Schulenburg, Texas December 2014

 Hi from Texas! We've been here for about a month now and have started making new friends and exploring. There are three other couples working with us and all have been very nice. We have been doing a lot with Bill and Penny who are from Arkansas (I know, but we don't hold that against them). Schulenburg is a small town of about 2800 people and the area was settled by Czech  and German immigrants. When they built their churches they modeled them after churches in their homelands.  Due to this, the area has become famous for their "painted churches".

 We've been to all in the area and have found most to be very ornate and beautiful inside. Most were built in the mid to late 1800's. As you can see they have been well taken care of and many are currently undergoing restoration projects. They are known as painted churches because of the interiors.

  Many of them have ornate designs and painted scenes on the ceilings and walls as you can see in these pictures. They also have beautiful stained glass windows throughout the building.

 There are about seven or eight churches in the area and we spent two different days driving to them. Most are open to the public so you are able to go inside and marvel at the beauty of them. I think there were only two that were not open during the week. As I said, some are very ornate and a couple were pretty "plain Jane" but that is just due to the religious beliefs of that church.

 We really enjoyed visiting these churches. It's hard to imagine how much time went into the art work on the walls and ceilings. I say art work because it is truly art. The people who built these and did the interiors were truly artist. I know I mentioned the stained glass windows and I will again as I love the looks of them with the sun coming through. Have you ever noticed that even when the sun isn't shining or at night they still have that glow to them.

 We found a very nice Mexican restaurant about 15 miles south in the town of Hallettsville. We went to dinner with Bill and Penny there and then stopped at the court house and took some pictures. They really went all out with the lights on this one.

 This is Bill and Penny (that's right the one's from Arkansas). This is a gazebo that was on the corner of the court house. I can imagine that  a few weddings and proposals have taken place there. It was a very beautiful spot. Yep, that's Holly and I in the lower picture. I told you it was a beautiful spot.

The four of us took a ride to Austin and went to a "craft fair". I'll tell you some of this stuff was priced way out of the craft line. I will say though that this is the first craft fair I have ever been to that had live music and beer. I guess that was to take some of the sting out of the pricing. We were able to get a free holiday picture courtesy of the beer company.

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. We had a big potluck at the park on Christmas with about 40 people so that was nice even though Holly and I worked that day.

This is a 1000 piece puzzle of Tiger stadium that I received from my son and his family. I think they are trying to drive me crazy. Well let's see if I have it done by the next Blog.

That's all for now. Hope you all have a great new year and I'll see ya'll then.

Quincy, CA. to Schulenberg, Texas November 2014

November was a travel month for us. We left Quincy October 30th and headed for Las Vegas to look at a couple of parks we were thinking about working at. Turns out we decided to quit thinking about them. We then continued on our journey to our new job. We stopped in Williams, Arizona and decided to take the Grand Canyon R.R. to the Grand Canyon.  

We rode coach due to the fact it was the cheapest. You have to remember that I'm Dutch. It was a nice trip up to to the canyon and it took us right up to the south rim which was just a short walk from the station. If you've never been to the Grand Canyon you're missing a wonderful sight. Pictures just don't do it justice...it's one of those places you have to see for yourself.

We had about three to four hours before the train headed back to Williams. We had time to walk along the rim and marvel at the views.With the sun and clouds changing the look of the canyon by the minute it was just beautiful. If you're ever in the area of the Grand Canyon, take the time to visit; it is an experience you will never forget.

These are just four of the 127 pictures I took and as I said, the pictures are nice but you really need to see it in person to really appreciate it.

I was able to get Holly to walk out on the point for this picture. Braver then me but she kept saying "hurry up and take it". This is one of my favorite shots . As usual all good things come to an end, so it was back on the train and back to the campground. The next morning we were on the road to Elephant Butte State Park to visit old friends. This is the first park we spent a whole winter at and wanted to stop and see how things looked.

We took the kids to the beach at EBSP and let them run. They had a blast. Brutus was with us when we volunteered there and he showed Ruby around. We spent three nights there and they both went to the beach a couple of times  and enjoyed being able to run and run. We went out to eat a couple of times with friends and had a great time ourselves.

We arrived at Schulenburg RV Park on November 7. Turns out they were not expecting us for another week so we left the motor home there and drove home for a few days and then drove back to Texas. This is a real nice park; the owners are great. The other work campers are also nice and have been very helpful in getting us acclimated. 

We have a nice site although a little narrow, and there's a DQ right next door. We work two days and have six off so we will have time to explore and see some new sights. We have visited some of the other towns around here and are getting a feeling for the area. That's it, next month we will start exploring and sharing it with "ya'll".  See ya next month.

