The dinner was a huge success.

I spent the morning putting the pics on the class blogg. I dont remember all the names so I have asked for help. We had two new couples join us that had been reading the escapees forum.

Today the sky is cloudy. We are all awaiting the Rita effect here. The forecast last night was for rain from sunday to wednesday. They need rain here for the farmers and lakes. We dont need rain here because we will be parking on grass starting in the am thru the morning of the 25th. If it becomes a big mud hole, I'll post the pics. We will probably have to use the laundry in a little town of Christopher which is east of Du Quoin. The laundry in DQ is old and not very inviting. Since we will have water but no sewer hookups, we have to have water and sewer hookups to wash, its to the laundry we go. Shirley went yesterday and we have clean clothes. We will dump tanks today and fill the water tank and see if we can make it to the 25th.

We went shopping in Marion, 16 miles south, to a mall to get something better than wal mart. The cheaper clothes just dont last. We went to Sears and Dillards and caught their end of season sale. It was like being in a candy store. I bought shorts and shirts so that I can trash what I have which is pretty well stained and discolored. I got $40 dollar clothes for $6 to $13. Shirley shopped and came home with a few tops. She said her petitte dept was all sold out. She needs clothes as bad as I did. We have a ways to go so we can shop on the way. And we treated ourselves to Red Lobster for lunch. Its been a long time since we had such good food.

She is out and about this morning. She went to the post office to see if our mail was there and to the arts show at Rend Lake arts building. There is wine tasting so she better be carefull driving. Im joking!

There were several at the dinner interested in our satellite so I gave little demo of setting it up and getting it running. And our uninvted guest Murphy came to dinner. I moving the dish and in putting the align-a-site on, my ring caught the bracket and pulled it off the dish. Perfect timing. And I didnt have a way to loosen and tighten the set screw. My tools in that dept are lacking, for now. One of our neighbors, Wes , aka Teachers Pet, had the tools I needed and let me borrow a 1/8" torex wrench. We were ready for the demo.

Again Murphy came to the demo. We have a couple who read this blogg and they are knowledgable about lots a of things. And from there email address they are quite smart. However, there is a part of common social interaction that some people just dont seem to get. And that is knowing when to sit and be still and let others have the floor without interruption. IE, dont show your stupidity by telling us all just how smart you are. As I later answered a coment from one of our classmates, I recognize that there are people smarter than me. My final comment on this is there is a cart and a horse, be sure to put them in order including the driver of the horse.

We have been very busy with the our rv class of 2005 gathering here. We are meeting the faces of names of those we chatted with on the escapees forum. Last night we had our pot luck dinner at our place and there were 15 or more couples here. A good time was had by all and the food was out of this world. If you want to see what we as a class are doing go to http://class2005escapade.blogspot.com/

Worked on transfering files from the pc to the laptop yesterday and today. Did not get out to get any pics. So this will be a short update tonight. We have added some more class mates and some additional escapees that are here but not part of our class. There will be time tomorrow to get pics and bios of our group.

We have a few new additions to our home. We added some indoor rugs and some outdoor items. The two red chairs we have had since we took our trip in 2001. This was our rv travel and living trip to check it out and to see if we could do this and not kill each other. The other two chairs we purchased last week on sale at wally world. They are so much better.






We have parked at so many places with no concrete or asphalt landing area. We ended up bring the dirt and grass stains into the rv and on the carpet. DW has done a very good job of keeping it clean but its time for a little help. So we bought a poyproplene matt to put outside as our clean landing area. This is our new patio. Its nearly stain proof and it lets water and sunlight thru. That means its dry and not killing the grass.


So, welcome to our home and our full time lifestyle. Stay with us as we travel the country and we may even be in your backyard someday. We have meet some very nice people and I will post their pics and a little bit about them.

Pics of spaces 50 and 51. Much better site than where we were.








Space 51 is the nearest and 50 is further away. Ya'll hurry.

I went out to take some pics and our neighbor was out walking his dog. He saw my camera and said "take my picture". So I did. I got a pic of him and his dog and a pic of his spare tire. We will not discuss my spare tire.

This is our classmate Mickey Ivey. He writes software for the rv industry. His websit is RVnotebook.com. His software keeps a record of the rv maintance and other things. Go to his website, look at the software and order your copy. Its well written, and as a nice low price. Be sure to mention our name.

We met Smokeyjo, Smokey and Pam, yesterday. They got here late and ahead of me. I moved the rv to here when we found a spot where we could stay. As I was about to make the turn into the area, my DH called and said that Smokey had the drive blocked trying to get his 5th parked. My wait was short though. He got it all in.

Another pic of this area. We went out to eat and celebrate Pam's b'day.

We are getting to know each other and are having a ball. After the pics were taken, in comes Jean & Willard Bass. They found the ast spot, so far. There are possibly two more but one is reserved for the 23rd and 24th and a tt moved into the other today. Will see when thay are to check out. They are in 52, the last of the circle. 53 is in the next circle.

I will post the status of the parking here in the forum as soon as I get all the parking status.

This is the best place for the friday get together. Since I took the pic, I moved my rv to the driver's side of Mickeys. The area is free of underbrush, large and grassy, restroom and water close by and parking is about 200 ft away if we cant fit all the cars in our parking space. This pic was taken after our overnight rain so its a bit wet.

The circle we are on is small and has spaces 49 to 52 and 59 to 62. Sorry, but they are all taken. Actually, there is only five of us and
the others have the rest of the spaces. The spaces from 53 to 59 are in a seperate but close ring. The status of this area I'll post on the Escapees forum.

The second pic is of Mickeys rv and his toad. Its wet too. We got a good rain overnight. It has been dry here. Mickey is a software developer.


The third pic is of the area inside of the circle we are in. The bathroom is pictured on the left of the pic. The water outlet is left of and in front of the building. From Mickey's rv, I'd guess it to be 200 ft. From my new location, its was 65 feet from the beginning of the parking ashalt. For water, I'm planning on moving the rv to the front of the building and then backing into my spot. The dump station is a double drive with water in the middle and two dump stations.

Its Sunday morning and we got rain. For all you in the warmer areas, its a balmly 55 this morning when I got up. We moved to the South Marcum campround late yesterday to be with our class. We have Mikey and Patti (RVNotebook) and as of late yesterday Smokey and Pam (Smokeyjo100). We all got together and bbq burgers at Mickeys rv and had a good time.

Sometime this morning I will take some pics of our area and of the class here so far. As each arrives I will post the pics for the rest of the class to see. I was telling Shirley that its kinda wierd that when we finally meet, we all are older, its a good thing, and no one is younger.

Mickey has his Datastorm running and I have my Direcway running. Wireless internet is available for those who join us. We went to the fair grounds yesterday and there were three tripod Direcway dishes up. I did not see any Datastorms. There will be wireless internet there. For you XP users, click start, connect to and wireless for a list of available wireless. move to the top of the list the strongest signal that is open and you should get on.

Ok, we need more of the class here, so get a move on it.
If you are staying in the area, hint Odessey, stop by any evening and say hello.