We successfully made the shift from RVing, and are now focusing on completing construction of and furnishing and decorating the Hot Springs Village house.  We had a bit of a setback on the schedule as our move-in date has now delayed to the end of April.  The domino effect is that we have to move out of the rental house on April 20, our former move-in date, and could not find a reasonable alternative.  We were able to reserve the efficiency one room casita we have stayed in several times previously.  However, we’ll have to move a lot of the stuff from the rental house to storage, and then to the new house—not a good week. On the bright side, progress was made on the HSV house (see Our HSV House blog).  And, we’re acquiring things for the house each time we go to Little Rock or Hot Springs.  This week we bought some bedding for one of the guest bedrooms and some yard art.

We did play golf this week, in between the almost daily showers; I took a lesson Monday, we hit balls several times at the driving range, and I played a round at Coronado.  

On Saturday, we visited briefly with Karyn, Matt, Ridge, and Aker, and were there when the kids were dressed for their Easter photo.  Kay so enjoys all four of our grandkids—and they adore her!  My oh my, the kids are really growing.

This was a busy week for us.  Rain resulted in the cancellation of golf Monday, and made outdoor activities near impossible.  We continued to pack for the trip home, though we’re just about finished; motorhomes are so self-contained that not a lot of packing is required—just enough to keep things from breaking.  Kay arranged an RV resort ladies’ luncheon Tuesday, and many old and new friends attended.  This marked our last “official” act in the Valley.  At the palapa happy hour Tuesday afternoon, we said our goodbyes for the season, and year, as we don’t plan to return until January 2016.

We departed Bentsen Palm Village RV Resort in Mission, TX, on Wednesday morning under overcast skies and against a 10-15 mph headwind.  Both stayed with us the entire day, but no rain.  We drove to Aggieland RV Park in Bryan, TX, for overnighting (thanks, John, for the recommendation).  Chuck, the owner, played football at Baylor at the same time I attended the University of Arkansas, playing against the Razorbacks in Fayetteville while I was there—small world!  He is a retired cardiologist, and works full time operating the RV park.  He said that out of the 7 docs in the practice, 6 retired and of those 6 cardiologists, two own and operate RV parks and one builds custom doors.  Go figure!  We drove the remaining 400+ miles home Thursday in light rain, arriving at Hot Springs Village about 4:30 PM.  

We had planned to overnight at Hot Springs Village’s RV park, but the rental house (our residence where until the HSV house is finished) was vacant.  We couldn’t pass up good clean water, wide open spaces, and a large shower.  We drove straight to Walmart on the west side of the Village, unhooked the Honda, and Kay left to pick up keys to the rental unit.  We parked the motorhome at the RV park, hooked up to 50 A shore power, set the stabilizing jacks, and opened the slides before driving to the new house to see progress since our last visit (Kay’s was three weeks ago, mine was 6 weeks ago)—we’ll have a separate post in Our HSV House blog in a few days.

We spent most of Friday, again in the rain, unpacking the motorhome—with three full car loads of stuff.  We are removing most stuff from the RV, and will do a reset to eliminate things we don’t use, or use so infrequently that it’s not worth the trouble carrying it, e.g. alternative down comforter.  Also, while in the Valley, we purchased some accessories for the new house and brought those with us. The wet and dirty roads left lots of grime on the Honda, the bicycles, and the motorhome so Friday evening during a lull in the rain, I washed the Honda.  Saturday morning, again in the rain, I washed the bicycles, the tow bar, and the bicycle rack, and Kay and I cleaned the inside and washed the exterior of motorhome.  Tired, we finished just after lunch, having essentially finished all the chores.  Sitting on the covered porch of the rental house, overlooking the 6th green of Coronado Golf Course, enticed us to play golf.  With chores finished, it’s time for GOLF—when the rain quits!

As we enter March, our time in the RGV is winding down—and, we’re anxious to go home, i.e. Hot Springs Village.  It’s our first time since beginning to RV in 2007 that we’ll return to a different city and house.  The weather here in the Valley has still been substandard, with cool, windy, and sometimes wet days most of the time; we just can’t get a break, but won’t complain too loudly as folks north of us are having a worse weather winter.  

Kay continues to exercise on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, and weather permitting, I play golf on Monday and Wednesday.  Kay also continues Swedish weaving with time permits, and is becoming quite the artist.  We met Jim and Cheryl Watts at The Ranch House for delicious hamburgers and great conversation.  Our visits are too seldom and too brief.

I continue to tie flies for bream (bluegills) fly fishing this coming spring and early summer, having tied some 6 dozen the last three weeks, including popping bugs, bream killers, and foam spiders; that should help stock the fly box!

