What happened to the blogs?

Briefly, I just want to say that I neglected to blog about the rest of our trip as I kept getting sicker and weaker. As you know, I have a progressive lung disease that had been dormant for quite a few years but it got "active" again last winter and even more during the spring. The weather was so cold that we spent most of our time inside the trailer with the heat on. I became so weak and devoid of energy that everything was a huge effort - getting dressed, taking a shower, going for a walk. The only time I felt good was when I was doing nothing - just sitting there, doing nothing. Pretty scary!

It turns out that the trailer must have had mold growing in the walls which would make sense since we had had a few instances of water coming in. We had mopped and removed all the water but couldn't access what went under the walls. Blood tests done along with a series of other tests proved a sensitivity to mold and to birds. I had suspected that keeping exotic birds had started the whole thing but now it was confirmed.

So to make a long story short, my lungs got further damage from that episode and now I need supplemental oxygen during activities. Still, climbing stairs or climbing hills seem to cause problems even with the oxygen concentrator. A bit of a curve in the road of life...

We took our time driving back from Texas and stopped at numerous campgrounds. But I have to talk about one in particular: Camp Tonkawa Springs in Garrison, Texas.

A piece of heaven! It is a private reserve with three different breeds of deer, Guinee hens, peacocks.  There is a pond fed by spring water that is apparently very busy during the summer. Beautiful wide trails go through the property. The place is owned and run by a father and son duo who are the nicest people!

The trail

The pond

Glen and Ali

The back end of a peacock

And the beautiful front

Black deer

We truly enjoyed this place. It also had a few man-made waterfalls and small bridges.

But we had to hit the road so we could get back "home".

Again this year, we got back to a muddy mess. The flood was worse than in 2017. We couldn't park at our site because the ground was too soft and we almost got stuck in another site. There were little ponds all around us where the ducks happily played. I was feeling really crappy and decided that I just couldn't take the cold weather that we had to endure before leaving for the south (where we got some pretty cold weather too) and again upon our return. That's when a fabulous idea started to grow.

Let's move where the temperature is always the same. After considering Panama, we decided that Costa Rica should be our new home. That is where we fell in love in 2008 so why not finish our story there? So we sold everything (there really wasn't that much to sell as we already had very little), kept only what we felt we couldn't do without, and proceeded to gather the paperwork we needed to apply for residency in Costa Rica. The hardest to let go was our pets. Cheeka and MeMe went together at first but then MeMe got relocated and Ali went to a fabulous family that had an old Boxer who didn't seem to mind Ali. We heard about all of them except MeMe which breaks my heart. They were all very special to us and we had developed such a good bond with them. But looking back, it did make our move less complicated.

North Beach Provincial Park (so much debris on the road from strong waves and high water)

That is a mobile home that is across from the lake. It stayed flooded for a long time.

Cleaning up the mess at North Beach Park. The beach was gone. It didn't really come back until August.

An unusual visitor at the oriole feeder

Baby robins

Baby killdeer with mom

On a mission!

Beautiful Oriole. My friend Helene told me about putting out grape jam for them and
sure enough, in no time at all, we had these beautiful birds right at our window.

After the trailer was gone, we moved in with Jason for 2 1/2 months to Thuy's despair. Having the mother-in-law in your house is no picknick. But it turned out well enough except that I felt so bad that I couldn't do as much as I would have liked to. I really was no help at all. Glen did all he could to compensate for my lack of energy. I hope we weren't too much of a burden. While there, I truly enjoyed seeing the grandkids every day and getting to know them better. They are the sun in my life and I hope that we will see them regularly enough even if only through the miracle of the internet.

We couldn't move out of the country without going at least once to the famous Normand's in Montreal. Glen had been telling me about this place for a while and his brother insisted they served the best fries! Well, it was true! The best fries ever! And I'm not a big fan of fries. But these were delicious!

 So keep tuned to the next chapter of our life.