Iowa, Missouri, England and Texas

Red Ivy cottage in Sawley near to the cottage we stayed in

It’s been quite a while since we posted anything here, that doesn’t mean that we’ve been taking things easy, quite the opposite.

After South Dakota we travelled through Nebraska to Iowa and crossed the Missouri River between the 2 States. The bridge was an open grate structure and could see the river below us as we drove Junior towing the CR-V over it. Our stop was at the Onawa KOA campground.

From there we drove to the Basswood Resort RV Park, which we discovered was directly on the flight path of Kansas City International, luckily they stop flights in the late evening.

While there we went into Kansas City, Missouri where we had a wonderful lunch with Kevin Hobbs a friend of ours from Connie’s time at Gabberts Furniture. After lunch Kevin gave us a great tour of the city and invited us to their home the next day. We spent a wonderful day at Kevin and Jim’s home, they have an amazing garden retreat with so many different areas to relax in.

After a short stay around Oklahoma City we then travelled on to Aubrey, Texas where we planned to stay for a month. During that month we left Junior at the park and Rusty at the kennels and travelled to England where we spent a wonderful week with Mum in a Ribble Valley cottage.

Connie had done an amazing job of finding the perfect vacation spot near Sawley in Lancashire that had 4 bedrooms all on one level. It had 3 ensuite rooms that allowed Mum to have her own ensuite with a balcony and a view of the sheep in the fields. We had really good visits from Eve and Jenna at the weekend and again on Sunday and Monday with Sue and Andrew – on the Monday they made a great goulash dish, enjoyed by all. Much beer and wine consumed but not Mum who stuck to her favorite tipple – tea. We managed to cross one off Mum’s ‘bucket list’ – we surprised her by taking her to Knowsley Safari Park near Liverpool, to drive amongst the wild animals – she loved it, especially the monkeys climbing on the car.

 

All too soon it was time to take Mum back to her flat in Thornton Cleveleys – not knowing that this would be the last time we would see her. Mum passed away on December 16th from pneumonia.

After 2 more days staying at the Royal Toby in Rochdale which gave us a chance to get some real Indian food at the Bay of Bengal in Littleborough and a great visit with Jenna and Chris at their flat – Eve cooked a great Chicken Tikka meal – on a par with the restaurant offering. Then it was back to Texas, Rusty and Junior.

While we had been away Connie’s Mom had been diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and was starting on a 6 week course of chemotherapy. We decided that we would forego our winter in Aransas Pass that we’d planned and stay closer to Wills Point, so we ended up at the Lone Star RV Ranch just 5 miles east of Canton. This meant we were only about 9 miles from her Mom at Wills Point and just 30 miles away from Mother Francis hospital in Tyler. She had to spend her 81st birthday in a hospital room, but we made it a little better by taking in a full lobster dinner. To say that things didn’t go as everyone wanted is an understatement. There were complications from the treatment and the COPD that has plagued Mom for so long, she was transferred into the ICU early November and on November 18th she took her last breath surrounded by her family.

We lost both our Mothers in 4 weeks.

We had to make one more trip to England early in January for Mum’s funeral service, to visit the solicitors and take one last visit to her flat to collect some personal mementoes.

Texas suffered some torrential rain and flooding during the 6 weeks we were in Canton, one of the local reservoirs opened its flood gates to reduce levels and then 2 days later we had amazing sunrise and sunsets.

While we were in the Canton RV Park we decided that maybe we would like to have a small base camp, a stick house, that we could spend our winters in and be a bolt hole in case we needed a long term base – we had just learned that things can change rapidly. After much searching in a very wide area south and east of Canton we found Grapeland – a thriving metropolis of 1,489 people famous for water melons and the peanut festival in the fall – and not much else, ideal. The house is small, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and a nice open Kitchen / living area – sitting on just over 1.5 acres – more than enough space for us and Junior. So here we are, buying furniture, appliances and planning a kitchen remodel and upgrades to the bathrooms. The second bedroom is the ‘office’ with 2 desks, and monitors and all that ‘stuff’. Rusty now takes us for a walk twice a day, though he does have a fenced yard for the quick bathroom visits. The neighborhood is quiet and country, East Texas style.

We are already a little stir crazy, wanting to get on the road again when it gets warmer, so we plan and re-plan our next adventure, which we will post here once we start travelling again.

 

One Comment on “Iowa, Missouri, England and Texas

  1. Pingback: 2016 through to Virginia | Connie, Tony and Rusty

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