What do you do when the RV is winterized so you can't travel in it?

Until a year ago, we were used to traveling in our motor home year-round. The secret was staying in the warm south in the winter so we didn't have to worry about winterizing it. But living in the Kansas City area, we had to winterize the plumbing system in the fall when the temperatures started dipping below freezing. That left us months without our RV to use for vacationing. But you shouldn't think that we stayed at home during all those months. We still went south to the tip of Texas this winter!

We spent the entire month of January in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Denisa's Mother sold her mobile in Mission, Texas, last winter. But at 94, she's still in good health to travel. So we rented a mobile for the month, and the three of us stayed at the same park where she had been for the last 40 winters. While in South Texas, we took the annual trip to Padre Island for the beach and to see the latest sand castles.

Preserved with a mixture of glue, you can even sit on one of the sand sculptures.

We enjoyed visiting some of the ocean-themed murals . . .

and tourist-store entrances.

We almost always stop at the birding boardwalk that starts right by the South Padre Island Convention Center.

While we were walking towards the bay, we saw a green heron had just speared a fish for lunch.

It was like a National Geographic nature special as he struggled with the reed that he also speared, and was now in the way.

That sizable fish seemed too big for that little green heron to eat. But this was the last picture before he swallowed the entire fish whole. Wow! That was a fun walk to the bay!

Even though Kansas City was "enjoying" a record-breaking snowfall that stayed on the ground an unusually long time, we were enjoying warm weather in South Texas. Because we arrived shortly after Christmas, the full-size nativity decorations were still up in the Catholic Basilica we visited with friends.

We've driven by this massive tile mosaic on the outside of the Basilica many times. Good friends Tom and Arlene offered to take us to a church service to see the inside of the church as well.

While enjoying the warm January weather, we also made a trip across the border. 

The tiny town of Progresso, Mexico, was an easy border crossing. But we hadn't made that short trip in several years. Not much had changed, as the town streets were still crowded with vendors and pharmacies and dentists.

We did all the usual things that we enjoy at Bentsen Grove RV Resort. We played pickleball, and Denisa made lots of greeting cards. She also enjoyed the jewelry classes where she made ear rings and necklaces out of polymer clay.

We enjoyed the oranges and tangerines again this year. Mark was good at climbing the trees and picking the fruit from the top that might normally be wasted in a park for people over the age of 55. Denisa's job was to stand on the ground, catching the ripe fruit that he picked. Who knew that we would make such a good fruit-picking team in our retirement?

This might have been the best grapefruit harvest we have ever seen. The fruit was huge and sweet and we ate at least one every day. There are few things that taste better than a tree-ripened grapefruit fresh off the tree.

This tree was so loaded that the fruit hung in clusters like grapes. That was a lot of weight on those branches, and the owner was happy for us to pick them.

A dear friend made us a unique local dessert that we have only seen in South Texas--grapefruit pie.

That same dear friend loves to bake almost as much as we love to eat desserts. In the course of a month she made us a cheesecake, blueberry pie, banana cake, pineapple angel food cake, a delightful German apple dessert, hummingbird cake . . . If that wasn't enough sweets, Mark also has ice cream most evenings at the rec hall. On special evenings they serve banana splits. He's found that if he knows the people scooping the ice cream, his serving is especially big.

We enjoyed seeing friends from past years and making new ones. We especially enjoyed a class that is new to the park this year. Tony brought his woodworking tools, and taught us how to make wooden bowls!

We started with a piece of wood that Tony also provided. The one Mark chose had a stripe of red wood from Africa called padauk. That will make an interesting design in this bowl.

Using the ring cutter, the students were instructed on how to carefully cut circles into that flat piece of wood.

The circles are then glued together and clamped to make them into a wooden bowl.

That's when the real work begins! Using the sanders that Tony also provided, it was time to spend hours sanding that bowl smooth.

Mark chose the more difficult thin-walled bowl, while Denisa chose the design that needed less sanding. But we were both thrilled with the opportunity to try such a unique craft this winter!

Tony also held classes that allowed us to make wooden ink pens. They were almost too pretty to use, but he assures us that the ink cartridges are re-fillable for a life-time of writing.

Tony asked us to send him a picture of us with our finished projects. We're smiling because we thought this was a fun new class and we appreciated all his help. 

While we went south to get out of the cold, that doesn't mean that the cold didn't chase us. We were picking grapefruit when it was 40 degrees outside, to get them off the tree before it froze one night in January. We were staying in a unit without a heater. Who needs a heater when you're way down south anyway? We hate to complain, but it was a little nippy for a couple days of our January in the Rio Grande Valley. Before we knew it, the month was over and it was time to head north again. We obviously didn't stay south long enough, because this was a picture of our street in early February.

That snow hung around for an unusually long time this winter in the Kansas City area. But once it melted off the trails, we were back outside enjoying a hike. That's just something else you do when the RV is winterized so you can't travel in it.

Harry S. Truman Lake - Exploring a Trio of Missouri Lakes

We planned to visit three lakes around Missouri on this ten-day trip. We finally got moved into our last camp site at our last lake named after a president with local ties--Harry S. Truman.

This was a cheap ten-day vacation since we enjoyed half-price senior rates on the already half-price off-season camping rates. That's just $5 per night here at Truman Lake. While the water was turned off at most of the campgrounds, we were learning more about where to get water. At Truman Lake, we camped at Sparrow Foot Campground, where the best entertainment were the local armadillos.

