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For all of you that keep up with our blog, we made it back to our sailboat we still call home. Leaving the cold and our little house out on the Kansas prairie. Just in time I think with and arctic blast coming down with snow and winds, temperature below zero F coming in. It was a hard trip trying to get back here with a 12-hour layover we spent in the airport. Pam worked so hard getting ready to come back here staying up late the last night we were there at our little house packing and getting ready to come back. She slept about 4 hours curled up in a big chair in the airport. Me I just can’t sleep with the announcements they’re always making and with people coming and going by some acting and getting crazy talking really loud. Some people say it’s a clown show going to Walmart but at times people in airports can and will even top that. Pam always dresses me to look at least nice when we travel and her being her, she dresses nice and always curls her hair. Me personally I don’t care that much but even I wouldn’t wear pajamas flying somewhere. One girl we saw in the airport maybe 20 years old, her hair was 4 foot wide. I have no clue how anyone could get their hair to do that or why. Being really tired after being up now 32 hours making it through customs and getting our bags being out on the street in Guatemala it was now, how to get to our hotel. Only taxi left at the airport was a little man older than we thought would be running a taxi. Couldn’t lift our two bags in the car so I did but they were heavy just under 50 lbs. each plus our back bags that are always heavy. Pam again with what she says we need and the big thing she always says what we may need with her packing. Now traffic heavy and him driving like a crazy man. Me trying to tell him we were not in a hurry in my broken Spanish. We made it but it was a little more exciting, with us just, getting back in Central America. Horn blowing, cutting people off and yelling at other drives and pedestrians. At the hotel Pam wanted to go eat something. There they have MacDonald, Burger King and places like that but its a far cry to say it’s the same as it is in the US. We went to Toco-Bell, and she ordered one plate with things on it that looked like we could maybe, eat it and to my surprise I liked it. No salsa, just little packets of hot something that was red. It came with one drink, so we shared that too. Back in our room it’s nice but cost a little more than a cheap room. The street in front of our room that comes with a balcony is blocked off from cars and trucks and of course motor bikes just foot traffic. Nice or not with the baloney you can’t keep out the real world. Not in front of our hotel but beside our hotel was a street preacher with a big speaker screaming away for hours. Tin cup, in hand wanting money. Just the world we live in, I guess and no way, to sleep, loud as this preacher was. After 8:00 before he left and I don’t know how anyone can scream like that for that long. Didn’t wake up one time all night I was so tired. We had called for a cab, and he was there on time the next morning but after we had our bags loaded, he told us what he charged, and it was 3 times what we paid to come from the airport. I said hell no. We had agreed what we would pay when we called. I trying to get our bags back out when he said OKAY to what we had, said we would pay when we called. This happens a lot if you’re white and they think you’re rich. Remember we were at a nice hotel. It’s called down here getting gringo-go-ed. Leaving the bus station the bus was nice but the driver driving like he was in a hurry to get there. Fine with me but he was driving fast. Have been on a bus traveling from there where the driver drove just too slow. Made it to the bus station in Rio Dulce and drug our heavy bags down to where we could catch a van, they call a bus to the little town where our sailboat is. When we got there the driver was just about ready to leave. Pam wanting to go get some groceries first. But the driver said he could take our heavy bags. He put them on top of the bus. We gave him a very good tip. No groceries shopping in town. So, what we had for supper was eggs and toast and some frozen sausage we bought at a little store near our boat. Got water in our tank and took a long shower and went to bed. Safe on our boat we designed and built ourselves. Hard to describe how that feels. What a life. Still together still, doing things

                                            The Adventure of Life Goes On.

Look forward to having Pamela Ann Back in the water in her element. In the water sailing.

