to move into the midlands of SC. Leaves are turning and falling and temperatures are becoming more tolerable. We will try to take some pictures of the fall colors here and post them later.
The holidays will be here soon and I cannot believe it. 2010 has flown by but it has been a really fun year.
More later.
We have been very busy with family the last few days. Just checking in to let everyone know we are still kicking!! The rest of the month of October will be dedicated to getting in for a number of doctor visits, including flu shots, and getting the 5er and truck all cleaned up from our travels. They are both a mess!!
Hope everyone is doing well and getting prepared for winter!!
We arrived in Bythewood, SC yesterday afternoon and have been hugged and hugged and hugged!! It was so good to see our grandchildren, they make us feel so loved and special!! We have our youngest granddaughter’s birthday party tomorrow and that will be fun. She is turning 4.
We will be taking time off from our travels until after the holidays so updates to our blog may be a little less frequent than they have been. We will be keeping up with all of you while we are “resting”….. and then on to sunny south Alabama in January with plans to be there for about 2 months.
It has been a fun couple of months but we look forward to moving at a much slower pace from now on. 9,000 miles in 2 months is just too much!!
Stay tuned and we will too!!
We left Talladega at about 8:15 this morning and arrived at Crooked Creek RV Park in West Union, SC at about 3:30 (one hour time change included). Got all set up, made a quick grocery run and then did dinner with my sister, Pat, who works here at the park. After dinner took some time to show her some of our pictures from the trip.
We are tired and looking forward to visiting with some of our family for a couple of days (Charley’s Dad and my Mom mainly). Then it will be back to Blythewood, SC to see the kids and grandkids on Friday!!
Sorry, no pictures today….. Camera did not even get turned on!!
We left Little Rock at around 8:00 this morning and arrived in Memphis between 10:30 – 11:00. No pictures today, only took a couple of the Mississippi River when we crossed it and I will include those tomorrow. Since I started the day with a major headache and cannot seem to kick it today will be very quiet.
We are actually staying at the Elvis Presley Blvd RV Park. It is about 1 1/2 blocks from Graceland. We saw Elvis’s jet plane on display as we passed by it on our way here.
We are planning to watch the Clemson football game tomorrow (kickoff at 11:00AM CDT) and then head out for some sightseeing followed by some Memphis BBQ for dinner. Not sure if we will have to take one of the tours to actually see Graceland or not but I would guess that we would have to. Our hope is to just snap a few pictures from the outside. Not really interested in the grand tour but we will see….. There are many other sights to see here based on the brochures we picked up and Charley’s research.
I promise a better update tomorrow.
We left Oklahoma City at 8:30 this morning an arrived here in Little Rock at around 3:30 this afternoon. Staying at the Downtown Riverside RV Park, a very small campground in downtown Little Rock. It is an okay place for a one night stay, no cable, no sewer connections and none of the amenities we have grown accustomed to. But for an overnight it is fine.
The drive here was VERY boring. I-40 did not offer much in the way of scenery, mostly just trees between the exits…. ho, hum. We did not think we would ever say it but, the plains of Colorado and Kansas were much more interesting!! Needless to say there are no pictures to share tonight…..
We will be packing up and heading for Memphis in the morning and will be there for three nights. Several things we plan to see there so the pictures will be returning soon!!
***********************************************
A note to everyone who has joined us as blog and network blog (facebook) followers since we started this adventure…. THANK YOU!! We appreciate you travelling along with us. We also enjoy and appreciate all the nice and at times very helpful comments that keep coming our way. My apologies for not saying thank you sooner!!
What a boring drive!! Everything looked pretty much the same for the entire trip! We did see one thing new, feeder lots for cattle. They were huge and were filled with hundreds of cattle. Needless to say, the aroma was strong!!
We left Greeley at 8:30AM Mountain Time and arrived in Russell at 4:30 Central. Losing an hour is not a good thing on a long travel day….
We are planning to leave early in the morning headed for Oklahoma City. We are going to stay two nights there and get some rest (I hope)… Will be staying at our first “adults only” campground.
No pictures again today, like I said…. boring….
We have spent today relaxing, watching football, and getting ready for a couple of days of hard travel to get back east by the deadline we have set for ourselves. Planning to head out early in the morning on our way to Russell, Kansas where we will spend one night and then on to Oklahoma City where we plan to spend a couple of nights.
Getting ready to start dinner so that we can watch the Gamecocks play Auburn. Will be interesting to see how this compares to the Auburn/Clemson game.
