Home, sweet Home

After two weeks in Santa Barbara we have returned to our 5th wheel here in Albuquerque and are preparing to get back on our quest. We had a great time seeing all our friends and family. Luckily we have a lot of them and were able to stay at Rob's for the first week and Ben's for the second. It was really fun to feel as if we were on vacation in our own town. Rob lives downtown, which made it easy to get to shops, restaurants and the gym while Ben lives on Mountain Dr, making it easy to see everyone and enjoy walks in the morning. I forget how beautiful Santa Barbara is and it was such a pleasure to soak some of that up again. Unfortunately Stan came down with a beast of a cold so he didn't get to have as much fun as I did. We went to my niece Colleen's graduation from Sacramento State (congratulations!!!!) and after checking into the hotel on Friday Stan went to bed and didn't get up until we left on Sunday. That's seriously sick for him! Other than that, all went well and we are back with a basket of avocados from our tree and ready for action.

Visiting the Homeland

Stan and I have arrived in Santa Barbara for the next couple of weeks, where we are planning to visit with family and friends and take care of the business of life. We left our 5th wheel in Albuquerque and will pick it up at the end of the month and head up to Angel Fire, NM. This just means that I will be a very flaky blogger until we get on the road again. Too much to do and not enough time to do it in......
I will say it's nice to be home, seeing everyone and knowing where I'm going. Santa Barbara is spectacular as usual.

Blowing through Kansas

We've been in Kansas for the past week, getting a little work done on the 5th wheel and seeing the land of Oz. It's very green here, with rolling prairie land, wheat fields and neat, tidy, little towns. About the only draw back is that they call this area tornado alley for a reason. We have been managing to do our travel days in between storms and getting to experience some spectacular shows on the others. You get to meet lots of other people when you're hanging out in the restrooms at the rv park together. We spent one evening, sirens screaming, with about 10 people, a cat and a dog. Every time we started back to our rvs another tornado would show up in the vicinity and back we'd go to the safety of the restrooms. Luckily they were clean! Meanwhile, we are intact and Kansas is quite beautiful at this time of year.

Life in small town America

While riding the Katy Trail was total fun, we wanted to do some other things too so one afternoon we decided to attend the high school baseball game in New Franklin, Mo. We walked over to the local school (grades one through twelve) and bought tickets. Luckily Stan and I qualified for the over fifty-five rate and got a dollar off, making our tickets a dollar apiece. We climbed up in the bleachers and settled in, not knowing how this was going to play out. Turns out the home team had the stronger players, but they both had awesome pitchers, so it was really fun to watch. It's amazing how you find yourself choosing and getting behind a team when you don't know anyone or anything about either of them. We had a great time. When we left we bought a bag of popcorn and ate it on the way back, hashing over the game.

Extreme mail service

Staying where we were in Missouri, Stan and I were a little worried about the address that we had given for our mail delivery. There was a little post office right across the road from us so I decided to go over and see if it was sitting on the shelf somewhere. When I explained to the post master, he said that it wouldn't have been delivered to our address but would have been held up at the other post office in town, a mile up the road. He told me that if I didn't have a chance to collect it, he would bring it down in the morning and I could pick it up there. Later that day Stan and I decided to make the walk up the hill to town and see if our mail was there so off we went. We were within a block of the post office when I heard my name called. I turned around and there was the postmaster, holding our mail out the window to me!! He had seen us going by and realized that we wouldn't make it by 4:00 (when it closes) so he went up, got it, tracked us down and hand delivered it! I call that beyond the call of duty. Nice, yes?