On the Road to Nowhere

Holly Point State Park, North Carolina

Not really nowhere....Taos, New Mexico, Seattle and Anchorage  are waypoints....but..It's great to spend a week camping with the grandchildren. Here are number six and number seven sitting outside our RV.

Number four and five like to start fires and cook marsh mellows.

We spend a lot of time playing Uno and Mexican Train dominoes...

The week sees a lot of days swimming with the four youngest grandchildren. Number six makes us a nice note.

We hit Target the first day and load up on water toys: beach balls, water guns, splash toys of all kinds. Here are number six and seven....

Some nights number four and five spend with us.  One night all four of the youngest sleep over...

 We have epic battles....

Alliances shift by the minute...

 Number five and seven....on the beach

They grow up so fast...

Want a Marsh mello?

Bubbye and Zaza visit the grandchildren

 

We're spending two weeks here with our seven grandchildren before we get on the Big Bird to London with the two oldest. Raleigh has a direct flight to London.

The campground  is on Falls Lake. The water is warm. I'm showing off my cooking skills with hamburgers, chicken and yellow rice, chili, steaks and other meals for ten or eleven...

I'm installing and painting shelves in the laundry room and a large closet. It's nice to have a little project to help pass the time. Most of my old tools ended up here in Kenny's garage.

Warren is an enthusiastic wood gatherer and fire builder.

Above  is the patriarch, Vivian and Riley. The trip to the United Kingdom is coming up soon. The first day we'll see Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and the Salisbury Cathedral. We'll sleep in Bath.

On our second day we will see the Roman baths, Glastonberry and the Wells Cathedral. That night we've been invited to play in a cricket match and enjoy a family birthday party in Torqay.

On day three we'll have breakfast with Helen and Chris and explore the villages and National parks in the southwestern peninsula.

The picture below (left to right and back to front) is Taylor, Brooke, Riley, Barret, Warren, Carolyn and Vivian. Taylor and Brooke are coming with us to see England, Ireland and Scotland.

If you want to know about day 4 though day 21 of our UK trip, follow the blog.

Carolyn offers me a marsh mellow.

Mrs. Phred is known to the grandchildren as "Bubbye" and I am "Zaza". Bubbye is the name for a Jewish grandmother. Zada is the proper name for a Jewish grandfather, but it was mangled by the firstborne, Taylor, and I'm stuck with Zaza now....

Zaza and Vivian above...67 years age difference. Today I told Taylor that my own grandfather was born in Cork, Ireland. Time is fleeting...

Bubbye and Zaza with the seven grandchildren. Kenny behind the camera...

Asheville

We've spent about five nights in Asheville. One night we went to see friends from Sun and Fun. We ate at a Mexican restaurant. It was interesting to watch their videos of black bears wrestling in their front yard. Jerry and Michelle were very cool to visit with.

We have a little hard court in Asheville that we use. Carol got invited to play three sets of doubles with three locals. Most days she plays two sets with me. Our scores are 6-3, 6-2. 6-1 and 6-0 and so on and on...

They park the cruisers by our tennis courts.

One day we run up into the Blue Ridge Parkway. Probably Fall is the most lovely time to see the hills.

We run into "Slide Rock" and try to remember all the times we've been here. The first time was with our son Kenny back about 35 years ago.

It's a cool place to slide in the summer.

We spent $53 to have a martini at the Grove Park Inn. That was $37 for the martinis ( $15 each martini plus an 18% service charge plus a 7% tax.) We also had to valet park our old beat up to Toyota which was another $10 plus a $4 tip since there were no parking spaces....we felt like we were members of the 1%.....

Mrs Phred liked the evening...we walked around downtown Asheville and had tapas and drinks downtown...

Watch out for the kid with the orange shoes

North Carolina

Four of the seven grandchildren went with me to play soccer Saturday.

I took the four that were old enough not to need car seats. It was very cold and a little wet.

The oldest is a referee.

Little Bob was scoring ten goals a game in his age group so he moved up to play with the 8 to 10 year age group.

I heard one of the Dads on the other team say, "Watch out for that kid with the orange shoes".

He's a fast mover...

An exciting game.

Not Home Alone

North Carolina

Mrs. Phred got an IPAD2 for her birthday so now we can download books from a variety of different "APPS", play "Angry Birds" and try to avoid zombies while driving a virtual car down a desert highway. We also have an APP that is trying to teach us Thai phrases like "Where is the bathroom?" and "please bring our check".

