If it's Sunday this must be New Hampshire

What a week! We have crossed 14 states in the past week, and lost my Mom in Scranton PA. Well, we know where she is, but she's not with us in NH. We pulled into Scranton Saturday evening, I was driving the motorhome. Just after I came off the highway toward our hotel, the front of the motorhome started smoking. At first I thought it was the car in front of us, but then I realized it was us! I couldn't tell where the smoke was coming from, and we were within a mile of the hotel, but I got a powerful feeling that I had to pull over immediately. I found an empty parking lot and drove off the road and up as far as I could, by then the vehicle was smoking really bad. Mom said "take your purses, in case this thing starts on fire" We jumped out of the cab, the whole front smoking like crazy, and saw fluid pouring onto the ground. It was the transmission, and we aren't sure if it was because we had the car dolly on and were pulling up and down a lot of hills coming into Scranton, or the transmission was problematic before. There was some whining in the motorhome even before we left Cottonwood, but I'm sure dragging a dolly didn't help.

Mom found a tow truck, and amazingly they were just a mile or two away. I called Uhaul, and a young man came down, hooked up the dolly and took it back to their lot. Everyone has been so nice there, it was a great relief. Mom insisted that we go on, and since we had to get the other trailer back by Tuesday, we really had no choice but to keep going. David plans to check on her tomorrow when he leaves here. Most people would get a little panicky, but not Mom. I wanted to stay with her, and she said "What are you going to do here, hold my hand?! I'll be fine, I'll rent a car and get to know Scranton for the next few days." She plans to drive over here when the motorhome is fixed, and spend at least a few days here before we start our trek back across the country.

David and Nic are only here one full day, and they spent most of the day helping put together furniture and unpack. They are superheroes, I think. They are planning to drive cross-country in 4 days, and since there are two of them to trade off driving, they may make it sooner. I wish they could go sightseeing with us for a couple days, but they both have to get back to work. This is the busiest time of year for Best by Farr, and Nic doesn't have much vacation time, so they have to get back.

I haven't uploaded any photos yet, I'll try to do that tomorrow. It's really pretty here, so many trees and so green! For a desert rat like me, it's a little surreal, I keep looking for the sprinklers and irrigation systems, but I think they just rely on rain to have such nice lawns and greenery. Manchester has over 100,000 in the city, and 250,000 in the immediate area.

Cruisin' through Memphis

Well, we are rolling along. We stayed in Albuquerque on Tuesday night, and it was 7% humidity. Tonight in West Memphis it's 51%. It was a smooth drive, and the trailers are riding very well, despite the weight!

By the time we reached Oklahoma City Wednesday evening, a storm was brewing. Luckily for us, we were able to 'ride the high'; there was a high pressure system between two storms, and we stayed right in the middle. Behind us, Oklahoma City had tornadoes, in front of us it was raining all the way to the coast. Whew!

Arkansas has so many rivers! And, it seems they are all flooding right now. In eastern Arkansas all the rivers we passed are flooding, and I'm so grateful that the highway was built high enough not to flood. We didn't see any houses being flooded, seems they have enough sense not to build on the flood plain, unlike some developers in the Maricopa valley. The fields are being planted, and the trees and flowers are blooming, it's really pretty.

We will cross the Mississippi river tomorrow morning, and right through Memphis. We won't get to stop this time. We were here about 12 years ago, and got to spend a day in Memphis. No, we didn't get to Graceland, darn it, but we went to Beale Street and it was pretty grimy, actually. The rest of Memphis was pretty nifty though. There was a really cool island right in the Mississippi river that had a scale model of the River from beginning to end. It was a big concrete model that showed all the states, and the Mississippi running through them. We spent a couple hours there, I was fascinating, the kids ran all over it, and jumped back and forth across the running water, saying "Hey, I just jumped the Mississippi!" OK, maybe that was actually me jumping across...

Gettin' ready to Go

Heather and Jared have all the stuff they need for the next month in the house, since everything else they own is in boxes in the garage. With 4 dogs and all the kids here, it's impossible to keep things cleaned up much. Oh well, I'm not a neat-freak so it's not a big deal. It's sure been great to have the kids here, and we had Dakota twice this week, all day Sunday and a couple hours last night. She is growing up so fast!

My friend Julie Hutchins Greer stayed over last night too, she is on the way to the Grand Canyon today. She painted a mural in one of the buildings there, and she has a painting in a gallery show there now. It's a national thing, the Parks dept. has a collection that is showing at National parks around the country, and the kick-off is at the Grand Canyon this weekend. Cool, huh!

