Happy in Rio Dulce

We are back on our sailboat and back home here at last. Pam and I have been married and together most of our life now and for years when we were young, we dreamed of living on a sailboat. We have a little house out on the prairie in Kansas we bought almost by accident with a farmer out there that just wanted it gone and didn’t want to do the repairs needed to sale it, so we bought it cheap. Our only child, a son lives out there, so we have our own place when we go out there to visit him. We enjoy going out there at times, but our sailboat is still home to us. We are getting old now doing this living on a boat cruising around and with our age the little house out there in Kansas is in some way security. If something happens to me Pam can chose where she wants to live and handling our boat by herself my get to be too hard for her and being by herself, she may want to live near our son. But right now, we are still together and doing fine still doing what we want. Living the simple life in the Western Caribbean on a sailboat. Sadly, we are not cruising right now. As boat people say on the hard working on our boat. This can be a little hard at times with the noise in a boat yard and how you have to live, living with the boat out of the water. Most people with their boat out of the water use the boat yard shower but we never do. We have a nice shower on our boat. When I was designing our boat before we started building it, I ask Pam what she wanted to go in first. She said, “Start with a nice shower and build the boat around it.” It wasn’t the way I did it, but it is where we started when we were designing where things would go. We have a holding tank under the shower, and you may think this is not very nice, but you can’t believe what hits the ground in a boat yard in a third world country with just washing a boat so pumping the water out of the tank out on the ground after everyone leaves works for us. It’s just bath water and really not that dirty. Maybe it is a little dirtier when I take a bath than with Pam. With how hard it is living this way, we are, in the warm Caribbean for the rest of the winter. Things go a little different here. They just had a birthday party here in the boat yard. It stared close by the boat yard at some one’s house just as it was getting day light with fireworks outside their bedroom window to wake them up. They like doing that here. Pam and I were still curdled up together in bed as I told her someone is having a birthday today with all these fireworks going off. Later in the afternoon the party stared as it usually does with kids and a pinata. This is always fun to watch. Kids with a stick trying to get to the candy. They start with the youngest kids and go up till they can rip it apart. When it comes apart it’s like ducks chasing bugs with kid grabbing candy.

LOOK OUT PINATA!

Finally, the candy starts to fall out. HAPPY KIDS!

With all the noises and work going on there in the boat yard and with us working on our own boat it’s still nice to go down to the river and look around. It’s really pretty here. You don’t have to have a license to sell food here so there is always food for sale here on the street. Always a crap shoot but some of is good. Pickup truck coming by with loads of melons or maybe pineapples. Cheap but still a crap shoot. When you go shopping in the stores here if you see something you want to buy it right then because you may never see it again. This too if you’re buying anything here there is no taking it back. I love grapefruit and most people here don’t care for them. If I can buy some maybe someone has that came up in their yard I buy them. These are not domesticated and are full of seed but really good. Hard to find. Bought some in a grocery store and they were awful. With hard to find let’s just say ants are very successful here. Pam couldn’t find any sugar but just in 5lb bags. So, we are eating brown sugar she found in a small package. I do believe at the end of time ants, roaches and seagulls will be the last to go. We are enjoying being back in the Rio Dulce.

                                          The Adventure of Life Goes On

We can see the bridge from the boat yard.

We can see some of the mountains from the boatyard.

Back Home

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.

Christmas

What a life. Maybe they will make a movie about Pam and our life together someday. It’s been an adventure, and the adventure is still going on. This is sixty-one years and counting we have spent Christmas together as a married couple. When we were dating if you could call it that, she was just fifteen and not allow to date. I only spent two hours with her at her house with all her family there that Christmas day. With her begging her mother, she let us go on a 30-minute car ride. Thirty minutes alone and I gave her a friendship ring. It was not and engagement ring. The battle to see her was already under way but now it was an uphill battle for sure. Five months later from the time we met with them trying to break us up we set our life in motion with another car ride across the state line to Georgia more then we could ever know back then. We ran away and got married. Lied about our age and made a pack if it wouldn’t stand up with the law, we had said our vows until death do we part and no one would separate us now. Our first Christmas married she was pregnant and no we never had sex before we were married. We have spent Christmas in places now we never even knew excited back then. We gave up on the life we were told we needed to follow at a young age and sold our nice house we had bought and built us a log cabin building it ourselves on a big power lake and raised our only kid there with a lot of remembered Christmases there. Pam had never even seen the ocean when we married and was in a hospital with a bad case of strap throat when she saw a magazine reading about people living on boats. That very day she said, “We are going to do that.” We would spend a lot of Christmas before we made that happen. Even one Christmas at a lodge some friends own spending the whole week of Christmas snow skiing. We have even spent Christmas day together out to sea going to the Dry Tortugas, Fort Jefferson on our trip headed south heading to Mexico on our sailboat we built ourselves. We have spent some Christmas alone like once in a boat yard painting the bottom of our sailboat. Pam decorated a metal boat stand for a Christmas tree. That is lonely place to be on Christmas day. Pam there with me made it, not so bad but I believe Christmas is a day to celebrate with friends and family. To all that read this Happy Christmas and we hope you feel the love we still feel in our life and it makes your Christmas one to remember.

