Quote of The Week:

"Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame."

— Stephen King

No turkey day leftovers! WAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! That's one of the best parts of Thanksgiving.

BUT!.............

........we'll have our own turkey with almost all of the trimmings either tomorrow or Sunday. We usually do this when we have Thanksgiving away from home. We even did this when we still had our house but went to another family members house for dinner. We'll have the turkey, probably some mashed potatoes, we do have a little left over sweet potato puff and a little baked pineapple, and Jenny always makes me REAL cranberry sauce even though she doesn't really care for it herself. And I found a K I L L E R recipe for award Winning Hot Fudge Cake which I'll do in the dutch oven. It's supposed to in the mid '60's tomorrow, so it'll be nice to be outside cooking.

We had a very nice meal yesterday, and met some interesting folks. I did make 2 trips through the food line, but I justified that by not having any dessert.

Thanks to my daughters tip about Pandora, I've been listening to non stop Christmas music whenever I get on the computer. Thank goodness for earphones!

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving, and that you can relax and enjoy the holiday weekend. We don't have to worry about Black Friday because we have all of our Christmas shopping finished. YEAH!

Hey, hey, hey! It's almost turkey day. I love Thanksgiving, especially the leftovers. I've always kidded Jenny that we need to make Thanksgiving dinner the day before Thanksgiving so that we have the leftovers on Thanksgiving.

My favorite leftover is just the good old turkey sandwich with a glass of cold milk. But since I learned how to make the turkey/dressing/cranberry sandwich, that has become the favorite. But a close second is the full plate of everything. In fact, I'd rather have the leftover turkey and side dishes than any of the desserts.

Of course, one of the problems with being on the road is that we usually end up having Thanksgiving dinner out somewhere, which means no leftovers. But we usually will fix a smaller version of Thanksgiving dinner a few days after Thanksgiving basically so that we can have leftovers. We'll do a turkey breast, potatoes (mashed and/or sweet), and cranberry sauce. Then we'll have enough leftovers to get us through a couple of days, which satisfies the craving for quite awhile.

This year we'll be having Thanksgiving dinner here at the park. The park is supplying the turkey and the gravy, and everyone attending will bring dishes to share. Jenny's going to make her sweet potato puff dish, and I'm going to do my dutch oven baked pineapple. It'll be a nice get together of the folks that are here, and I'm sure we'll have some really good food.

So what is everybody else doing? Regardless of what you're doing, we want to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving and a joyous holiday season.

What a nice surprise we had yesterday when our good friends, Ron and Jean Arnold, pulled up alongside the coach and climbed out of their car. We knew they were coming down here, and we'd planned on meeting them somewhere for lunch. But we had no idea that they had arrived, let alone found their way to where we are parked.




We know them from our church, and it was Ron that built our first home for us back in 1976. Jean was the church's choir director and bell choir director for many years, but now has scaled back to just the bell choir. She was also the person that "conned" me into helping direct a number of our church musicals our music department every year.

The reason for their visit to Branson is one of those double edged swords. First, they both enjoy the area and love going to the shows. But secondly, because this is the first year that Ron will not be going deer hunting because he's having some back problems, they came down to help him through the "withdrawl".

We had a wonderful chat, and they were able to help us catch up on everything that is happening at the church. There are 2 new pastors at the church now, as one of the previous pastor's retired and the other took another calling. Plus, the church building is undergoing a major renovation, and Jean had pictures for us. It'll be interesting to see it when we go home for Christmas.

After our chat time, we went over to Branson Landing and had lunch at Garfields. We all had wonderful sandwiches, and I was so enjoying talking with Jean and Ron, that I totally forgot to take pictures of our meals. But the food was so good, that I know that we'll be going back for another meal, so I'll get some pics then.

Ron and Jean will be here until Thursday, but I'm not sure we'll be able to see them again. They've got themselves pretty well booked up with things to do while they're here. Hopefully we'll connect one more time before they leave, but if not, we'll see them again at Christmas.