Quincy Ca. October 2014

 I know I'm late but I've been busy. This is the diner in Truckee that was on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. We had lunch there and it was very good.  Holly had the lobster mac and cheese. Nice little town to visit. It was on the way to Lake Tahoe and has some nice little shops.

 We went to a rodeo with our fellow work campers and had a yahoo great time. Some of those guys are just plain nuts. Those bulls and bucking broncos are wild.They also had calf roping and barrel racing. I don't think I would even try barrel racing, I'd probably fall of the horse and land on one of the barrels.

This is Nancy, Jeff and Holly enjoying the rodeo. Nancy and Jeff were our partners in crime. They worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We worked on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We all really worked hard but I think we worked a little harder so they would have it a little easier (they are much older than us).

Holly, Eric (Eric is a full time worker there) and I were called on to judge a pumpkin carving contest that one of the RV rallys had. This is the winner. It wasn't an easy job but we were willing to take bribes.

We took one day and drove around Lake Tahoe. This is a shot of the lake from one of the pull outs. There are some really expensive looking homes around there. No, that's not one of them below. We drove by this barn several times and I finally stopped and took this picture, I kind of like it so I thought I would share it.

 Brutus and Ruby finally decided it was easier to get along and have worked out most of their problems. Brutus is still his own dog and Ruby thinks people were put on this planet to scratch her back and belly.

We took a drive up to Donner Pass just before we left. This is Donner Lake which looks a lot like Lake Tahoe. They had snow up in the pass a couple of days before we were there and it was starting to stay around.

Donner Pass is up around 7500 feet and winter was starting to arrive.
Ok here comes the excuse for being so late with this blog. Two days before we were schedule to leave they had a winter storm warning so the owners said we should leave two days early to beat the storm (that never came). 

We do thank Wes and Diane for being concerned for us. So we have been on the road heading to Texas. Once we arrived we found out they didn't expect us for another week so we left the coach jumped in the Jeep and headed home for a few days. That's all I have for now. I'll try and be on time for November. Bye for now.

Quincy, CA. September 2014

Holly's sister drove down for one last visit so we all went exploring. We went to Subway Tunnel which is an old lava tube. As you can see, it was a ways down to get into it. It was a good thing we were told to bring flashlights as it's not lighted. It's open on both ends but the sunlight doesn't go too far into it.

I took this picture with the flash. Now close your eyes...that's how it looked without the flash. There were places where I had to duck while walking due to the low ceiling and other places where it was 15 feet high. Nice little side trip, especially since none of us have ever seen a lava tube. 

Further north we came to Burney State Park where there is Burney Falls. We had brought a picnic lunch and had the perfect day for our trip. The falls are 22 feet high and there is 100 million gallons of water that goes over the falls every day. There's a trail that goes down to the bottom of the falls and follows the river to Lake Britton.

This is the river that flows through the canyon and down to the lake. The water temperature is between 42 and 48 degrees...not real nice for swimming but fishing is good.

We followed the trail along the river for a little ways and then crossed over and went back up the canyon to the top of the falls. The canyon walk was nice; it was going back up that wore us out. Nothing fancy here...just a dirt trail to the top. This is Holly and Deb on the bridge over the river. The smiles were gone by the time we got to the top.

After Deb left for home Holly and I went to a wildlife park. They take care of abandoned and injured animals. If the animal is injured and can be released after healing they return it to the wild; if not they keep it at the park. They also have animals that need special care that the owners could not provide. They have wolves, coyotes, cheetahs, bears, mountain lions

and several others, not all native to the area. The nice thing is every animal has a little story about how they came to be at the park posted by their habitat. It was really interesting to read all the different stories.

We're looking out over Lake Tahoe in this picture. It was a beautiful day though quite windy. There were even white caps on the lake. We were surprised at how large the lake was. It is 22 miles long and 12 miles wide. There's even a Coast Guard Station there. What rough duty that must be.

This is just me relaxing after a hard 3 hours at work. That's the shop and garage where the owner keeps his other car (a black Corvette). I've offered to take it out for a spin every now and then just to keep everything oiled and running well but we all know his answer to that (can't say I blame him, knowing me).

This is a Mountain Blue Jay, not to be confused with a Steller's Jay which is also a type of blue jay which we have plenty of here at the park.

Yes that's right...we found another train museum. This is the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City. They had some very nice restored equipment and nice displays.

This is a self-propelled passenger car. It will carry 72 passengers and was used around the Lake Tahoe and Truckee area. It's  a cross between a bus and trolly on steroids. They have done a great job of restoring it as you can see in these two pictures and they do give rides on it around the grounds.

That's all for now. Time to start thinking about pulling this train back out on the main line. We leave the 1st of November for Schulenburg RV Park in Schulenburg Texas. That will be our winter home. We are going to try and sneak home some time this winter for a week but until then we will see ya all down the line. Toot- Toot.