What could possibly keep us busy at a winter resort?

While we spend most of our year traveling and exploring new territory, we've found that it can be hard to find warm places to hang out in the winter. So we are spending two months at Bentsen Grove Resort in Mission, Texas. So what does a couple of wanderers do to stay busy when we're in one spot for so long?

This resort probably has the most activities of any winter campground in Texas. Looking at the weekly schedule, you can find wood carving, stained glass, ceramics, water color painting, quilting, photography, Spanish classes, polymer clay class, wood burning, glass art, guitar lessons, radio control club, ukulele lessons, fiber arts, paper quilling, cricketeers, diamond art, bible study, and pottery. They even have a rock shop with different sizes of rock saws and polishers and grinders that you can learn to use. We've tried most of those classes over the eight winters we have stayed here. But with limited room to display crafts, Denisa now only goes to one--card making. Denisa loves going to the weekly class. But even more she loves to have access to the hundreds of stamps, dies, and embossers to make cards during open nights. It's a hobby where the finished products take up little room, and can be mailed to friends and family throughout the year.

If you were looking for exercise, the resort has plenty of options in that category too. They have water aerobics, a fitness room, morning aerobics, biking, tennis, yoga, volleyball, golf, bowling, softball, tai chi, water volleyball (which is a hoot!), and our favorite--pickleball. We have the nicest pickleball courts in the entire valley. They are indoors and air-conditioned, which allows good play even when it is raining, windy, and very hot (or cold) outside. We have a growing number of young retirees that move here just to play pickleball.

For less aerobic exercise, the schedule also includes organized times to play shuffleboard, horse shoes, table tennis, bean bag toss, darts, indoor shuffleboard, pool, and a new game called bean bag baseball. We have tried most of the activities, but our favorite in that list now is bean bag baseball. It doesn't take much skill, and the main goal is to have fun. We found out that Denisa has an unusual high backward kick that has never been seen before. She just can't keep that back leg on the ground, and Mark took a picture during one game when Denisa didn't know it.  

If you love to dance, the weekly Friday night dance is always well attended. During the week, you can attend classes for clogging, square dance, couple dancing, and all levels of line dance. This is Denisa's favorite activity, and she attends every line dance class offered. This year the advanced line dancers performed in the talent show. That's where Denisa decided it was more fun to dance in class with friends instead of on a stage in front of a packed audience. While we wouldn't usually have line dance pictures, we have this one that Mark took during the talent show.

The evenings are filled with more activities. Mark always go to bingo Monday night, where a loyal group of guys meet and share a table and some snacks and cheer each other on. Denisa sometimes joins him for Thursday night card bingo, where a bingo is scored if your five random cards are the first ones called from the emcee's deck. At a nickel-per-game, card bingo is a high stakes game where the fellowship and snacks are more important than winning.

Besides a live band for the dances every Friday night, concerts are held a couple nights each week. These are usually performers that tour the country, or hang out in Branson in the summer. Just like us, they are trying to stay warm in the winter. They are looking for crowds of winter Texans that enjoy good music at a fair price. One of the concerts was by a piano player named Jason Coleman. He is the grandson of the famous pianist, Floyd Cramer. As a child, Jason performed with his grandfather on the stages of Nashville. Floyd Cramer was the pianist for famous entertainers like Elvis Presley, and his style was recorded on solo and group albums in the 1950's and 60's. Floyd Cramer died in 1997, but through the wonder of technology, the grandfather and grandson can still perform duets for audiences in South Texas. It was a great show!

We have a busy activity office that is always organizing events. We participate in all the scavenger hunts, game nights, trivia nights, and poker runs. Scavenger hunts usually involve a list of random things to find around the park. Winners are the first ones that correctly record the lot numbers where you can find each item on the list. We were looking for things like a random signs that say, "Knight Rider" or "Do not feed the parrots."

We are glad to report that we didn't win or lose at the last trivia night. That means that we didn't win the bag of smarties (for the winners) or dum-dums (for the lowest score).

Anyone that loves to play games should be able to find an organized time to play every game known to man. Weekly you can play polish poker, nomination, dirty uno, double deck pinochle, bridge, 500, bid euchre, cribbage,  mah jongg, 65, Omaha, ten square, poker, pokeno, bunco, Mexican train, pitch, duplicate bridge, dirty board, sheeps head, rumikub, whist, pegs and jokers, and Texas Hold 'em, While we have played some of those games in organized groups, we much prefer playing games with Denisa's Mother. The stakes are pretty high among our group of three!

Besides all the activities during the week, we also have a full line-up on Sunday morning. Church services start at 8:30 a.m. with a preacher that has done the weekly sermon for many years. That is followed by Sunday school.

The resort has a cafe that is open several times each week. We eat there often, as well as the neighboring resort that has some great fish on Fridays. We are in the middle of a major metropolitan area that has every kind of restaurant you could want. So we can report that besides staying busy, we are also staying well-fed. We are definitely getting anxious to start up the motor home and start exploring again, but we are keeping busy for now at our winter resort home.