I guess yesterdays' visit to Silver Dollar City put us in the right holiday mood, so we went out and got some new snowflake lights for the outside of the coach. We bought exactly the same kind we had before since we liked them so much. Unfortunately, the last set of lights decided to die all at the same time, so we pitched them.

Here are the new ones.








The other day I finally broke down and unpacked all of the stuff for some dutch oven cooking. I was just getting the urge to do some cooking, so I figured I'd better be ready. Of course, right after I get everything set up, it started raining for the next few days. Oh well, I'll get something cooked sometime. If the weather is good, maybe I'll whip up something for our Thanksgiving dinner next week.

But we did decide to pan fry some Tilapia tonight. It was very easy and fast. Jenny made up a Buttercrisp cracker and almond breading in the blender, which turned out to be really good. So even though it's not dutch oven, here's some pictures of pan frying the fish and the finished product. It was delicious!

Yesterday we finally got over to Silver Dollar City to see the Christmas sights. You can read a little bit about it here Silver Dollar City Christmas.

In a word, it was fantastic. We got there when it was still light, so some of the pictures just show the park without the lights on. Actually, many of the lights are on all of the time, but they don't show up too well in the pictures. If you've not been to Silver Dollar City before, you should come sometime. It's a wonderful amusement park. Normally, they have wonderful displays of crafts and artists where you can actually talk with the people doing the work. It's pretty cool to be able to talk with a blacksmith, a woodcarver, a glass blower, a potter, or many other craftspeople as they do the work. But one of the real cool things about SDC are the trees. The very first time we were there, the thing that impressed us the most was the fact that as you walked around the park, you really didn't notice the rides because they're all set back in the trees. There's lots of shade all over, and you feel like you're strolling through a wooded garden. You can get an idea of this with some of the daylight pictures I posted, even though the leaves are pretty much gone.

Even when it was still light out, the decorations were wonderful. They have all kinds of wonderful little displays of snowmen or carolers tucked away in the trees. And no matter where you turn, you'll find poinsettas.

But of course the real show is after dark. Everything, and I mean everything, is covered with Christmas lights. This includes the buildings,the trees, the bridges, the fences, and about anything else that doesn't move. And many things that move have lights too! It truly is spectacular. And of course all of the people that work there are being extra happy and seasonal.

There are a number of shows that are presented, but no matter how hard we tried, everytime we got to one we would have liked to see, it was already full. We finally went to the location of a music show about a half hour early and got in line and finally got in. It was a fun show with a trio of ladies doing all of the singing and a fellow that played the piano, the xylophone, the vibes, and the drums (not all at the same time). What was really cool was that it was light when we went in and it was dark when we came out. What an exciting way to see the lights for the first time.

This place really puts you in the holiday spirit.




( Silver Dollar City Christmas )

My daughter has just recently purchased a new phone called The DROID. Apparently this phone has all of the bells and whistles that can be had on a phone. As she talked about it in her blog, she mentioned that she was very excited because she could connect to Pandora with this phone. After she mentioned this a number of times, I finally asked her about Pandora. I'd never heard of it, although I suppose that most of you probably have. She explained to me that it was a website where you could listen to any kind of music you like, and the site would build a "radio station" with just that kind of music.

Sounded interesting, so I tried it.

This is AWESOME! Here's a link if you'd like to check it out yourself...Pandora

It's a free service, or you can upgrade to commercial free for $36.00 per year. Right now I'm using the free service, and although there are ads that popup on the side of the screen, or an occassional audio ad that airs between musical numbers, I've not found them intrusive or even annoying. But if you purchase the upgrade, there won't be any at all.

Here's what you do. After signing in, you're asked to type in the name of an artist or a song that you like. As soon as you do that, the site starts playing the song, but it also starts searching for other songs similar in style or artist to the one that you typed. It then continues to play the songs it finds. Now you can, at anytime, indicate that you don't like a particular song and have it removed, or you can add other artists yourself to the list. You also will name this particular "radio station", and whenever you sign back in, it will be there for you to listen to.

