Merry Christmas!

Our Freightliner Baby-semi and our Mobile Suites 
5th Wheel - Our car and house!

Greetings from the Rio Grande Valley in Alamo, Texas!

We have decided to try something new and we created this blog so you can keep up with us as we travel this coming year. We previously used Good Sam's My Trip Journal and we've linked our travels from 2006 to 2010 to this blog.  Actually, we are using both for now until we decide which one to keep.

Last year we stayed in 18 states.  We now only have one state to go before we can say that we have stayed in all of the lower 48 states with our fifth wheel.  We hope to visit that state (Michigan) in 2012.  While visiting those 16 states, we drove 11,000 miles pulling the trailer and another 16,000 without the trailer   That is the most driving we’ve done in a single year since we started full-timing in 2006.   

We started 2011 in the Rio Grand Valley and then spent  the month of March in Port Aransas, Texas.   In April, we were able to visit relatives in Pennsylvania and attend Karen’s (our niece) wedding.  In May we spent some time Iowa visiting friends and relatives and meeting our new great grand-daughter, Kira.  In June we attended the Suite Owners International Travel Club (SOTIC) Rally in Sieverville, Tennessee.  We enjoyed the Smoky Mountains for awhile and then headed to the Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, North Carolina.  If you haven’t ever been there, we would highly recommend seeing it at least once!  After that we headed back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for Monica’s (a friend) wedding in July.  After the wedding, we took our grandson Jordon, with us to South Dakota for 10 days.  We took him sightseeing and managed to get our driver's licenses renewed while we were there.  After we returned Jordon to his Mom, we drove back to Des Moines to spend some time with Danica and Greg and families.  In August, we headed to the lakes of Minnesota for some relaxation.  We stayed at Leech Lake and then at Lake Winnibigoshish, both about halfway between Bimidji and Grand Rapids and in September we stayed at Sandy Lake near McGregor, MN.  Then we moved on to Spring Valley, Wisconsin for a week.  Then it was back to Iowa to help Danica and her kiddos move into a new apartment and attend Greg and Angel’s wedding on October 8^th.   On the 10^th, we went back to Cedar Rapids so Mary could have some minor surgery.  Then we headed for Missouri and stayed in Mark Twain country for a couple weeks before returning to the Rio Grande Valley and Winter Ranch where we are staying this season.    

We will be in "the valley" until the end of March.  We came here in early November to relax after a lot of traveling but now we are involved in so many activities at the park that we don't have much time for doing nothing.

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and may God bless each and every one of you in the New Year!