Meet Willie Walker IV

He is here! He is Beautiful and He is  so LOVED!

Daddy Love

To cute for words

Mommy and Son just after delivery. We all wish we looked this good.

Proud Grannie

The  Willie's  II, III, IV , My handsome men!

Time to go get my baby snuggle on!

Fixing the Fridge and waiting for Willie

The Fridge is finally working again. Yippee! Spent a week just laying around and taking care of some things on the RV. I came down with a cold and needed to stay away from Dana. Not Fair but at least the timing worked out.

My fridge laying down in the middle of my living room.

Taking off and cleaning out the old parts.

New refrigeration part. Yea the whole size of the unit.

On the roof and also on the outside of the RV. Lots of work but they Got it done.

Resting at home after picking us up and going to the park the day we arrived.

 

Tripp showing us Willie's room and some of his childhood treasures.

Proud Daddy to be.

Dana's sister painted this, it matches the quilt behind trip in the picture above. So talented!

Cheesecake Factory for lunch. First day we could get together for almost a week since I came down with that nasty cold.Now we are just waiting on Willie to arrive.

Death Valley Side Trip part 2

I was having trouble with the previous post so continuing pictures of our Death Valley trip.

Lots of People coming to see the Super Bloom!

We see more flowers locally by the roadside all the time.

This we don't see locally ever.

You can see how Death Valley usually looks most of the time.
  The small scattering of flowers in the foreground are Super rare.

Resort in the South end of Death Valley. A Super Bloom happens maybe
 once a decade. When you think about how rare it is to have flowers
 blooming  here you can understand the excitement over the Super Bloom.
 We arrived back at Oasis just around dark. 

Home Sweet Home Look Honey they left the lights o for us!

Death Valley Side Trip Part 1

 Dana's sister Samantha was coming in for the weekend so we thought we would give them some quality alone time and take the opportunity to ride over and see the Super Bloom a couple of hours away in Death Valley California. Yep Freddie's driving again.

Death Valley Overlook. Reminds me of a moonscape.

Freddie in Death Valley!

Beautiful but I can't comprehend how the early settlers survived traveling here.

                                                                                                              

Red Rock , We love this place.

We visited Red Rock Canyon for a couple of hours one afternoon. We had been there a couple of years earlier and loved the place. One of the perks of being older is you can get a Lifetime Senior pass to National Parks for $10. Great Deal and we took advantage of it allowing Dana and her twin some alone time and a nap.

Lonely Cactus

1st observation and hiking point.

We aren't in St. Marys anymore!

Poor Freddie, Driving again.

 There are always climbers at Red Rock. The guy lying down to the left was laughing at his friend in the yellow having a difficult time climbing.

 We traveled on,and on,and on. After the first couple of days we made good time averaging around 400 miles a day. We left St. Marys mid morning on Tuesday and arrived in Las Vegas before dark on Sunday afternoon. Not to shabby for newbies.

 

Yep Walmart RV Resort Again.

Over half way there! Less than 1000 miles to go.

Oasis RV Resort pool! We highly recommend this place.

This was on Monday (Leap Day) Dana, her twin Renee Tripp and Freddie in the background at a nice park right down the street from Tripp and Dana's. Beautiful day and we were so happy we made it before Willie arrived.

On the Road to Las Vegas Day 3

Well we woke up and headed out for day three on the road. We were quite happy to have safely navigated through Mobile avoiding the tunnel and making it all the way to Louisiana the day before. The storms had passed but there was still a lot of wind witch caused us to go pretty slow. But mostly I could see Freddie gaining confidence in driving this Beast. One driving video had suggested putting a mark on your windshield to mark the front end blind spot to help with knowing where your coach is on the road and that really helped. We had now traveled through 4 states and into Louisiana heading toward Texas.

Almost all of  I-10 through Louisiana is over water like this.

And now Texas.

The Texas rest area we stayed at on day 3! and yes we spent day day 4 traveling through Texas also

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                 Negotiating Houston rush hour traffic was challenging. Freddie did a wonderful job.              No pictures of the insanity. Stopping at a Texas Walmart for the night we discovered that our fridge had quit working. Three bags of ice turned it into a 4 door ice chest. On the road the next day we went through El Paso. Realized just how close to the border that is when my phone picked up  Mexican cell service. Finally across Texas and into New Mexico after going through border patrol!

We are hoping to get the fridge fixed in Las Vegas.

Bye Bye Texas! only 3 states to go!

Heading cross country for our Grandson's birth!

Yes. you read correctly. Although the longest trip to date was less than 50 miles driving home from the dealership and we managed to put her in a ditch on a 10 mile trip, we are now heading across the country to Las Vegas for the birth of our Grandson. Packing up the RV, getting everything taken care of at the brick and mortar, watching and re watching sever class A driving instruction videos we took off. Severe storms were forecast-ed for the next day so we only traveled about 4 hours and stopped overnight in Tallahassee.  We found a Walmart/Bass Pro Shop parking lot and set up to hopefully miss the line of storms headed our way. 4other RV's joined us for the night.

Yes we are finally on the road.Willie IV here we come!

Super Cool Bass Pro Shop. Huge aquarium and other displays.

We moved over in the parking lot behind this fifth wheel to be more level
 and out of the way. Lady traveling with her dog to volunteer at a Park in Georgia.

Stopping in Tallahassee served us well as the storms diminished to just a line of thundershowers where further west in Pensacola there were tornadoes that wiped out a couple of RV Parks and in Louisiana several tornadoes that cost lives.We were indeed Blessed! We took off heading west again and navigated through Mobile Alabama without going through the tunnel ( we were lead to understand that since we carry a good size tank of propane that tunnels are a no- no.) We made it all the way to a Louisiana rest stop with 24 hr security, free coffee and WiFi for the night.

Blowing past Biloxi

Great Rest stop where we spent night 2 on our travels. Great staff and pretty good free coffee also.

Learning

We took the weekend to stay at Crooked River State Park with our friends Jim and Elaine Heath. Crooked River is a local State Park and a wonderful place to camp. Great time side by side camping and getting to know our new to us RV!

And then OOPS!

 Driving a 36 ft RV and making tight small road turns has a learning curve.

 Called a wrecker to pull us out of the ditch. Apply a little duck tape and a couple of bungee cords and we are on our way to the house to do repairs and get ready for our big trip out west. Needless to say Freddie was more than a little nervous driving to the house.

 Freddie can fix about anything. Mostly a little fiberglass work (he has had lots of practice with the boat!) and reattaching the mud flap and good as before.

Watched a wonderful u tube video on class A confidence course which helped a LOT. Now loading up and getting ready to head cross country!