Sweet Home Chicago and back again - Luling, TX

Warning: This is really not an RV post, but bear with me - we had such a lovely time in Chicago that I have to share it anyway.

After what felt like a quick hit and run trip back home for a little over a week, we arrived back in Luling, TX yesterday to reunite with the moho. We had flown out of San Antonio on April 8, back home to Chicago for our club's Party in Parrotdise. We promised when we left that we will NEVER miss this event and we have no intention of ever reneging on that. What a time it was!

Upon arriving at Midway and picking up a rental car we heading to Geneva to stay the first 3 days at the home of our old friends Chris and Roger. On our first day there we all headed out for a local bar crawl through some of Geneva's fine watering holes and eventually ended up at Sergio's Mexican Restaurant for dinner. Surprise of the night - unbeknownst to us  they had arranged for friends Dean and Terrie to be there also. The six of us had a lovely dinner and lots of laughs as we all caught up with one another.

The next day we headed out to Lincolnwood to visit with Chris and Roger's daughter Melissa and her family. Many, many years ago when I ran a home day care, Melissa and her sister were among my charges, so this tells you just how long we have all been friends. Dinner that night was at...drum roll please...Lou Malnati's Pizza! As faithful fans of the world's best pizza, which everyone knows can ONLY be found in Chicago, we had really been missing good pizza during our months on the road. When Chris was planning for our stay there she asked me if there was anything special that we wanted and I told her we just needed a pizza fix, so she arranged it. Way to go!

Thursday we drove into the city to spend the evening with our daughter Melissa and her guy AJ - we had a really nice dinner and drinks at Chief O'Neils, one of the Chicago's best Irish pubs.

On Friday afternoon we headed for our hometown Carol Stream to check into the Holiday Inn, where everyone involved with Party in Parrotdise was staying. We weren't even checked in yet when we started running into old friends. This is the biggest event that our Parrot Head club puts on in the whole year, so just about all of our club friends were there. After meeting up with the homies, we all made our way over to Flip Flops Bar and Grill - this is our old neighbor hangout, which happened to be hosting the kick-off party to start the weekend event.

The music that night was provided by Jay and Bobby of the Disorderlies, 

Jay and Bobby rocked it, especially when they started the party off by proclaiming that "the Tropps are back in town!". There isn't much room to dance at this little place, but we managed.

                                     

It was a late night, but we all managed to be up early on Saturday to get the venue set up and decorated for Saturday night's main event. After that it was back to the hotel for a pool party, with music by Flip Flop Dave. It was hard to drag ourselves out of the pool and hot tub, but we finally did in time to grab some dinner and then get over to the Legion Hall where the party was about to start. The first musician up for the evening was Jim Hoehn for the warm up, and then - our very own Mr Myers band!

Our friend Todd Donnelly and his Mr Myers band have been our local hometown band forever. They play amazing reggae music, along with covers of Jimmy Buffett, Bob Marley and lots of others. They also have some great original songs (Rum Punch for Breakfast, anyone?) Among other places, they've played in Florida at national events, and even opened for Jimmy Buffett in Key West one year. We love those guys! They did not disappoint that night, and they kept the party going on into the night. I did not sit out even one the whole night but it was such a great time that I didn't even notice until we were on the shuttle back to the hotel that I was hurting all over!

The theme of the evening was Pirates of New Orleans and a lot of people dressed up in awesome costumes, while some of us slackers just dressed comfortably. Next year for sure! In any case, it was just an amazing night - great times with some of my favorite people in world. Nothing like coming back after an absence to make you feel loved and missed!

Sunday morning another one of our local musicians (and good friend) Frank Whiting played at the "Sunday Moaning" brunch.

Bill and I then headed for the south suburbs and Anita's house, where we spent the next couple of days. This allowed me to have a girls night out with my oldest friends in the world, the ones I walked to school with when I was 6 years old. How's that for long friendships?

Our last two days were spent in Downers Grove with Don and Cheryl and then we all attended the club meeting on Wednesday night. There were just a couple of people there that had not been able to make the weekend event, so we were able to see them as well as one more time around with the whole group. Fond farewells were then said, but as my new mantra states, it's not a goodbye - it's a "till I see you again." We'll be returning to Chicago in the moho by the end of July and staying for about 6 weeks at that time, so it won't be long before these bad pennies come rolling back again.

