2006 Page -2-

We went up to Wimberly next, (again no pictures :( I need to start getting a few more pictures along the way - 2008 will be a complete year, it'll be my New Years Resolution. Then from Wimberly up to McKinney Tx for a meeting with one of our retail customers - 

            Can you tell that I'm setting up the camera and then running over
            to get in the picture??

            But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. We had another little incident 
            on the way up to McKinney. 

I pulled out from behind a big truck to go around him and there in the middle
of the road was a nice big gator waiting for me. No place to go so I straddled it.
Almost cleared it except for the mud guard which tore loose on the right side
and of course Mellow Yellow (our pet name for our little Towed). 

For those not in the know:
Gator - that big chunk of tire that's left in the road when the outer part of a tire,
usually from a big truck, seperates from the rest of the tire. 
Towed or Toad - a RV expression for the car that you tow behind your RV. 

All the black was more cosmetic than actual damage and I was able to clean
most of it off with a bit of elbow grease. The mud guard wasn't so lucky and
ended up on the shoulder of the road. I hatee leaving it there but I just didn't
have any place to put it to bring it back with me. 

             So you'd think that we would have had enough bad luck by now, but you know what they say, they 
            come in 3's. Sure enough the third was just waiting for us. The tire monitor started acting up and after
            stopping and checking the right front tire 3 times and finding it was fine I took off the sending unit for
            the monitor on that tire. Of course that meant it was time for the tire to start leaking (probably from the
            tire valve which was previously sealed by the sending unit. We took off merrily down the road and in a
            small town we were passing through a 4 wheeler pulled up  alonside and told me I had a flat tire on the
            towed. 

            It had apparently been flat for awhile as the rim was worn down to the point that it was trash. We put
            the spare on and spent most of the afternoon finding a replacement rim/tire for the towed. The damage
            this time was not just cosmetic and it took a new skirt and a touch up on  the paint job to make it all right
            after we got home. Also a new rim as the only thing we could find out on the road did not match my 
            factory rims. 

Next stop, Pensacola, Fl to visit with family.  This was my last visit with my Dad who passed away a few weeks later. So here's a little tribute to a great man - and that's not me saying so it's all the people who knew him.

John E Ewing, Jr. USN Retired, 1920-2006 with his wife Eileen Ewing and son John Ewing.

From there we returned home and turned our thoughts to the upcoming holidays. But our plans were changed when Dad had a massive heart attach and we had to go back up for his last moments. It was decided to put off the service and burial until Thanksgiving week so there would be time to get all the kids and grandkids together for the occassion. So we spent a week in Pensacola and then retuned home till Thanksgiving.

We returned Thanksgiving week and spent the week with family. Dad had been talking, just before he passed over, about wanting to get the family together. It had been years since we had seen each other and there were some of the grandchildren that I had never met. Well he did get his wish at least and the whole family gathered to celebrate his life and remember all he had given to each of us. 

            Here's the view from our site at Emerald Beach RV Resort which is just
            outside of Pensacola. It's a great little campground which is just a short 
            drive over to the gulf to the south and Pensacola to the north. 

I couldn't get the whole famil in with one shot so I did each side of the table. 

After Thanksgiving with the family we returned home and started doing our bit to support the economy - Christmas was fast approaching. 

We did go a little overboard on the presents this year - but what the heck........