 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
We left Santa Fe on August 27th in the afternoon. That morning was Madison’s birthday party and we had a great
time watching the little ones of her play group eat cake, toddle around and have a good time. The new patio at
Justin and Amanda’s was perfect for having such a large group; I can’t imagine what they would have done
otherwise. In addition to the kids and their parents there were lots of grandparents…besides me there were Patti
and Steven - Madison’s maternal grandparents, Terry Kirkbride her paternal grandfather and Great Grandpa Ed
Kirkbride, the 97 year old patriarch of the Kirkbride clan.
Off we went to Denver to see Colleen’s brother, Jim, and his family. As always, there were lots of things going on
and we enjoyed seeing Colleen’s nephews Stephen and Brett…they are sure growing up fast.
On our way to Denver we got caught in a hailstorm that dimpled the top edges of the motorhome and broke all the
skylights and vent covers. Drats!!!! We taped up as many of the holes as possible – ain’t duct tape wonderful –
and on our way out of Denver we stopped at Camping World and bought and replaced the vents and
skylights…nothing like doing repairs in a parking lot in the hot sun!!!! These houses of ours are small and
portable but they do require work to keep them working….it isn’t all fun and games without a house.
On we toodled and BJ, the woman who is going to travel with us to Mexico, called on the cell phone. She had
figured out that we were going to pass on Interstate 80 as she headed west to Colorado and us east to Indiana.
So, we kept in touch by phone and arranged to meet at Lake Ogallala in Nebraska. We camped at the lake at a
state park for $5 a night and we got to get acquainted. She is traveling with a tiny little trailer she pulls behind her
Volvo station wagon. We talked about some of the perils of travel in Mexico and she is going to make some
changes to her setup to make it easier for the trip. We will meet her and her 17 year old cat in Brownsville, TX on
September 30th and cross on October 1st.
We stayed at Lake Ogallala for two nights and then continued on toward Indiana and our appointment at the
Newmar factory for the last bit of warranty work before our warranty expires. We also made arrangements to have
the dimples taken out of our roof at a repair facility,
The next night we spent at Platte River State Park in Waverley, Nebraska. There was no one at the entrance in
the late afternoon and no signs that said we couldn’t camp there, so we wandered around until we found a big
parking lot near some corrals. No one showed up to collect money and it wasn’t until the next morning that
someone told us that there was no RV camping there. By then we had already eaten breakfast and were ready to
go. It was a beautiful park with lots of cabins for rent and trails for walking….
From there we went to the Amana Colonies in Iowa and spent the night at a large RV park where they were
getting set up for a dog show. We had intended to spend two nights there, but were asked to move our boondock
site after the first night so just continued on down the road.
The drive in Nebraska and Iowa was beautiful with field after field of corn and soy beans. Occasionally we would
see some leaves starting to turn gold but fall had not really hit yet. It was now the Friday before Labor Day
weekend and we picked a state park in Illinois to spend the night. Dummy boondockers that we are, it never
dawned on us that everything would be full. After getting into a state park that was full and having to negotiate
tight turns through the entire campground to extricate ourselves, we picked the first wide spot on a side road and
pulled over for the night. We were on a wide area where some obvious earthmoving was going on but figured that
it was late and the next day was Saturday and no problem….hah….early in the morning there were loud rumblings
of a belly dump taking passes close by. I was up so walked out to say good morning and tell them we were leaving
soon…I got a rude welcome and then they drove off in the belly dump…no more work to be done now that we
were chased off!!!! It sure is easier and more welcoming to boondock in Mexico and Central America. Those of
you who are Rvers have heard this lament before a thousand times, but we didn’ t sell our house and get rid of
the mortgage to make $1000/month payments to RV parks….traveling south of the border is a lot easier….
On Saturday, September 3rd we arrived in Nappanee at the Newmar factory. We found a place in their “RV Park”
to set up and made ourselves comfortable. We had 2 days to wait for the appointment.
We did really interesting things like laundry and shopping while we waited for our appointment on Tuesday the
6th. It was fun and curious to see the horsedrawn carriages used by the local ‘buggy Mennonites’ as a young
Amish girl in a restaurant called them. One woman arrived at the laundromat with her family’s clothing and tied her
horse to the ubiquitous hitching post while she brought in her laundry. We weren’t there long enough to tell the
difference between the Amish and Mennonites but chuckled at the anachronisms apparent everywhere.