A huge thank you to all these wonderful friends who opened their guest rooms to us, and the many more who offered.

After arriving back in Luling yesterday, we spent the day unpacking and doing laundry. Today was grocery shopping and catching up on a few small chores. We're taking one more day here before heading out on Sunday morning, bound for Big Bend National Park. Next post should be from there.

Westbound Way Stop – Luling TX

We left Tampa last Sunday, having been at Bay Bayou for 2 months. It was a pleasant stay but longer than we had really wanted to be there, so we were raring to go by that time.

We spent the first night on the road at Beaver Lake Campground in Quincy Florida.

For those who have asked how we find our overnight stops, I have a number of RV travel related aps on my phone. First I check Passport America, which is a discount membership that we have found to be indispensable. The membership is only around $40 per year and the card gets us 50% off on every affiliated campground. There are enough parks on the program that we rarely have to stay elsewhere while on the road, so that a typical $30 fee turns into $15, which adds up to a huge savings over time. We have paid as little as $12 for a site. There are restrictions which differ from park to park – some allow the discount for only up to 3 days, other disallow it on holiday weekends etc. But for traveling, it is by far the best discount program out there. If I can't find a Passport America affiliated park, I next check Good Sam – this is another membership that most RVers have since it also provides roadside assistance. Good Sam affiliated parks give us 10% off. I generally check the RV Park Reviews site to make sure there are no glaring issues before selecting a park, but as always when reading reviews you have to take them with a grain of salt. As a last resort I go to the KOA (Kampgrounds of America) site. The reason this is a last resort is that KOA parks are generally much more expensive and our discount is only 10%. While we don't mind paying more for value when we're going to be in a place long enough to use the amenities, it doesn't make sense to pay $40, $50 or more for an overnight stop. They generally do have shiny clean facilities which we don't use since we are totally self contained and even have our own on-board laundry – we just need a place to park and can almost always find it at a better price. Many parks are affiliated with more than one membership program so we can go with the one that gives us the best value, which invariably is Passport America. On the other hand KOA parks are just that – dedicated KOA parks with no other affiliations or discounts other than their own membership. In any case, it has never been a problem for us to easily find a stopover with easy access.

Gulfport, MS:

The second day of travel brought us to Gulport MS where we stayed at Campground of the South. This was a nice park and we decided to break up the trip by staying for a couple of extra days. We didn't exactly have a smooth landing there, since the first site we pulled in to had an unfortunately spaced tree that would have prevented us from opening our slide. Lesson learned – check the site FIRST, then pull in. There were plenty of other empty sites so we simply chose another one BUT...all the roads in the park are one way so we had to go all the way out in order to get into the site next to us. That's all good, except for the fact that we had to make a big circle onto a grassy field...and it had recently rained a lot...oops. The good news is that we didn't need to be towed out – whew! The bad news is that it will probably take years for the ruts we left to disappear. 

There is a lot to see and do in the Gulport/Biloxi area so it was a good place to stop for a while. On Tuesday morning we took our bikes out to ride the 15 mile Gulf Islands Live Oaks bike trail.

This route winds along the beach for a while and then through some neighborhoods with real old southern charm and we really enjoyed it. We stopped in downtown Ocean Shores for lunch and then hopped back on our bikes and proceeded to get hopelessly lost. The downside to this trail is that they must have run out of trail markers so that the only way to know which way to turn when you come to a crossing is to consult the map. Well, it's tough to ride with a map in your hand, right? But we didn't see any skeletons next to bikes along the way, so we figured we'd get back to our car eventually and we did, but only after much circling and stopping to check Google maps. It was a great ride – and incidentally we don't call getting lost a mistake. We like to refer to it as an Adventure. Ha! We have a lot of Adventures. 

On the way home we stopped at the Biloxi Margaritaville for a drink. We can't pass by a Margaritaville!

On Wednesday we took the ferry from Gulfport out to Ship Island where we spent the day. The hour long ferry ride over is one of the best parts of this particular excursion, especially on a sunny day such as we had. 

