Summer Journey

We are all packed up ... ready to go ... Beckett is nervously following my every move; not wanting to be left behind -- as if THAT would ever happen. We are headed for a four night stay at Charlotte with stops at the Coushatta Casino in Kinder, LA ( winnings should provide enough to cover the trip), Meridian, MS and Anderson, SC. Eventually we will go to Virginia Beach, Northern Virginia, Ohio and return in mid-July. The highlight is our grandson, Danny, will graduate from high school in Northern Virginia on the 19th of June and will head to Madison University this fall. Also, Gene is scheduled to take a flight in a T-6 (Texan) trainer that he first flew in flight school eons ago -- what a fabulous birthday present!

More to follow ....

The trip over was pretty uneventful ... super hot ... upper 90's. After setup in the Red Shoes RV Resort at Kinder, we hit the casino ... sadly, our $10 only gave us about an hour of play with very little real action. Our dream of bankrolling the trip vanished with our ten spot. The place was full of old folks and SMOKE! Nevertheless, it was fun. Casinos have come along way from the "put you money in and yank the handle". One almost needs a three hour course on the whole thing just to figure it out! After dinner in the casino we are now watching the telly and getting ready for an early departure to Meridian.

Speaking of the Red Shoes campground ... very nice ... very clean ... WiFi ... cable ... 50 amp service ... shuttle service to the casino ... all for 20 big ones a night. Such a deal!

Talk to you later ...

South Padre Island - Postscript

Drove home yesterday ... uneventful trip ... the highlight was a Peanut Buster Parfait at DQ's in Refugio. We are very pleased with the final upgrade of the kitchen which looks like the above pics (I thought they followed the comments):

South Padre Island

Saturday was a "run around" day ... we drove out to Los Fresnos and pigged out on their mucho grande Tex-Mex platter lunch described earlier in this blog. On the way back we joined "herd" headed for South Padre ... mucho creeping along. Today we lounged around ... caught up on our last minute fixers here - new pictures up, install new blind over the kitchen sink and fun stuff like that there. -------I forgot ---- on Friday we linked up with some old friends from Long Island Village and passed them some stuff for their church yard sale.------
The racing action at the Brickyard today was exciting .... fortunately no one was hurt! We are looking forward to the early arrival of our backsplash installers in the morning, then collect our stuff for the trip back home on Tuesday.

Each night about 9ish the have a huge fireworks display from a barge in the bay ... it is readily seen from our balcony. Lil Beckett doesn't enjoy sight and sound of it and we have to time his last walk AFTER the display. I tried to get some pics but my timing was terrible.

                                                                             

More to follow ....

South Padre Island

The plumber wrapped up the necessary connections to the sink/disposal/spigot and the whole installation looks pretty good. We had to extend our block on the place until the end of the month ... new tenants are due in on June 2nd. The rental company had to scramble to relocate folks due in today inasmuch as the backsplash installers will not get here until Monday. We have been assured by the folks at Lowe's they WILL BE here Monday morning. We plan to return home on Tuesday.

Beckett and I strolled the beach this morning ... suppose to be in the 90's today with a very brisk wind ... upwards of 40 miles per hour. Here are some shots of the beach this morning .... pretty good size surf.

Here are a couple of shots of the kitchen with the doors installed:

We are off for lunch .... headed to Kelly's, reportedly the best Reuben in the Valley!

Catch you later!

South Padre Island

 Back again .... the pics above show you how they taped it all up for spraying the cabinet frames.

These pics show the cabinet frames all sprayed up:

Last night we ate at Dirty Al's ... the best fried shrimp on the island. It looks like this:

We are awaiting the arrival of the countertop and backsplash installers.

The countertop folks DID get here about 10ish .... and installed them ... really nice job. However, the backsplash people are not coming ... numerous phone calls later reveals we are scheduled for MONDAY! Hopefully, we can sort that out tomorrow; but, if we have to, we'll survive till then and move our return from Sunday to Tuesday. Tomorrow we can concentrate on getting the plumber back to hook up the sink/disposal/spigot.

More to come ...

South Padre Island

We spent the day ... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... for the cabinet refinisher, who was to be here at 9ish ... turned out to be 3ish after we called twice and insisted they get started  because the plumber was coming tomorrow afternoon to disconnect the stuff from the sink. Sadly, the contractors in the Valley have a very different concept of the term "timely" and seem to focus on "later".  Anyway. we are on the timeline again, and if they show up as promised tomorrow at 9ish, we are good to go.

The kitchen is all taped up for the spraying to begin so we were forced to enjoy some yummy Church's Chicken w/cole slaw and freshly made biscuits.

More to follow ...

South Padre Island

Woke up to another lovely day in South Texas! Yesterday was a shopping day ... went to the outlets at Mercedes. Enroute we stopped at a huge Shell Store (they sell shells and all kinds of crafty things) outside San Benito and bought a bunch of shells (of course), wall hanging thingees, and other decorative items to spruce up the condo.

                                                                         

Then we stopped at Julia's in SB for lunch .... had a huge Tex-Mex combo plate (taco, chalupa, frajita, and tamale w/refried beans and Spanish rice) ... that was the meal for the whole day! We waddled back to the car and headed for Mercedes. Most of our buys were for replacement items for the kitchen ... folks either misplace, break or steal all kind of kitchen things, it seems. On the way home we bought a new 26" TV for the second bedroom which had died ... plus the batteries in the remote were missing and it was broken. We seem to lose batteries from most of the remotes over time; maybe tenants need them more in their stuff!

                                                                           

Today we plan to go to Brownsville and look for a couple of new rugs, lamp shades and blind for the kitchen. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

More to come....