We've got brakes!!!

We first started this RV thing in 1997 when we purchased a used coach and did the weekend thing for four years. Although we towed a car behind, first on a tow dolly and later a Saturn with all four wheels on the ground, we never thought much about having an auxiliary brake system for the towed car, or the "toad", as we RVer's like to call it. In 2001 we purchased a new Monaco LaPalma and continued to tow our Saturn. (The picture to the right is of the LaPalma.)

In the fall of 2002 we attended an RV rally in Claremore, OK, and attended a seminar on tow brakes. This seminar was presented by one of the vendors at the rally. The vendors are the people who come to the rallies to sell us all those extra things that we just cannot live without for our coaches. The tow brake seminar made an impression and I got to thinking we probably needed one of these things. We purchased the unit and the vendor, Frank Damron, installed it for us, wiring up both the coach and the Saturn. This was a fine addition to our RVing experience. We have gotten to know Frank and Sharon Damron over the years while attending numerous rallies and they have become good friends.

In March of 2006 we traded off our Saturn for a new Chevy HHR. The HHR became our new "toad" but it was not wired for the tow brake. That May we were at a rally in Goshen, IN, and we had Frank wire the car so we could use the brake again. This was great until October 2006. We were at another rally, this time in Tucson, AZ, when I decided we just had to have a new coach, a diesel this time around. After convincing my dear wife that we just had to have this beautiful 2007 Monaco Cayman we made the deal to trade. Unfortunately, we did not complete the deal until after the rally was over and Frank and Sharon had to move on. Oh well, we'll just catch up with them at the next rally, which would be in the spring of 2007, and have it done then. I did remove the controller box that was attached near the driver controls in the LaPalma before we let it go. Only problem is I did not know what I was doing and ruined the controller. When we got to the next rally Frank was unable to do the install on the new coach. He had the, now damaged, controller sent back to the factory, on my nickle, to be rebuilt. They did a good job and sent it back to me in the mail. Okay, we'll get with Frank at the next rally in the fall of 2007. As it turned out we had to cancel out on that rally.

Well, after a year and a half without using the tow brake package, which is kind of dangerous and not a good idea, we have it working again. In Frank and Sharon's travels across this great country, doing their work at rallies, they wound up this past week in Shawnee, OK, at a Good Sam's Samboree. At this point he was only forty miles away from where my brother lives, which is another 40 miles from my house. Since my brother, Bill, was wanting Frank to put new shocks on his coach we made arrangements for Frank and Sharon to go to Bill's house and work on both coaches. Frank wound up working on our coach for over five hours for a very nominal fee. When I headed out to return home around 3:30pm he was just getting started putting the eight new shocks on Bill's coach. But, thanks to our good friend, Frank, we now have a working tow brake system and are now legal again in all 50 states and all of Canada. Now it's about time to get back on the road.

Another short adventure in the coach

We actually got to take the coach out again this past weekend. We left out mid-morning last Thursday and headed to southeast Oklahoma to Robbers Cave State Park. There we joined up with our local RV club, the Birds of a Feather. This was the club's second outing of the year. We had a total of nine coaches making up this month's get-together.

Robbers Cave got it's name from a set of caves high up in the cliffs of this area where some of the more notorious gangs used to hide out. These included the James Brothers and the Dalton's. The state park now covers several hundred acres and has some great camping areas. We had full hookup and a concrete pad that was just about the most level spot we have ever set up. The only draw back to this park is there is no cell phone service, no TV reception and no WiFi. I was so bored in the evenings I was in bed by 10:00pm, a new record for me.

Thursday night several of us went into town to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Now, as most folks know, I don't eat Mexican food. No problem, this place had almost as many Italian dishes as it did Mexican. Friday and Saturday mornings, as is normal for this group, we started off each day with donuts and coffee and a good gabfest. Friday night all 18 of us went to a neat little restaurant up in the hills. The had a menu that included everything from catfish, frog legs to BBQ. They also had some of the best home made pies you could ask for. On Saturday night, instead of our regular pot luck we had a wiener roast in the camp pavilion. Afterward we built a big fire down in the coach area and had a good visit until it started to rain around 8:00pm. We also did some exploring in the park. Due to all the rains the creeks running through the park were overflowing and all three of the small lakes were full and running over their spillways. The trees and flowers were all in bloom. Especially pretty were the dogwood trees that grow wild in the area.

Since we had no TV or computer connection I had to get my fix somewhere. The folks in the office said the nearest WiFi was at the McDonald's in town, about six miles away. As it turned out there were several free WiFi connections along the main street. I wound up Friday night sitting in the car in front of a closed Radio Shack store answering my e-mails. This is not all that unusual since I run into this problem quite often in our travels and I have become very adept in working with the laptop sitting on the steering wheel.

WOW--Another RV friends fix

We had another of our RVing friends come through for a short visit. Don & Vicki Leith, who have been sitting over in Arkansas for several months while they have been building a new house, stopped over this afternoon for a visit. They are on their way west to California to do volunteer work at the Baker to Vegas Run. The Baker to Vegas Run is a relay run from Baker, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada, for teams made up from law enforcement departments.

