Paradise South RV Resort - Christmas 2008

Feliz Navidad! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the resort in south Texas. The Christmas Program was great. Y delivered a funny version of the Night Before Christmas called "The REAL Night Before Christmas (a parent's version) and our friend Jerry was a great warm-weather Santa.

Santa brought Y a birthstone necklace for Christmas.

There was lots of good food at the Christmas Day Lunch, and to think we can do it all over again at 5:00pm for leftovers (not!).

Paradise South RV Resort - December

Things are getting busier around the resort as we get near the holidays. The resort has a program called "Give Back", where they send various items to the soldiers that they would not normally have available. Y knitted several stocking caps for the soldiers in Iraq. Y and I, along with our friends Jerry and Charlene, were chosen to judge the Christmas decorations at the members individual sites...what pressure!

Y is helping out with the Christmas Program and our good friend, Jerry, will be playing Santa Claus for visiting grandkids. We will spend Christmas at the resort since Tonya and family will be in Virginia. There will be a large Christmas lunch put on by the resort. We plan to drive to Bastrop after Christmas (27th) to visit with everyone and celebrate Chris' 30th birthday.

Our Christmas Tree

Paradise South RV Resort - Thanksgiving

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving weekend. Y made a great dinner of chicken and all the trimmings...especially my favorite...cornbread dressing. We watched the Dallas Cowboys vs. Seattle Seahawks game...way to go Cowboys! We don't have cable or satellite, so I kept up with the Texas vs. Texas A&M game on the computer. Hook'em Horns!!! Texas 49, Texas A&M 9.
We also purchased a second laptop this week...an ASUS EeePC 900A. There are times when we both want to be on the Internet. It's much smaller than our Dell, but is easy to use and works great as an Internet surfer.

Paradise South RV Resort - Veteran's Day

Y and I finished our first week of workamping. We are responsible for the Activity Office communications. This includes producing event calendars, brochures, activity sign-up sheets, and posting "open to the public" events to several websites and local newspapers. The resort has a very full and active activity calendar. It would be hard to say "there is nothing to do".

We have spent the last couple of weeks meeting some very nice people. We have learned how to play the Pitch card game, shuffleboard and a Bean Bag Throw game (similar to Washer Throw that we learned in Eagle Nest).

Today, we celebrated Veteran's Day with a program and luncheon.

Paradise South RV Resort - Mercedes, Texas

We will begin work in the Activity Office on Monday.

We attended our first scheduled event last night...Halloween Party with music and refreshments.

A view of our campsite and down the road.

Bastrop to Mercedes, Texas

We left Bastrop this morning after spending a great time visiting with the kids, grandkids, family and friends.

We arrived at the Paradise South RV Resort in Mercedes, Texas to "big hugs" from our friends Jerry and Charlene. We got the trailer set up, then Jerry and Charlene gave us a tour around the resort. Jerry cooked hamburgers for dinner and the guys beat the girls at Pegs & Jokers.

We will spend November through March camphosting in the resort's Activity Office with Jerry and Charlene.

Bastrop, Texas

We arrived in Bastrop this past Tuesday (a week early) and setup at the Bastrop RV Park for the next four weeks. This is the RV park we first stayed after we sold our house. The picture on their home page is our first Excel. We have several appointments scheduled before we head down to south Texas at the end of the month.

Saturday was Wyatt's first birthday. Tonya and Eric had a birthday party for him at a local park. We visited with family and friends.

Wyatt stayed with us that evening and we watched the Texas vs. Colorado football game.

Jordyn showing off her new earrings.

The grandkids at the Pumpkin Patch for pictures.

Lakewood, New Mexico

We arrived at the SKP Ranch Co-op this past Monday afternoon. The Ranch is located about 20 miles north of Carlsbad in Lakewood, New Mexico. The area is part of the Chihuahuan Desert, days are dry and warm (85 degrees) and nights are cool (50 degrees). The co-op members are a very friendly and social hour (4pm daily) is well attended. The first thing we found out when we arrived was the reverse-osmosis water system was down. They were waiting on replacement filter membranes. Water was being trucked in from Artesia and we could fill up our fresh-water holding tank on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evenings.