We were told to be ready for our warranty work at 6:00 am so the days of leisurely mornings were over for a few
days. Glenn Helmuth showed up at 6:15 to ask about the repairs and we talked about the two items on the
list…the squeak in the floor and the shower door hinge….we also just ‘mentioned’ a couple of other items and off
he drove with our rig.
There is a small but nice waiting area at Newmar but Colleen and I headed out to Granger, Indiana to visit Colleen’
s mother’s gravesite where she was buried 13 years ago. Several of her other relatives are also buried there. It is
a beautiful old cemetery right on the border with Michigan. While there, Colleen met a fellow who was there
tending gravesites of a friend and he said that he would trim and fertilize around Colleen’s family graves too.
While there I found a bunch of nuts under a tree and realized that they were chestnuts. I have never done
anything with chestnuts before, but I now have about 10 pounds of them and will figure something out….if I can
find out how to make chocolate on the internet, I imagine there will be information about chestnuts. If any of you
readers have any ideas, let me know….they are already out of their outer shell and are shiny brown and beautiful.
A memory I have from my teenage years is the smell of roasting chestnuts being sold along the sidewalks in Paris.
I would love to duplicate that smell if y’all know how. And if I roast them, then what? I don’t remember eating them.
We went on the Newmar factory tour and the Monaco factory tour too while there. It appeared that the Monaco
factory was more ‘modern’ but we heard scuttlebutt that says Newmar makes a better product. You won’t get us to
argue with that.
From Nappanee we went north to Elkhart to All Brand RV Repair who worked us into their schedule to repair our
dimpled roof. When they started the repair they discovered that there had been a leak under the air horn from
improper installation since the beginning that caused the roofing to swell. We got authorization from Newmar to
repair it under warranty so that slowed up the process somewhat. We also had a fantastic fan installed in the
bedroom roof to increase ventilation in there.
In the middle of the repairs was a weekend so we arranged to meet two women who are interested in investing in
Maricasa with us. They flew in to Chicago and we drove up there to meet them. We parked in front of the house
where they were staying and had a great visit. We discussed our mutual visions for the project and got to know
one another. We also went to the Bahai Temple there in Evanston….it was beautiful and very interesting to read
about their philosophy.
We drove back to Elkhart on Sunday evening for the last bit of the repairs. While we waited we went to an RV
surplus store where they had lots of parts for RVs….it was like an RV flea market. You could just about build an
RV with all the parts they have there.
On leaving Elkhart, we headed west and south as we waited for the Red Cross to assign us to a particular city.
First we were told to go to Montgomery, AL, then Baton Rouge, then Houston, then finally we were routed to
Dallas where we currently are settled in at a local trailer park. Most of the residents here are in singlewide mobile
homes and RVs that have seen their last adventure and are rusting in place. The price is right at $120 a week
including electricity and everyone is really nice. Dinah has a nice place to be tied outside in the shade while we
are not here and the nights are peaceful. The AC has to run almost constantly to keep the temperature
reasonable in the 100 degree heat and high humidity….
We have been here in Dallas for one week. The day we arrived we checked in at Reunion Arena where we were
to work with Media Relations and Public Affairs. I was assigned to do a half hour radio show the next morning on
the local Spanish language radio station about the role of the Red Cross in Dallas. Thanks to the diligence of
John Hoffman, a volunteer also with Media Relations, I got about 30 pages of emailed material to review before I
showed up to do the show. Thank goodness the interviewer, Jose Luis Madrigal, had a lot to say!!! It went well
enough and I didn’t make any misstatements.
Since then we have been working daily at Reunion Arena assisting individuals and families with finding help with
their particular situation. Some of them weren’t residents of the shelter and needed to get registered, some
needed help finding family members, some needed help with transportation to other cities or within Dallas and
some just needed to talk. All were really grateful for how they have been treated by the Red Cross but some were
not as happy about how slowly the system to get them out of the shelter and into other housing was moving. The
City of Dallas put together Project Exodus to move families into more long term accommodations…it was a long
process…..the shelter is now almost closed as the last of the families have been moved out and we are waiting to
find out what our next assignment is.
This takes us to the 18th of September and now we are a bit anxious about Hurricane Rita which has Texas in her
sights as she heads north and west toward the coast to make landfall later this week.
