All Work and No Play make me a . . . hmmm, nope, reverse that!!! (Polymer Clay Play and other fun; Fall, 2015)

Just because I'm on vacation does not mean I do not do any work.  In fact, I get my best work done while on vacations.  I don't know if it's because I'm more relaxed or have more incentive or what, but I usually "clay up a storm".  Just in case anyone reading this does not realize it, I'm a Polymer Clay Artist and have a "mini studio" in the RV for my clay work.

During the "Great Escape from IL Harvest 2015" these are some of the polymer clay canes I made.

 I took time, this year, to take a watercolor class at the local community ed at Heartland Community College.  It was fun, although I wasn't horribly proficient at it.  As a "thank you" for the teacher, and other students, I made polymer clay dragons water coloring the same painting we did for our first class.   The instructor's dragon sculpture was about hand sized and the others were about palm sized.  They were really cute and fun to make.

   My daughter Becky Castle Vollmer has her own home crafted soap company, MoonSilver Soapworks.  She makes marvelous soap, in several different types, some for special skin, some special scrubby soap (for me for polymer clay clean up), some unscented and some wonderful scents. After I spent an afternoon with her learning about making soap, she mentioned needing a business card display holder.  I said I'd make her one but couldn't quite make the design come clear for me.  One day, suddenly an idea for a design popped into my head, so I quickly made it up for her.   I do believe she liked it.

 Other things I've been doing this past year, I have continued to improve my crocheting ability and the interest in that has not waned in the least.

I got a shipment of chicks again this year (we do indeed love our fresh eggs).  Chicks sure do grow up quickly though.  

 I also got a new kitten this year.  He's a mitted blue point Ragdoll and he's been so much fun.  He's the light of our lives at the moment.  He seems to firmly believe he's a dog and gets along with the dogs wonderfully.  He, too, has grown up so quickly; he's now larger than either of the dogs, weighing in around 15 lbs.


































At Christmas, we were fortunate enough to have both kids, and spouses, and all 5 grandkids, as well as my parents and sister, over for the Holidays.  It was truly a Merry Christmas for us all.  The kids helped make these cute snowman place holder/gifts for everyone.

Oh my, this catching up has a lot more to it than I remembered.  I guess I had a much busier year than I thought, last year.  One more post before I can start posting this years "Escape from IL Harvest Trip" posts.  It's been an interesting trip this year. . . not particularly "good", but interesting.  Thanks for coming along.

See you later, Smiles, Sue C

Galveston, TX Dellenara RV Park (September 21, 2015)

We've been here in Galveston, TX, at Dellenara RV Park since September 21 and have had a great time.  We really haven't done anything important, no sight seeing etc.  We're just here to relax and do what we please.  We've stayed at Dellenara RV Park before, but in a pull thru site in the center of the park.  This year Mr. C reserved a site that backs right up to the sand dunes between the park and the beach.  Yes, we're backed right up to the Gulf of Mexico.  It's fabulous.






















We're backed right up onto the sand dunes just a stone's throw from the Gulf of Mexico.  It is beautiful here.



















We had full hook ups, picnic table, grill.  The fence helped some with the blowing sand, although we had no trouble with it.  There were only a couple less than perfect days.











We did have one discouraging thing happen, we went out one morning and our truck wouldn't start.  Fortunately we have Good Sam's Extended Warranty as well as Good Sam's towing etc.  Good Sam sent a great tow driver who took the truck to the local Ford Dealer.  In the meantime, we called Enterprise Car Rental who came to the campground and got us and took us to rent a car (which was also paid for by Good Sam).  We had to have one of the alternators replaced, but these things happen when you are driving miles and miles pulling heavy trailers.  It was fixed within a couple days and our trip went on as planned.



























































Snuffles and Bandit enjoyed their time at the beach, although neither of them particularly wanted to get in the water.

We really didn't expect to get to swim this year because it's so late in the season, but it turned out that the air temps our first week were in the high 80s and the water temps were around 84.  WOW, my kind of weather.  So we got to swim several times.  I forgot to bring our water camera so we had to get one with real film which we don't get until Wednesday so I'll add the pictures to this after Wednesday.





The water was so wonderfully warm, as well as the weather.  The water was also pretty calm, just lots of soft easy swells.

I almost forgot, although I have no pictures of it, we had some excitement.  While bobbing on the waves we were watching birds flying overhead.  I noticed and pointed out to Mr. C 2 very large black birds with what appeared to be white heads.  My first thought was "Bald Eagles HERE?"  As we watched them circling above us, trying to figure out what they were, we noticed they definitely had white heads faces and necks.




They had long black wings shaped like most other sea birds (an exaggerated V bend and pointed).  We don't to this day know what they were, but I said, I sure hope they don't decide to "bomb us" down here and just then, we saw dropping from the sky. . . YEP, they bombed us and missed us by about 5 feet, LOLOL.  I didn't think I'd ever stop laughing.  They took several passes over us before they decided to fly on.  The closest thing I could find in the bird books was an albatross, but they supposedly don't come this far up into the Gulf.  Anyway, it was a great memory.

The next day was cooler and we weren't planning to go in the water, but noticed our neighbor as well as others were in the water, about the same place we were in these pictures.  As I was watching her and wondering if we should go swimming I saw some dolphins just a yard or so beyond her.  I quickly decided to go swimming again, but of course no dolphins to be found.

We saw dolphins swimming right in front of our RV 3 different times (once further out following a shrimp boat) and twice fairly close in, but I couldn't get any pictures.




