Last weekend was so great here in Texas! A calm 70 degrees with a pure blue sky ... doesn't get any better. We are now into springtime and all the trees and flowers are starting to bloom with fury ... ahhh-choo! Here's Bruce's Mom and Dad and Jo-Anne as we had a BBQ in the parents back yard ... grilled salmon and fillet minon. Rich and Kerry came over just after this picture was taken and provided the wonderful marinated salmon and a fresh salad.





As I have said, over the last few weeks we have been getting the Flying Scotsman ready for the summer and have not had it out much. Here is a nice shot of it in the hangar all shined up. We have actually gotten the bus almost back to the new state after three years of minimal upkeep and it really looks good for our fourth summer in it. We've gotten a new dining table and new mattresses for both the sofa bed and the main bedroom so we will sleep better this summer. On Friday we will take the RV down to Camping World in Katy to have our new washer/dryer installed.

And, of course, we would/could not forget the flamingos .... !

It's been a longer than usual winter ... at least it seems that way from the number of cool, rainy days we've had, but the last of the brief snow has faded .... and the temps are staying around 60 or higher in the daytime ...







... and the squirrel is back in the bird feeder ... letting us know that it is time again to start thinking about our summer in Canada and other parts of the world.

Over the winter we started to think about the Flying Scotsman and how it suits our needs. It has about 23,000 super miles on it and has served us well as we picked a good vehicle to start with, however, it has taken us through three good summers and we lived totally in it for the first year and a half we had it. This winter, then, we began to look at newer, and slightly larger vehicles ... maybe a diesel.

We had cleaned, scrubbed, emptied, and gotten the bus ready to trade from the fall into the winter months and started to look at new machines in earnest after Christmas. We then looked at and priced a bunch of RVs from a bunch of dealers around central Texas ... it was enough to drive poor "Mr. Chicken" crazy. Those of you that know us, know Mr. Chicken and the fact that he has been with us for a long time, either at home or in the RV. Maybe we need a proper naming contest for the poor beast, eh.

He's remained with us through it all though and now is extremely happy to be positioned back in his rightful place in the Flying Scotsman kitchen again with no more silly talk of "newer and bigger" machines ... at least for this summer's run to the north.

We are now almost done putting all the stuff back into our second home, in addition to the rooster, and are tentatively planning on a May first departure for the northland.