Mrs. Phred's cousin in Chiang Mai, Thailand has hundreds of piano albums and songs available in the Apple Store. Our passports came back with a visa good for ninety days from the Royal Embassy of Cambodia. The only worry we have now is the increasing flooding in Bangkok, which looks to still be there by December 4th. Our hotel in Bangkok is where "Hangover II" was filmed.

Christmas and our 45th anniversary on Christmas Eve will be on the Mekong River in Cambodia. Like the song "Holiday in Cambodia" says, "..pack a wife". Click on the MP3 thingy to the right side of the blog to hear the song.

The grandchildren are easy to amuse. Playing dodge ball on the trampoline or swinging them high in the hammock sends the little ones into paroxysms of laughter. Our oldest grandson taught us to program and use the new IPAD2.

The cameras on the front and back of the IPAD are very cool. I love the way the display rotates when you spin the pad around.

The End of Summer

Wake Forest, North Carolina

This is the last day of our week with the grandchildren. I'm cooking a blueberry pie and chicken and yellow rice for our goodbye dinner.

After six months on the road, we're heading back to Sarasota for the Fall and Winter.

Time to start planning next years travels.

What Does It Matter Where People Go?

Wake Forest, North Carolina

Why am I here? Where will I go? How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife....

I've been hanging around to accomplish some things for my son. With seven kids (including a newborn), he probably deserves some help now and then. I finished painting and caulking the new playhouse; got two lawnmowers, two weed wackers and a chainsaw running and spent a day cleaning up construction debris from the house addition.

I could stay and organize his new garage and build shelves, but that would be a project too far...

Mrs. Phred is VERY eager to start our summer trip. I've been putting her off day by day to finish projects. I have no idea which way to go...maybe it will come to me in the morning

Start your engines, gentlemen..
Round 'em up...Move 'em out...
Walk me out in the morning dew, my baby...

If you were a bird, and lived on high,

You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,

You'd say to the wind when it took you away:

"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Where am I going? I don't quite know.

What does it matter where people go?

Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow -

Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

- A.A. Milne

The Perils of Self-Containment

Wake Forest, North Carolina

RVs must be able to function on a self-contained basis. Among other things, they have three holding tanks:
- One for fresh water,
- One for "gray water" (sink and shower drains),
- A third tank is for "black water".

The plumbing on my RV has two places to connect a water hose:
- One allows me to fill the freshwater tank or, by moving a lever, connect the RVs plumbing directly to the fresh water supplied by the hose.
- The other connection is used to flush and clean the black water tank. A warning sign says to be sure that the black water drain is open while the flushing process occurs.

In a rush to get setup, I accidentally connected the water supply to the wrong port. After a few minutes, a brown soupy-looking liquid begins to spew and cascade energetically over the roof and down the awnings and both sides of the RV.

The hose water has completely filled the black water tanks and forced the contents of the tank out the roof air vent.

I call Mrs. Phred at the grandchildren's house, explain the situation, and ask her to give me a few extra hours to get the tanks dumped at the Park dump station. Then I climb up on the roof to hose off the disgusting mess. I wash down the sides carefully.

SHIT!
Happens
SHIT!
Happens
It happens, it happens
SHIT!
Happens
SHIT!
Happens
DON'T WORRY!
'cause shit will always happen

Eyjafjallajokull - What are the odds?

Asheville, North Carolina

We have a flight scheduled to Amsterdam on Wednesday. Normally, I wouldn't mind a reschedule or a refund, but we've booked a river cruise that starts Friday and those Dutchmen are not going to be handing us back a check if we fail to appear. It was pricey...I should have bought the trip insurance. We're on the same flight as the underpants bomber...it could be worse...What's that cooking?...smells good...idiot child.

The volcano acted up in 1821 and then it laid doggo until we were ready for our river cruise.

We've found a great tennis court here in Asheville. The scores have been 6-0, 6-1, 6-0 and 6-2. I might not have done quit that well, but Mrs. Phred is hitting them all to me instead of flipping them into a corner as she is quite capable of doing.

In town, the people and stores and restaurants show a very serious hippie quality and flavor. We had mojitos and a cuban sandwich on one visit and plan to hit the Biltmore Estate on Sunday.


The Blue Ridge Parkway is just opening. They had a lot of damage to the trees from winter ice storms, which they are just now clearing. We drove up to Mt. Mitchell at 7,000 feet today. There were a lot of bicyclists pumping slowly up and whizzing quickly down.