And we both began packing about the middle of the week for our return to Arkansas, and we are essentially ready to depart when the appointed time arrives Wednesday morning.  

We attended our next to last dance in the Valley Thursday afternoon, and while it was fun, the smoke was too much for our allergies, and I’m still suffering with stuffiness, headache, and itching!

Lastly, with respect to the HSV house, Brandon Tedder, owner of Renaissance Homes, Inc. and our builder, gave us a 45-day out finish date of around April 20 to coincide with the last day of the house rental in HSV.  

Sunday, Chris Tenney and I drove to Resaca de la Palma State Park to capture photos of some unique butterflies.  Chris is on a quest for a “Big Butterfly Year” in 2015—to identify and photograph as many species of butterflies in the US in 365 days; you may read his on-going efforts in this regard in his blog, http://www.butterflybigyear.net/  His wife passed away 2 years ago in January, and last year he was still in deep mourning.  His specific target on this Sunday was the Gemmed Satyr, and he was able to identify and photograph it before noon.  Additionally, he identified and photographed a White-scrubbed Hairstreak, a life butterfly for him, i.e. the first time he has ever observed one, and allowing him to add two to his “big year”.

As for me, I have been chasing the elusive Mexican Bluewing Butterfly for three seasons, a species I have seen twice, but never photographed.  I was able to see several of these butterflies on Sunday, and capture a decent photograph.  I also saw many Blue Metalmarks, a species I had never seen, and was able to get several photographs of the butterfly, a lifer for me.  We saw over 25 species on an overcast windy day—not too bad!

Coincident with Kay returning from 10 days in Arkansas, this week has been a “coming out” week for me, as the funk I’ve been in since last March 2014 seems to finally be dissipating.  With the new house progressing, and no commitments for the future, it seems like we’ve finally retired, though neither has worked full time for over 10 years.  It seems as if I’ve been going ninety to nothing the entire 10 years, and speeding up even more when Ronnie died, I was diagnosed with cancer, and had the mild heart attack this past summer.  It feels good, actually great, to be cool, calm, and collected again, finally!  I resumed fly tying, the first time tying in the RV since 2009, and the first time tying for fun in several years, I have really enjoyed it.  It sure seems like the older one gets, the more one returns to the things truly enjoyed and loved.  So, I returned to my first love in fly tying—popping bugs and bream flies—readying for a great spring and early summer of fly fishing for bream and bass, a first love in fly fishing.

Overall, the week was quiet, with cold, wet weather predominating—no golf, no dancin’, and bridge only once—resulting in a quiet, indoor week.

A constant topic in the blog this winter has been the cool, wet weather here in the Rio Grande Valley.  And this onerous weather pattern continues, with only a few days of normal 70s and sunshine among the many days of windy, overcast, cool days, with occasional rain—this tropical desert area of south Texas is supposed to be dry, sunny, and warm!  Consequently, we have altered our normal winter activities, having to forego many of the things we enjoy doing outdoors.  While golf has been my main entertainment, we have had few warm sunny days on which to play.  Cycling has been almost non-existent, though we do find a day here and there where the weather is conducive, i.e. not too much wind (less than 15 mph), and not too cold (above 60°).  There have been few birds and almost no butterflies since early November.

Early November provided consistently great winter Texan weather, but the end of the month, December, and January were largely cold, wet, and overcast, at least by Rio Grande Valley standards.  However, this week saw weather in the mid-60s to low 80s with lots of sun.  With encouragement from neighbor Chuck, we did 3 bike rides this week, increasing the distance on each successive ride so that our latest ride on Thursday was 13.0 miles with a slow average speed of 8.8 miles per hour.  And, on the last ride we saw 3 Roadrunners, and the last two posed for photographs on the trail.

Al, Sharon, Kay, and I attended a mariachi concert at Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle – National Shrine where the Rio Grande City middle and high school mariachi bands, the La Joya high school mariachi band, and the Basilica’s mariachi band all performed.  The level of talent, even for the middle school, is amazing—some of the best male and female vocalists and trumpet players we’ve heard.

On Sunday, February 15, Kay returned to Arkansas to assist with childcare for Ridge and Acker, and to see progress on the new house.  She made it safely, despite a plane problem in Houston.  Unfortunately, freezing rain, possible snow, and cold temperatures are arriving there tonight.

Early Sunday morning, about 4 AM, we left the relatively warm RGV driving north to central Arkansas, arriving at Hot Springs Village at 4:30 PM where it was windy and cold.  The real purpose of our trip was to witness the birth of a granddaughter and take care of newly dubbed little brother, Ridge, for a few days.  At the Village, we quickly “inspected” both the inside and outside of the new house where we were met by Pam Williams, and Martha and Bobby Altom.

