Thanksgiving Day

Today is Thursday, November 27, 2008, THANKSGIVING DAY. Are you giving thanks today?

We awoke this morning to the clouds below us and blue sky above! Presently the sky is clear and blue, and the temperature is about 60 degrees! It is truly a day in which to give thanks! Look at the pictures. Isn't it beautiful? All the world is a wonder. Created by our GREAT GOD and his WONDERFUL SON!

Today we will have our Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner with new friends from Thousand Trails. Each of the campgrounds have such a dinner. They cook the turkey, dressing, and mashed potatoes and gravy, along with coffee or ice tea, for the low of price of $5.75 each. Then, each of the families brings a vegetable, salad, rolls and desserts. Melva is making a huge pan of sweet potatoes like my mother used to make, with butter, brown sugar, and marshmallows. There are two sittings, and we have opted for the early one at 2:00 pm.

When we bought this 5th wheel, it had no television, so we are going to leave here this evening and park at the Wal-Mart to see if we can find a good buy on a flat screen to put in. Where we are located presently we get about 5 channels with our antenna. We purchased a 13" at Goodwill for $15 and it is working okay. It has a built-in VCR, so we are able to view the videos we brought along, only they are so small that it is hard to see from the recliners in the rear of the 5th wheel. We then purchased a VCR/DVD player and have it hooked up to play DVD's, so we have all of the entertainment we need.

Tomorrow we will be checking into Minden Lake, near Nicolaus, CA, in the center of the Sacramento valley, about 17 miles south of Marysville/Yuba City. We will spend 4 days there and then travel on to Morgan Hill, CA which is about 20 miles south of San Jose where we will spend four nights.

The lakes around here are covered with large white geese and Canadian Honkers. There are deer all over this campground, and also wild turkeys, and of course, large gray squirrels.

Well, I will close this for now. We will be leaving in a little while for our community thanksgiving. May continue to bless you and provide for you now and forevermore as you serve and trust in Him.

On the Road Again!

Jim and Melva are on the road again! We left Madras, Oregon about 2:30 pm on Thursday, November 20, 2008. When we were on Highway 97, just outside of Sunriver, it began to snow. It snowed hard until we were past LaPine. From there until we stopped at the Indian casino in Chiloquin, we ran in and out of snow. It snowed hard at times, but it never did drop below freezing, so we kept on traveling in the slush. We spent the night in the RV area provided free by the casino. It dropped down to about 24 degrees during the night, but we were quite okay in our newly acquired Montana.

Last year we traveled in a 36' Alpha 5th wheel, but it was entirely too heavy for our 1995 Dodge (especially as we continued to load it down with purchases), so we sold it about one week before we left, and purchased a 32', 2002 Montana, which is just right for the truck, and plenty large enough for our travels. We are enjoying it. It has two slides and it does not include a washing machine, so it is nearly 5000 pounds lighter.

We reached Redding, CA shortly after noon on Friday, so we stopped for two nights at Bear Mountain RV Resort. It was quiet, because it is about 8 miles off of Interstate 5, in the hills. It is a nice place to spend a day or two. The weather was great. The water was good (and that is not always so in many RV campgrounds), and there was an area where Stitches (our 3 year old Jack Russell) could go for walks, off her leash.

On Sunday we traveled down Highway 99 E to Chico where we stopped to enjoy church at a large Baptist congregation, Pleasant Valley Baptist Church. The service was great. They sang hymns we knew, actually had a piano, a choir, and two special numbers before an excellent sermon by the pastor who has been at that church for 21 years.

Traveling on, we checked into Thousand Trails Minden Lake at Nicolaus, California where we didn't even unhook, because we left the next morning to purchase a few items at the WalMart in Marysville, CA before traveling to our present position at Thousand Trails Lake of the Springs two miles north of Oregon House, CA. We will be here for Thanksgiving and will join with the other Thousand Trails families who are here. We will leave Thursday evening so that we can be at the wonderful "after Thanksgiving Day" sales.

By Friday afternoon we will be at Minden Lake again and spend four days there before traveling on south. Our destination is southern California and then on into Baja California to spend at least one month. As opportunity avails (internet being available), I will post our blog and pictures of where we are.

The pictures on this page show our present position, on top of a hill at Lake of the Springs. We wish each of you a wonderful Thanksgiving and our prayer is that you will not only be thankful for the dinner, but for the blessings of God in your life throughout the past year.