Wildlife in Kansas

Our last weekend in Kansas before we go back to our sailboat we left in the Caribbean. As I have put in a lot of our blogs Pam and I have been married and together most of our lives now. Always being told how we messed up our lives marring so young. Told all of our lives how we should live. Mostly being told how much you have the day you die is how well you have lived your life. I have heard Pam say she knew what she wanted the day when. {she ask me to marry her.} With her just 15 years old I was 17 and agreed with her like I mostly always do saying okay, “Let’s do it.” Why wait if you know what you want with people saying you have to wait till, you’re older an know what you’re doing. What we both wanted back then and have enjoyed in life together is experiencing different things and doing, lots of different things. Maybe that is why we like to travel so much and love living off the grid living simply. With enjoying different things this has been good this time with us here at our little house out on the prairie. In the last few weeks, we have had a snowstorm and enjoyed it then it got really warm. I like to hunt but don’t hunt wild turkey or wild ducks. I enjoy seeing them and they are here in big numbers but don’t like how they taste so I don’t hunt what we don’t eat. I’m not that fond of pheasant but Pam and I love quail. This week we had six for supper one night I got off our son’s little place he has out here. Cold and snow on the ground with a nice fire in our pellet wood heater eating fried quail for supper is special to us. There is other thing people take for granted with what we like to eat as you travel and they don’t have. Here in the states, you can buy grapefruit most of the year and Texas Reds are in season. Back in Guatemala oranges will still be in when we get back to our boat and they’re green not orange because it takes a little cold to turn them from green to orange. Grapefruit are hard to find. I think they don’t like them much and don’t grow them. When you do find them, they’re bigger than what we have up here and full of seed. I know how lazy people are and how they don’t want anything with seed. I like things with seed they taste better to me especially watermelon. There is a little woman that sales thing on the street there where we are going. When she sees me, she starts jumping up and down like a little girl waving at me and I know she has something I will want to buy from her. By the way when I said little women she is maybe 4 foot three and not skinny, that normal down there where they are with a lot of little women closer to 4 feet than 5 feet. Pam calls her my girlfriend. She sometimes has found me some grapefruit. When we left, she had taken a job, and I guess eating grapefruit is out till we are back in the states again. Another thing we have made friends like her in a lot of places as we travel. On the bus going to Guatemala City to fly back to the US the last time this little woman was getting on the bus and saw us. She ran to Pam and hugged her hard a long time. She looked at me then grabbed me and kissed me. This surprised me and had Pam laughing hard. If you’re wondering how little this woman is I was seating down on the bus by now. In our broken Spanish I think she was saying we were special people to her. I guess this is what makes memories special when you’re thousands of miles and another world apart from where you have been. In the song by Allen Jackson, the older I get the less friends I have but the ones closet to me are the ones I know have my back. I’m getting old now, but Pam is not and she tells me that sometimes. I’m glad we have lived the life we have with times like this with that little woman so happy to see us. We had a little more to happen to us this week out here before we are leaving. Wildlife is great out here and sometimes unexpected. Working outside in the yard I heard snow geese being really loud, so I went for Pam like I always do and we went to see. They’re unpredictable where they go and why. This time just a very short distant from our little house. Just one street over and its farmland as for as you can see and they were there for some reason that close to our little house. I’m not kidding thousands of snow geese landing there for the night. It looked like snow with them being white covering the ground and they kept coming in. We love seeing mother nature but being this close it was loud and went on way past dark. They have not been back but that was something to see. What a sendoff.

Snow geese coming in for the night. 

To all our friends near our boat we will be back this week. To all our friends here we will miss out here on the prairie. We will be back this summer when it’s hotter in the Caribbean. What a life living in two worlds I guess with no rerun days.

                                       The Adventure of Life Goes On

Hope to be back aboard “Pamela Ann” soon.

Snow!

