Matinee Movie NFC Title Games and Weather

Friday
Sandy's sister called and asked if we would be interested in coming to Longview for lunch and afterwards take in a movie. Sandy and I have been to a movie only once that we can recall since moving to North East Texas thirteen years ago. So, the thought of taking in lunch and an afternoon matinee sounded like a winner.

Pam prepared a wonderful chicken soup she had picked up from The Pioneer Woman's website. Pam and Sandy both have prepared some great meals from The Pioneer Woman's recipes. She gives great pictorial instructions of many of her recipes and she is also quite a photographer. She also writes very interesting blogs.

After a great lunch we went to one of the local theaters for a afternoon movie. We picked Red Tails which is based on the real-life story of black pilots in the World War II Tuskegee Air Force training program who, after being kept on the ground because of segregation and racism, are finally called into duty — a chance for them to rise to the occasion and prove their worth. Boy did they!!!! We enjoyed the movie and give it "two thumbs" up for its action and storyline.

Saturday
Our winds began to pickup out of the Southwest and blew pretty hard most of the day. We suspect these winds were the same that blew through southern California and Arizona. The wind blew down quite a number of large limbs from trees nearby. Fortunately none blew down from the large oak trees we are parked near. The weatherman said the wind gust's were around 35-40mph. Besides the high winds our weather has been nothing but outstanding.....high 60's during the day and low 40's a night. We've had only a couple of night's where it got below freezing. In fact the month of January has been very seasonably warm compared to prior January's. Let's just hope that trend continues.

Sunday
Was a day of watching the AFC and NFC championship games. Wow........talking about good games and being close you couldn't ask for anything better. At the outset, we first thought it might be a Harbaugh Bowl in Indy instead of Super Bowl XLVI. But, due to some misfortunes, it turns out we will see a rematch between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. All I can say is they both were excellent games.

Sandy just about wore herself out watching the game between the 49's and Giants. She is an avid Eli Manning fan and there were times during the game that I thought she was going to crawl into the TV and punch out some of those 49's that was knocking Eli around......six sacks and twenty hits. that guy I'm sure was very sore after the game.

 

Monday
Found us in Longview where we picked up groceries at the local Walmart for her Mom and us. We also paid a visit to Target and the Ultra store. I managed to snooze, guard the Jeep and play games on my IPhone 4. Well maybe mostly snoozed.

Our weather is expected to turn a little messy tonight and tomorrow. The weatherman is predicting rain starting tonight through most of Tuesday. We still need the rain to help our creeks, streams, lakes and ponds recover from the extreme drought we had last year. I might add the rain we've had to date has gone a long way in helping in this recovery.

Our fuel prices are gradually creeping up again. Filled up the Jeep today for over $55 which is the highest we've paid since way before Christmas.

On a side note I went to VA Shreveport last Thursday. My recovery process is still getting better each day.

Until next time. . . .MtnAire Travlers.

Daingerfield State Park

This morning we decided to drive over to the Daingerfield State Park to see what renovations had been done during last years closure of the park. Daingerfield State Park is a 550+ acre recreational area (including an 80-surface-acre lake), deeded in 1935 by private owners and opened in 1938. It has four camping loops, three for RV's and one what appears to be for tent sites. The park is heavily wooded and quite a ways off the main highway. I believe finding a satellite signal would be just about impossible. I also can see where at nighttime this area could be pitch black.

The park is about 15 miles from us and we have used the faculty several times since we moved up to this area. These visits have been day visits only as we felt the park was not big rig friendly for staying over night. We were hoping the renovation would have included adding larger sites for big rigs.

Upon our arrival at the park entrance office we were greeted by a very polite young lady. We told her we wanted to tour the area to see what renovations were done last year and if they added larger sites for big rigs. She informed us they did not make any changes to the sites other than repaving them and adding sewer hookup to a lot of the sites.

While driving through the park we saw evidence where our drought last year had done a number on the trees. There were a lot of trees down throughout the the area. You could see evidence where they had been cutting some of them up for clearing them out.

The Big Pine camping sites were all pull through with FHUP and what we could tell there only three of the ten sites in this loop would accommodate a big rig like ours. The other two loops, Dogwood and Mountain View sites, were all backend sites. I didn't see anything in these two loops that would accommodate our rig.

We may just plan a weekend getaway trip just to check out the parking accommodation. Here are some photos of this park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time. . . .MtnAire Travlers.

Little Excitement In Lone Star Today

This place is usually pretty quite. Every now and then you would here the siren of the local EMS ambulance or volunteer fire truck running down the highway. Today however was a little different. Right before lunch today we heard this loud boom and felt the concussion shake the motorhome. Sandy said wow that seemed awful close. I said naw.....that sounded like it was a far piece from us. Well little did I know.

In about five minutes after the explosion, we heard a siren and looked out our window and saw it was one of our volunteer fire trucks. We both said what ever it was must have been east of us.
About ten minutes later Sandy looked out and said there was a Texas DPS car blocking the highway out front of our motorhome.

No sooner than saying that we heard the rotors of a low flying helicopter. We both ran out and looked in the direction of the sound and saw a ETMC Life Flight helicopter landing on the highway about 400 yards from us.

There is a welding supply plant about this same distance that sells oxygen/acetylene and welding equipment. We walked to the highway where there was a local policeman standing by his truck with his bubble gum machine just a flashing. Sandy walked over to him and he said there was an employee injured at the plant as the result of the explosion and they had to call in Life Flight. It is alleged that the employee was cutting on a empty barrel with a cutting torch that set off the explosion. Now what was in that barrel that would have caused that kind of explosion.

We stood there for about thirty minutes before they brought out the injured man and loaded him into the helicopter. I had my IPhone 4 phone and took these pictures. I had hoped to catch a video as the helicopter lifted off but I failed to hit the start button to make my video. Bummer.......as it was neat as he flew directly over me at tree top height before he finally lifted higher in the direction of Dallas. We have no report as of this posting on the injured man. We pray for him and his speedy recovery.

Until next time. . . .MtnAire Travlers.