Don & Vicki were staying in an RV Park not far from our house. We met them at their coach and visited for a few minutes before going to dinner. They travel with his dog, Tess, and her cat, Furbie.

We went to dinner at the world famous Cattleman's Restaurant down in the Stockyards area of Oklahoma City. After a good steak dinner we drove out to our house and had a good visit, catching up on what has gone on since we saw them last this past fall when we stopped by their place one our way to the east coast.

They will be heading out in the morning to continue their trip west. We really enjoyed their visit and hope to see them again soon.

A good visit with an old friend

One of my best friends from high school lives, with her husband and five dogs, in Savannah, Georgia. We were able to visit with Diane and Russ Abolt this past fall during the week we spent in Savannah. She has five small dogs that have been trained and certified as Therapy Dogs. Diane is in town, Oklahoma City, at her parents house. This afternoon we drove down to the south side of the city to visit.

When Di comes to visit she brings one of her smallest dogs, a beautiful little miniature schnauzer named Hanna. She is about the same size as our Brandi Jane was but is more the color of Buddy Joe. Although Hanna lives with four other dogs, including one of her litter mates, she is very shy and needs to warm up to people before she is comfortable. Since Buddy always enjoys playing with other dogs we took him with us. After a few minutes Hanna appeared to want to play but Buddy was not having any part of it. After awhile the two of them just ignored each other.

We did have a good visit with Diane and her folks and always enjoy our time together.

A pleasant surprise

We previously had expected some of our RV friends that had made plans to come through town this month to visit us. Due to some late winter weather and other considerations both couples elected to stay in southern Arizona longer than usual and then head north, bypassing this part of the country. So, it was a great surprise when we received a call from Lew Anderson last night saying that he and Dottie were in Amarillo, Texas, and were headed our way, on their way to visit family in Wichita, Kansas.

They pulled into the Oklahoma City Elks Club, where they are parked for the night, this afternoon. We picked them up a little later and headed to our favorite steakhouse, the world famous Cattleman's in the Stockyards area. After dinner we took a tour of our fair city. Went to Bricktown, the entertainment district that has been built up from the old brick warehouse district east of the downtown area. As we were walking around the outside of our new baseball park, one of the finest Triple A parks in the nation, one of the gate attendants allowed us to slip in an look around even though they were admitting fans for an exhibition game between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox. We finished off our tour with a visit to the Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing Memorial. Although the bombing of that building took place in 1995 this was my first time to go down there. It was not as hard to visit it as I was afraid it would be. That may be because we were there after the inside museum had closed and we just strolled the outside grounds.


Tomorrow morning Lew and Dottie will head out for Wichita. We had a good visit and really enjoyed this surprise.

The start of a new adventure

We are still home bound for another couple of months or so. I've decided I need to do something besides sit at the computer all day so I've volunteered to help at the Military Welcome Center at Will Rogers World Airport here in Oklahoma City. I started my first shift tonight in a "training" capacity. Next Friday morning will be my first shift of actually working at the Center.

Will Rogers World Airport is the major airport for the Oklahoma City area and is serviced by many of the major airlines. The other airport in the OKC area, which is a general aviation airport, is named after Wiley Post. Both Will Rogers and Wiley Post were world famous Oklahomans but I've always wondered about naming airports after people who died in a plane crash.

The Military Welcome Center is operated by the YMCA and is a great service to our nations heroes. Most of the people coming through are new Army recruits on their way to basic training at Ft Sill, a little over 80 miles southwest of OKC. The Center also caters to service members who are coming through the airport between flights or awaiting transportation to one of the many military bases located in Oklahoma after returning from leave or arriving on new orders. The new Army recruits come from all over the United States and arrive with a single backpack, a set of orders and a very scared look on their face. They are hosted in the Center until the chartered bus takes them to Ft Sill. We have buses leaving at 6:30, 8:30 and 10:30 each evening but only the new recruits are allowed on the buses since they are funded by the Military Entranced Processing Stations (MEPS). Last night we only had nine people come through, three on each bus. Today they expect about 135 to be coming through.

The Center has several large sofa's, a wide screen TV with DirectTV, computer terminals, games and books available to the service members. Additionally, they have cell phones available if the guys want to make a quick call home to let the folks know they arrived safely. The local Pepsi distributor has put in a large cooler and keeps it stocked with soft drinks. The YMCA provides other drinks, such as juice, Gatorade and teas, available in the cooler. They also purchase snack items and each evening they have Domino's deliver pizza to feed the service members and volunteers.

This welcome center is a pleasant place for our warriors to stop and relax before continuing their journey in the defense of our country. It is an honor to serve these young people and, in our own little way, let them know we appreciate what they are doing. Remember, freedom is not free. If you are able to read this blog entry then you should thank a teacher. If you can read it in English, thank a military service member.

