Back to Normal -- Tues., July 10

San Antonio and Blanco, Texas:

The vertigo is gone today, but I did stick around the 5er until early afternoon to make sure I felt well enough to go out.

I hit Walmart, AAA (for maps), and then headed north to Blanco and stopped at the first stand I came to that said "Fresh Peaches & Vegetables."

Nice roadside stand.

Peaches!

Summer squash.

I bought a small box of peaches, yellow summer squash and cherry tomatoes. When we finish this batch, I will make another foray north for more peaches and other fruits and vegetables.

South Texas is getting thunder, lightning and rain. Driving north to Blanco this afternoon, a few rain showers gave my car a bath, removing another layer of caliche dust. Car detailing is in the Escape pod's future to remove the caliche dust from all the nooks and crannies. 

Today, Bob took his truck in for an oil change, air filter, brake fluid and transmission fluid.  We're getting our vehicles serviced after being in the oil fields on bumpy, dirty back roads. His truck is especially important because it will be pulling the 5er to Yellowstone in a little over a week. We still have a few 5er repairs that need to be made before we go.

That's it for today; pretty quiet here.

Enjoy your Wednesday.

No Peaches Today -- Mon, July 9

San Antonio, TX:

Today I headed for the Texas Hill Country to purchase peaches, cantaloupe, blackberries, tomatoes, and corn on the cob directly from the local peach orchards and farms. I was excited for today's excursion and got up early. Most of the stands opened around 8:30 or 9:00. 

First stop was Walmart. I wanted to pick up a couple of items and do cash back at checkout to have some moolah. Some farms don't take credit cards. Toward the back of Walmart, in the electronics department, I could feel an attack of vertigo coming on. 

As quickly as I could, without making myself more dizzy, I walked to the front of the store and out to the car. Complete vertigo set in. I keep plastic grocery bags in the car for vertigo attacks. I got sick and sat quietly with my eyes closed and breathed deeply. Sometimes that helps it go away. Not so today. After 15 minutes I thought I felt well enough to drive back to the 5er. Ugh. Not really. Anytime I have vertigo, turning my head from side to side, as in checking both ways when driving, makes the dizziness worse.

I made it back to the 5er 11 miles away. Got sick again as soon as I pulled into the driveway by our 5er. Made it inside and got sick again. I went back to bed and slept until 5:15 p.m. Vertigo sure takes it out of me.

When I finally moved, I headed to the kitchen and made a big salad for dinner. Bob came home about 7:45 p.m.

Tonight we are having thunder, lightning and rain. In fact, it rained off and on most of the day. The temperature is in the mid-80s so we've given the A/C a little rest. 

Since we have cable TV again, I relaxed and watched The Bachelorette (first hour and rose ceremony), The Closer, and a rerun of Hawaii 5-0. I feel better since I took that long nap.

I may try for the peach orchards again tomorrow. I'm hoping the rain has not damaged the crop. Tomorrow could be more exciting, though, there's a 70% chance of thunder and lightning storms. I do not plan to go into the orchards to pick peaches. My money goes to the farm stands that already have them picked and waiting.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Texas sure needs the rain, so I'm happy for the showers.

Travel Bug out.

Peaches and True Humorous Stories -- Wed., June 13

Cotulla, Texas:

I am a peach aficionado/addict/connoisseur and, I'll admit it, snob. When we lived in Oregon and Washington I planted peach trees where we lived. The peaches were out of this world divine, juicy and, one tree in particular, was prolific; giving us over 175 peaches one summer. To me, nothing says summer like fresh, ripe (and did I mention juicy?) peaches. OK, watermelon falls into that category as well.

Much to my delight the Hill Country of Texas grows peaches. I've been waiting for them to come to the market and my patience has been rewarded with absolutely yummy peaches that we bought at Walmart yesterday. I bought 7-8 peaches. Today we're down to one. Must. Get. More.

Peaches are wonderful plain, cut up over vanilla ice cream, in a peach/raspberry/blueberry/ cherry fruit salad, or cut up and served with baked or sauteed chicken. Summer is my happy fruit time!