                                The Adventure of Life Goes On

“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Everyone!”

We put up a big tree this year.

This is our favorite Christmas display we have seen this year.

 

 

 

Simple Living

With our crazy life we are getting restless planning our trip back to our sailboat “Pamela Ann,” back in the Caribbean. We decided we wanted to stay at our little house out on the prairie for Christmas this year. Experience the changing of the seasons. Spend time with our son out here. We only had one child and with us spending very little time back in South Carolina where we are from, with family members there we have lost and so little contact with family members left it feels like our son is all we have left. I know he likes spending time with us and Pam still has the mothering instinct to take care of him. On his birthday this year with him turning 60 he is not a kid anymore. He has had several failed marriages and no kids it just us. We usually look for what we like where ever we are. Out here it’s the simple life we love. We could be doing things out here maybe very few are maybe no one else is doing. Maybe some are making their own sausage but I haven’t met anyone in years that even knows how to sugar cure a ham.

We made sausage in casings this time.

Cutting up one of our sugar cured hams.

This is a meal we won’t be getting when we return to the Caribbean.

There is a lot we like doing our here. One is Pam is a moon watcher. Watching a full moon out here is something to see. Remember this is really rural out here. This is mostly flat country with very few trees. As the full moon comes up it starts as a bright orange glow. Growing fairly fast into a bright orange glowing ball. Pam watches the calendar and I take her moon watching in our old 1972 Chevy truck we put back together with her setting beside me like we were on a date 62 years ago. With us living simple we have boxes of tomatoes wrapped in paper from our garden stored in the dark. Home grown tomatoes with snow on the ground. Take them out in the light and they turn red quick. I guess I should have said, When we put them in boxes wrapped in paper the were green. Onions out of the garden stored back. Turnip greens still green in the snow. We missed the Christmas parade out here we had planned to go see. It was just too cold with the wind blowing they said on TV gust up to 30 MPR, temperature below freezing. People out here are different with how happy people seem to be even in a zoo like Walmart with Christmas coming. There is always someone that can make you fell bad but for the biggest part this is farm country out here and a more simple life. The farmers can get a little crazy with planting season and harvest. We work with these farmers out here with Pam sewing doing repairs on covers for these long trailers they haul grain in. We just did one ten feet wide and over forth feet long. You have to take it off and we charge for that. The owner said he would help so we said, “Okay no charge for that.” As we took it off.” It was way to heavy for us and we called a friend that is a little crazy with how hard he will work. As we wrested it to the ground and laid it out we discovered sometime in the cover’s life it had probably been damaged and the usual tubes made aluminum had been replaced with the pipe they use in oil wells, heavy gauge steel. We got it off and usually we sew on these covers on a table we set up outside. We managed to get in our little house and down in our basement because of a snow storm coming. As the sun came back out and the man came back to get it he brought two men, farm hands with him and they put it back on. There was some difficulty getting it back on but it was like a game to them. No yelling are cussing. I liked the way they worked at it. Like I said it’s different out here. With all this and us getting old the adventure of life goes on. For our friends in the Caribbean were coming right after the first of the new year. Back living on our old home built sailboat. Maybe it’s not paradise but what a dream life we have had at times in.   Dream big, And                                                                                                                                                                       The Adventure of Life Goes

Where is Paradise?

