Sunday, March 9, 2008

Last Post - WE ARE HOME!

This will be our last post for this trip so we wanted to close by thanking you all for your hospitality and friendship during the last three months. We had a great time, saw a lot of wonderful places, reconnected with many friends and family and are awfully glad to be back at Lake of the Ozarks. Some of you have asked for pictures of our place here, so we will close by attaching some pictures we took today, even though winter pictures don't show our home at it's best. Maybe this will encourage you to come visit - imagine how beautiful it looks with trees and flowers!

Our next trip will be to Alaska. While we are meeting a caravan of motorhomers for that 40-day trip in Dawson Creek, BC on July 11, we have to travel 2,400 miles just to get there. We try not to travel more than about 200 miles a day, so we will leave mid-June and probably return about the end of September. We will send out an invitation to follow us right before we leave.

Meanwhile, we would love to hear from you! Have a beautiful spring -
Anna and Dean

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Winter in Missouri

For those of you who have accused us of bringing bad weather to you, be glad you don't live in Springfield, MO. We are trying to get back to our home at Lake of the Ozarks and stopped for a couple of days in Springfield. Yesterday it was rainy and cold and last night, we got 8 inches of snow!! You may remember that last time we were traveling through here, we were in the midst of a horrible ice storm. Molly doesn't know how to do her business when snow is up to her shoulders so she waited until about 9 this morning, only after Dean had trampled down an area for her. After all, in Chicago she had that wonderful area under Lakeshore Drive where she was sheltered from the really bad weather.

Since our last post, we were in Arlington and spent a lot of time visiting potential neighborhoods in North and Central Texas to see if we might want to live there. There are a couple of very nice "active senior" communities (not independent living or nursing homes) and we could see ourselves living in one. Robson Ranch near Denton and Sun City in Georgetown both have a lot to offer people our age and older. We also went to a development in Terrell, just east of Dallas and to Granbury, southwest of Fort Worth where there are some beautiful homes and mature neighborhoods.

We also spent time with many of our friends in the area and even acted like tourists one day in Fort Worth. If you haven't been to the Cowgirl Museum there, it is worth the visit. The day wouldn't have been complete without lunch at Angelo's - an old barbecue restaurant that is legendary. We even went dancing at the Stagecoach Ballroom on Friday night which is one of the oldest ballrooms in Texas. It was a little more low-key than the dancing done in the clubs in College Station where the young Aggies go to dance (thank goodness)!

Now we are anxious to get home to start spring cleaning and catching up on the many projects that are overdue there. That part of our lives won't be very interesting, so we will take a break on this blog and resume once our travels start again. As many of you know, we are planning a trip to Alaska this summer and will now plan on leaving in mid-June. I'll send out an invitation to follow us on that journey, which may take as long as 3 months. Meanwhile, have a beautiful Spring and fun Summer until we meet again!