We started by touring the civil war era fort on the island and then spent the rest of the day on the beautiful beach. 

                                                                       Inside the fort

Oh, Bill.

There is no development other than a small snack bar and restroom facilities on the island. No one lives there, although a couple of rangers sometimes stay out there. The two guys who work at the snack bar traveled with us on the ferry. Since ours was the only boat there that day, the only people on the island were with our group. 

This is Minnesota Steve's "office" - Steve rents beach chairs and came over with us on the ferry.

The term that sticks in my mind is magnificent isolation. I would definitely recommend a trip out to Ship Island to anyone visiting the gulf coast.

Back on the road:

Thursday morning we got off to a late start due to an accident just outside our campground that closed the road to traffic. After the accident was cleared, of course the emphasis was on clearing the traffic backup rather than letting us out and onto the street. Can't blame anyone for that decision since we weren't trying to make it to work like those other drivers were. So we sat at the campground driveway for about 30 minutes but then got on our way. Our stop that night was Hidden Lake RV Park in Beaumont TX, another very nice little park. Friday we had a relatively short driving day since we arrived here in Luling in the early afternoon. The only issue we had was the hassle of getting around Houston – we usually take bypass routes rather than plowing through major cities but in this case it didn't help much since the traffic ended up being bad even on the bypass. And taking the tollway around the city cost us $14 in tolls for about 20 miles! Maybe we shouldn't complain about Illinois tollways quite so much...

We are now at Riverbend Campground here in Luling, just outside of San Antonio. It's a very small town, so yesterday we drove out to the neighboring town of Sequin to do a little shopping. Today we are doing laundry and catching up on some maintenance chores while getting ready for our planned trip to Chicago. We are leaving the moho here on our campsite and flying out of the San Antonio airport on Tuesday morning. We are looking forward to spending 9 days with friends and family and attending Party in Parrotdise, which is our Chicago Parrot Head Club's major charity fund raising event of the year and incidentally SO much fun. We'll be at the Holiday Inn in Carol Stream next weekend for the event, but the rest of the time we're staying with various friends. We had many kind offers of guest rooms and we're following the rule that states house guests and fish should not be kept more than 3 days, so we'll be moving around a bit. So get ready Chicago – we're on our way!

Wrapping things up - Tampa, FL

While our time here in Tampa has been extended due to circumstances (Bill's physical therapy), it is finally winding down to a close. It's been a lot of fun and we've made a lot of new friends as well as reconnected with old ones, but we are definitely getting antsy and are ready to move on.

We've had friends over for dinner a few times here at the moho, and luckily the weather cooperated and allowed us to eat outside, especially when there were 8 of us - that would have challenged even our generous space inside. Although on that occasion when we were joined by friends from Tampa and Toronto we did all end up inside after dinner to watch a video, since it got a little chilly for our Florida friends. For anyone who remembers all the gatherings that we used to have at the house in Carol Stream, it's easy to understand that we miss those times and we still love having friends over. So the tradition continues.

St Paddy's Day:

We celebrated St Patrick's Day with friends from the Tampa Bay PH club at Ybor City. The traditional parade is very different from the parades we're used to in Chicago - no marching bands or bagpipes. The parade is all about the different Krewes (social organizations) putting floats together and throwing out beads to the crowd. It didn't really feel like St Patrick's Day (seriously, no bagpipes!) but it was a lot of fun - it had a Mardi Gras feel to it, since the concept of Krewes originated in New Orleans, at least according to Google. Yes, I had to look them up because I didn't know what Krewes were until then. We could barely walk under the weight of all the beads we were wearing by the time the parade was over. Anyone need a few billion beads? Let me know!

Many of the floats were really spectacular.

Thank you to Mary Ann Massengale for the pictures.


Reconnecting with friends:

Last week we caught up with friends Bill and Kris, whom we had met back in December during our stay at the Tiffin plant in Red Bay, Alabama. They are currently in Wauchula, about 2 hours from us, so we met up for lunch in Bartow which is about halfway between. We had a great afternoon exchanging stories, catching up and comparing future travel plans. They brought along friends Jim and Linda and the six of us had a great time. It's great to meet new people and even better to reconnect with them down the road. One of the big perks of the RV livestyle.