For my first station, I typed in Glenn Miller. When I did that, it listed a number of Glenn MIller's albums that I could select, but I selected just the name so that I'd get everything. The station started playing some of Miller's songs, and while I was listening to that, I typed in Tommy Dorsey, and then songs of his started being added. But even if I had not done that, the station continued big band music and mixing up the artists. So it doesn't just play the artist that you type in. It plays a wide variety of artists that perform similar music.

Since I started using, I've now got a 2nd station for Holiday music and a 3rd station that plays the kind of music that Big Bad Voodoo Daddy plays. And everytime I come back to the site, those stations are there, ready to go.

This is so cool. I wish this had been around when I was still working so I could have listened back then. All I had was a small radio in my office that would only pick-up the local radio station, which really sucked!

Anyway, if you haven't checked out Pandora and you enjoy listening to YOUR kind of music when you're on the computer, give it a try. I bet you'll love it too.

Last night was dinner night out, so we combined activities and attended the Dixie Stampede Christmas Show. Dixie Stampede

For those that have never been to the Dixie Stampede, you have dinner while watching a kind of rodeo/variety show. Of course, the Christmas Show is "adjusted" with seasonal songs and costumes. The normal show divides the audience in half, with one half being the Union side and the other half being the Confederate side. For the Christmas Show, the audience is divided into the North Pole and the South Pole. The cast is also divided in half, and throughout the show, the "actors" participate in a number of rodeo type competitions. Of course, you cheer for your side to win. The real only difference between the regular show and the Christmas Show are the costumes and the music.

But one of the really fun things is the dinner. The dinner is served throughout the show, and you eat the entire meal without any utensils - just your hands. The meal starts with a cup of creamy vegetable soup, then a biscuit, then a whole, small roasted chicken, a big potato wedge, a slice of pork loin, and finally an apple turnover. What really amazed me was that everything was good and hot and very tasty. It's amazing to see how the servers almost literally run up and down in front of the table serving everybody.

One of the disappointments at the show is that you are not allowed to take any pictures during the show. I will admit that it would be difficult to take pictures while you're eating, but I certainly think I could have taken some nice shots. I'm sure the rule is so that the flash of cameras don't stratle the animals or the cast, but the audience is far enough away that I don't think it would have been a problem. We attended the Dixie Stampede a few years ago when we were here, and I'm sure we were allowed to take pictures back then. So I didn't get too many pictures, although I did sneak a couple before the show got started.




( Dixie Stampede )

We did a little running around yesterday, and while we were out, we stopped at the Branson Craft Mall. It opened up as a place for local artists and craft people to have one centrally located place rather than be spread out all over. There are a variety of booths throughout the building, and many of the craft people work right at their booths so that you can see what and how they make their products. Unfortunately, they don't allow picture taking, which seems weird to me. You'd think they'd like the free advertising. So I wasn't able to take as many pictures as I would have liked, and those that I did take had to be done covertly.

Marsha, you'd LOVE this place!


( Branson Craft Mall )

We've set aside every Thursday evening as "Dinner Night Out". This is not to say that we won't go out for dinner on other evenings, but we guarantee ourselves one night out a week this way.

In our search for a place to go, Jenny discovered that The Fish House, which is the restaurant affiliated with Bass Pro Shop at Branson Landing, had walleye on the menu. That settled that decision real fast.

What a great place! It's just like an old fashioned fish house that was built right over the water, because it's an old fashioned fish house built right over the water. Of course, it was never really a fish house. But the decorations were great. There were all kinds of old outboard motors hanging on the walls, fishing rods all over the place, all manner of camping equipment, and a lot of wood. It was great!

But OH MY, were the meals wonderful. The walleye was fantastic, and Jenny's salmon was wonderful, especially with the pecan butter that was served on it. And the prices were very good. That means we'll be going back again! I did take a few pictures of the interior, but there are a lot more that I can take when we go back.

