Blogs from North America

This post will be mostly photographs. We took a LOT of them yesterday on our tour. The tour was put on by Patronato pro Niños, a group that helps kids with mostly medical care and transport: http://www.patronatoproninos.org/events/tours.html The volunteer guides are mainly expats (ours was Jay) and they each have a wealth of knowledge about the history behind the buildings of San Miguel de Allende. The tour is 300 pesos per person, well worth it. 119 pictures and 3 panoramas. Enjoy.... read more

Today’s activity took us in a different direction other than amusement parks and beaches. Nicki Jo, our activities director, arranged for some of us (including Lulu) to participate in an annual event held countrywide. It’s called “Be Bold, Be Bald!” It is a national cancer fundraising event held in October each year, and takes place wherever you are. We are at Tropical Palms. We started out with a potluck lunch. That hit the spot. A nice variety of delicious food. Linda thought it would be a good idea to have a potluck lunch everyday. Yummmmmmmmm. Nicki Jo handed out our bald caps to decorate. Some folks really put the full glitz on theirs. We put a penny on ours to recognize a very dear person who is dealing with cancer at this time. She knows the ... read more

Day 23 Rest Day Bike maintenance,washing, relaxing, hot pool soaking and admiring restored vintage cars. Day 24 T or C to Carrizozo Out of T or C we were on seal for 30kms heading predominantly North. Our route then led us onto a gravel road which was easy riding, relaxing with no nasty bits. After 50kms of this we took another road which while good, had some tricks in store. Smooth dirt with very little gravel this road took us North through scrubby desert-like country although there was some stock being run here. Many dry washes to watch out for. These ranged from nothing more than a small bump to a good sized culvert full of loose gravel &/or deep sand, some with a deeper narrow culvert running through the middle that has been carved out ... read more

Where do I start? It's been a tough year... we lost our beloved Scaredy cat in March.... then Keith passed suddenly which threw us for a loop….and then the sweetest dog on Earth, my Simon, passed away just last month. September was the saddest month of my life thus far. I can still barely talk about losing Simon. I miss him almost every day. It's like a suffocating lump in your throat that doesn't go away. In other news, the St Louis Cardinals had a great year. I've always loved baseball and at some point in my life I switched from backing the KC Royals to the STL Cardinals. This year, with Simon being sick and blind, he couldn't do much.. he would whine if I didn't stay near him....so I would sit with him after ... read more

BASICS We decided not to go into Chicago and instead explored more local places. Valparaiso ("Valpo") had a spectacular outdoor train layout. We drove on to the lakeside home of friends in Manchester, Michigan, stopping en route in Three Rivers, MI, at the bookstore which Linda remembered as wonderful. It is. After a delightful visit, we forged ahead at our not very fast pace toward home. We stopped in Thompson Ohio, where we encountered one of the nicest campgrounds ever. We stopped twice in New York state, at Chautaqua and Campbell. Then on to New England, which already felt like being home. After a night at a ski area in Bennington Vermont, we drove through the glorious fall leaf colors which entice people from all over to New England. And, finally, to Durham. Our yard has ... read more

This will be a short post -- we were both exhausted today. As we left New Mexico and got closer to Texas, the land started changing. The beautiful mountains gave way to very. flat. land. We tried to capture it in the photos. Amazingly, we saw NO police through all of CA, AZ and NM, then literally saw about 15 in the brief time we drove through Texas! I know we didn't see the best parts of Texas, but my impressions were too many cops, very flat land, lots of cattle, and the worst interstate quality we've seen yet. What DID fascinate me was the wind turbines. They are EVERYWHERE and literally went on for miles and miles. My research indicates that West Texas A&M University began wind energy research in 1970 that led to the ... read more