We saw some beautiful birds, this "hawk" on the ground, as well as this ?White heron? and my favorite "Spoonbill" in the ponds around the park.














































We also saw some fabulous sunsets.  I can't wait to go back.











While we were driving up and down the beach road, we noticed some odd things along the beach and in the water.

We discovered that due to past hurricanes and storms much of the beach has been washed out into the gulf.  The town of Galveston found a good solution.  The shipping lanes have to be kept clear for the ships to pass from the harbor to the Gulf of Mexico.  So they have ships that dredge the sand from these channels.  Usually they just suck it up and discharge it at sea.  But, someone thought, why don't we have the dredged sand placed here on the beach and build the beach back up again.  Since the dredging was being done anyway, an agreement was made that Galveston only had to pay for the discharge of the sand on the beaches.  They have been working on this for the past year.  They use HUGE pipes that carry the dredged sand up to the beach and then using all kinds of equipment spread it out and move the pipes to where they need more sand.  It was quite an undertaking and quite interesting to us land locked Illinoisans.

 On one of our last days in Galveston, just as we pulled out of the Campground, we saw this pretty sight right next to the road.

We were able to pull safely to the side of the road and Mr. C got out of the truck to take these lovely pictures for me.  We were probably only about 10 feet from these birds.  It was wonderful.







I'll close with these pictures, but tomorrow, will show that just because I'm on vacation does not mean I'm not working.  I get my best work done during vacations.  Until later, Smiles, Sue C

Long time NO posts. . . (Catching up from Fall 2015)

I know, shame on me, I haven't made a blog post in so long, I think my last one was in October of last year (October 5, 2015 to be exact, LOL.  Oh my, I just read it and realized I never posted any posts from last year's adventures).  I'm not sure why it takes going on a trip to get me to write a blog post, unless it's just because nothing happens during the normal day to day, work week, stay at home life.  This year has been pretty crazy, and unfortunately I've spent a lot of it depressed and not doing much other than reading (my personal escape hatch).

Let's see, briefly, the high lights of this past year:

We did take the Fall Escape from IL allergies trip and it was successful beyond our highest expectations.  (I explained in a previous blog post that I am horribly allergic to IL and especially during harvest.  It wasn't TOO bad until "our farmer" added 3 HUGE Grain bins and a larger dryer(s?) etc, right next to our home, that I really started having trouble, including asthma so bad it got classified as COPD, inhalers, nebulizer treatments, coughing and choking, and losing my voice for up to 6 months that we decided to try a regimen of leaving IL during harvest, the only problem being that poor Mr. C can only be gone from his work for 30 days at a time, due to security issues, but we found a way around that).

September 2 to September 8 we made a short trip to Branson, which was fantastic.  We stayed at America's Best Campground as usual.  I would request a different campsite next year as we were directly under some high power electrical lines and that makes me personally uncomfortable.  But, that aside, while we were there we saw our usual favorite:  Keith Allyn with a Neil Diamond Tribute concert.

 Then his wife, Diana Lynn performed with Ron Preston as the Carpenters.  We've only seen Diana Lynn perform in the past via video feed, as she has been very ill for several years and unable to perform.  This year she not only sang with Keith Allynn (their duet has been sung as Keith Allynn singing with Diana Lynn on video feed for the past couple years).  It was a real treat to see and hear them perform together.





We were fortunate enough to be able to catch a performance by Collin Raye, which was also a fantastic performance.











Following Collin Raye we were entertained by Billy Dean and Steel Horses, as well as the commedian Garrett.  Billy Dean is the consumate performer.  He so obviously enjoys what he does and it shows through every minute of his shows (this is the second time we've seen them).

We truly enjoy ourselves at Branson, every time we go there.  There have only been a couple shows we haven't thoroughly enjoyed, and surprisingly, they were "big name" musicians who were too "full of themselves".

While driving around one evening, we were "fortunate enough" to see this beauty (anyone who knows us knows we enjoy seeing and photographing critters of all kinds).  Yes, it's a Copperhead, aren't they pretty at least their pattern is pretty, I know a lot of people hate snakes, LOL.

Then we stayed home for a week or so and on September 19 left for the "Get out of IL during harvest" trip.  We had a great growing season last year and the harvesting started about a week before we left, we'll have to work on that in the future.

Just before leaving I found an exciting critter out in our apple trees.  This is the caterpillar of the Polyphemus moth and we had never seen one before.  With great excitement I placed a mesh bag around his several apple branches in hopes of seeing his hatching the following spring.

Although this is out of order, here is the lovely moth he turned into, in the spring.














We started off with a night at Tom Sawyer Campground in West Memphis, Arkansas.  We loved the campground, being right on the Mississippi River, but didn't much care for the West Memphis area as far as meals, shopping etc.










We ran into a slight snag as we traveled south.  We had tried having a hitch attached to the back of the RV to carry our bike/terra trike; however, the hitch did not make it even through the first day's travel and when we arrived at the campground we saw it hanging nearly to the ground.  We are lucky it didn't fall completely off.

Our campsite at Tom Sawyer's Campground was fantastic, we were right on the Mississippi River, and although it was not horribly busy, it was still interesting to see the river traffic and even just the river was fascinating to watch.  

 After a peaceful evening, night, and morning, we made our way to Shreveport where we had dinner with Becky and family before heading on to Galveston, TX, which will be our "home" for the next 18 days.

Trying to catch up with few posts and just the most important photos until I catch up to the present.

Smiles, Sue C