Hondo to Quartzsite

After two and a half weeks in Hondo, taking care of plants and chores, we headed west to Quartzsite. It had been a few years since we had been in Q during all the winter activities, when most of the people are here, which means many of our RVing friends are in one area for us to visit with.


A new view of our lot in Hondo. We took out the two large agave plants and trimmed the remaining plants. While here, we had some very cold weather, three nights well below freezing 24 deg, 22 deg and 16 deg. As you can see from this photo, our palm doesn't like the cold any more than we do, the leaves are all brown.

The continental divide looks a little different here in New Mexico than up in the Rockies. It's flat desert for miles around.

We saw many acres of pecan groves along our route.

Colorful containers on a train make for an interesting contrast to the mountains behind.

Picacho Peak, Arizona.

Here we are at Quartzsite at the LTVA (long term visitor area) known as La Posa West, with some of our RVing friends we worked with at Amazon. A survivors reunion.

Our house plugged into the sky, collecting all that free energy. Life is good here in the desert.

Back in Hondo, Texas

We appologize for the long gap between posts. There really was nothing new to photograph in Coffeyville (see posts from 2008), and we were working five 11 hour shifts per week. Not much time or energy to do anything else. How fortunate we had friends there to visit with when time allowed.
We left Coffeyville, Kansas one week ago and are now on our lot in Hondo, Texas. Our last day working for Amazon was on Tuesday December 22. Wednesday we pulled out of the City park shortly before noon heading for Texas. We had two options, either the Austin area or the Houston area (both have relatives to see at Christmas). A winter storm chased us further and further south and we didn't stop to sleep until 3 AM on Thursday. It was a good decision as we avoided the ice and snow. We decided to go to Spring, Texas where one of Larry's sisters lives. It was a great three days visiting with her and relaxing, thanks for the use of your driveway! Sunday we drove to Katy, Texas for a couple of family baptisms on Claudia's side of the family. We had the wonderful opportunity to visit more family. We spent the night at Camping World and arrived here in Hondo on Monday.
We hope to have some new pictures to post soon.

Visiting Family

We were able to visit with all of our children this year, which is a big accomplishment considering they are living in California, North Dakota and New York. In October we took the long way around to travel from Montana to Kansas, via North Dakota, New York and Virginia. The following are a few snapshots of family we visited. We also appreciate all the friends we were able to catch up with in the eastern part of the US. Thanks to all for their hospitality.


Our wonderful kids.








A few of our brothers and sisters.

Just checking to see if you were paying attention. This was at the Cornell Orchards in Ithaca.

Cayuga Lake and Taughannock Falls, NY

Most of our time the last couple of weeks has been spent catching up with relatives and friends in the area, some of whom we had not seen in almost 10 years. Yesterday we decided to play tourists and revisit some of the natural beauty in this part of the country. We drove down by the shore of Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes, which was carved by glaciers. For our next stop we picked Taughannock Falls State Park. It was cloudy and looked like rain might come soon, so we went to the overlook at the top. There is a trail you can take which goes close to the base of the falls, but we decided against that for now.

Fall colors are everywhere.

Looking across Cayuga Lake at some of the cottages on the west shore, surrounded by trees hanging on to their many colored leaves.

A look at Stewart Park at the south end of the lake.

Taughannock Falls

The water plunges 215 feet, which makes this the tallest free-falling waterfall in the northeast US. If you look closely, you can see where the lower falls trail ends at the bottom right.

The Texas tourists.

The water fills the pool at the bottom of the falls.

The following are a sampling of the beautiful trees in the state park down by Cayuga Lake.

Travels from Montana to New York

After spending the summer in the Yellowstone area, we left abruptly in the middle of the day on Oct 3, to avoid the 1 to 3 feet of snow and very cold temperatures they were predicting. The weather was chasing us, so we had longer days on the road than we normally plan on. Our first overnight stop was in Billings, MT and then on to Minot, ND to spend 3 days visiting our youngest. The weather was cold, wet and dreary, but we had a great visit.
Our next destination was the central NY area and with the cold weather at our heels, we covered that ground in 4 long days, with nights in Minneapolis, MN, Davenport, IA, and Sandusky, OH.
Here are a few sights seen along the route. The weather was not the greatest and most of the shots were taken out the window of our truck while on the move.

Crossing the Mississippi River very early in the morning. It's been quite a while since we've been on the east side of the river.

We were glad we were not too late to see the show of fall colors in the east.

Now that we have stayed in Iowa, we only have 5 states left to visit. We should be able to cover New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine without too much trouble. Alaska and Hawaii, who knows? You can make your own map at www.visitedstatesmap.com

Big Springs and Cave Falls

We spent this day, taking Tom and Nancy to Big Springs, where we saw this muskrat having a cool dip. You can see more photos of this location on previous posts.



At our visitors' suggestion, we went to a place we had never visited. We had read about Cave Falls, which is located at the southwest corner of Yellowstone NP. The access to it is from the Idaho side, so is not visited by very many. It was definitely worth the trip.

The aspens are starting to turn.

A distant view of the Tetons from the west side.

More aspens, which can vary in color from pale yellow to bright orange and all shades in between.

The next few shots are self explanatory, as we take a walk up to the base of the falls. According to what we read, there was supposed to be a cave there, but a recent rock slide appears to have covered the entrance.