January 2017 - Cruisin'

January started and ended in the same place - Thousand Trails Lake Conroe Texas. We had lots of travel over the month but only minimal RV time.  If you click on the link http://www.rvparky.com/trip/5873178604208128, know it is not broken - we flew and road the boat so the APP was unable to provide a route. It does however show destination points.

We started the New Year quietly in the park but we did see a few fireworks going off here and there. The first couple of weeks of January we spend relaxing, finishing up doctor appointments and enjoying evenings in the hot tub. A few days before we left for our cruise Brett's mom (Bridget) came and camped at the campground with us. She is enjoying her little Siesta and stopped to see us on her way to "the valley" to visit her mother.  She never comes with empty hands and this trip was no different - several dozen chocolate chip cookies as well as oatmeal cookies and pickled eggs for Brett.

Mid month we left Lake Conroe and drove the coach over to my good friend Stan's to park for the two weeks we were gone on our cruise to Hawaii on Carnival Miracle, January 14-29, 2017 round

Picture courtesy Leon Kirby -  Port Long Beach

trip from Long Beach CA.

Would love to say the cruise was great but this one was just not all we had hoped. It was January after all and January in the Pacific can be touchy as well as chilly. Hawaii itself was great - Susan had never been so it was nice to be able to share the island adventures with her. Weather prevented us from making two of our ports so we did not see Nawiliwili, Kauai or Hilo on the big island.

Spiny Silversword

In Maui we took a sunset tour
up to Haleakala Crater ttps://www.nps.gov/hale/planyourvisit/summit-area.htm to see the sunset at 10,000 feet. The view was indescribable and pictures do not do the experience justice. If we ever make it back to Maui we will plan to schedule a sunrise visit to the crater and we will most assuredly take jackets as IT GETS COLD AT 10,000 feet!! LOL! While at the crater we did see several Spiny Silversword plants - the only place in the world they are known to grow is at Haleakala Crater. This amazing plant lives anywhere from 3-90 years or more but they only bloom once in their lifetime and once they bloom, they die.

We were blessed to have wonderful tour guides while on Oahu - Norm and Michelle Gann were great!  We started the day off by watching the inauguration on Fox News before we walked to the Ala Moana Regional Park Beach https://roadtrippers.com/us/honolulu-hi/places/ala-moana-regional-park where Susan put her feet into the Pacific Ocean for the very first time and where we met up with Norm and Michelle. They then spent the rest of the day driving us from

Norm, Michelle and Brett

USS Missouri

one end of the island to the other. Our day included stops at
Pearl Harbor and tours of the USS Bowfin http://bowfin.org/ submarine and museum, the USS Missouri https://ussmissouri.org/#, and a view of the Arizona (tickets were sold out so we were only able to see it from shore but the sight was still humbling to say the least)! We also had a great late afternoon lunch and of course a few beers. Thank you again Norm and Michelle for helping to make our time in Hawaii enjoyable - it truly was the best day of our trip!  Unfortunately by the end of the day my back started to protest so we had to end the day rather abruptly. Feeling rather bad about this we informed our guides they could just "let us off here" and we would walk the last few blocks to prevent them from having to deal with pier traffic. Thankfully they declined as we arrived at our pier only to find our ship was GONE, and to be informed that it had relocated to another pier and due to weather we would be staying an additional day in Honolulu! So thanks again Gann Family for sticking with us and "going the distance" to get us to our relocation destination!
Day 2 in Honolulu was a bit less exciting but we know how to find fun. We made a few early morning calls to find out the bus schedule and made our way down to Waikiki. It may have been a wet drizzly day but the bar on the beach at the Halekoa http://www.halekoa.com/ was open for business! Guess where we spent the day?

Borrowed clip-art

Our next stop was Kona and Susan signed us up for a historical tour excursion that took us by 3 places we would not have otherwise visited. OHHH did we mention the storm we hit on the way from
Honolulu to Kona? Let's say it was a pretty good one and I have been in some pretty good ones...lol We had winds overnight in the mid 90MPH range and seas 25-30 feet. Cruise ships are not designed for those conditions as they are very top heavy. Needless to say it was a bouncy night, awww but I slept like a baby.