After dinner, we went for a short walk in Branson Landing to see some of the Christmas decorations. We were a bit disappointed in them, as all they had were some blue lights wrapped around the light poles, white lights wrapped around the trunks of the trees, and one blue light shining up into the leaves of the trees. There were some nice decorations at the entrances that had big, silver reindeer with blue Christmas trees, but that's about all. I forgot my tripod so I could take some nice night shots, so I don't have many outside pictures, and those that I have aren't that good. We'll try to go back and get some better ones.

Our meeting at Silver Dollar City went very well, and it looks fairly good that we might end up working there over the summer. We'll find out around the first of the year or so.



( The Fish House )

We've not been doing a whole lot since we arrived in Branson. Partly this is because things are a bit more expensive here than from the last time we were here, but also partly because we just don't want to do much.

AND WE'RE ENJOYING IT!

Oh, we each have our little projects that we wnat to get done. I have some "blue" jobs to do oursie and Jenny has here "pink" jobs. One of Jenny's goals is to get the coach cleaned top to bottom and front to back while we're here. But she tackles just one part of it each day. Today she's cleaning the shelves under the kitchen sink and the cleaning the oven and stove top. And that's all she'll do. I went up on the roof and checked seam caulking for gaps (I thought I spotted a small amount of rain water inside by the front windshield). I did find a small opening in the caulking, so I cut it out and re-caulked it. we'll see the next time it rains if that was the culprit.

Anyway, we've been throughly enjoying our time without working. We've decided that we will win the Missouri state lottery while we're here, and then we can do this all of the time!

Yesterday we drove to Springfield to find fabric for pajamas that Jenny wants to make for the grandkids for Christmas and to find seat cushion foam to reupholster our 2 dining table chairs. We found the foam alright, but Jenny didn't get the fabric for the kids. The patterns that she needed to make the pajamas were $13.00 apiece, and the fabric would have cost almost $40.00 for each. Those prices are ridiculous! I always thought it was less expensive to make the clothes than to buy them. Well, it used to be anyway. After we left the fabric store she stopped at T. J. Maxx's and found pajamas for the kids for $13.00 and $9.00....and they're Carter's brand, which I guess are really good. What's happening to the world??

Tomorrow we have an appointment with the Human Resources Director at Silver Dollar City to talk about summer jobs (just in case that we don't win the lottery ;-) ). You might recall that we applied last year about this time for last summer, but because Celebration City had closed down, those employees would fill open positions at Silver Dollar City. However, Sonya from Human Resources has contacted us a couple of times since then to see if we wanted to work there in 2010. We've always said no becxause we had some other committments. Well, she called us the other day not realizing that we were actually here. when we called her back and told her we were here, she said that she had some possibilities that she wanted to talk to us about if we wanted to come over. So what the heck! We'll go over and talk with her and see if they have something that interests us.

I went out and walked around a bit today to take some pictures of the park we're in. It's an Escapees Rainbow park called Turkey Creek. The nice thing about the Rainbow parks is that they are owned by the Escapees organization and they're a first-come first-serve park. That means that they don't take reservations, so if they're full and you show up looking for a site, you'll be out of luck. But we've been here before and have never had a problem.

This is a very active park, because they have activities going on all of the time. Almost every evening at 4:00 there is a social hour. This is a time when the "guests" can come up to the meeting room and meet other guests. We went up the other night and nobody else was there. Oh well, we've met many people already just by walking Bailey.

But they have other activities throughout the week. Every Sunday, there's an ice cream social. Every Wednesday they have root beer floats followed by a local entertainer that comes in. This fellow actually counts this time as practice time, but nobody cares because they get a free show. we haven't gone up to watch him yet because he's more country and western, which isn't one of our favorite types of music. On Fridays, they have a jam session for anybody that plays an instrument. We haven't been there for that either since we don't play instruments. I'm sure we'll meander up there to see some of these activities just for something to do. The park also has breakfasts on Saturdays and various kinds of evening meals through the week.