On Tuesday, we visited the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens which is part of the New Mexico State Parks. It is a 1.3 mile self-guided walking tour through a variety of habitats found in the Chihuahuan Desert. There were several species of birds in the aviary, reptiles, mule deer, bison, elk, mountain lions, wolves, prairie dogs and a black bear named Maggie. All the animals were part of a rescue program for injured or orphaned wildlife. At the end of the walk was a greenhouse containing several hundred varieties of cacti.




On Thursday, we drove down to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This time of the year is the off-season and there were not many visitors. We opted to walk down the natural entrance (about a mile). The path is steep, but well maintained with hand rails the entire distance. Once at the bottom, we walked the Big Room tour which was another mile. Since we were last at the Caverns (~10 years ago), I think they have changed the route. We saw some new formations and did not see formations that we remembered from our previous trip. No pictures, forgot the camera *&$$#!@. Here is a park link to some of their photos.

We plan to leave on Monday, September 29th and make our way into Texas.

Deming, New Mexico

We've spent the last week at Dream Catcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico. Dream Catcher is a RV park in the Escapees organization. The social hours were quite lively. We spent a couple of evenings playing Pegs & Jokers with Jessie and Ann (park managers).

We visited the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum. The museum contains an extensive collection of items depicting the history of Deming.

We drove down to Columbus (35 miles south of Deming) on the Mexico border. Columbus was the site of the Pancho Villa raid in 1916. We visited the Railroad Depot Museum while in Columbus. The museum has numerous artifacts from the old railroading days and the 1916 raid.

There are several state parks in the area. We visited Rockhound State Park to take pictures of the Florida Mountains (pronounced flor-ee-da).



We will leave Deming on Monday and head over to Lakewood, New Mexico (between Carlsbad and Artesia).

Visiting in Los Alamos

We spent this past weekend visiting with Rick's sister Joanne and brother-in-law Jay in Los Alamos. We toured the area of the 2000 fire that destroyed a significant portion of the forest and numerous homes...including Jay's previous home. We spent the rest of the weekend learning and playing various board and card games. We really enjoyed the home-cooked meals and playing the Mahjong game!

We did our first dry-camping with our new Excel in the Los Alamos County Entrance Park. The "park" is a basically a parking lot with public restrooms and a dump station. There was a lot of road noise since we were adjacent to the main road in/out of Los Alamos. There was also construction on the other side of the parking lot where they are building a new school district administration complex. The county charges $10 per day...expensive for no hookups, but there are no other choices.

We left Los Alamos around 8:00am this morning and drove to Deming, NM. We stopped in Albuquerque at the Flying J Travel Plaza for fuel and breakfast. We arrived at the Dream Catcher RV Park (Escapees Rainbow Park) at 3:45pm. This was our first trip driving separate vehicles...Rick driving the truck and trailer and Y driving the Jeep. It worked out OK. We were able to communicate with each other using our walkie-talkies.

Eagle Nest - Summer 2008

We have had a very busy summer. We began our first camphosting position in May at the Golden Eagle RV Park in Eagle Nest, New Mexico. We enjoyed working with the entire crew. We ended this week and will be leaving on Saturday.

We plan to visit two of the parks in the Escapees system; Dream Catcher in Deming, NM and The Ranch in Lakewood, NM. From there we travel to Bastrop, TX to visit the kids and grandkids. We will spend the winter camphosting at the Paradise South RV Resort in Mercedes, TX with our friends, Jerry & Charlene Dyess.

We flew home to Austin twice (June and July) for family reunions. On our second return trip, we purchased a new 2008 Jeep Wrangler X in Albuquerque. We have had lots of fun taking the Jeep offroading on several US Forestry roads in the area. It has allowed us to visit sites that are only accessible with a high-clearance vehicle. For instance: Goose Lake, Cabristo Lake, Greenie Peak and Midnight Meadows.