Well, as you know by now, Rita did crash into the coast of Texas and Louisiana though a bit east of where it
originally was tracking and as a category 3 instead of a category 5. Where we were in Dallas we felt some gusty
winds for a couple of hours one day and that is all. More than 2 million people evacuated inland causing lots of
traffic delays and an influx of evacuees to the Dallas area from Galveston and Houston. Some of the new
evacuees were people who had fled Hurricane Katrina. I mentioned that the shelter where we were working was
closing down and it never did close as thousands showed up in Dallas.
So, we spent 2 days making phone calls to enlist Red Cross volunteers to take a shift at the Fort Worth shelters
and then we went back to helping families to get assistance as they flooded into Dallas. We were finally able to
allow media into Reunion Arena and spent a couple of days escorting them to the concourse level to take
sweeping photos of the cots on the basketball court below. We also became more critical as volunteers as most of
the new evacuees were Spanish speaking and there were lots of interviews with the local Spanish radio and TV
stations as well as just assisting families.
This group of Rita evacuees was much different from the Katrina evacuees. Besides being Spanish speaking they
were much more well-prepared and most of them were not going to face the devastating losses that people from
New Orleans faced. Some of the families from the Beaumont, Texas area did lose everything but most who
evacuated did not. They also traveled to safe havens in caravans of their personal vehicles and were able to
keep their families together where evacuees from New Orleans were split up and sent hither and yon.
Working with the Red Cross was a fabulous experience and I have a new respect for what they do. I had no idea
of the breadth of ways the Red Cross helps families during a disaster. We packed up and left Dallas just as more
evacuees were being moved from small Texas towns to Dallas shelters. The local volunteers got some relief from
national volunteers but they were facing another long stint as we left.
We traveled south through San Antonio and saw many evacuees heading home with gas cans on the roof.
Arriving in Brownsville we hooked up with BJ and made plans to cross into Mexico on the 28th of September. We
arrived at the border crossing only to discover that the immigration officer was rather stiff and told us we had to
spend another 72 hours in the US as when we returned in June the immigration officials did not stamp our
passports as having returned. If you are in Mexico for 6 months you have to leave for 72 hours in order to get
back in for another 6 months. So we are cooling our jets in Brownsville for an extra 3 days and will cross
tomorrow. It is super hot here and I will be glad to get moving.
I put up new pictures of Madison from her first birthday and you can see them on her page.
time watching the little ones of her play group eat cake, toddle around and have a good time. The new patio at
Justin and Amanda’s was perfect for having such a large group; I can’t imagine what they would have done
otherwise. In addition to the kids and their parents there were lots of grandparents…besides me there were Patti
and Steven - Madison’s maternal grandparents, Terry Kirkbride her paternal grandfather and Great Grandpa Ed
Kirkbride, the 97 year old patriarch of the Kirkbride clan.
Off we went to Denver to see Colleen’s brother, Jim, and his family. As always, there were lots of things going on
and we enjoyed seeing Colleen’s nephews Stephen and Brett…they are sure growing up fast.
On our way to Denver we got caught in a hailstorm that dimpled the top edges of the motorhome and broke all the
skylights and vent covers. Drats!!!! We taped up as many of the holes as possible – ain’t duct tape wonderful –
and on our way out of Denver we stopped at Camping World and bought and replaced the vents and
skylights…nothing like doing repairs in a parking lot in the hot sun!!!! These houses of ours are small and
portable but they do require work to keep them working….it isn’t all fun and games without a house.
On we toodled and BJ, the woman who is going to travel with us to Mexico, called on the cell phone. She had
figured out that we were going to pass on Interstate 80 as she headed west to Colorado and us east to Indiana.
So, we kept in touch by phone and arranged to meet at Lake Ogallala in Nebraska. We camped at the lake at a
state park for $5 a night and we got to get acquainted. She is traveling with a tiny little trailer she pulls behind her
Volvo station wagon. We talked about some of the perils of travel in Mexico and she is going to make some
changes to her setup to make it easier for the trip. We will meet her and her 17 year old cat in Brownsville, TX on
September 30th and cross on October 1st.
We stayed at Lake Ogallala for two nights and then continued on toward Indiana and our appointment at the
Newmar factory for the last bit of warranty work before our warranty expires. We also made arrangements to have
the dimples taken out of our roof at a repair facility,
The next night we spent at Platte River State Park in Waverley, Nebraska. There was no one at the entrance in
the late afternoon and no signs that said we couldn’t camp there, so we wandered around until we found a big
parking lot near some corrals. No one showed up to collect money and it wasn’t until the next morning that
someone told us that there was no RV camping there. By then we had already eaten breakfast and were ready to
go. It was a beautiful park with lots of cabins for rent and trails for walking….