During the course of the next 8 days we viewed the house 3 times (see separate Our HSV House blog), and it would be an understatement to say that we are excited.  We spent Sunday and Monday nights with Ron, and enjoyed our visit immensely. Tuesday evening, we celebrated Ron’s birthday, and stayed at Karyn’s until our departure back to the Valley; I played planes, trains, and hero action figures with Ridge for 5 days and nights, and saw more Dusty and Thomas the Train videos than imaginable!  Regrettably, Jenny, Brian, and Harper were sick, suffering a stomach virus, and our scheduled visit with them on Wednesday and Wednesday evening had to be cancelled.  Friday, just after 12 noon, Acker Elizabeth Adams entered this world at 8 pounds 14.6 ounces, and 19 inches;  mother, father, and baby did great, and were released from the hospital late Sunday afternoon (this photo was from Thursday, February 5).  Kay and I were up real early Monday morning, February 2, and left for the RGV at about 3 AM, arriving at 4 PM, just in time for happy hour!

Former next door neighbors, Wayne and Loretta, arrived in the Valley a week ago, and are living just up the road.  It was nice reconnecting with them, and we plan to spend some time touring the Valley while they are here.

Otherwise, life goes on.  Most of the  season, we play bridge at least a couple times a week.  And, when the weather is conducive for outdoor play, I stay quite busy with golf, with a few other things filling the blank spaces.  Here are a couple of photos flying an RC helicopter, a gift from next door neighbor Jim Miles.  It is an absolute hoot, but lasts only 6 minutes before the battery runs down.

Kay, on the other hand, is always doing something, be it shopping, turning bowls on a lathe at the woodworking shop, or doing Swedish weaving. Here are a series of photographs of her newest bowl creation, turned from a piece of solid red oak, followed by a photo of the just completed 72 X 72-inch Swedish woven blanket.  Isn’t she a talented artist!   And Sunday evening, she was in a variety show here at BPVRV Resort.

The photo is from Tierra Santa, a golf course Al and I played last Tuesday, our only “good” weather day last week.

This winter season has been full of distractions for us, what with building, furnishing, and decorating a house from near 800 miles away; unseasonably cool and wet weather that has limited all outdoor activities, including birding, butterflying, bicycle riding, and golf; family obligations; RV resort quality and amenity issues (60 counted vacancies on Friday, January 9, compared to a significant waiting list a few years ago); and health issues.  These have significantly lowered the fun meter for us. So, here we are on Tuesday, January 13, another cold and damp day, washing clothes, cleaning house, and waiting for sunshine, and the water lines to be repaired, again (maybe the internet is working today, too).

We were up early Saturday morning, departing for central Arkansas by 5:15 AM.  The 13-hour trip was uneventful, and we enjoyed the lowest gasoline prices of our travels since beginning to RV in 2007.

We spent Saturday evening, Sunday, and Sunday evening at Ron’s, and he had baked one of his famous blueberry pies for our enjoyment.   We snuck in a visit to the new house under construction on Sunday morning.  A neighbor stopped by to compliment us on the lot and house plan, and advised that it was a great, sociable neighborhood.  After lunch with Ron, Cheryl, and Kaden, we met with a decorator at Bassett Furniture, and identified “collections” and pieces for use in the great room, dining room, sun room, breakfast room, and master bed room.  The decorator is to develop a design for each of the rooms for our review on Friday.  This story is covered in the new HSV House blog.  We found central Arkansas to be cold, at least by our standards—guess our blood has become thin with the mostly 70s and 80s in the Rio Grande Valley.  

We returned to Hot Springs Village Monday to insure that our storage of household goods was paid up to date; pay for storage for the RV; take care of Property Owners’ Association business, including buying new stickers for the cars, kayaks, and canoe, and paying for tee time registration and the golf handicap system; and pick up some balk mark repair tools at the Coronado Golf Club.  And, of course, we snuck another look at the house construction (info on the house construction can be found in its own blog).  As we arrived another neighbor couple was inside looking at the house.  They asked questions about the floorpan and affirmed that the neighborhood was a good one.  We drove from there to spend the next few evenings at Karyn’s.

Hot Springs Village was our destination again Tuesday morning, as we met with Brandon, Sam, and Cris of Renaissance Homes, Inc. (our builder) to discuss progress, verify electrical, television, and HDMI outlets, and view layouts of the various cabinets with the cabinet maker.  The plumbing subcontractor was there also, working on plumbing installation, but we did not meet with them.  Several changes were made on the advice of the Renaissance Homes, Inc. team, including changing the shower door location and restoring the television connections to the right shelving unit; we had moved it to the left on the advice of our decorator.  We also talked in generalities about the landscape plan and the grade of the driveway.  Regretfully, the motorhome is not going to fit the parking pad as originally conceived, but we’ll make adjustments and alter our plan of attack!  Late afternoon and early evening was spent celebrating the holiday meal and gift-giving with Kay’s side of the family.  Matt and Karyn served a delicious meal of pulled pork, beans, slaw, potato salad, chips, and cookies and pies.  Of course, Ridge was star of the show, opening and playing with his many gifts.