Stop 1 brought us to the Royal Kona Coffee Center with lots of samples of 100% Kona Coffee? If you ever have the chance, you must have some! This coffee was not cheap but the samples were free so we indulged in a few or more. 100% Kona Coffee was about  $18 per pound in the store. Not going to make it to Hawaii anytime soon? No worries, you can order it online - for a price. http://royalkonacoffee.com/visit/. 
Stop 2 was at The Painted Church, http://www.thepaintedchurch.org/default.asp which is a historical Roman Catholic church built in 1899 and painted by a priest with no professional training and a very limited budget. His labor of love and devotion took years to complete. The church has ongoing efforts to continue to preserve this quaint beauty and donations from tourist go toward aiding in the preservation/restoration efforts. I know our catholic friends will find this interesting but anyone who enjoys history is likely to enjoy it as well. 


Our 3rd and final stop of the historical tour was at Pu’uhonua o Honaunau https://www.nps.gov/puho/index.htm. We could have easily spent hours enjoying this stop. The good and the bad of booking an excursion - Good: you see lots of stuff quickly, Bad: you see lots of stuff quickly.
We ended up spending two days in Kona due again to bad weather but we opted to stay on the ship the second day as we were only scheduled to be in port half of the day and had no interest in shopping at the time. While we were in Kona we did receive the new that we were expecting a kitten! Well, actually we were informed that the expectant mother had delivered six kittens so we would get one around the first of April.

We were a bit bummed that we did not get to go to Hilo as we had scheduled an all day trip to see the Hilo Chain of Craters (volcanos) and the famed Lava Tube! I don't know if we will make the journey back to Hawaii anytime in the near future but if we ever do, we have seen a peek of what there is to see and have a LONG LONG list of things we would still like to do there. Maybe Susan can get her professional license in Hawaii and then get a contract job there for a few months.
There was a short stop over in Ensenada Mexico and while it was another adventure, it was the mandatory foreign port for this cruise and just another tourist trap in our opinion. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting stop just not a place we will put on our "have to see again" list.

Partial list of delays due to protest

We finally arrived back in Long Beach on January 29th and spent the night in LA for an early flight back to Texas on the 30th. Did someone say something about protestors? Grrrr.... not even going to go there other than to say the airport and traffic into and out of the airport and the surrounding areas was a MESS!

The 30th found us overnighting at http://www.aggielandrvpark.com/ in College Station. We were just too tired (and not feeling well) to go any further - even the extra 75 minutes it would have taken us to get to Thousand Trails Lake Conroe was just too far.
But on the 31st we were up bright and early, or at least we were moving by mid-morning and on the road by 11 for the short trip back to Thousand Trails Lake Conroe for a much needed bit of relaxation and recuperation.

This is where we head to relax - our "home park" Lake Conroe

December 2016

December finds the Wandering Wickett’s still in Hickory, NC enjoying the area and spending time with our daughter. http://www.rvparky.com/trip/4703505275682816 Susan and I pretty much concentrated our time with our daughter and didn’t really do much site seeing as our MAIN reason for coming to NC this time of year was to celebrate our daughter’s graduation from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.

Taskina graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science Business Administration. Her major was in Management and she had a major concentration in Human Resource Management. 

We were pleased to share this happy event with my dear mom who made the flight from Oklahoma to Charlotte, NC. We picked Mom up from the airport on Dec 9^th and made the trip up to Boone where we camped in a hotel for a couple of nights.  Our Saturday morning started bright and early as we had to be on campus by 9:00am for the graduation at 10:00am. Did I mention it was also 20 degrees and the wind was blowing about 20 MPH?  I am pretty sure that was the coldest temperature Boone had had this year (2016). Anyway, we made it to the graduation and enjoyed it immensely! It is such a great feeling to sit and watch your daughter be rewarded for all the hard work she has put in over the past four years. Of course the ceremony was followed by pictures. LOTS of picture and celebrated that evening with Mom’s homemade tacos – per the graduate’s request.  We left Boone on Sunday and head back to Casa Wickett in Hickory to spend the night as mom had to be back at the airport Monday morning.

It was sad to say bye to mom and even more sad to say bye to our daughter, but when the 14^th arrived it was time for Susan and I to start our slow trek to Texas. So G’bye Taskina and G’bye North Carolina. We had a great time once again and look forward to the next time we will be together.

