We are still here!!!

We are sitting in Arkansas at our lake place and watching the Masters on TV.  It is sunny, total blue sky and in the low 80’s.  How much better can it get. 

We left Florida on April 6^th.  We had an interesting last couple of weeks in Fl: preparing to leave, saying good bye to dear friends and working. We did take time to see one of the Flower and Garden concerts at Epcot called “The Nelsons”.  These are the twin sons of Ricky Nelson and they sign their Dad’s songs.  I have a special place in my heart for Ricky Nelson because he sang the song “Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Heart, Sweet Mary Lou I’m so in love with you”.  Ricky’s sons were 18 years old when he died in a plane crash. They are both handsome men and sing as well as their dad did.  They do two types of concerts.  One they do is this type of memorial to Ricky Nelson that we saw and the other they play their own music as they have a band of their own and are quite popular doing that.   It was a great concert.

We stopped in Mobile to see the battleship “The Alabama”.  It looks much smaller from the freeway and neither of us had any idea how big this ship really is.  You could spend hours reading all about the ship and some of its missions and touring the boat.  I am sure if we went back again we could see and read things we missed before.  We met a man in the gift shop who was selling a book he had written.  His name is Col. Glenn D. Frazier and his book is “Hell’s Guest”.  He was born in 1925 and is 89 years old.  I enjoyed talking with him for a long time and hearing his stories about the war. He was in the Bataan Death March (he is the 2nd man from the bottom left with the dark pants) and he is alive today to tell us about it.  I am excited to read his book.

We had to stop near Biloxi at our favorite place “The Shed” for barbecued ribs.  It has become a tradition for us.  Every spring and every fall we stop there.

We stayed at an RV park on Lake Pontchartrain just a short way from New Orleans.  It is not a true lake but a Brackish* estuary* connected to the Gulf of Mexico.  It is one of the largest wetlands of North America.

*Brackish water or briny water is water that has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater.

*An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea).

We went into New Orleans and I had just 3 things I wanted to do. 1.  Go to the D Day Museum and see the brick we bought with my Dad’s name on it.  2. Walk down Bourbon Street and 3. Eat a beignet (Beignets are like a sweet doughnut, but the beignet is square shaped and without a hole. The French colonists of the 18th century brought the recipe and custom of making beignets to New Orleans).

We did them all.

Driving to AR we were excited because the weather was in the high 70’s and we were excited to see our place. We drove into the RV Park and still had our air conditioning on but to our surprise we found out a cold front had come in and the temperature was about 50 degrees.  The next day it rained all day but since then it has been nice.

We look at the weather back in MN and we think we should call the doctor for an appointment to have our heads examined.  We will be heading back to MN next week but may have to leave the coach here for a couple of weeks until the weather in MN is nicer.

We are starting to put together some things for this August when Dad, Ana, Helena & Julia visit.  I have been after them to send some pictures and we got some.  What a beautiful family. We can't wait to see them again.