I said in our last blog how Pam and I like to live an adventures life and have most of our life. Most people in this world never have ever seen snow. I don’t know what the true numbers are but from our southern boarders south it’s a long way before you go far enough south to find snow and a lot of people live between here and there. Most people live out their life within a few miles of where they were born. Even people that travel some usually are there wherever they go just a few days or a few weeks and miss so much of what it’s really like there. A lot of people we met from up north hate snow. Pam and I are getting old now married as teenagers we have now spent most of our life together, I guess. As a kid back on the farm in South Carolina if it snowed it, was a holiday. Pam and I still make snow ice cream when we can. It hard to find raw peanuts but out here just before Christmas a store here had some for sale and we are parching peanuts in the oven today like we did so many years ago back on the farm. You buy parched peanuts there so perfect but parching them yourself you may have some a little burnt and some not so well done but eating parched peanut hot fresh out of the oven on a snowy day setting, by the fire watching it snow sure brings back memories. Pam and I have built some fine snow men in our lives but it just not that much fun anymore without kids around to play with. We have even had some find snow days on our sailboat. We will be back on in little over a week in the Caribbean where people there have never seen snow and don’t really know what it’s like. One really special day we were snowed in years ago on our sailboat we were in the Chesapeake Bay on our way after Christmas headed south. Most people headed south to the Bahamas and the Caribbean on their boats had long been gone. This meant it wasn’t crowded, and you could find a good anchorage most anywhere. Listening to weather on our VHF radio they were warning people that a snowstorm was coming. We found a little cove to anchor up for the night. We put out three anchors in three different directions just in case it got too stormy with high winds. All settle in just before day light Pam sat up in bed and said something is wrong. It’s too quiet and the boat is too still. She got up and went through the boat looking in the cockpit. There she let out a little squeal saying the boat is covered in snow. I told her to come back to bed it’s too cold to get up right now. We slept most of the night without any heat. Just like we did coming up back on the farm with heavy cover and blankets. Just after daylight she was up building a fire in our little potbelly wood heater. Yes, we have a wood burning heater on our boat off a train caboose. They had made a little house out of the caboose. A friend gave it to us laughing saying this is so you two so do something with this. Then Pam went on in the galley lighting our little home build furnace we designed ourselves that burns kerosene. With it so hard to get kerosene we use paint thinner now and it works great. Now she was getting me up to go in the aft cabin to get a sugar-cured ham we were curing ourselves, like people did in the old days back on the farm. It was back there hanging in a bucket. Hanging the whole ham in a bucket so the water that drips out during the curing won’t get on anything. Now I was cutting fresh sugar-cured ham while Pam was fixing breakfast and baking homemade biscuits in our small oven in the old Taylor 30 kerosene stove that was given to us, I converted to propane years before. We always wanted one and couldn’t afford one before they became obsolete being, kerosene and no one wanted them anymore. They’re polished stainless steel trimmed in brass. (I know who wants to polish their stove anymore?) What a morning it was with us anchored all alone in this little cove with everything white and our sailboat covered with snow. Living on a boat most of the snow will blow off the boat, like it does on a car leaving some here and there. This time with no wind at all our boat was covered in snow. Eating breakfast listening to good music nice and warm. Over in the afternoon starting the motor to charge up everything and make hot water with the motor water running through our water heater to make hot water so we could take a shower. I’m not going to tell all we did being there all alone after taking a good hot shower, but it was what we had, dreamed about for a long time before we were able to live on a boat and we were there now doing it. We stayed two more days then swept what snow was left off the boat and went on sailing south not motoring now with the little wind we had with all the world around us still white with snow. Talking to a family member later she wanted to know why we didn’t call someone on our radio most boat have to get us off that boat with us stranded out there in that snowstorm. “This life is not for everyone I guess.” Working hard somewhere a long time maybe a year saving every penny, we can stocking up the boat then away we go again not knowing how long or how far we can make it without working. When I said at the first of this blog people that stay somewhere for a few days, or a few weeks then leave with us staying maybe a year can build memories of what it’s really like being somewhere new to us. This makes working not so hard or maybe it’s the planning our next trip putting it all together that keeps the adventure of our life going. Leaving the snow and our little house on the prairie here in Kansas and heading back to our sailboat up a river in Guatemala in a little over a week. The adventure of getting back there will be on soon.

                                            The Adventure of Life Goes On

This is looking left out our front door while it was snowing.

 

This is looking right out our front door the next morning after the snow had stopped.

The little tree we had for Christmas decorations covered in snow with solar lights shining through.