We made the 14^th a short day and stopped in Sevierville, TN for the night at the Riverside RV park once again. http://www.riversidecamp.com/ This is where we had stopped on the way to NC and saw no reason not to visit again. As we were in no hurry we decided to stay a couple days and take in the sights. We rode over to see Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg as we wanted to see what damage they suffered during the fires in November. Yes, many people and businesses were devastated but I am

happy to say the towns are up and running and tourists were walking the streets. We were actually very surprised to see both towns suffered little apparent damage from our vantage point as tourists. The news made it sound as if both towns were virtually gone and while there was damage it was not at the level of devastation expected from what we saw on the news. This was our first venture to either place, but we have vowed to return at some point, some year in early spring or late fall. Wow, they are cool is the least we can say….But man I bet they are busy in the summer! LOL

Next stop Henagar, AL and the home of my best friend in the world, aside from my wife, Karen Blansit. We set up camp in their yard for a couple of days and caught up once again. Karen and I have been friends since the mid 90’s where we lived across the street from each other in Oregon. Karen was concerned the first night as the weather was calling for possible tornados….nah, we were fine. I tried to tell her to trust me…lol Much time was spent catching up and just enjoying good conversation.  Karen also took Susan and I to a local nursery where they decorate for Christmas. I never thought I would say that, but I was truly impressed.  Always good to see when a small town business had the knowledge and skill that could easily compete in any metropolitan area and set the standard. Just in case you were wondering, this is a florist type nursey, not a baby nursery…lol AND besides more themed Christmas trees than I can recall - I also found a real life elf while we were there! Unfortunately we were only able to stay at Karen’s for a couple days and we were off again.

As we continued our trek heading toward Texas, we stopped in Meridian, MS at Benchmark RV park. http://www.benchmarkrv.net/ This was a nice little park that offered Passport America discounts, so it was also nicely priced. This was where I realized we had no zone one (living room) heat in the coach. Oh and it was cold and raining…lol So for two days I learned a ton about my heating system and how it actually worked. Through trouble shooting I learned that my heating system was fine - good deal as that is very expensive but my thermostat was the issue. I also learned my thermostat is an entire computer system consisting of circuit boards, zone control modules and tons of wiring AND it is not made or supported any longer. LOL it was starting to sound like a Gov’t project. Lastly I found out there is ONE place in the country that can completely rebuild the entire system, IF you remove it all and send it to them in Ohio where they will gladly rebuild it and have it back to you in 4 ½ weeks…. Uh wow, how to not have heat or AC in your home for 4.5 weeks. I will figure it out. But were headed back to Texas and at least slightly warmer temps.

As we continue at a slow bell to TX we made a couple more non-eventful overnight stops in Vicksburg, MS http://www.ameristar.com/vicksburg/rv-park and Marshall, TX at Laguna Vista RV park http://lagunavistarvpark.com/. We had stayed at Ameristar a few times before so knew what to expect. We had never stopped at Laguna Vista and it was little more than a parking lot but hey, they are also a Passport America park so for the price one night was just fine. It was clean and all gravel. Mostly oil field workers that lived there, but no issues at all, owners were very nice. We did learn that their name, Laguna Vista really means “look at the neighbor’s pond” in English…lol

Then just like that we had completed our 9 day trek across 1148 miles and arrived in Willis, TX at Thousand Trails Lake Conroe for our winter stop.  It was almost as if we had returned home as this is our home park within the Thousand Trails network and where we started our full time RV adventure on 10 Aug.  This stop really is a place to get caught up on medical appointments for Susan and I more than anything and trust me, we were full of medical appointments…lol

We had thought we would be alone this Christmas. But this was not to be the case. My Uncle Raymond and Aunt LouAnn who have tracked and visited me all over the country for years  graced us with their presence once again…lol! They had been in Houston visiting their boys and grandson and were passing by on their way home. We had a great visit and were able to catch back up before they had to hit the road again. Glad they were able to stop by!

Our day was good, we were not able to spend it with the kids, but it was enjoyable none the less. Susan fixed one of my many favorite meals for Christmas dinner, TACOS…lol and baked a great cheesecake for desert. That was all topped off by opening gifts from our daughter, thanks for the Moonshine….it is great!

Christmas in south Texas tends to be pretty nice weather and this year was no different. Temps in the mid 80’s and mostly sunny made for some great walks with my darling wife. The past few months have been very hard on me health wise and Susan has been doing her very best to help me out by encouraging frequent short walks and staying with me to provide her support. Now if all of that were not great enough, the entire day was topped off by a nice night time sit in the hot tub. Nothing like being in a hot tub at 9 PM on a clear night with temps in the low 70’s on Christmas. Gotta love it!