We are still living the good life out here in our little house out on the prairie. Dreaming about living our other life “soon” on our sailboat we left in the Caribbean to spend the summer up here. We decided to just stay on and spend the holidays here this year. We only have one child, and he lives out here. We don’t have any close family anymore with us living so many places, like we have. With our rambling lifestyle we hear living in paradise a lot. Where is it too hot or where is it too cold. I know when Pam and I were driving tractor trucks together up north up to the tree line in Canada it could get cold. Having Pam always with me going on 62 years now it was just another adventure. She didn’t have to worry about her figure up there with all those clothes on and we did have to work at staying warm. Just part of the adventure. Now with it being hot is another challenge. It mostly sleeping when living in the tropics. You can’t swim all night. Air conditioning can get to be a luxury. Traveling like we have even in the US food can be really different. Cold deli food to us, being born in the deep south is maybe like hot greasy fried food down south to people from up north. Up here in Kansas beef is good so is pork. After you pass the US border headed south the further you go south the worse beef gets. Pork can be hit or miss sometimes too with pork not being feed grain or corn. There is always chicken. Warm water fish to us not that good to us. Where is paradise? I believe it is in people’s minds they want to believe they can find it so bad where everything is perfect. Why are we always going back to our sailboat in the Western Caribbean? This time, it’s not paradise but it is nice to travel and be there in the winter when it cold in Kansas. Traveling there, things are always happening, daily. Routine has never been Pam’s and my lifestyle. Out here we have an old antique motor bike and two old Chevy trucks. One we have mostly restored we drive where we need to. A 1972 pickup truck and another 1950 Chevy 2-ton truck we are restoring to work out of when were here. With my art I do out here we need away to haul 50 pieces to do an art show. On our boat we have two outboard motors for our dink. Our dink is our way to travel from our boat to where we need to go with us living on the water. We have a small outboard motor that gets really good gas mileage. A bigger one if we need to go faster or help someone move their boat or help them get them get back in deeper water. Of course we have had to use it ourselves. With the miles we have put on a boat you will have to deal with running aground sometimes. With the holidays so near, I hope everyone reading this you find paradise wherever you are and the adventure of life is keeping you happy.

                                                     “Happy Thanksgiving”

                                             The Adventure of Life Goes On

Sailing along can be Paradise.

 

Sometimes just being at a dock can be Paradise.

Happy Campers

 

Happy Halloween?

We’re still at our little house out on the prairie in Kansas. The season is changing as I said in our last blog. We have our green tomatoes out of our garden wrapped and stored in the dark in the basement, our peppers gathered and hung on strings drying.

Peppers drying on strings. We will use them in cooking and making sausage.

We have a sugar-cured ham hanging. Wood pellets for our wood heater. “We’re Set.”

Staying warm with the pellet heater and our favorite brand of pellets.

We decided to stay here for the holidays this year and go back to our boat in the Caribbean after Christmas. Halloween has past and out here there are very few people here where we live. Miles between houses. Some places you can see to the horizon and won’t see but maybe one or two houses. This means people out here live different than places we have been. Living and traveling on sailboats for most of 40 years we have had some real parties where people seem to just show up on the dock. Halloween is special to us because we met on Halloween 1963. Pam likes to dress up in costume, for Halloween. One year while we, were still building our boat we normally live on they had a party at a restaurant on the waterfront in Southport. They had a contest for the best costume. Pam again, she was shopping and found some theatrical body paint and horns. Found red sweatpants and hooded shirt. We pulled them over our clothes wearing a tail she had made to match and sewed on. She fixed her long red hair and went to work on me with these horns in thin rubber that came down on my forehead making my forehead wrinkled. Then went to work on my face with that red body paint. Then rubber gloves she went to work on with a felt pen to make them look bad. When she had all her garb and paint on she combed her long red hair around her horns and we went as the devil and his wife. People there we saw ever day didn’t recognize us. The whole place got quite as we walked in. A young girl that worked behind the bar where they cooked, came out and someone said, “I think we may have real visitors this time and she backed away from us like she was scared. She looked down at my old work boots and said, “That’s Tim and Pam. I hope that who you is.” I said in a gruff voice, “You know I love you, Carol.” Everyone there stared laughing a couple of women there even let out a little scream, she said, “I hope you’re not the devil talking to me. You’re really good but you don’t need to dress like that. You just don’t need to dress like that. You look too real.” It worked out and we won a free meal. On, Halloween this time Pam wanted to do something. They were having a street party in a little town near here. Near as in 20 miles away. Pam went as a leopard, cat. Tail and all. It didn’t work out or maybe it did.

Pam standing next to a big black cat. We had a good time.

