RenegadeRider

Our ship, Royal Caribbean’s “Mariner of the Seas” was the largest cruise ship in the world. It may have been surpassed in size by another ship, but I am not sure. It carries about 3500 passengers. I understand that the number of passengers is limited by the total capacity of the lifeboats. It really is a spectacular ship. Next port call was St. Thomas. The tour we selected was sailing on a catamaran to a session of snorkeling. The scenery was superb. We shared this intimate moment with about 75 of our closest friends. Sailing out to the island, “Buck” Island, I think, took about 45 minutes. We arrived at our destination to find four other boats already tied up. These were some of the other scheduled tours that were on our menu of choices. The other tours included SCUBA diving and “BOB”, a self propelled under water machine that a person can ride without needing SCUBA training and certification. Snorkeling was pleasant, but I did not consider it superb. Once we were ba

Check out our friends, Smash and DaGoddess for posts on some recent Protest Warrior activity defending freedom from the Kool-aid drinkers of San Diego. Hats off to Rick Roberts, too. Keep up the good work.

Sign seen in Nassau with some Island patois.

First port of call was Nassau. We were in port for a short stay, 6 - 8 hours I think. We decided to not take any organized tour, just walk around the town. I think a better choice would have been to hire a taxi to tour the island. My perception was that Nassau would have little reason to exist if it were not for the cruise ships. The downtown was full of shops selling expensive jewelry, with the rest occupied by banks. There were also the obligatory shops selling touristry trinkets. We did see a couple of points of interest. The "Queen's Staircase was carved from solid coral and led to the top of one of the highest points on the island. It had a water tower and a gun emplacement that was from some time in the 1800's. I'm sure there was more there, but we didn't see it.

In case you missed us, we spent the last week on a cruise. (We were there whether you missed us or not.) The itinerary was from Port Canaveral to Nassau to St Thomas to St Maarten and back to Port Canaveral. The camera saga: The old camera was a Minolta DiMage S404. We bought it about 2 ½ or 3 years ago. It served well until late November, when it suddenly began reporting a “System Error”, and then shutting down. Sometimes we could take one or two quick photos before shutting down. We could not view any photos that were on the media. It did appear that the movie mode did not have this problem, but I did not try taking any movie clips. The next choice was the Konica Minolta DiMage Z3. The camera was working well. It has a 12X zoom and can focus extremely closely. The batteries lasted longer than when in the S404. Then, the day before we left for our cruise the camera reported “System Error”. This was on the original set of batteries. I wondered if the batteries

We arrived Tuesday at Palmetto, FL to visit Dianne’s sister, Karen. She led us to the RV park we will call home for the next month or so. Thursday night, about 1:45 am I awoke to hear Dianne screaming, “Hey! What are you doing? Get out of here! Someone tried to steal our bicycles, which we carried on our rear ladder. The perp had already cut the cable lock, but Dianne had successfully defended our position. She’s my Heroine!

It Was a struggle, But we made it to the top!

From Jackson we proceeded to Gulfport, MS; then eastward. We pulled into the Alabama welcome center along side of Don & Iris Lucke, fellow members of the Renegade club. They winter in Florida. He was having trouble with MS Outlook on his computer. I attempted to assist him and soon discovered that I had the same problem. Since I don’t use Outlook, it has never been a problem. The suggestion was that Mozilla Firefox changes a “dll” file to suit it’s own purpose. I also use Firefox. The first signs we saw of hurricane damage were east of Mobile, AL. Some trees had blown down or broken off. The roadsides were lined with tall spindly pine trees, about the size of telephone poles. Apparently they had recently (in the past 20 or 30 years) planted the entire roadside, much like a tree farm. We didn’t stop in Pensacola. I don’t think we were near the worst hit areas. I 10 runs about 10 to 20 miles from the coast. The eastbound lane of I 10 has been temporarily repaire

We found a RV dealer to repair the leak. It was done by mid afternoon. With a couple of hours of daylight remaining, it was onward to Ruston, LA. It got very cold during the night. We awoke to a layer of ice (not frost) on the car. We were about 20 miles from the Driskill Mountain, the highest point in Louisiana at 535 feet. It ranks # 48 of the 50 state highpoints . We reached the summit by about 10:00am. (I know; you have to start somewhere.) We’re headed for Florida, # 50, at 345 feet, next. Next stop was in Jackson, MS. We explored the state Capitol building. It is a splendid structure of many kinds of granite. The next morning The Governors mansion Which was BTW was not open for visitors when we arrived. The First Lady Was having a tea.

Dianne upon her conquest or Driskill Mtn.

Saturday pm we visited our friends John & Cindy Young near Dallas. They too, have a Renegade motorhome. They were rushing home early from Missouri to see us. We got to their house before they were home. Our camera had died and we took advantage of the time to shop for a replacement camera. We went to a nearby Costco. Perhaps that was a mistake. Dianne found all manner of other things that we “desperately needed”. The next morning, John suggested we visit the nearby Fry’s Electronics store. Since we live near a Fry’s I didn’t have that great urge, but I still readily agreed to visit the store. We chose the Konica Minolta DiMage Z3. Following a great visit we headed east mid day Monday. It was raining, very heavily at times. There were a lot of wrecks. There is a general idea that southern California drivers don’t know how to drive when it rains. Now it appears that other drivers can’t handle wet conditions either. We stopped for the night near Shreveport, LA.

On Tuesday, we left Lubbock. The weather looked threatening to snow; we pushed on to visit our friends Richard & Paula Hicks who live southwest of Ft Worth. We arrived just after dark. Driving at night is no longer fun to me. We finagled an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner. Dianne is getting really good. Paula put on a fabulous spread. We waddled off to our coach and slept off our stupor. Friday we all attended the Christmas parade in the town of Granbury , named after a Confederate general from the Civil War. Whatever the parade lacked in big city polish it more than made up for in small town charm. America's heart lives in it's small towns.

We drove about 700 miles in two days and arrived in Lubbock, TX Monday am. It's raining and snow is threatening.

Teresa & Quinn

We finally got underway late Thursday afternoon. It seems that no matter how long we plan for loading “our stuff”, it always takes the greater part of a day longer than what we had planned. By the time we were finally ready, I was tired, and wanted to wait to leave until the next morning. Dianne insisted that we get a few hours behind us that day. We stopped for the night in Yuma. Friday: On our way through Tucson we stopped to visit Quinn and Teresa Sanford. Quinn has been working on a Masters degree program at the U of A. This morning he successfully defended his thesis. While on his way home, he received a job offer from MMM in Minneapolis. He will start work in February. They are very excited. Congratulations!

Our Home Away From Home.