Final Days in Rosanky

Sunday:

Quiet day here in Rosanky. Connie spent most of the day resting while I spent the afternoon watching The Masters golf tournament. It was great to see Jordan Spieth win the title at such a young age (2nd youngest winner ever of The Masters).

Monday:

Early this morning we had a severe thunderstorm that knocked out the power here in Rosanky. It also fried our Progressive surge protector which probably saved a lot of electrical issues from the storm in the motorhome. We ran the generator a couple of hours to keep the batteries charged up, turn the refrigerator over to propane and tried to conserve as much battery life as we could. Connie when into Bastrop and did some shopping while I stayed here to wait on the electric company to come and restore the power. Around 2:00 PM in the afternoon, the electric company showed up and asked if they could take their truck down to the corner of the field that is fenced off for the cattle on the place. I told the technician that it was very wet in the field, but he was welcome to try it. He got his truck stuck in the mud after travelling a few hundred feet into the field. He was able to get the power back on and then had to wait on a larger truck with a hitch/witch to pull his truck out of the mud. After about an hour the larger truck showed up and took another hour to get his truck out of the mud. I called Progressive since they have a lifetime guaranty on their surge protectors. The process is that I mail them the old one and they will send me a replacement, so we will do this later in the week.

Tuesday:

When we got up this morning, I tried to start The Duchess and the motor would not start. Nothing, not even a clicking noise. We tried several different solutions, but nothing worked. So I spent the rest of the morning trying to find someone to come look at the problem. The earliest anyone could come would be on Friday, so I schedule a time for the repairman to come on that day. The joys of owning a motorhome. I spent the afternoon clearing more limbs along the lane that leads into the property so that the motorhome will not have to deal with trees on the way out.

Wednesday:

Connie took another trip into Austin today to see Katie, her acupuncturist and yoga teacher, while I spent some more time working on The Duchess. That afternoon I got The Duchess to start 5 times in a row, so I called an cancelled the Friday scheduled appointment with the repair person.

Thursday:

Connie and I had an appointment in Waco Texas with the attorney's office who representing her in a lawsuit from a car accident that occurred two years ago. We had to meet with one of the paralegals and go over the responses to the discovery process of the lawsuit. After meeting with the paralegal and completing as much of the discovery questions as we could, we went to lunch at the Kitok's Restaurant in Waco. It is a Vietnamese restaurant: Connie had a Vietnamese dish while I had the cheeseburger and oriental fries.  The fries are made with potatoes, carrots and parsley and have an interesting flavor. On the way back from Waco, the sun was out and we drove back with the top down in Connie's convertible. It was a long day, but something that had to get done before we leave Central Texas. There are still a few items that we will have to scan and e-mail to the attorney's office before we leave Rosanky. We received 2.5 inches of rain in Rosanky after we got home from Waco. Another storming night and everything is soaked here at the ranch.

Friday:

Got up this morning and tried to start The Duchess. Back to the "nothing, not even a clicking noise". Tried a couple of things and decided to call a different company to see if they could get to us that day. I was lucky and they were able to send someone out that morning. The technician got here around 10 AM and spent around two hours going over all of the electrical connections from the ignition switch to the starter. It ended up being the ignition switch that was the problem (or the main part of the problem - there were a couple of other issues he fixed along the way). A bad connection on the ignition switch was repaired and The Duchess started up 10-12 times in a row.

Connie catching a few rays in her convertible

Connie went into Austin to sell her convertible to CarMax. We had listed the car for sale through Craigslist with a couple of responses but little interest. We have been so busy that we did not spent as much time as we should have keeping the Craigslist ad at the top of the page. I sure we would have gotten more for the car than CarMax offered us, but at least we have gotten the last item off of our to do list before leaving Rosanky. I left Rosanky for an meeting with my former employer with whom I am still doing some consulting work. Connie visited some friends of her mom & dad that afternoon while I had my meeting. We then met Heidi/Brooks and Rhonda/Russ at BJ's Restaurant in Cedar Park for dinner. After another nice visit with everyone, Connie and I went back by CarMax to complete the sale (they are open till 9 PM Mon-Sat). It was pouring down rain while we made the drive to CarMax. It took about 30 minutes to complete the sale, get everything out of the car and receive a check from CarMax for the vehicle. Connie has had a convertible for the last several years and we will miss having one. We thought about taking the convertible as our tow car, but we would have had to use a dolly, modify the transmission and deal with the fact the car sits low to the ground. So we ended up with a Jeep Liberty instead.

