Month long family visit over – on the road again

We arrived in the Sacramento Area on August 19th…this evening, with tears in Bubba’s eyes, we left and started our trek up the Sierra’s on I-80.  Yes, Bubba loves his Uncle Arny and Aunt Sandy so much that he really had tears in his eyes.  Can’t capture that on camera, but I felt the tears on his furry little face.

We got a lot done during our 33 day visit (if I counted right).  Fix everything that broke down on the Alaska trip, saw my parents numerous times, and my two sisters and one brother-in-law, saw  both of my brothers who live in the area, and made the trek to the Bay Area to visit my oldest son and his girl friend, another trek with mom and dad and Marcia to visit mom’s sister and husband down by Modesto, and Marcia and I even went to Tracy to meet up with friends from back home who were out visiting their daughter.

As always, there is never enough time to see everyone…we did not find the time to visit with Aunt Flo, who has her hands full taking care of her mother who, at 90+ just moved in with her, and I did not get to see any of my friends from when I lived her some 30 years ago.  But, we will be back…probably next spring.

Now it is off to Salt Lake City to see my daughter, then Phoenix to visit a good friend of Marcia’s, then Kansas City are to visit my youngest son and hopefully some cousins and an Aunt and perhaps even a Niece this time.  From there we are off to Arkansas to visit some of Marcia’s family, some mutual friends, and the big yearly physical exam.  So it is a long way to Florida…especially the route we are taking.  And I have not even looked to see how many miles we have driven since we left Florida back in March…but since it has been three oil changes, that means a minimum of 15K miles.  Oh my…that’s a long drive! 

After the Rain, Door Fix, Skruffy Video

We got about an inch of rain Sunday night – Monday morning.  After I drove over to the motorhome to finish up the door fix (story below), I saw some blue skies to the north and decided to head back over to Robert K Rees Memorial Park where at first I was alone….but that did not last even long enough for me to finish up my Raspberry Ice Tea I got when I filled up with gas ($1.99, up 10 cents from a week ago).

Last week when we both were here, we did not walk the boardwalk to the north side of the small peninsula that the park is on.  Today, without the crowd, I decided to take the short walk, no more than two tenths each way, through a bunch of Mangroves.

Well, that’s the view from the north side…oh well, it was still a nice walk.

On the way home I see this Osprey nest, and normally where there is a nest, there will be an Osprey near by….you can see it I the upper part of the dead tree to the left of the nest.

Unfortunately I did not have the newer camera in the car, it zooms in much more, but this is still a pretty good shot.

   

I had mentioned before that I had a few minor repairs to compete.  Today I installed the new acrylic glass sliding window in the door.  I have broken two different sliding glass windows, and each time I replaced it with an acrylic window.  Don’t know how I do it….has something with letting the dogs out on a leash from the door and when they come back in I pull on the inner door handle which, if the sliding window is not fully open, can, and does shatter the window.  As you can see in the lower picture above I also installed a bar to go across the door, something I picked up at Camping World.  This will make it easier for Marcia to close (it was her request) and it will help me to not break the acrylic window.

Ok, I know some of you are just getting this far into the blog because you wanted to see the Skruffy video.  I have been working with her on being more “patient” when she gets her morning and evening treat.  I got this short video of her on Monday.  Essentially I hold a small portion of a Beggin Strip in my hand, and then I toss it to the floor.  She will watch for it, and then normally wait for my “go get it” before she takes off.  Got this video in one take.