New Year

Well, it over and we did it again. I guess I mentioned this maybe too much but it’s important to me with how we have lived our life and that we are still together. When I said over again, Pam and I just spent 61 years together doing what we can to make the day special as this holiday passed was. I have had in our blog how we started our life together so many years ago with our first Christmas with her,16 years old and pregnant. Now another part of our life important to us is our sailboat we left to come up here to be with our only child. The child she was carrying that first Christmas we were together so long ago. Our son that lives out here in Kansas. The tickets are bought and January the 21st we fly back to the Caribbean to live our life as cruisers again aboard our sailboat we dreamed about for so long and the dreaming seemed endless back then for how we could ever live on a boat. Now over 40 years, we have been living and traveling on sailboats. Most people we know think it’s what you have accumulated on your last day here on earth that tells how well you have lived your life. We are getting old now always hearing with age comes wisdom. If that is true, I believe most of what I hear is just an opinion today. Facts the way I see it are hard to come by. I know most people don’t care about all the adventures we have had in our life. Waking up on a cross-country trip with both of us sleeping together in a one-man back packers’ tent beside our old antique motor bike in a state park somewhere. Buying extra bacon, the night before and cooking it all for breakfast. Eating what’s left during the day as we ride on like were eating jerky. Does laughing a lot count as living well? I guess we have always lived a little different than most. Even on our wedding night after we ran away as people say at 15 and 17 to get married and were finely alone in a room by ourselves we fell asleep in each other arms in just minutes after we laid down in bed together the first time we were so tired. When the morning came when I open my eyes she was laying beside me looking at me saying, “Well we made it through our first night together. You still happy?” It’s hard to be that happy every day but there has been times. Do you really need to be that happy every day to live well. Even the bad days like the lay over we have coming up on our trip flying back to our sailboat in the airport. I want be holding her in the airport like young lovers but having her with me knowing how crazy she can get maybe it won’t be to boring and there is always the chance of something happening we will laugh about for years. Maybe like our flight being delayed one time and landing late. After getting through customs we got our luggage and walked through a door thinking we would still be in the airport and stay there till daylight we found ourselves outside at three in the morning and couldn’t get back in. No one and nothing out there in the street was scary in a way. Being in a foreign country that time of night. I don’t want to be in any big city out on the street that late at night and surly not Guatemala City in Central America. It worked out we found a driver asleep in his cab and he took us to the bus station that open up at 4am. No bus till 8:00 and our bus not till 10:00 but that is just apart of the adventure of traveling and we felt safe there, waiting there in the bus station. When we got to the bus station it was not open so the cab drive sat there a few minutes with us till it open. Traveling in a foreign country can be exciting and some time it can be a little scary. On one trip back to the Rio Dulce, they can drive a little crazy. There was a really bad wreak. We sat for a while there on the bus when the driver pulled over in the ditch and went up the side of the road passing stopped traffic. Went a long way with the bus leaning on it side a lot. Made it to a road leaving the main road and went through a small town where at one time they had to move a car for us to get by. There he may have been talking to someone and a man got on as we went on up the small road. After a mile or so we came to a bridge and turned to go back to the main road. The man got off and was walking in front of the bus guiding the driver across the bridge. I could not see how this bus was going to make it across this bridge. Looking out the window looking straight down you could not see any part of this old wooden bridge just the river below. I told Pam to hold on to me if she could if we went in. A few minute latter we were going again on the main road with traffic on the other side of the road backed up for miles. Laughing about what had just happen and how crazy our life can get. I hope we are in (our safe place) if we can somehow get to each other. Standing on that street that night I’m not sure I could have kept her safe or if that bus turned over in that river what would have happened. All I know is it’s like the words in and old country song. “It’s not how many friends you have. It’s knowing the one always with you always has your back.” Happy New Year and it won’t be long, and we are traveling again. Still living the life, we wanted so bad so many years ago when they try really hard to break us up.

                                             The Adventure of Life Goes On

In the airport in the US getting ready to leave on one of our trips to Guatemala.

Having a good time in Guatemala on December 7th. Burn the Devil celebration.

Aboard Pamela Ann getting ready to leave on a trip.