A Quick Update

Just a quick update to let you know that we are alive and well. I will have a full update later on, but here are a couple of highlights I wanted to share with you.

We spent three nights with our son Travis his wife Geli at the place they just bought near Gordo, Alabama, which is about a half hour east of Tuscaloosa. They have a little over eight acres, 10 miles down a narrow country road, and they love it after living in Tuscaloosa for many years with neighbors right on top of them. Travis loves gardening and they are both back to the land people. The place came with a beehive and they are learning how to be beekeepers. Here is Travis in his bee suit. They harvested some honey a few days before we got there and it was delicious.

This is love bug season in Florida, and swarms of the nasty little critters are covering cars everywhere. Their body fluids can destroy a car’s paint in no time and they can be a bear to get off before they do any damage. When we had the truck ceramic coated at Global Mobile Detailing a while back, they told us that one of the benefits would be that all we had to do was take a hose and wash it off to get rid of bugs or anything else. I will admit I was a little bit skeptical about that, but it turns out to be true. After driving over 600 miles to Travis’s house, the front of the truck and windshield were pretty nasty. But he took a garden hose to it and most of them came right off. There were a few places that Terry did use a miracle cloth to rub the stubborn bug splatters off, but the whole process only took a few minutes. I’m impressed, and it’s definitely worth the expense of having the ceramic coating done.

We left there today (Saturday) and took highway 82 west through Columbus, Mississippi, then picked up State Route 25 and took it southwest to Jacksonville, where we eventually got onto Interstate 20 westbound. About 440 miles after we left Travis’s house we arrived at the Hampton Inn in Marshall, Texas, just a few miles inside the state line. We have stayed here before and it’s a comfortable place with good rates, and right off the highway.

Once we were checked in, we drove into town for dinner at Cajun Tex, a restaurant we discovered when we passed through here a few years ago. The food is delicious, the portions are generous, and even though it was a busy Saturday evening we got our food quickly and thoroughly enjoyed it.

We were worried about how my back was going to handle the trip but overall it’s been okay, and no worse than when we were at home. But I’m having a lot of problems with pain from my tailbone for some reason. We picked up a driving seat cushion that has a split in the back to alleviate pressure on the tailbone. It has helped somewhat, but not a lot.

We are 1,215 miles from our first destination in Arizona, a week in Mesa visiting Terry’s parents. We’re breaking it up into roughly 400 to 450 mile days, which will put us there on Tuesday when our first hotel reservation starts. We could do it in less time, but right now that’s a pretty full driving day for us.

That’s about it for this time around. I’ll have something more for you in a day or two.

Thought For The Day – Babies recognize their mothers voice in the womb so they can selectively block it out when they’re teenagers.