RV Trip--Short but fun

Well, our time "back on the road" was short but fun. We continued through this past weekend with our RV Club the Birds of a Feather at the Cedar Valley RV Park in Guthrie, OK. We awoke Saturday morning to a fine meal of biscuits and gravy provided by our camp hostess for the weekend, Judy Burks. (Each time the group has a scheduled weekend meet one of the member couples is assigned duty as Host/Hostess. Their job is to coordinate with the RV Park prior to the group arriving, see that there are donuts and coffee on Friday and Saturday mornings, and insure clean up of the party room that is usually provided by the RV Park.)

Our weather had been very good on Thursday and Friday with temps in the 70's and plenty of sunshine. Friday evening a weather front moved in and dumped some rain on us but also lowered the temps by 20 degrees. It was cool and damp on Saturday morning but it warmed up some during the day. That evening we all got together for our usual pot luck dinner. It always amazes me that, although no one specifies a menu nor asks anyone to bring any specific dish, we always have plenty of food and a great variety. As the first pictures shows we had plenty of food to feed our 16 campers.

After dinner we were entertained with some trivia games brought by our hostess. One was a list of advertising slogans and we had to figure out the product. Another was a list of TV/movie characters descriptions and we had to come up with who they were. The last was a list of names of U. S. cities with the letters scrambled and we had to unscramble the letters to determine the cities name. Some of these were harder than others but Joanne and I were able to win all three games. It helps that we are the two youngest in this group and that I have spent a lot of time in front of the television over the years. George, the past president of this group of merry wanderers, had an accident recently and is off his feet. He had to play the games in a reclining position.

Sunday morning brought cool temps but clear skies. The group started breaking up and slowly the motor homes started to pull out of the park. We were next to last to leave and made the 30 mile trip back to the house. By noon we had the coach unloaded and back in the storage lot. It was fun while it lasted but now we are back to our routine of not doing much while Joanne oversees her mother's cancer treatment.

Finally, on the road again--well kind of

We are still pretty much home bound while Joanne's mom continues her cancer treatments. It has now been five months since we returned home from the east coast and have been sitting. Well, we actually are out in the coach and away from home, at least for a few days. Our Oklahoma based motor home club, The Birds of a Feather, is having it's first meet of the year in Guthrie, OK. Although it is only about 40 miles north of our house we are really in an RV park with other RVer's.

We arrived here before noon yesterday and were the second coach to show up. By the end of the day we had seven of the eight coaches here. The other arrived this morning. We started off today with donuts and coffee and some good fellowship with some long time friends. Actually, we have been eating most of the day. At noon one of the members, who lives close by, told us about a new Grill just down the road and claimed they served the best onion burgers around. So, most of us loaded up and went to see if he was right. Sure enough they were great onion burgers. This evening we went the other direction to the town of Guthrie to have dinner at The Stables. This is an old livery stable that has been converted into a fantastic BBQ cafe.

Guthrie is a very neat, old town. In 1907, the year Oklahoma became a state, Guthrie was the original capitol city. There were many arguments in the government and with the people of keeping the capitol in Guthrie or moving it to Oklahoma City. In 1910, in the dead of night a group of state legislators "stole" the state seal and moved it to Oklahoma City, declaring this the new state capitol. As history shows the capitol stayed to the south in the larger city and Guthrie fell on hard times. Now much of it has been refurbished and it is a great city of turn of the century buildings and home. They celebrate the 1889 land run here, state hood day and have many "Territorial" festivals throughout the year, harking back to the days that Oklahoma was actually made up of two U.S. territories, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory.

Happy birthday to our little Buddy Joe

Today we celebrated Buddy Joe's seventh birthday. He has brought so much joy to our lives over the years. He has the best personality of any dog I have had the pleasure to have. He has yet to meet anyone he did not like. Actually, he thinks that the world was populated with people to pay attention to him and pet him.

Since losing his sister, Brandi Jane, a few months ago he had a hard time adjusting to being not just the only dog in the family but now he was the lead dog. He had always deferred to his older sister. Now he has come into his own and wants to be involved in everything. He also has become much more vocal in letting you know he is there. When we had two dogs they were her dog (Brandi) and his dog (Buddy). Now Buddy has become our dog. He has decided he should be in the lap of which ever one of us that sits down first.

Happy Birthday Buddy and thanks for giving us so much joy.

Happy Birthday to my Mom

Today my mother celebrates her 89th birthday. Won't be able to share it with her, as is the case most years, because my folks are away at the National Farmers Union Convention, this year in Las Vegas.


Mom has done well over the years and all four of her sons are grateful for her for all the years she spent bringing us up. Dad's work took him on the road a lot while we were growing up and most of the child rearing was left to her. We were fortunate to have a mom who could stay home and care for the family. Over the past few years she has seen her eyesight starting to fade and needs hearing aids but she is still the same, beautiful mom that I remember waiting at home as we boys returned each day from school.


Happy birthday Mom and thanks for being there.