Views of Houston, TX

I thought this was neat. All the sewer drains have a plate on them that tells where the water eventually ends up. Maybe this would keep people from dumping their used motor oil in the sewer drains!

Actually, this isn't Houston. This is the upstairs part of the trailer, and we keep all our money in that safe. We need a big one. Yep. Actually, this is the vault of the Wells Fargo, and the guy told me I couldn't take a picture of it, so I pretended I erased it. Hee Hee.

I mentioned in Facebook how all the buildings in downtown Houston are connected by these tunnels. Well here is Jan and our friends Dee and Vic Lucas in the tunnel. Vic and Dee worked with us in "Hell" last summer -- Point Lookout. They hated it, too.

This was a view from the observations floor (59th) of the Wells Fargo building. I have no idea what building this is, but we all thought it looked like a big trash can,

Before vertigo set in, I took this shot looking straight down. Those little specks are cars. I had to back off after I took this.

Check out our new digs!

We've been wanting to do some fixing up in our trailer for the longest time, and we decided to do it while we were in Ocala. Here are our two new La-Z-Boy chairs, which are where our couch used to be. Sure beats a peed-on couch with a hole in it, eh? Also you can see our new carpet under everything.

Our new carpet is a tweedy berber with colors of tan, brown, green, blue, burgundy. You name it, it's in there. I will take more pictures but wanted you all to see the changes.

It's Great to Have Friends!

Our last night together, we all got together for turkey dinner at the Knapps'. L-R are Mary Lane, Christine Bridge, Elaine Cannell, Laura and Gordon Bornkamp, Frank and Gretchen Knapp, and Jan and me.

Laura wanted a picture of the girls with all their Bare Minerals faces. Don't they look great? This is Gretchen, Jan, and Laura.

We drove to Orlando to see Jan's former co-worker, Bill O'Brien, who I forgot to take a picture of. This is Bill's wife, Sandy, who used to live across the hall from Jan way back in the 70's in Columbus. Jan got Sandy a job with Patton, her former company, Sandy met Bill, and now they've been married for 25 years!

Then it was my turn to visit my mentor and good friend, Chuck Fekete and his gorgeous wife Bobbie. We ate dinner at Outback Steakhouse, and Bobbie's steak was tough, and Jan's steak was RAW, so we asked to see the manager, and the manager gave them their dinners for free. Then I asked her to take our picture. I'm sure she was thrilled to do that after we bitched at her.

Beauty Day at Bushnell Escapees Park

These pictures are kind of bass-akward, but Laura Bornkamp, our good buddy, decided to get her hair cut by another woman here at the park, and when she came to show us, Jan said she'd do her makeup. So here's the "after" picture.

Here is the "during" picture. Jan uses Bare Minerals, so she was showing Laura how easy it is to put on.

The hair cut lady made a lot of money that day! Here's our other good friend Mary Lane getting her hair cut.

And here's Laura getting HER haircut, which is what got the ball rolling for Beauty Day at the Kessler trailer.

The top picture is me and my beautiful wife in front of Cinderella's castle, and the bottom picture is with Terry and Joan Murphy. We met Joan and Terry our very first year of full-timing in 2002, and we haven't seen them since, because they usually winter in Florida. They work at Disney World on the Splash Mountain ride. It was so great to see them again, and they were excellent tour-guides through the Magic Kingdom.

A Visit to Disney World

I haven't been to Disney World in years and years, decades really, so it was fun to go with our full-time RV friends Joan and Terry Murphy. This is at the entrance to the Haunted Mansion. I don't know who this woman is, but it's hard to get pictures at Disney World without people in them.

And this is the living room in the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. Today's kids have probably never seen the movie, but I sure did back in the day. Jan saw it too and both of us wanted to live in a treehouse back then. This place is so cool with all of the little rooms stuck in the limbs of a huge tree.

Several times a day there's this parade through the Magic Kingdom, and they do lots of singing and dancing and clapping of hands. These stilt-walkers were pretty cool; I've never known how they do that. And the characters from "Toy Story" are on the float. Disney hires lots of RV'ers to work at the park, and Jan said it would be fun to jump around and dance all day long, and Joan said, "Honestly? I think they're looking for dancers a little bit younger than you!"

And here is Cinderella's Castle. Thank God for this place, which keeps you from getting lost. I guess there's an apartment in the towers, built for Walt Disney, and now rented out to the guys with the Big Bucks. It's a beautiful castle.

And here is Main Street at the Magic Kingdom, all decorated for Christmas. We were there on a Tuesday, and this photo was taken around 9:00 a.m. when it wasn't really crowded yet. Later on in the afternoon, this avenue was wall-to-wall people. There are shops with expensive merchandise, and a restaurant where we paid $16.99 FOR A HAMBURGER!!!!