These animals are blessed with an armor exterior for protection because their poor eye site and hearing give them no warning of an approaching predator. They also are not warned of an approaching photographer, who got very close before the armadillo finally responded by jumping straight up into the air. This unusual movement surprised the photographer so much that by the time she finally snapped the picture, only the front legs were still in the air. Doesn't he look like he was smiling at Denisa's startled reaction to his startled reaction?

We rode our bikes around the camping areas, and visited with some very friendly campers. We also found that the campground hosts were very nice. But we never put the kayak in the water at this third lake of our trip. We thought finding pretty fall foliage was more fun than paddling at this stop.

We took a road trip one day, to the nearby town of Clinton, Missouri. This is the western terminus of the famous Katy Trail. An old railroad bed, it has been repurposed into a delightful biking and hiking trail.  Because the old trains couldn't pull loads up steep grades, it provides an almost flat trek across the state of Missouri. We noticed that the first miles of the trail run beside the highway, so we opted to drive on to the little town of Windsor to see a more remote section of the Katy Trail.

The section that led out of Windsor, Missouri, was completely shaded, and many of the trees were turning into their beautiful shades of fall. You might notice that we were not biking this popular bike trail. That's because we learned that transporting our bikes was not as easy as it used to be. They used to stay on the bike rack on the back of the pickup, so the bikes were ready to go wherever we drove. But now they are on the bike rack on the back of the trailer. To transport them to Windsor, we would have to unload the bikes, then unbolt and move the rack from the trailer to the pickup, then rebolt the rack and reload the bikes. When we finished, the whole rack had to be moved again from the pickup back to the trailer. It's a big job that we decided not to do this day. Denisa's foot was less swollen from its encounter with the distribution hitch, so she could finally put on a shoe. So we hiked on the Katy Trail.

We only walked a couple miles of the trail, then turned around and walked back. At our first intersection, we saw an interesting sign, "Horse-drawn vehicles prohibited." That's because we were in the middle of Missouri Amish country, where lots of horse-drawn vehicles are used for transportation.

We had a list of Amish businesses in the area, and after our walk we went exploring on the narrow dirt roads to find them. We have learned that the more horse poop you find on the road, the closer you are getting to the Amish communities. We stopped into several Amish grocery stores, and tried hard to remember that we had already splurged on a bounty of Amish goodies at our first stop in this trio of lakes. We were eating the Amish desserts with reckless abandon, and we even convinced ourselves that pumpkin crunch can count as a vegetable side-dish for a meal. 

It's been a great nine-nights of camping at lovely corp of engineer campgrounds on three of Missouri's lakes! But we were ready to get home. We might have been in a hurry to get back from all this camping to do some trick-or-treating with our two favorite goblins back home!

Chasing eagles at Pomme De Terre Lake

We spent three nights in the Outlet Campground off Lake Pomme De Terre. While we couldn't see the lake from our campground, we enjoyed the Pomme De Terre River that flows out of the lake. On our last day, we finally found time to kayak down this little river with almost no current.

This was the river that comes off the dam that forms Lake Pomme De Terre. If they decided to let water out of the dam this day, this glass-like river would suddenly have a current that would make it very difficult for us to paddle back home.

So we crossed our fingers and oars and hoped that we could easily paddle back to our campground when we decided to turn around. Until then, we were entertained by the animals along the river banks, like this big blue heron . . .

and the occasional turtle sunning on the logs in the river.

But the most fun was following an eagle that continued to lead us downstream. He would land on a branch over the river ahead of us, and then fly off about the time we got close enough to take a good picture. He continued to tease us so we continued to paddle.

With temperatures in the 70s and beautiful fall foliage, it was a great kayak trip. But we finally had enough sense to turn back toward home, even though we never got our picture of that eagle.

We paddled until we saw our new little trailer, hiding among the trees on the banks of the river.

On another day, we decided to kayak at the Pittsburg Corp of Engineer park at the very end of Pomme De Terre Lake. A big flock of migrating white pelicans joined us on the tip of the lake. While they look completely white when they are standing, their black wing tips show up when they fly overhead.

White pelicans with a backdrop of nice fall foliage made for a nice picture.

No motor boats can get to this tip of the lake, and we found lots of birds and turtles enjoying the peaceful solitude.

The cormorants didn't seem to mind when we coasted in close for a picture.

But we were especially interested in all the eagles that like this lake. We first spotted this one on the beach.

Then we spotted this younger eagle that was still sporting some brown feathers on its head. We were concentrating on getting close enough for a picture, and we completely lost track of how shallow the water was beneath our boat.

Mark was steering us into the right angle for Denisa to get a picture of that eagle in the sunlight framed by the red foliage. Then we suddenly came to a hard stop. We were grounded on a mud bank and we were stuck. We're pretty experienced at getting out of such jams, but this one was especially tricky. It was the kind of mud that we would sink up to our knees if we had to get out of the boat. So we worked and rocked the boat a long time before we managed to paddle ourselves out of this muddy muck. But we got the picture!

We enjoyed chasing the eagles at Pomme De Terre Lake. And we managed to "capture" this one in a picture. We have enjoyed our three days at Pomme De Terre--the "apple of the earth."