February 28, 2007 now to continue my stories of Louisiana and the stories that Randy, Susie, Mark and Sue had told us. Of course sitting with them and since they live in Louisiana we talked about Katrina. We told them about while driving here there were still neighborhoods of FEMA trailers all over Louisiana, they said wait till you go into the out skirts of New Orleans, and they are still there too. When we did go into New Orleans, we had breakfast in the French Quarter which is just fine it’s the neighborhoods outside of the French Quarter that are still messed up. There the houses that were unlivable have trailers either in the front yard or side yard, but the people still haven’t done anything to fix their places up. It was a very poor area anyway, very low income, and these people just want to keep taking the handouts and not do anything to improve the area. It doesn’t help with the Louisiana Government, not just New Orleans Government being corrupt, that’s what Randy told us. So much money has been wasted here and still is. The trailers that FEMA has supplied have been trashed, the people were given a year to get there acts together and not rely on the government but that hasn’t helped to get them motivated, they were never motivated before why should they start now and their own government officials don’t help them but just pocket the money. FEMA wasted so much money at the beginning and it doesn’t help that the outside businesses that were hired by FEMA had taken advantage of FEMA too. It was so hectic here that FEMA kept throwing out money and had no controls of what was going on. People that had no damage at all and still applied for FEMA money where given it and some that needed it were turned down. The trailer park, Yellowstone where we were staying was taken over by FEMA for evacuees from New Orleans; they had put trailers all over the park and paid the park owners for all the spaces. They even had hired a company to come in and dump the trailer tanks of the waste, well after doing that NO EVACUEES ever occupied the trailers. The dumping company came in once or twice a week and pretended to dump the waste tanks and billed FEMA even though all the trailers were empty. The trailer park charged of course which they had a right to do because all of their spaces were taken up by the FEMA trailers. Supposedly in the outskirts of New Orleans, where the trailers still are and it has been over a year, FEMA went in to take the trailers out but of course the news media got wind of it and made the government sound like the bad guys for not doing more to help these people. So needless to say the trailers are staying and the people still don’t plan on doing anything to improve things. Just keep waiting for the handouts is what they plan on doing, poor me the government owes us, boy I sure get sick of hearing that. Some of the neighborhoods a little farther out have been working very hard to cleaning up their areas but it is a slow process but at least they are doing something.
This is a hard topic to write about, so much too say, it’s just easier to talk about and not write about.
This is a long blog so let me cut off now and start another one about Mississippi and the damage Katrina caused here.

February 27, 2007 Boy I'm getting lazy at writing my blog, at least I'm not as bad as my nephew, Spanky, he hasn't updated his blog in over a month.
We are now in Biloxi Mississippi staying at a trailer park called Martin Lake Resort. The park is small, the lake is nice looking but most of the people here live here. This is one of the real trailer trash parks, thank goodness we won't be here long. Let's see, we have been in a few different places since I last wrote so I have some catching up to do.
We left Lake Medina, Lake Hills Texas, on Friday the 23rd and headed for Houston Texas. We stopped in Houston at the Johnson Space Center and took the tour they offer to show you the space shuttle and command center. It was interesting to see and hear about what the astronauts go thru in their training. After that we got back on the road and stopped for the night at the Delta Downs Race Track & Casino in Venton, Louisiana. We parked right outside the race track, which we didn't know at the time that they would leave the bright lights on all night long. Dave and I went in the casino for dinner but what was interesting is that in Louisiana the casinos are blocked off so you have to go thru a security check and prove you are 21 yrs old to go into the gambling part. The Harris Casino in New Orleans has like 10 glass doors in front to enter by but all the handles have been taken off of them except for 2 which when you go in the security check is right there, very interesting. Anyway, we stayed one night at the casino then on Saturday morning we headed for Robert Louisiana for a couple days. We got to Jellystone Park, yes Jellystone, Yogi Bear's Camp-Resort, so needless to say this was a Family/Kids campground. I was hoping to get in the adult section but there wasn't any, oh well. They had lots of lakes, pools, ponds, basketball courts, baseball, horseshoes, volleyball, mini golf, pop hut, yogi's cafe, rec. center and The Yogi Dome. Very large and pretty nice RV park, they even had a section called the Condo Village, which is private property but it's all trailers. I'm talking about 5th wheel trailers with car ports over the top of them. I got some pictures, will post them later, but these people were real trailer trash too. We were only staying in Louisiana until Monday so we could go into New Orleans and see for ourselves the destruction that Katrina caused. Saturday after getting settled into Yogi's camp we met our next door neighbors then there went the rest of the day. Really nice folks and we ended up hanging with them and a couple of their friends until late at night. It was Randy, Suzi and Mark and Sue. I'm going to stop here now and post more tomorrow, it's getting late here and I have a lot more to say.