The Yard:

Last Saturday we attended a house concert at "The Yard", which is a well known and award winning Tampa home venue for trop-rock music. In this case, it was a bit of a departure from the usual, as the Reverend Billy Wirtz is not a trop-rocker but a blues musician/comedian/entertainer who put on a terrific show. I'm not sure why he's called "the reverend" because he so is NOT - a lot of his stuff is on the raunchy side and definitely not for kids. We had a great time and the Yard experience is not to be missed while in Tampa.

The "Reverend"

Bands and musicians who've played the Yard

Anna Maria Island:

Yesterday we drove out to Anna Maria Island, which is about 60 miles from Bay Bayou. We spent a lovely day at Holmes Beach.

Approach to the island

Toes in the water

Watching the parasailers

The weather has been great most of the time we've spent here, although we've seen the odd rainy and cooler period here and there. Those are the days we catch up on the inside chores. We've had plenty of sunny pool and beach days and good bike riding weather too. On one of our bike rides we came across this little gentleman on the side of the trail:

We spent a morning last week clearing out our storage trays under the moho. Whew! Flashback to clearing out the basement in the house last year...and everyone has heard THOSE stories. I'm sorry to say the missing Malaysian plane was not in there, although for a while I thought it might be since it seemed like an awful lot of stuff had accumulated down there. Lucikly now, it's all organized and we have a lot more storage space...which I'm sure we'll quickly use up.


On a very sad note, our RV park experienced a tragedy this past weekend when a 5th wheel camper a couple of rows from us caught fire. The neighbors saw the smoke and flames and a couple of them broke a window and pulled out the resident inside, a 54 year old man who had been severely burned. The fire department arrived and found the unit totally engulfed. The fire was put out and the victim airlifted to a nearby trauma center but he unfortunately did not survive. The fire remains under investigation and we are all anxious to learn what caused it. There are of course all kinds of rumors but until the investigation is complete there is no telling what happened.

This week we're tying up loose ends and attending to maintenance chores prior to hitting the road on Sunday. We've been here for nearly two months so we want to make sure everything is in order before we head out. We'll be heading up to I-10 and then west towards San Antonio, Texas as a way point since we'll be flying to Chicago on April 8 and I booked our flights from there. After our week in Chicago we'll be heading for Arizona with a stop at Big Bend National Park on the way. So until then...

Way Too Much Fun - Tampa, FL

Yikes, it's been a while. Since we haven't been doing any actual RV travel for the past few weeks I haven't been updating here, but in the interest of making sure everyone knows where we are, here goes.

We spent nearly two weeks down in the British Virgin Islands in mid-February. We've been going down there for the last 10 years but this was the first time we stayed on land rather than on a sailboat. How did it compare? I would say pretty well, in our situation. For first (or even second or third) time visitors, there is no better way to get to know the BVI than on a sailboat since there are so many little islands, bays, anchorages and great spots that are only accessible that way. Staying on land obviously limits you, although there are numerous day sails available to get you to some of the highlights. Don't even think about a cruise ship - that is absolutely not the way to experience these islands. For us, since we are frequent visitors the land based stay worked out just fine, and gave us plenty of time to reconnect with old friends down there.

For the first week, we stayed at Grand K Suites in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola. This is a three unit building up the road behind Myett's, just off the beach. We had a full kitchen, living area, balcony, bedroom with king size bed and a full bath plus powder room so space was not an issue. The owner, Sandman, is also a part owner of Myett's along with his brother and sister-in-law, Kareem and Valerie. You quickly learn that everyone in Cane Garden Bay is related - they're all Rhymers, up and down the beach. Along with us, our friends Jack and Patti were also at Sandman's place, in an adjoining unit. Other friends Mike and Karen stayed at Myett's,

The six of us had a great week. One day we did a day sail on White Squall over to Norman Island where we snorkeled the caves and then had lunch on the Willy T. The rest of the time we spent pretty much vegging on the beach every day, dancing at happy hour at Myett's every afternoon and going to dinner at a different place each night. There are five bars/restaurants in Cane Garden Bay that we could get to just by walking down the beach. One evening we decided to cab it over to the next Bay and had dinner at Brandywine, which was absolutely fabulous.