Christmas Eve, Wednesday, was a rest day for me and not necessarily by choice; I spent most of the day in bed, sick with a head cold.  Regular doses of ZyCam and Tylenol were the order of the day.  Kay, on the other hand, was busy all day helping Karyn get ready for the evening’s activities. Matt and his family allowed us to join their family celebration of the holiday as we all ate pizza, salad, and cookies and pies.

We were up early Thursday, Christmas, for a trip to Memphis to celebrate the holiday with Jenny and her family.  Harper was in rare form, and enjoyed opening the many gifts from grandparents and Santa.  She had an assembly line going with DD (that’s me) taking the toys out of the packages—this involves cutting, untying, unscrewing, and sometimes tearing away packaging materials—while her dad put the toys together.  He spent several hours putting her kitchen together because the parts did not fit, and the instructions were pitiful; he did a great job, and she enjoyed it immensely.  Jenny and I prepared portions of the meal—I mainly assisted as she is a great cook.  Kay visited with the Simanks, taking Sandy a few pieces of hammered aluminum Kay picked up from a Canadian collector in the Rio Grande Valley.  After stuffing ourselves and cleaning up the kitchen, we drove back to central Arkansas.

Friday, we met with Kecia, our decorator at Bassett.  She was gracious enough to come in during her day off.  Before her presentation, we advised her of the construction changes we made Tuesday, and furniture preferences for the sunroom.  She quickly added and modified the design as necessary, and made an awesome presentation; we liked everything.  Now, it’s add a lamp here, a pillow there, a additional rug or two, a few televisions, and we should have a furnished house, or at least part of one.  While we were at Bassett, Ridge and his mom were at the zoo; he loves the zoo.  Afterwards, he and I played super heroes and race cars.  Now, his definition of playing is different than our—his definition is for me to sit with him on the floor while he plays!  Friday evening, Kay, Karyn, Ridge and I had dinner at The Pantry, a German restaurant in Little Rock.  The service was poor to fair, and while most of the food was very good, a few items, like onion rings on top of the dish I had, were so over battered and cooked that they were too hard to eat without breaking a tooth, seriously!  And, some of the food prices were quite high.

Ridge joined us in bed Saturday morning for an hour or so, before we all got us for playtime and breakfast.  We reluctantly said our goodbyes and departed, in the rain, for Corpus Christie, where we met Al and Sharon Crawford after their flight from Toronto, Canada, via Houston.  They arrived about 10 PM, and we drove the two and a half hours to BPVRV resort, arriving at 12:20 AM.  It rained almost the entire 800-mile drive. 

We were sluggish all day, Sunday, having had little sleep after the later/early arrival from central Arkansas yesterday.

A return to our routine Monday was the order of the day with Kay exercising early in the morning and Al and I playing golf, despite the cool, misty day.  Kay began turning a new bowl in the woodworking shop, this time from a solid piece of wood brought to her by Paul Graham, our next door neighbor and her “turning” instructor.  The maintenance folks in the RV resort turned the water off, did some never-ending repair work, and then turned the water back on.  Our potable water tank overflowed, and we think their turning the water back on created a surge that created havoc with the fill tank valve.  A call to Lichtsinn RV got us a new one in the mail; I do dread having to replace the valve again as it’s only been a few weeks since the last one was replaced.  The electrical and water supply infrastructure in this RV resort is unreliable, to say the least, in my opinion, as there are constant problems with blown circuits and leaks, respectively.  We did manage to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks football team demolish the University of Texas Longhorns in the Texas bowl in the evening.  Whoo, Pig, Sooie!  And, cold, wet weather returned to the Rio Grande Valley, not fit for outdoor activities.  And, it’s supposed to hang around for a week or more!  Oh well, beats freezing temperatures and ice!

I woke up with a horrendous back ache in the left shoulder area during the wee morning hours Tuesday.  It was so bad that I spent most of the day in bed, trying to get some comfort with a heating pad and ice rub, but not to much avail.   Kay continued “turning” the new bowl.  Cold and light rain continued.

I was in so much pain Wednesday, that I remained in the motorhome all day and evening; Kay did go to dinner with the Circle 3 group,  We both skipped the New Year’s Eve party, though.  Cold and light rain continued.  Happenings these last few days were a tough way to end a year that saw so much occur in our lives.