It's a nice park, and as Escapees members, it's very reasonable. But you don't have to be an Escapees member to stay here, so for any of you RV'ers that haven't tried it out, come on down. I think you'd like it.


( Turkey Creek )

I've got a BIG shout out for my friend, Ron Hall.








Ron came to my rescue when he read my post where I mentioned that one of the exhaust fans in our bathroom had disintegrated. He sent me a reply saying that he had replaced the same kind of fan in his motorhome, and that he still had the old one. He said he'd send it to me if I wanted it.

How do you say no to an offer like that? Even if the fan is not the right size, which is what I figured would happen, you just don't say no. So I said I'd be happy to take it if he wanted to send it.

Well, I received it yesterday. When I opened the package, I knew immediately that it was the right diameter size. Great! I had been searching around this area in various hardware stores and home improvement centers, but hadn't found the correct size yet. So I was very happy. Ron even sent the small electric motor that powers the fan, but it wasn't compatable with the design of my framework without a lot of modifications. However, the shaft that holds the fan blade onto the electric motor was a smaller diameter than the shaft on my electric motor.

No worries! A quick drill out of the shaft hole in the blade made it the right size to fit the shaft.

So I now have a working fan again. Hooray!

Thanks a bunch Ron. I owe you a big one. When we meet up again soon, we'll figure out what I can do to repay you for your thoughtfulness and generosity.

Yesterday we FINALLY had a day of sunshine. We've been here for a week, and we've had exactly one day of sun. It's driving us crazy! It is so wet and muddy around here, that we can't hardly find a decent place for Bailey to go potty. I don't mind the rain so much, as much as I hate the mess that it makes. That's one of the problems with being in an RV. It's very hard to keep the front entrance of the coach clean. We try to take off our shoes so we don't track through the coach, but then we end up having shoes alying around the front. And we're always dragging in leaves on our shoes. I really miss our mud room we had in the house at times like these!

But I really feel sorry for the farmers down here. They can't get into their fields to harvest their crops. I heard on the news that they're at least 40% behind in corn harvesting and more than 20% in soy beans. and those kinds of delays cost those people a lot of money. But the rain is supposed to end sometime tomorrow, and then we have sunshine forecast at least through next Tuesday. What a relief that will be!

So we took advantage of the nice weather yesterday and drove down to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It's about an hour drive from here, through some beautiful country.

Eureka Springs is a very picturesque community that has been become a real tourist destination. There are all kinds of unique shops and beautiful old buildings to see. The town is built in a very hilly area, so the best way to see it is to take a trolley to the top of Spring Street and walk down.

We only had a couple of hours to spend there (our parking meter only had that much time on it), but since we've been there before, we knew that we wouldn't need all that much time. We did notice that there were a number of empty shops, which really didn't surprise us. But another thing we noticed was that it seems that the quality of the items in the shops had gone down. There used to be really nice galleries, jewelry shops, and quality locally made items. But it seems that most places now are offering the standard, run-of-the-mill touristy stuff. That's a real shame, because we think the town has lost a lot of its "character".

On our way home, we decided to stop at the College of the Ozarks. It is only a mile or so from where we're parked, and they have a wonderful reputation for their restaurant. One of the things that the college is well known for is the culinary school. And all of the meals prepared for the restaurant are prepared by students. We were pretty sure that there would be some kind of Thanksgiving meal planned, so we thought we'd stop and find out about it. They sure do have something planned. They'll have a huge buffet for $29.95 per person. They have 3 seatings, at 10:00a.m., at 12 noon, and at 2:00p.m. From what we've learned, the only available seating left is 10:00a.m. But they only take reservations for parties of 8 or more, so we think they'll probably keep a certain number of seats available for walk-ins. we'll check a little later in the month and see if we can get a better read on it. Then we can decide what we'll end up doing for turkey day. Here's a link to the College of the Ozarks. College of the Ozarks



( Eureka Springs, AR )

Today I was out walking Bailey, and I noticed a fellow working outside of his 5th wheel. I stopped to just say hello as I walked by, and we started chatting. As most RV'ers know, one of the first questions that is asked is "Where ya from"?