The Webster Flea Market in Florida

This flea market is HUGE and is only open one day a week - Monday. Jan's not into flea markets, so I went by myself and had a great time. I was there all day. This is the inside part, and I guarantee you anything you need is here.

This is the outside part. There's so much here, I can't list it all, but I enjoyed looking at tools, old furniture and the like. There are way over 200 vendors here. They have a whole section of farmer's market with great deals on fruits and vegetables. I had a ball, and I MAY go back next Monday!

Visitors at Bushnell Escapees Park

I looked out the window today, and there were a pair of sandhill cranes just strolling around, not a care in the world. They weren't concerned with people or dogs coming close to them, and they let me close to take a few pictures.

Like I said, not a care in the world!

Stephen Foster State Park, White Springs, FL

We totally enjoyed our visit to this State Park in the northern part of Florida. They have a "Craft Square" where various artisans are given free space to display homemade wares. This guy made rope, which was neat to watch.

This is the bell tower which, in addition to chiming the hours, plays some of Stephen Foster's songs: Old Folks at Home (Florida's State Song), My Old Kentucky Home (Kentucky's State Song), Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, etc. Stephen Foster wrote a LOT of songs.

I took a picture of a picture, showing an aerial view from above the bell tower.

Inside the museum, they have dioramas to illustrate Stephen Foster's songs. This one commemorates "Camptown Races".

There are many pianos in the museum, and this one has an unusual keyboard, called the Von Jonks keyboard. Every row has the same keys on it, so if you want to hit a middle C, you can hit in in any of the rows, whichever one is more convenient to your hand. It seems to me a whole lot more efficient way to play the piano!

Our Day in Downtown Savannah

Jan's wedding ring had gotten so tight on her finger, and her knuckle so swollen, I had to cut it off! So we visited a silversmith in Savannah and got her a new wedding band. Simple but very nice.

This area is called City Market, where they blocked off a street and turned it into a pedestrian mall. This is kind of the heart of downtown Savannah. LOTS of restaurants, LOTS of galleries.

This is for all the Paula Deen fans out there. Since we couldn't get into the restaurant, right next door was the Paula Deen Store, full of tee-shirts, aprons, and the like with "Hey Y'all" written on them, as well as expensive cooking gadgets. She talks about Michael all the time on her show, so here's a picture of her and Michael on their wedding day, not all that long ago.

And here is the famous Paula Deen restaurant. Just kidding, no it's not. It's right across the street, and we loved the name.

THIS is the Paula Deen restaurant. You have to get in line starting at 8:30 a.m., and they will tell YOU when you're going to eat, and you can just shop and spend all your money in Savannah and work up an appetite that way. Their buffet is $17.99 a person. We didn't eat there, nor did we really want to. Their specialty is fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, and we can get that at Cracker Barrel for less than $17.99!

Hilton Head, SC

The first few days we were here in Hardeeville, it was gray, gloomy, and wet, but then one night the sky got gorgeous at sunset, which we took as a sign it would start getting nice -- and it did!

I had never been to Hilton Head before and wanted to see it. Of course, it was nothing like I thought. I pictured a seaside town like Lewes (in Delaware), but this place has "plantations", each of which is kind of its own town, and you have to pay to get in. Keeps down traffic, I guess. This is the Hilton Head lighthouse, which is the hub of Sea Pines Plantation.

This is one of the 8 quadrizillion condo buildings in Hilton Head. I'm pretty sure there are more condos than houses. This particular building overlooked the marina and the lighthouse.

This is the Sea Pines marina, filled with big, big boats, the smallest of which probably cost more than my house in Maryland.

Beautiful Charleston, SC

On a lovely Tuesday, we ventured into downtown Charleston. We've been there several times, but we're always impressed by the loveliness of it. It's such a mixture of neat stores on King Street and gorgeous old (and new) homes everywhere else. It ain't cheap to buy a house here! We ran into a realtor who was showing a nice "fixer upper" to a guy, and the price was $1 million.

This is called Rainbow Row, but it's not the most impressive part of Charleston. All these places are painted cheery colors, but frankly, I think some repainting is due. The picture above is access to parking in a little courtyard place. Jan wouldn't want to negotiate this alley in the truck if she'd had her weekly glass of wine!

This is one of the oldest buildings in Charleston. It was a marketplace back then, and I'm sure slaves were sold here.

You can take a nice carriage ride around town if you have $40 for two people. We didn't, so we walked everywhere. We walked 4 miles or so, and our feet were pretty tired.

Here is a typical gorgeous home in downtown Charleston. The building in back is a carriage house. Isn't this just lovely. We both decided we could live here. Of course, we couldn't pay the mortgage, but we could live here.

MY WIFE NEW SOCK

MY WIFE LOVES TO MAKE SOCK. yOU CAN SEE IT IN HER WORK