From there we went to the Amana Colonies in Iowa and spent the night at a large RV park where they were
getting set up for a dog show. We had intended to spend two nights there, but were asked to move our boondock
site after the first night so just continued on down the road.
The drive in Nebraska and Iowa was beautiful with field after field of corn and soy beans. Occasionally we would
see some leaves starting to turn gold but fall had not really hit yet. It was now the Friday before Labor Day
weekend and we picked a state park in Illinois to spend the night. Dummy boondockers that we are, it never
dawned on us that everything would be full. After getting into a state park that was full and having to negotiate
tight turns through the entire campground to extricate ourselves, we picked the first wide spot on a side road and
pulled over for the night. We were on a wide area where some obvious earthmoving was going on but figured that
it was late and the next day was Saturday and no problem….hah….early in the morning there were loud rumblings
of a belly dump taking passes close by. I was up so walked out to say good morning and tell them we were leaving
soon…I got a rude welcome and then they drove off in the belly dump…no more work to be done now that we
were chased off!!!! It sure is easier and more welcoming to boondock in Mexico and Central America. Those of
you who are Rvers have heard this lament before a thousand times, but we didn’ t sell our house and get rid of
the mortgage to make $1000/month payments to RV parks….traveling south of the border is a lot easier….
On Saturday, September 3rd we arrived in Nappanee at the Newmar factory. We found a place in their “RV Park”
to set up and made ourselves comfortable. We had 2 days to wait for the appointment.
We did really interesting things like laundry and shopping while we waited for our appointment on Tuesday the
6th. It was fun and curious to see the horsedrawn carriages used by the local ‘buggy Mennonites’ as a young
Amish girl in a restaurant called them. One woman arrived at the laundromat with her family’s clothing and tied her
horse to the ubiquitous hitching post while she brought in her laundry. We weren’t there long enough to tell the
difference between the Amish and Mennonites but chuckled at the anachronisms apparent everywhere.
We were told to be ready for our warranty work at 6:00 am so the days of leisurely mornings were over for a few
days. Glenn Helmuth showed up at 6:15 to ask about the repairs and we talked about the two items on the
list…the squeak in the floor and the shower door hinge….we also just ‘mentioned’ a couple of other items and off
he drove with our rig.
There is a small but nice waiting area at Newmar but Colleen and I headed out to Granger, Indiana to visit Colleen’
s mother’s gravesite where she was buried 13 years ago. Several of her other relatives are also buried there. It is
a beautiful old cemetery right on the border with Michigan. While there, Colleen met a fellow who was there
tending gravesites of a friend and he said that he would trim and fertilize around Colleen’s family graves too.
While there I found a bunch of nuts under a tree and realized that they were chestnuts. I have never done
anything with chestnuts before, but I now have about 10 pounds of them and will figure something out….if I can
find out how to make chocolate on the internet, I imagine there will be information about chestnuts. If any of you
readers have any ideas, let me know….they are already out of their outer shell and are shiny brown and beautiful.
A memory I have from my teenage years is the smell of roasting chestnuts being sold along the sidewalks in Paris.
I would love to duplicate that smell if y’all know how. And if I roast them, then what? I don’t remember eating them.
We went on the Newmar factory tour and the Monaco factory tour too while there. It appeared that the Monaco
factory was more ‘modern’ but we heard scuttlebutt that says Newmar makes a better product. You won’t get us to
argue with that.
From Nappanee we went north to Elkhart to All Brand RV Repair who worked us into their schedule to repair our
dimpled roof. When they started the repair they discovered that there had been a leak under the air horn from
improper installation since the beginning that caused the roofing to swell. We got authorization from Newmar to
repair it under warranty so that slowed up the process somewhat. We also had a fantastic fan installed in the
bedroom roof to increase ventilation in there.
In the middle of the repairs was a weekend so we arranged to meet two women who are interested in investing in
Maricasa with us. They flew in to Chicago and we drove up there to meet them. We parked in front of the house
where they were staying and had a great visit. We discussed our mutual visions for the project and got to know
one another. We also went to the Bahai Temple there in Evanston….it was beautiful and very interesting to read
about their philosophy.
We drove back to Elkhart on Sunday evening for the last bit of the repairs. While we waited we went to an RV
surplus store where they had lots of parts for RVs….it was like an RV flea market. You could just about build an
RV with all the parts they have there.