Saturday:

The Duchess started again this morning (YEA!!). We went through all of the items from Connie's car to see what we needed to keep and what we needed to throw out. We had seen a billboard with an ad about a distillery in Smithville Texas (about 12 miles from Rosanky). Connie called Heidi/Brooks to see if they wanted to meet us in Smithville and visited the distillery. They said OK and we decided to meet them for lunch and then on the distillery. We had a brief visit with my son, Greg and grandson, Rhys (Greg is living in Smithville and Rhys was visiting him for the week-end) before meeting Heidi/Brooks for lunch at the Pockets Grill in Smithville.

Distillery Room

One of the owners giving us a taste

After lunch we travelled to Bone Spirits  Distillery located along the railroad tracks. After going up the stairs to the tasting room, we met with one of the owners who gave a taste of the vodka, gin, moonshine and whiskey they are distilling at this location. Everyone (including me who usually does not like distilled products) liked all of the tastings. Connie and I decided to buy a couple of bottles of the vodka, while Heidi/Brooks bought one bottle of the vodka, one of the gin and one of the whiskey. We had a nice visit with the owner who told us about their process: they use corn to make all of their products and the corn is all grown on farms located in Central Texas (they only use non-GMO corn in their products). They have been open since 2010 and are coming out with a bourbon later this year. He told us their products are starting to be sold in a number of outlets throughout Texas. From the visit to Bone Spirits, everyone came back to Rosanky so that Heidi/Brooks could see The Duchess. After a short visit, all of decided to "crash" (Heidi/Brooks had been invited but we had not) a friend's birthday party/crawfish bake in Fayetteville Texas which is about 45 minutes from Rosanky. The party was great and the hosts were happy we came. Lisa (the birthday girl) is from Louisiana and her husband Phil gave her a the party along with live Cajun music as a gift. Lisa & Phil have a ranch with around 100 acres on which they raise Longhorn cattle and a couple of horses.

Brooks "Hook 'em Horns"

They have been living on the place for about 3 years and have made a lot of improvements and have a 20 year plan for additional improvements. We came back to The Duchess around dark, took our showers and went on to bed. It was a long day but we enjoyed spending time with Heidi/Brooks along with getting to go to a party. None of this was planned when the day started, so it was an unexpected pleasure.

Sunday:

Our plans for the next few months are:

April 20th - Leave Rosanky and travel to the Rainbow Park (an Escapees park) near Livingson Texas. We plan on being there until May 2nd and have an appointment to get The Duchess weighed.

May 2nd - Travel from Livingston to Galveston Texas. Connie will  be on a "girls' cruise" celebrating Rhonda Herrington's 60th birthday and Heidi Ivey's 50th birthday from May 3rd to May 10th. Mike will be staying in The Duchess at an RV park on Galveston island during Connie's trip

May 10-15th - Travel from Galveston Texas to Augusta Georgia.

May 15-18th - In Augusta we will visit with Connie's aunt and cousins.

May 18-22nd - Travel from Augusta to Asheville NC.

May 22-Jun 8th - Attend RV Dreams Reunion Rally and spend time visiting Asheville area.

Jun 8-Jul 1st - Travel in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee (no particular plans at this point)

Jul 1-15th - We will south of Nashville TN near Henry Horton State Park to attend a Johnson family reunion and do some sightseeing.

That is as far out as our plans go right now. We may head north from Tennessee through Kentucky and Indiana up to Michigan for the remainder of the summer months.

We will complete our last day prep for leaving Rosanky tomorrow and make one last run through all of our stuff to make sure we have not forgot anything (I sure we will forget something). Hopefully we will have some sunshine today and tomorrow to dry things out and make the drive to Livingston pleasant.