Turned out it was for kids. They had Trick or Treat stuff and something to do with decorating the trunk of your car. She did get some comments. We came back early in our old 1972 Chevy pickup truck we driver out here. Getting dark with Pam seating close beside me on my side of the seat holding my arm like we did when we were dating back in 1963 &1964. They do enforce seat belt laws out here sometimes, but they don’t use seat belt laws to raise money out here like they do in most places. More or less, you are more free out here. As far as stories about Trick or Treat, our only child is 60 years old now but when he was six years old, Pam was working on Halloween night. We had and old car I put together from junk. I took our son and a little boy his mother had given to her mother to raise, out to go Trick or Treating, the little boy very seldom saw his mother. I went to the richest part of the city nearby. When they can back to the car with me watching I gave them a empty bags to go to the next house. Me there poring up their candy. Me telling them let them see in your bag when you go up to their door. Back at the house where the little boy lived with his grandmother, he was the same age as our little boy, I had to carry his bag in it was so heavy. This is what I have lived for most of my life. Maybe some would think this was cheating carrying an empty bag to everyone’s door, but this little boy lived close by us and there was no one to take him Trick or Treating. The look on his and his grandmother face with all this candy would warm the heart of most people. Most people not all. Some just look for something wrong with whatever you do. As for what I live for, it’s the adventure of life. Love not hate and what and adventure it has been living that way.

                                           The Adventure of Life Goes On

Another Birthday

Fall is here in Kansas with us still out here off our boat. We had planned to go back to our sailboat, Pamela Ann, in the Caribbean already but things change. We have so much going on out here at our “little house on the prairie” we bought near our son so when we come out here to see him, we have our own place. With us getting so, close to getting our old 1950 Chevy truck painted and running we deciding to stay. It’s not only the old truck it’s some art stuff coming up with my art. The book we are working on trying to get published and another doctor’s appointment. Now with all this Pam had another birthday.

For Pam’s birthday, our son treated us for supper at a Mexican restaurant. The food was great. 

Pam at age seventeen years old.

A few years back a man I don’t care much for said I bet she was pretty when she was young. I spoke to him in a strong way as I walk off. He said, “What is wrong with you?” I just kept walking. Remember I met Pam 5 days after she turned 15 years old. I know people see everything differently, but I don’t see her as being ugly in any way now after all this time. Another person there that heard him said, “I don’t think he meant it that way.” Another thing I don’t like to hear is, she looks good for her age. After I met her, she was trying as hard or harder to see me as I was to see her. This drove her Mother I won’t say crazy, but less just say she didn’t like it. The didn’t like it turned into trying to break us up. Five months later and we ran off as they say. Lying about our age we went and got married. With the running off we didn’t see what we did that way. With the respect we have always had for each other. We made a plan, and I picked her up at school as she got off the bus on a Friday morning and we simply went using a foraged paper “we had made” making us both 21. Said our vows in a courthouse in Georgia, in front of a Justice of the Peace. “Until death do us part.” We still hear after all this time this wasn’t legal. To us holding hands saying our vows to each other was all we needed to live together and for her to take my name. “End of story with that.” We would not be separated.

Off the Grid?

The other things happening out here is us always loving living off the grid. Living on a sailboat for almost 40 years now knowing how to live simply works for us. Here right now with frost coming maybe, this week a friend we know that works the farmers market gave us a bucket of nice green tomatoes to put up for the winter. We wrapped them in newspaper. Place them in a box and store them in a “dark” cool place. This is like drying beef, it had a lot to do with how cool how, dark and how close to ripe they are when you wrap them how long they will last. Drying beef walking on a trail it depends on the weather how long it will last. We have a place on our sailboat we designed and built ourselves just for this. All I can say is with how long they will last, we have ate a lot of garden-fresh tomatoes doing this with snow flying. Done right months later. Pam has also been canning tomatoes and making salsa the way we like it.

Some of the tomatoes and salsa we got canned.  Ready to be put in the pantry.

Wrapping green tomatoes. They will be so good when we eat them.

All in all, we are still together doing things like this now over 61 years. It’s been an adventure that is still on going. We should be back on our sailboat sometime after Christmas enjoying the warm Caribbean breeze while the winter is hammering everyone up here. We have heard some family members over the years say they don’t understand why we live so hard when we could do better. That is back to how you see life. Is living simply living hard? We make our own sausage “wherever we are” but out here with the cooler weather we have a sugar-cured ham hanging. Is making sausage, curing ham making jelly and all the things we know how and still do living hard? The adventure goes on. A doctor on a checkup for Medicare said, “You’re in good shape but it’s best if you both stay active.” We both just laughed with him looking at us.

The Adventure of Life Goes On and What an Adventure it Has Been