The second week, Karen and Mike sadly left us to return home. The remaining four of us took the ferry over to Jost Van Dyke where we had a three day stay booked at the Perfect Pineapple, a little cabin just behind White Bay. The view from our front porch:

White Bay is my special happy place:

Every year when we visit White Bay we take an updated "tree picture". The tree sits in front of our favorite bar, One Love. This year's installment:

A drink menu from one of the funky little bars:

I'll have the "cup of shut the f..." well, never mind.

We had a great couple of weeks in the islands, and coming "home" to Tampa wasn't nearly as painful as it had to be for the rest of our group, who were all returning home to Chicago. Brrr...

We didn't have time to let the grass grow under our feet, since just a week after we got back to Tampa the next event was Music on the Bay. This is a large scale event put on by several of the central Florida Parrothead Clubs as a joint venture. A lot of really big names in trop-rock played the event, but best of all for us, 38 members of our Chicago club came down for the event (a few missed the group photo op).

It felt like we had the band back together! Sharon and Bob stayed with us in the moho - and while you have to be pretty good friends to share tight living accomodations (with only one bathroom!), we did just fine.

MOTB was a fantastic event and we all had a spectacular time. Besides all the club members from Chicago, Illinois was represented by the Boat Drunks, who headlined on Saturday and then our very own good friends Todd Donnelly and Pirate Greg who along with the whole Mr Myers band played on Sunday. That was sort of the culmination of the whole weekend, with all of us up by the stage while the boys played our favorite songs...it was like Christmas morning for this girl.

There were highlights:

.

And low lights:

Ewwww, said Cheryl and Dee!

By the way, thanks to Ron Horne and Carol Echelberger for some of the pictures I stole.

So MOTB behind us, we said a sad "till I see you again" (I refuse to ever say goodbye) to all our hometown friends. But on to the next weekend where the ride continued.

Our friend and favorite Trop-rocker, Brian Neale was in town after playing MOTB and he had a couple of gigs lined up in Ft Myers and Punta Gorda for the weekend after so we headed down there to see him with some of the Tampa Bay folks that we've become friends with. We also had the opportunity to meet up with New Hampshire transplant and friend John, who came out to Hurricane Charley's to see Brian and join us also. 







So it's been a bit of a whirlwind here. In the next week we're looking forward to meeting up with several of our new local friends. Meanwhile, we've been attending to the day to day business of life such as a doctor appointment here and getting the car serviced there - our trusty old Honda has close to 200,000 miles and still runs great but does need a little TLC now and then. We've been riding our bikes on the great Tampa bike trails too. Our plan is to stay in Tampa until around the beginning of April (when Bill should be done with his physical therapy) and then head out. We will be leaving the moho behind somewhere (TBD) while we fly into Chicago for a week in mid-April, then continue west. Till then!

BVI Bound - from Tampa, FL

Very short update this time, since we didn't have time for any adventures during this utilitarian week.

We arrived back at Bay Bayou RV Park last Saturday, after a leisurely but cold trek over a period of 4 days from Texas. But it was warm when we got here and I got to spend every day in the pool until Thursday when things cooled down into the low 60s. Sunday we joined the Super Bowl party in the clubhouse...and yes, our team (at least our team of distant second choice) won, but no more needs to be said on THAT subject, right?

This past week has been a little getting resettled here and a lot of getting ready to head out to the British Virgin Islands tomorrow morning for our annual visit to our most loved place in the world. We'll be returning from the islands on February 20.

Our plan had originally been to leave Tampa early in March and begin heading west, but now that Bill has finally seen a doctor for his lingering back problems, he is doing physical therapy which will extend to the end of March. So we'll be here in Tampa until about the first week of April...anyone need a warm weather getaway next month? Remember, we have a guest couch and always welcome friends.

Today is about packing...so further updates will have to wait on our return. To the hometown friends joining us - safe travels and see you in the islands. To those who are remaining at home, we'll hoist a First of the Day to each of you!