I asked this fellow that question, and his response was, "Oh, we're from a town in Wisconsin you've probably never heard of." "Really"? I asked. "We're from Wisconsin too. What's the town?"

"Janesville".

!?!?!?!?!?!?!

"That's our home town too. Where'd you work?"

"The City of Janesville Fire Department".

Choke, gasp, hick.....

"I worked for the City too. I was the Risk Manager".

"I thought you looked familiar when I saw you walking. I'm Bill McRoberts."

"Yeah, now I remember you."

How funny is that? But what's even more unusual is that Bill and another retired Janesville firefighter had bumped into my son in San Antonio. Tom was sitting with some other fellows from his base on the Riverwalk when we saw a couple of guys walking by wearing Wisconsin shirts/hats. He shouted out to them "Go Badgers". They stopped to talk to the young man who had shouted at them, and through conversation, discovered that I was Tom's Dad. I'm not sure that I want to know what they might have told Tom about me, but none the less, it was kind of a neat meeting.

And so was today's. It's too bad I didn't meet up earlier with Bill, as they're leaving tomorrow.

Safe travels Bill.

It is a small world.

Yesterday was pretty miserable around here. It rained all day. As a result, we didn't do much. Jenny got caught up on the laundry. I took apart the fan in the bathroom. The other day I turned the fan on to remove some of the heat in the room, and the fan blades disintegrated! I think that a wire had "moved" into the path of the blades, and when it was turned on, the blades hit and started coming apart. So I cleaned everything up and removed the stub of the fan that was left on the spindle on the motor. Now all I have to do is to find a replacement fan blade.

It's supposed to be only 47 today, so won't be doing much. we are definitely going to get groceries, because we are out of almost everything. I think next Monday or Tuesday we'll head over to Silver Dollar City, because they're having a huge fall festival there until the 31st. It should be fun, and those days look like the best weather wise.

Well, we did go out to get something to eat, but we didn't go to get groceries. And when we got back, we didn't go for root beer floats or music. It was just one of those times after we finishing eating that we both looked at each other and just said, "let's just go home, get our comfy's on, and chill."

So that's what we did. But I did get some pictures of the restaurant. We selected a Mexican place, and it turned out great. Jenny had a beef burrito and I had a beef chimichanga. We both agreed that it was amazing that we had to come back to the middle of the country (from the west and the southwest) to get really good Mexican food.

Yes, we are now in Branson, MO. Hopefully, we'll be here until after the first of the year, weather permitting. We're staying at Turkey Creek, the Escapees RV Park. As members of Escapees, they have great rates, so it's really great that we can take advantage of our membership.

The drive up from Hot Springs went well, and in fact we actually got here a little sooner than we thought we would. Now it's off to get some groceries and some dinner, or maybe we'll reverse that so that we won't buy stuff that we really don't need. This evening at 6:30 there's a social hour in the clubhouse with root beer floats and some music provided by a local group. We figure we'll mosey on up there and check things out. Should get some pics for you.

Today we spent a few hours walking around the Garvan Woodland Gardens.

OMG!!!

If you EVER get to the Hot Springs area, you absolutely must see these gardens. They're spectacular. there are wonderful walking paths, most of which are made out flagstone. You feel like you're strolling through a state park. It's wonderfully relaxing. What's really amazing is that these gardens have only been open since 2002. They've done all of this in just 7 years! It is affiliated with the University of Arkansas, so I'm sure that they get a lot of support from there. But still, it's truly amazing.

The entire staff of the gardens are in the process of decorating the gardens for Christmas. They must have a lighted display for evening viewing, because they were stringing lights along all of the walkways and they were erecting fabulous ornaments, Christmas trees, mechanical butterflies, and all kinds of other holiday decorations. I sure wish we could see that.

