Opal's 80th Birthday

We were invited to the 80th Birthday that Mark Allen gave for his grandmother, Opal, who had a Birthday on Jan. 1 and his mother, Cheri, who had a birthday on Jan. 5. The cake said that his grandmother is 80 years old but it didn’t say how old his mother is. Smart Man!

Opal and her husband are good friends of ours that we meet every year at Emerald Cove. I wrote about them in my book, “More RV Chuckles and Chuckholes-More Confessions of Happy Campers.” Opal will tell you to go to page 100 and read about meeting Frank and their life together.

DON’T TRAVEL LIKE THIS!!!!

We have been recovering from the stress of the last two weeks of 2008. Not only did we have the stress of the loss of Terry’s brother during the holiday season, but also we traveled 3773 miles in eight days with the most severe weather we have en-countered in two weeks time. There was snow, ice, hail, sleet, fog, wind, and tornados.

We didn’t take many pictures of our trip but one photo was taken of the home where Terry, Bill and Dennis grew up near Sugar Grove, IL. The other photo was taken in AZ. (We drove the new highways near the old Route 66 from CA to the Chicago area of IL.)

Why didn’t we fly? When we left our RV in storage and started the trip in our car, Dennis was still alive. We didn’t know how long we would stay in IL. The airport was closed and many holiday flights were cancelled to IL.

In the Litchfield, IL area, we traveled over ice at 10 mph in 4-w drive with about thirty vehicles in the ditches and ambulances coming and going. We kept moving because Dennis Miller’s funeral was for the next morning.

East of Tulsa, OK, the sky was so white we could hardly see so we stopped awhile. Then the sky turned black. We turned on the radio and heard that four tornados were spotted in the area. We stopped at McDonalds since it was safer in a building than in the car. The manager turned a large TV to the weather station and asked each customer what direction they were headed so she could tell them when it was safe to go.

Near Albuquerque, NM, we were still encountering winds with gusts of 60 to 70 mph that we had experienced all through OK. A van with luggage strapped on the top speeded past us. We saw the medical helicopter before we saw the van turned on its side. Interstate 40 was closed for half an hour both East and West while medics evacuated seven people.

Thanks for your prayers for our safety. After we arrived home to our RV, we were stressed out! We needed to sleep in our own bed, eat regular meals with vegetables, and get hugs from our friends. My friend, Karen gave me a massage. My friend Wendy emailed me that she walked past an RV that looked like ours and wondered where we were. (We were parked two rows from her.) She listened to me and went to the hot tub with me.

Then I had a severe migraine headache and needed to sleep it off.

Now we are planning for our trip to Newfoundland in 2009 but we will stop when the weather is bad.