Tis the season to be jolly- ho, ho, ho, etc! The Harrells have arrived in East Prairie, Missouri for the holidays. We are visiting with my sister until after Christmas and then we are off to Florida. The weather here has been California weather for the past month but we are prepared for winter to arrive soon. It will probably wait until the day we leave for Florida and decide to snow and sleet.
We had a family celebration for Thanksgiving and prepared turkey and all the trimmings for 15 people. Needless to say we don't want to see more food at the present time. We are looking forward to celebrating Christmas with family. This will be a first for Sue. She has not spent Christmas with her family in 30 years. The day after Thanksgiving we went Christmas shopping. That is something else we have never done in California. Most people with any intelligence do not tempt fate and shop the day after Thanksgiving in California but in this small town it was a breeze. Everyone said, "are you crazy going to town the Friday after Thanksgiving?" If they could see the stores in California they would understand why we were so excited about the traffic here (or lack thereof).
We have spent the past 3 1/2 months traveling from California to the most northeastern costal town of East Port, Maine, . We left California on a very hot August evening and got to Barstow, California where we had a tire blow out ( probably from the motorhome being grossly overloaded ). This meant we had to spend the night in Barstow since a tire store was not open late in the evening. We bought 2 tires then found a UPS office and shipped about 300 pounds of "junk" (tools, books, etc.) to my sister's home in Missouri. We found that we were considerably overloaded and our little motorhome was starting to complain about the weight. We then sat in a city park until later in the afternoon and then proceeded to Needles, California. As we got near Needles, that evening we had trouble with the engine and of course we had to spend the night. This time I insisted upon finding an airconditioned motel room until morning. The next morning, after trying to get repairs on the charging system we drove about an hour to the next large town and spent the day in a Toyota dealers repair shop getting the "fuse block" problem repaired. By this time we were almost ready to call the whole thing off and return to California expecting the next year and a half to be more of the same.
We drove on to Flagstaff, Arizona; where would you believe, we experienced a 7.0 earth quake. Well that isn't what really happened. On the evening we arrived in town we ate at a lousy Mexician resturant and got to the campground about ten at night. After finding a site next to a picknick table, Sue started dinner. Then the quake hit. We turned on the radio, no announcements. Dale checked with the camp host, they hadn't felt a thing. We could not believe it. Next morning we discovered that Dale had parked on an incline and put the motorhome in first gear instead of second and he hadn't put the emergency brake on. We had rolled thirty feet in the dark and come to a nice soft stop. What a ride.
After that episode everything proceeded smoothly except for the hot weather. We spent some time in New Mexico exploring Indian puebloes and soaking up some history. We arrived in Missouri after a 2 week journey and visited with Sue's family until early September then we were off to view the fallfoilage. Across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Penn. we saw very little good color but as we got into New York and across the Adirondacks the red and orange colors were beginning to show. From New York we went into upper Vermont and since we were a little early for good color we went through New Hampshire and across the upper part of Maine.
Our eastword motion stoped at the most northeastern coastal town of East Port, Maine and began our journey down the coast. Maine is beautiful and the people are friendly and easy to talk with. This was Sue's "lighthouse" tour and we visited every lighthouse we could easily find and some that were not so easy and some that were a mere speck on the horizon. We got great photos that Sue hopes someday to turn into masterpieces of artwork. We were shocked when one rainy noonday we were driving along the highway 1 at a slow speed and from the side of the road a huge moose walked into the road; very slowly wandered across the road. Dale was telling me to get the camera but I was so shocked and awed by its size that I just sat with my mouth open. I am still hearing how I missed the greatest shot we ever had. While in Maine we attended the Fryburg country fair that is a huge event that has been going on for 150 years. We had attended this fair on our trip six years ago but only spent one day. This time we stayed two days and saw it all. They are very country oriented and have a great country museum on the site and a lot of farm related acitivies such as oxen pulling, draft horse showing, and everynight entertainment in front of horse rasing grandstands. We enjoyed the people most of all. There were several hundred campers there and we had lots to talk about with them. It had begun to get cool in the evenings and as we were all gathered to see the performance one evening, Dale told those close to us that he knew when to get out of Maine. Of course, they asked when? He said when my holding tank freezes. One lady spoke up and said "my holding tank is heated". I turned to her and said," my motorhome is not even heated and your holding tank is heated!!!" They all thought this was very funny since most of their motorhomes were much newer than ours. (For those of you who do not understand motorhome talk, the holding tank is the tank underneath the motorhome that holds your wastewater and sewage.) Dale says he is looking for a newer motorhome and this is true.
After leaving Maine we toured New Hampshire and the White Mountains and found the foilage there to be in full color. We thought New Hampshire was much more enjoyable than Vermont. Vermont has become too much a tourist state. From New Hampshire we went to Connecticut., where Sue's son and his family live. This is the second time we have spent time with our 21 month old granddaughter, Brianna. When we first arrived she wasn't sure if we were acceptable playmates but after about 30 minutes she discovered Grammy's lap and it was all over after that. We explored all of the parks in the city of Hartford with her, went to an "Apple festival" where we rode the carousel several times, visited a duck pond up real close ( grandpa Dale let her fall into the duck pond head first ). She recovered rather quickly with grammy's help and we continued to enjoy the day. That will be a "keeper" to tell her when she is a adult. We won't bore you with more granddaughter stories but when we see you in person we have five albums of pictures we took to share. ((Some of the granddaughter photos are on line at this site.)) We enjoyed our visit with our son and his wife and stayed two weeks parked by the side of their apartment. Thank goodness we had the motorhome. We would not have lasted long staying with them since there are five in their household. We understand why God planned for younger men and women to have children!
On our trip from Connecticut to Missouri we spend 14 days traveling 1400 miles. We spent a good deal of time through Virginia. We thought this state might be a possible future home state. It is indeed a beautiful state, we traveled through the western part from north to south. We found one city, Lexington, that is a charming old city with a college and also a military college there and is small enough where even Sue would be able to drive successfully. We may go back there and spend more time to see if our first impression was as positive as we thought. We are still planning to explore the southeast area of Missouri where Sue's family lives as a possible home. We have so many friends living here and of course all of Sue's family are here that this seems to be a logical place, but we are not convinced as yet.
After Christmas we plan to go to Florida and spend January and some of February, especially Key West and the Everglades. Then it will be on to Louisiana so we can explore all of the state this trip and as spring progresses we will continue throughout the South watching spring arrive. That is as far as we have planned but one thing for sure we will head for a cooler climate before summer has arrived.
As a small note,; Dale discovered the Susanna Wesley Family Learning Center as soon as we arrived in East Prairie, Mo. Check out the new web site he's started for the center.
Dale's new creation:
http://freecenter.digiweb.com/family/SusannaWesleyFLC/
We hope this season finds you and your family healthy and happy.
We miss all our friends and hope to get to see everyone within the next 2 years.
Sue
and
Dale
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