Issue 1
Dear Friends and Family,
It has been a crazy two weeks since leaving Cleveland. I will try to sum up what it has been like. First, I want to thank you for all your prayers, they really helped to get us here alive and safe.
We hit the road on Good Friday about 3pm with the Merc towing the PT Cruiser jammed with all the most important things we felt we would need: computers, bedding, my office files, clothes, camp chairs and a tool kit. It was not enough, we found out later. The rest of our “stuff” will arrive sometime next week. Towing the PT was nerve wracking. Pulling the added weight caused the Merc to swerve about 3 feet every time a truck passed and our safest top speed was 60 mph. Molly whined constantly while I cried tears of goodbye, looking for the last time at the familiar landscape along 480 and 71. We crossed the Ohio River around 8 pm and found a Days Inn (we renamed it Dumpster Inn) that takes pets. Pulling into a parking lot that had a dead end, Doug found out that one cannot back up a tow dolly. More wracked nerves. We walked across the lot and had a steak dinner at a Waffle House, watched a little TV, then slept like the dead until 4 am. Waking so early was a sign to get moving so we headed out.
Felt a little better after some sleep, and hoped getting an early start would give us some time to rack up the miles. But when we stopped at Burger King for breakfast we noticed a bubble on the sidewall of the radial tire of the tow dolly. U-haul has customer service tuned to the fine art of ancient torture. After many frustrating phone calls we drove to a U-Haul in Bowling Green Kentucky. Here they still couldn't help us, but told us to take it to a local tire dealer to get fixed, which we did after we got lost trying to find the place. We waited to be the last one to get in, and lost about 5 hours of travel time on this fiasco. While in Kentucky, Doug wanted to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, so we stopped for a box for our lunch. Since Molly wasn’t eating, I gave her a little too much of the scraps, which caused her to have a bad case of gas a little later in day. Phewee!
Molly was still whining non-stop so we tried a new arrangement and put her in the front seat and I took the back seat, and this seemed to help calm her down. We then drove through some beautiful rolling country side with redbud trees all in bloom. Doug now learned more about driving down steep grades with one set of breaks and two cars.
We put in a long day and made it to Little Rock Arkansas, about half way to our destination. We got to our room about 10 pm and about 950 miles into our trip.
Easter Sunday dawned cool and drizzly. Molly is getting really whinny and bored. Driving through Houston we nearly avoided a crash, Traffic stopped suddenly and on the wet pavement we couldn’t. Doug made a quick lane change and God made sure there was no one in that lane. We finally made it to Aransas Pass on Sunday night and slept hard from exhaustion. Iin the morning we took the ferry ride over to our new home: Port Aransas!
On this monday morning we signed the papers for our townhouse and then suddenly the sun came out! Beautiful weather greeted us to the island and made us joyful to arrive. We are amazed we are here and falling in love with the island life and all its newness.
Today it is raining which is giving me a chance to sit down and write. The past two weeks have been so hectic. Every day we have a million things to do to get our lives back to normal and settled in to our new home. The very first thing we had to do was find a vet and a groomer for Molly. Sharp little “stickers” growing in the grass were sticking to her everywhere in her long hair and she was limping and miserable. A short hair cut solved that problem and gave us a happier pooch.
We went shopping every night and day for a week in Corpus, buying such necessities as a washer and dryer, vacuum, coffee maker and a toaster. My first morning here Doug served me breakfast in bed: a cup of coffee and toast with jelly. I felt like a queen. We are learning to appreciate the little things in life that we take for granted. We finally got our phones hooked up and on the Internet by the middle of the week. This week, after ordering on-line everything we needed, stuff started to arrive. The first delivery was a big pot, which we thrilled over like castaways finding booty washed up on the shore. Then a mattress arrived! What delight! We now have a dining room table and chairs and I am sitting in my office surrounded by the pieces of a filing cabinet I will be putting together later today. On May 6th our new living room furniture will be delivered and I will finally have soft chairs to sit in. This week sometime a truck will arrive with the contents of our house that we had shipped. Then I will spend my days opening boxes and finding places for everything.
Well, if you are still reading this, thanks for sticking with me. We miss our friends and writing this makes me feel like we are a little bit closer. We are looking forward to the day when this place will be “done” and we hope you can all come down and visit us. Meanwhile, we are learning about island life. I have attached a few pictures that I took when we first arrived. I have my morning coffee and feed the turtles, ducks and birds from my deck. Molly is having a great time running on the beach and chasing shore birds into the surf and the little frogs and lizards around our house fascinate her. At night it is so quiet and peaceful. From our house you can hear the faint whoosh of a hundred waves splashing ashore. The sight and sound of the ocean is so awesome. Dear friend, please do not feel I have left you. I have only traveled a little farther to find a special place that I hope to share with you someday soon. Until then you can go out on a clear night and find the brightest star in the sky and gaze up and know that I am gazing upon it too.
With love,
Janis