TRUE HUMOROUS STORIES (have to get these out on the blogosphere):

Canadian Trip, Circa 1991

My friend Cindy and I, my son, Michael (age 12), and Michael's friend, Marcus (age 12), embarked on a trip to spend a week in a timeshare at Fairmont Hot Springs in eastern British Columbia. We opted for the most direct route from Portland, Oregon which was out I-84, then north through Tri-Cities and Spokane in Washington, and Sandpoint, Idaho.

Because we had a timeshare with a full kitchen we wanted to stock up on provisions. Sandpoint, Idaho has a great Farmer's Market about an hour from the Canadian border. We went crazy. Bought potatoes, corn, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums--all our favorite fruits and veggies.

Upon reaching the Canadian border crossing, we were asked by Border Services Officer (BSO) if we had any pitted fruits. Oh, nuts! I forgot about not being able to take pitted fruits into Canada. The Canadian BSO was very nice about it. He told us we could park the Explorer in the designated parking spot and eat as much of the fruit as we could.

So...four of us stood outside the Explorer, stuffing our faces with peaches, nectarines, apricots and plums until we couldn't stuff any more fruit into ourselves. The rest we handed over to the BSO who promptly threw it all away. I must say, we made a pretty good dent in a week's worth of fruit! And we had no problem with constipation over the next couple of days. Lesson learned.

The 5th Wheel Refrigerator

Here we are parked in an out-of-the-way South Texas location guarding an oil field gate with temperatures soaring to 106 degrees. Our refrigerator is getting warm, warmer, uh-oh, meats in the freezer are thawing. Time to figure out what's happening.

My first thought was the refrigerator needed to be defrosted. Monday afternoon I decided to defrost it. While I was in Cotulla, I went to Super S to buy ice for our ice chest to keep the meats, cheese, eggs and milk cold while I did the deed.

As I was driving to the Super S Bob called to say he figured out what was wrong with the refrigerator. Seems the top door latch worked fine, but the bottom door latch didn't so cold air was escaping. That didn't explain why the meat in the freezer was thawing, so I decided to defrost anyway.

Monday afternoon, I took everything out of the refrigerator, iced the most critical things, then got to work defrosting. While I was at it, I thoroughly cleaned the whole thing top to bottom. (That's got to help keep things cold, right?)

After defrosting and cleaning, the refrigerator was still warm. Drat! What could it be? That's when I read the small print by the refrigerator controls: "1--Cold; 9--Coldest." What? For some reason I had it in my mind that the lower the control number, the lower the temperature in the refrigerator. I had turned it all the way down to 2 in my effort to make the refrigerator colder. Did you know I'm a blonde?

 Bugs in the 5th Wheel

Last night, I was sitting at my computer, happily typing my blog. I reached up to shoe away a bug on the back of my neck. It was the tag from my shirt. Kept typing. Then it felt like a big bug hit the side of my neck and I hastily swiped it away. There must have been a wrinkle at the neck of my T-shirt as the bug fell down there. I let out a shriek and pulled the front of my T-shirt out to GET THE BUG OUT OF THERE! Oh, oops, it was my earring. Did I mention I'm blonde?

Camping with Kids

Back in the day when our kids were about 12 and 8, we used to take our Dodge van and go camping along the North Umpqua River in Oregon to swim in and hike to waterfalls. Usually the kids slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the van and we had the bed.

On a very beautiful summer evening, the kids wanted to sleep out on the chaise lounge chairs under the stars. We told them, "Okay, but don't be going in and out of the van all night."

At 2:00 a.m., I woke up to pounding rain on the van roof. No kids inside. I opened the sliding door and looked outside for the kids wondering if they could possibly be sleeping through the rain. I mean, we definitely tired them out with swimming all day long! No kids, no chairs.

I woke Bob up and urgently said, "It's pouring rain and the kids aren't in here and they aren't out there. Even the chairs are missing!"

We launched a full scale, DEFCON 2, search. We couldn't imagine where they had gone. After frantically looking under trees and all around our site, we found that somehow the oldest son, Randall, had tucked his chair, extended full length, UNDER the picnic table. Michael's chair was sideways under the edge of the picnic table so only the middle part of his body was covered.

We hurriedly rounded them up and shoo'd them into the van, gave hugs all around, told them we loved them, then asked, "How come you didn't come in?"

Their response? "You told us not to."

Kids, ya gotta love 'em! (The oldest is a blonde.)