Enjoy the pictures.



( The Gardens )

We started out yesterday by driving through the National Park to visit the Mountain Tower. Hot Springs National Park is a beautiful park, and the drive was very enjoyable. We got to the tower and decided to go up the 265 feet so that we could check out the views. It was well worth it. The fall colors are just now starting to become visible, so in another week or two it would be spectacular.

Hot Springs has quite a history. It was the first dedicated National Resort in the country. As time went on and the area became more developed, it started getting a reputation as a very lawless community. It had a number of casinos and a the reputation as a "safe haven" for gangsters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. But in the '30's, there was a huge crackdown on all of the questinable establishments, and today, there are no casinos at all. There is the Oaklawn ractetrack that has some gaming in it, but other than that, all other casino type establishments are gone.

After seeing the tower, we went back downtown to walk along Bathouse Row. Out of all of the bathouses that were located here, there is only one (Buckstaff) that has operated continuosly through the years. Jenny checked to see what it would cost to try it, and it would have been $55.00. Just a little more than we're willing to pay. But we did tour the National Park Service Visitor's Center and museum. It was really interesting, and I hope you get a feel of what these bathouses were like back in the day.

Today we'll be visiting a botanical garden that looks wonderful. Lots more pictures! Tomorrow we head for Branson.


( Hot Spring Bathouses )

Our 3 days in Oklahoma City went really fast. We stopped there for two reasons. The first was to see our friends that we made while we were in St. Cloud, Steve and Pat. The second reason was because we could stay at the casino for free for 3 days. Of course, one of the down sides to that was the fact that we didn't have wi-fi.

We only spent one day going in to OKC. There was a huge RV show at the state fair grounds, so we thought we'd go in to take a look around. Besides, on Friday we'd get in for half price. We really didn't see all that much at the show, although we did see the 5th wheel that we like offered at the lowest price that we've ever seen. But since we've all but decided to stick with our coach, we shrugged our shoulders and walked away.

After leaving the show, we decided to drive down through Bricktown. This is an area that has been revitalized into shops, upscale eateries, and housing. They've done some beautiful restorations of old brick buildings. We had lunch in Bricktown, so a few pictures will follow.

Friday evening, our friends drove over to the casino and we all met and had dinner. It was wonderful, especially since the restaurant wasn't all that busy and we were able to sit there as long as we wanted to chat. It'd been a whole year since we'd seen them, so we had a lot to catch up on.

Saturday became a laze around day. We didn't do much of anything other than just kicking back and relaxing. We left Sunday morning to head towards Hot Springs, Arkansas.

( Bricktown )


The drive to Hot Springs was uneventful. Everything went well, we made good time, and we pulled in around 3:00 p.m. We had considered staying at the National Park campground, but then we realized that they wouldn't have wi-fi or cable. So we decided to try a park that we had considered applying to as workampers. We'd seen an ad the park had run, and from what we could tell, it was a nice park. It's called Young's Lakeside Resort.

Well, it IS by a lake. Other than that, I'd hesitate calling it a resort let alone an RV park. It'll do the job for the 2 or 3 nights we'll be staying, but I'm certainly glad we didn't apply. I've not taken any pictures of the park yet, but I will.

As we got settled in our spot, I commented to Jenny that the area we're in has a lot of lakes. There should be some restaurants that serve walleye. You know me and my walleye! Well, a little searching on the internet (the park does have awesome wi-fi!), I found Fisherman's wharf that had walleye on the menu.

Guess where we went to dinner??? The walleye was fine, but Jenny's salmon wasn't very good. It's too bad too, because we really liked the place.

Some pictures to follow.


( Fisherman's Wharf )


During dinner, we decided that on Monday we'd take a drive through the National Park, go downtown to see Bathhouse Row, and maybe do a little shopping. The next post will discuss those activities.