On leaving Elkhart, we headed west and south as we waited for the Red Cross to assign us to a particular city.
First we were told to go to Montgomery, AL, then Baton Rouge, then Houston, then finally we were routed to
Dallas where we currently are settled in at a local trailer park. Most of the residents here are in singlewide mobile
homes and RVs that have seen their last adventure and are rusting in place. The price is right at $120 a week
including electricity and everyone is really nice. Dinah has a nice place to be tied outside in the shade while we
are not here and the nights are peaceful. The AC has to run almost constantly to keep the temperature
reasonable in the 100 degree heat and high humidity….
We have been here in Dallas for one week. The day we arrived we checked in at Reunion Arena where we were
to work with Media Relations and Public Affairs. I was assigned to do a half hour radio show the next morning on
the local Spanish language radio station about the role of the Red Cross in Dallas. Thanks to the diligence of
John Hoffman, a volunteer also with Media Relations, I got about 30 pages of emailed material to review before I
showed up to do the show. Thank goodness the interviewer, Jose Luis Madrigal, had a lot to say!!! It went well
enough and I didn’t make any misstatements.
Since then we have been working daily at Reunion Arena assisting individuals and families with finding help with
their particular situation. Some of them weren’t residents of the shelter and needed to get registered, some
needed help finding family members, some needed help with transportation to other cities or within Dallas and
some just needed to talk. All were really grateful for how they have been treated by the Red Cross but some were
not as happy about how slowly the system to get them out of the shelter and into other housing was moving. The
City of Dallas put together Project Exodus to move families into more long term accommodations…it was a long
process…..the shelter is now almost closed as the last of the families have been moved out and we are waiting to
find out what our next assignment is.
This takes us to the 18th of September and now we are a bit anxious about Hurricane Rita which has Texas in her
sights as she heads north and west toward the coast to make landfall later this week.
Well, as you know by now, Rita did crash into the coast of Texas and Louisiana though a bit east of where it
originally was tracking and as a category 3 instead of a category 5. Where we were in Dallas we felt some gusty
winds for a couple of hours one day and that is all. More than 2 million people evacuated inland causing lots of
traffic delays and an influx of evacuees to the Dallas area from Galveston and Houston. Some of the new
evacuees were people who had fled Hurricane Katrina. I mentioned that the shelter where we were working was
closing down and it never did close as thousands showed up in Dallas.
So, we spent 2 days making phone calls to enlist Red Cross volunteers to take a shift at the Fort Worth shelters
and then we went back to helping families to get assistance as they flooded into Dallas. We were finally able to
allow media into Reunion Arena and spent a couple of days escorting them to the concourse level to take
sweeping photos of the cots on the basketball court below. We also became more critical as volunteers as most of
the new evacuees were Spanish speaking and there were lots of interviews with the local Spanish radio and TV
stations as well as just assisting families.
This group of Rita evacuees was much different from the Katrina evacuees. Besides being Spanish speaking they
were much more well-prepared and most of them were not going to face the devastating losses that people from
New Orleans faced. Some of the families from the Beaumont, Texas area did lose everything but most who
evacuated did not. They also traveled to safe havens in caravans of their personal vehicles and were able to
keep their families together where evacuees from New Orleans were split up and sent hither and yon.
Working with the Red Cross was a fabulous experience and I have a new respect for what they do. I had no idea
of the breadth of ways the Red Cross helps families during a disaster. We packed up and left Dallas just as more
evacuees were being moved from small Texas towns to Dallas shelters. The local volunteers got some relief from
national volunteers but they were facing another long stint as we left.
We traveled south through San Antonio and saw many evacuees heading home with gas cans on the roof.
Arriving in Brownsville we hooked up with BJ and made plans to cross into Mexico on the 28th of September. We
arrived at the border crossing only to discover that the immigration officer was rather stiff and told us we had to
spend another 72 hours in the US as when we returned in June the immigration officials did not stamp our
passports as having returned. If you are in Mexico for 6 months you have to leave for 72 hours in order to get
back in for another 6 months. So we are cooling our jets in Brownsville for an extra 3 days and will cross
tomorrow. It is super hot here and I will be glad to get moving.
I put up new pictures of Madison from her first birthday and you can see them on her page.
Copyright - All Rights Reserved
2005
2005
September 2005
Around the World with Kathe and Colleen