I've been working on my watering system for the past week, hoping to keep everything alive while I'm gone. David fixed the automatic system pipes that broke last winter with the freezing weather we had, so that's taken care of. Now I'm setting up soaker hoses and an automatic timer on all my backyard plants that aren't on the electronic system.

I've set up reservations at Day's Inn across the country, so we'll have a decent place to stay on our trip. It will be quite a caravan, our big black truck hauling a big Uhaul trailer, Mom's motorhome hauling Heather's car, and Jared's car. So now we have 6 driver's for 3 vehicles, it should be a little easier to manage, with several drivers. Gas is going to cost a mint!!! We're expecting close to $4 a gallon, ouch! I'm pretty excited about the trip though, we're going through Tennessee from Memphis to Kingston, which is in the northeast corner. Then up the Applachian mountains on highway 81 into Pennsylvania. I'll post picture as we go along, I hope, we're supposed to have internet access. I can't believe we leave next week!

NRA and John Wayne

I'm sitting with all the kids, watching the Godfather. Now, it came out when I was in high school, but back then they really didn't let anyone in the theater for R rated movies unless they were 18. My Mom had worked at that same theater when she was in high school, so the owner knew us, there was no sneaking in! Long story short, I've never seen the whole movie, and the boys were watching it when I came home from the NRA banquet. Jared and Heather are staying here until they move on the 15th, and Nic came up to hang out with all of us for the weekend. His daughter Dakota is coming over tomorrow too, so it should be a fun day.

I finally finished Heather's dress! I will get a picture of her in it tomorrow, and post it. It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I finished my socks too, they are a little loose, but comfortable.

What can I say about the NRA banquet? Well, it's not really a banquet here, but a BBQ held at the local fairgrounds. David and his brother are life members, and sponsors too, so we go to the dinner every year. The part I like is that local politicians are usually there, making an appearance or stumping for votes, if it's an election year. I signed two petitions for candidates to get on the ballot tonight- one for Sydney Hay, running for Congress, and the other for Ernie Cox, running for Sheriff. Sydney and her husband sat at our table, maybe because not only did I sign, but I made sure David and Jon went out and signed their petitions too, so she knew we were friendly. I voted for her last election, but Renzi had a lock on the campaign, I think. He's really made a mess of things, hasn't he? I like politics, and I like to keep up on the candidates.

During the auction I bought a John Wayne clock! It's a western one of course, and I think I'll give it to my Mom for Mother's day, she loves the Duke. And that's all I have to say for now.....

Clear blue skies

I've been pretty busy the last few weeks. I'm trying to finish a 'little black dress' I started for Heather over a year ago. It's an adapted vintage '40's pattern, and I got sick before I could finish it. I promised her I'd finish it before she moves, so I've been working on it a little every day. It is a beautiful pattern, but complicated. I told her that when it's done it isn't just homemade, it's a designer dress, since I've fitted it to her exactly. That's my story, anyway. I'm working on a new pair of socks, too, they are knitted from the toe up instead of from the leg down. That makes it easier to fit them to a person's foot better, since you can try them on as they are knitted. These are mine, I haven't made socks for anyone else, besides my mom, yet. The needles are so small, they are hard to see the stitches as well as on bigger projects. I love hand-knitted socks though, so I have to make me some every now and then. The darn yarn costs 7-12 dollars a skein, so they are'nt cheap to make, but they wear well, and the colors are so cool!

Today is David's mother's birthday, and we met his brother at her place for strawberry angel food cake. Jon brought his girlfriend, Gina, so we had a nice party. I brought all the fixin's- strawberrys, angel food cake, which is her favorite, and whipped cream. I found a cool booklet/birthday card that tells about the things happening the year she was born. She was aghast that the year was printed right on the front, but she enjoyed reading it. Mom Farr doesn't tell anyone her age, when someone asks her she tells them she's a day older than yesterday, so seeing her birth year in print wasn't something she likes, but she got past that to read all the information in it.

I heard on the news today that Utah and other states were snowy, and the airports were delaying flights to de-ice planes and clean runways. In the meantime, it was 80 degrees here, and just the most beautiful spring day! It's hard to stay inside on a day like this, I'd rather be outside in the yard, or reading on the porch, but there are things that have to be done.

I saw my old supervisor from work today, we had a good visit, and she had seen the letter I wrote to the editor about the court building that has been promised here in the Verde Valley for years. The office appreciated the support for getting probation moved closer to the court, but who knows when it will ever be built. I do my part in encouraging the county to honor their commtments, but we all know how the government works.....