You and Me and Rain on the Roof...

Rain on the roof sounds comfy-cozy in a song, bit it isn't my favorite camping scenario.  Port Aransas, Texas, is a cute little coastal town on the gulf, where the beach is considered a city street.  Before it started raining last night we enjoyed an amazing aquarium with jellyfish that looked like Christmas lights, and playfully cute Dolphins.  We visited the King Ranch and Museum, which began in the 1800's and still thrives today.  We drove to the tiny town of Lamar, to see 5-feet-tall (we were told) Whooping Cranes.  Though we did spot some cranes with our binoculars in a marsh beside the beach, they were disappointingly small.  While wondering if we'd been 'had' we stopped to admire this one thousand year old tree.

Jerry fished from the Jetty in the state park, where I found two starfish and a Sand dollar.

This is a view from my handlebars.

The Jetty at the City Beach.

As I write this, we are about 95 miles from our next destination.  The rain has stopped, the skies are much brighter ahead, and  our plans include seeing family; San Antonio, here we come!

The Big Easy

As we leave Louisiana today we will remember fondly the peaceful, natural beauty of St. Bernard State Park.  The musicians, magicians, museums, and food of The French Quarter and Jackson Square, and the serene beauty of The Garden District neighborhoods.  New Orleans was historical, very fun, and a bit scary too; after hearing reports of two violent attacks in the area, we always left before dark.

St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest continually used cathedral in the U.S., where we attended Mass last Sunday.

Jazz musicians on Royal Street in the French Quarter.

The Oak Alley Plantation, which got it's name from the long line of trees evenly spaced and stretching out to the levy in front of the mansion.  Jerry is standing along the path between the trees below, which were planted In the 1700's.

We celebrated our 36th Wedding Anniversary at The Revelution, a Creole restaurant in the French Quarter, and it was unforgettable!

Westward....Ho!

The Old Man and the Sea

It is our last evening in Gulf Shores, tomorrow we leave for New Orleans.  Jerry fished off the pier in the state park and caught this one...

and more than a few much smaller ones, which he gave to this Blue Heron waiting patiently behind him.

  A fisherman nearby said, "You give him one more of those and he'll be sitting on the bench with you."

  I took a long beach walk.

One night we went to Bellingrath Gardens, one of the top 10 light displays in the U.S., it did not disappoint.  In fact, total amazement was around every corner along the garden paths.

Goodbye, Alabama, we will definitely be back!

Folks on Spokes

The journey has begun and our first stop was, Lewisburg, TN, to visit my cousin Don, and his really sweet wife, Becky.  It was so good to see them!

We met the goats they love and the "worthless chickens" (according to Becky) that lay just one egg per week collectively.  We had supper at a Mexican restaurant before hugging goodbye and promising to come back when warmer weather and a visit to their church might make us want to stay. It was chilly and rainy when we left the next day for Gulf Shores, Alabama, where it has been unseasonably warm.  We ride our bikes a lot and a frequent destination is the beach.

The bike trails through the state park where we are staying are as "good as it gets" and so beautiful and peaceful.  Jerry seems to be loving everything about retirement thus far, the only negative comment I've heard him say to me since we left home is, "I never thought of you as high maintenance until I retired, but you are high maintenance."  He smiled when he said it though, retirement looks good on him.

Sisters

A sister will always share her hopes and dreams with you,

And listen quietly with care,

In hopes that yours come true.

A sister is a hug, a smile,

The familiar sound of laughter.

One you've known all the while,

And a friend forever after.

I wrote this for my sister, Sandy, when she was in college.  I used a typewriter at our old highschool, decoupaged it onto a block of wood, and gave it to her for Christmas.  A couple of years ago I saw it someplace in her house when she was looking for something for me.  It was supposed to look old when I made it, that's what we aimed for back then (I think I even scorched the edges with a lighter before I attached it) but now.....it WAS old and she still had it.  It had gone with her from married housing in college to her first apartment, to her second apartment, to a rental house, to the first house they built, to the second house, to the third house, to the fourth house.  How many times must she have asked herself, "Do I really need to keep this?"  I smiled when I saw it that day, just for a second, as it tumbled by with all the other things in a drawer she was searching through.  I don't recall if she found what we were looking for that day, but I did....it was her love.

Deep and Wide

Shallow has never described her.

She prefers a free-fall to

Wading hesitantly, 

feeling every icy drop of pain.

A deeply devoted mother,

She scans the horizon of her life

When the waters are still.

She searches for the treasures of her heart

buried in a sea of chaos

Unearthed now in the calm.

The sight of them bobbing and floating 

Rhythmically in the flow of her love

Causes her to forget the storm.

What she'll remember most is...now.

In the quiet she drifts

on the love she feels for them.

A love so deep she will hold her breath 

And dive down into it again and again,

When the winds change and the storms rage.

Casting aside the pain in her dissent,

Retrieving her sinking heart

As she retrieves her treasures

And once again they will float.

A Disturbing Experience

I sit in fear.

The ache within me spreading like cancer.

My world is not turning,

it's too scared to.

I see the words scrawled 

on me like the disease I wear.

In naming my disease, he named me.

And I believed him.

Where does my strength come from

when I force myself to face this?

To accept it like a case of chicken-pox,

though it will never go away.

Acceptance makes the pain lessen like the grip of a headache.

I smile and play and tear my new birthday dress on the slide.

But as I sit alone on a teeter-totter my disease flares

and I sink into it like a coma.

I cannot face it, or bare it, or accept it, or even scream out for help.

I'm cast in fear and I wear silence like a surgeon's mask to protect myself,

and my family too.

They don't know about my disease, and I can't risk telling them.

Behind my mask I play.

I hold my mother's dog up to the window when my mother isn't home.

I wait for the little dog to whine and shake as she searches the yard below for my mother.

Then I hold her tight and whisper soothingly in her tiny soft ear.

The pounding of her heart against my hand

slows down, mine does too

And we both stop trembling in my embrace.

We're like victims of a house fire clinging to each other on the ledge of a window.

My tormenter is not my disease.

He is the one who named it, named me,

When he misdiagnosed my freckles as cooties

And I was slain by a six year old.