Monday February 19, 2007 Presidents Day. Still here in Lakehills Texas until this Friday then we will head for New Orleans. Last week, on Valentines Day, we drove into San Antonio to find the Wal-Mart and Costco and get a little shopping done. We thought we would be gone for maybe 2 hours but it ended up being about 5 to 6 hours. In Wal-Mart I ended up getting my nails done, eyes checked and ordered new glasses, Dave had a hair cut and we did grocery shopping. We then headed for PetSmart to return Valley's booties that didn't fit well, then over to Costco for more shopping. Texas is another state where you can't buy hard alcohol in regular stores only beer and wine. The Costco here has a separate alcohol store attached and what's crazy is they give away free samples of booze and wine what ever their specials are that day. We then stopped and had lunch at Macaroni Grill and on the way back to the coach we had to pull over because Dave had a business call. The call kept dropping out because of all the hills that we were driving thru, that's why we had to pull over.
Saturday we drove into San Antonio to see the Alamo and the River Walk, the 2 most popular places to see while your here in San Antonio. When we got to the Alamo we were just in time to get to hear the story of what had occurred back then, very interesting story. After that we walked over to River Walk and walked along the river then we took the Ride the "Rio" San Antonio boat tour. After that we drove around a little checking out the place then headed back to the coach we figured 8 hours of being locked in the coach was long enough for Valley.
Sunday is our breakfast out day so we drove into San Antonio and went to a Mexican Restaurant, which everywhere you turn that's all you see is Mexican Restaurants. Just about every other corner is a "Bill Miller" BBQ fried chicken, drive thru or sit down, haven't had enough guts yet to try that place and probably won't. We stopped and got a GPS System for my car for when we are driving around these crazy cities. Texas has freeways that chris cross all over the place and also frontage roads and turn arounds.
That's it for now, Happy Presidents Day!

Tuesday February 13, 2007 we are now in Lakehills, Texas. We are official “Trailer Trash” now, after leaving Gila Bend, AZ at 6:30 a.m. we finally stopped at Fort Stockton Texas at 8:00 p.m. and spent the night at our 1st Wal-Mart, with about 7 other campers. We did gain an hour so we didn’t really drive for 13 ½ hours just 12 ½. I know we aren’t supposed to do things like this but we were trying to cut down our driving time on Monday because of Dave’s work. I did do some driving maybe 1 ½ hours, if that, it wasn’t much but enough of a break for Dave, he said. The week we were in Gila Bend was almost in the 80 degree range every day, on Sunday, when we left, they were supposed to get rain. At least for a week I got to work on my tan, but now here in Lakehills, which is about 30 miles outside of San Antonio, the weather is suppose to be in the 40’s and 50’s, so there goes that tan. Before I forget I have to tell you driving across Hwy 10, once in Texas, we have never seen so many cars and trucks being pulled by other cars and trucks. Dave came up with, only ½ of the vehicles in Texas run because the other ½ are being pulled. (ha ha)
Anyway, we are at “Thousand Trails” Medina Lake Preserve very large park, 260 acres and we are parked close to the Lake. Big lake but not much water in it, I guess they are hurting here for rain and you can tell by how low the lake is. The park here is a deer sanctuary I think, the place is covered with deer and Valentine could care less. She looks at them and they really stare at her but she is more interested in looking for lizards and squirrels, I’ll get pictures and post on the website later. We haven’t been taking any pictures lately, so it’s about time we get started again, I should have started with the State Signs like New Mexico, Texas, but we drove by too fast oh well.
We will be here for 2 weeks, will write more later.

Thursday, February 8, 2007 still here in Gila Bend, the rally started today. Yesterday was registration all day long, Dave and I worked the check-in table from 3pm to 5pm with 2 other people but most had checked in by then so we only collected $200, the registration is only $10.00 a person, what a deal. Don't understand how they can hold a 3 day rally with so little money, a lot of volunteer's I guess, still they have free hot dog lunch one day, and each morning they have a free continental breakfast. They have over 200 that signed up for this rally, this park we are at is full so people are either at the Elk's lodge, down the street at the Shell Gas Station RV Park or they are dry camping in the back of this RV park we are at. I'd have to say they are more 5th wheels here then RV's but everyone has a satellite dish, plus some of the one's that are dry camping have lots of solar panels that lift up on the top of their rigs and that's how they get their power, needless to say they have all those panels because they do a lot of dry camping, that's not for me. The weather here is sunny and 80 degrees so I'm working on my tan again.
Bye for now.

Monday February 5, 2007 sorry I'm a little behind in posting this. We are in a new location now we got here late Saturday afternoon, so now we are in Gila Bend, Arizona. One thing I want to say before I go on is last Friday morning Valentine got into the shower in the motorhome and took a shower, not by her choice of course. She has a skin rash and the vet gave us some medicated shampo and rinse and said she has to be bathed twice a week and since it was way too cold outside while in Lakeside she got a bath in the motorhome. She did really well too, but now that we are here in Arizona todays weather was 80 degrees so tomorrow she can get bathed outside. Anyway, we are here in Gila Bend for a Mobile Satellite Internet Rally which doesn't start until Wednesday. Very small town, maybe 1900 people, if that, so needless to say they have nothing here. Sunday we drove into town to have breakfast but didn't find anything to stop at so we ended up driving into Goodyear Arizona and stopping at TGI Fridays and having lunch. Goodyear is about 45 miles away and that's the closes town if we really need anything I guess. Hopefully I stocked us up enough so we won't need to do any shopping until after we leave this place which will be next Sunday. The rally is from Wednesday thru Saturday and they have lots of stuff going on everyday. Dave even signed us up to be helpers for the rally, so he just told me tomorrow night we have to go to a meeting to be told what our duties will be. Yesterday was Super Bowl sunday so we sat outside and watched the game and commercials from the TV that Dave got hooked up underneath the motorhome. The screen is my old computer screen and it's all mounted now and we can sit outside from now on and watch TV, pretty neat. Today Dave had a lot of work stuff to do so Valley and I did a lot of walking and laying out in the sun, it was great, I even have a sunburn now yea!