Tory Enjoying The Sun

Well, we’ve been home a little while now.

So what have we been up to?

Well….

The kitties are the same.  Whether it’s in the motorhome or in our house, laying around enjoying the sun.

Whisper Dreaming About Birds

Whisper dreams mostly about what birds he’s going to see on our next adventure.

While BK…

BK bird hunting

practices his hunting skills.   Not that he’d have much use for them.  They are all inside cats.  Just don’t tell them that.

Baby Geese

We’ve been watching our Canada Geese and their babies.   Watching them grow.

Oriole Trying To Drink Out Of Hummingbird Feeder

We’ve been watching how dumb the Orioles are.  They try to drink out of the hummingbird feeder even though they have their own feeder on the next hook.  They also have been driving the cats crazy by pecking and fluttering at the windows non-stop.  They think they are seeing another Oriole when in fact it’s their reflection.  Not the smartest bird.

David Replacing Another Hard Drive

Yup…that’s David replacing another hard drive in the Macbook.  This time it was his computer.

Cleaning Out The House

We’ve been doing a major clean out of the house.  It’s amazing how much stuff accumulates.  We’re only two people and we filled this dumpster.

No worries, I kept David :)

David Power Washing The Deck Last Year

We’ve been dreading doing this.  Power Washing our deck is no small task.  This takes hours and hours.  And boy, do your arms ache the next day.

Or so I am told.

So, some of you may have heard, we’re considering selling our home and living in the motorhome for a while.  We like the idea of having a home to go back to, so we may look for something smaller.  But in a no personal income tax state.  We really enjoyed the Hill Country of Texas when we were there.  So we may look there.

Their would be no rush though.  We’d just tool around in the motorhome for while and live life.

On the other hand, we love this house and we have it just the way we like it.  Most of our family is here in Rochester and it’s all we’ve known.

So, do we take life by the horns and just do it…or do we stay?

Who knows.  We’ve been debating the points of view since we’ve been home.  One day we want to put the house up for sale and just do it.  The next day we may say, “Maybe next year”.

Life’s to short to live it stuck in one place.  So I think you know which way we’re swinging right now.

David Preparing The New Raw Food Diet For The Cats. BK Has To Help.

So about 2 months ago we started the cats on a new diet.  It’s a raw food diet specifically formulated for cats.

First question people usually ask us is, “Aren’t we afraid of Salmonella and the cats getting sick because it’s raw?”

Short answer…no.  Think about it.  Cats are naturally carnivores.  They eat mice, birds and such all the time if in the wild.  They have a different immune system and digestive tract than we do.  Their bodies can handle raw meat.

So how did we get into this raw diet?  Well, some friends of ours, Bill and Janet, who are full-timers have three cats of their own.  Their cats were having some health problems caused by the store bought food.  After doing lots of research, Janet found Feline Instincts.  After switching their cats from a regular store bought food diet to this raw food diet, their health problems all but disappeared, they are more active and generally more happy and healthy.

Feline Instincts is a company based out of Texas, that makes the powder mix for your kitties raw food diet.  Felice is the owner and she is wonderful to answer any and all of your questions.  As I had a lot.

You basically buy this powder mix from Felice’s company and mix it with chopped up raw meat, water, salmon oil and raw liver if your mix does not already contain liver.  She provides the “recipe” for mixing all the ingredients together to get the right mixture.

Feline Instincts "My Natural Cat" With Liver Powder Mix

I buy the powder mix that already has the liver powder mixed into it.  So that eliminates a step for me.  I figure, the less things to buy and mix the less chance of me messing it up.  For some of you that know me, sometimes I have a hard time following directions.  So the less ingredients, the better.

David and I have gotten pretty good at making the food.  The first few times were a little trial and error.  Mixing it to much so it’s more of a pate consistency was not good.  We found out the cats like it chunkier.

BK Is Always The First One Around To Help

When it’s time to make the food, BK is always there to help.  By help, I mean, get in the way.  But I’m not so mean that perhaps a small piece of chicken may happen to hit the floor while I’m making the food.  And BK is all to eager to clean it up for me.

Don’t panic.  No…I don’t give him a whole piece of chicken.  Just barely a sliver.

When we make the food, we make it 1lb at a time.  Then we put that 1lb into a rubbermaid container and freeze it.  We usually do 6lbs all together (6 containers).  One of these containers will last us 2 1/2 days with the 4 cats.  So we only make up the food every couple of weeks.  Not bad.

It took the cats a few days to get use to it.  Well…let me  correct myself.  Angel…no issue.  She will eat anything you give her.   Whisper, same thing but is just a little slower at eating it. (He takes pauses to think about it.)  Tory and BK wanted nothing to do with it.  Part of that was our fault.  We blended that first batch into a pate consistency and they did not like that.  Felice mentioned we might want to leave it on the chunkier side.  Next batch we did that and it was better.  To get them all to eat it at first, we mixed some tuna water into it.  Then slowly took the tuna out of the equation and wallah!  All 4 kitties eating the raw food diet.  Tory was the hold out in this one.  She can be stubborn.  It took her a good week and a half to fully accept that this was all she was getting from now on.

Angel, BK And Tory Eating Their Raw Food Diet

Whisper Eating His Raw Food Diet

So why would we try this?  Well, the news is littered with reports of people’s pets dying or getting seriously ill because of contaminated store bought food.  How many times have you seen a recall on your pet food because of this?  Once is too many for me.

Some of the food you buy in the store contains by-products not fit for human consumption.  So it ends up in our pet food.  I’m sorry, but if it’s not good enough or safe enough for humans to eat, why should it be ok for our pets to eat?

In doing all this research, talking with friends about their kitties and talking it over with our vet, we came to the conclusion that a raw food diet was a good choice for us.

It wasn’t an easy decision.  It took us weeks of going back and forth.  The biggest factor was the cost.  It’s not cheap when you consider the costs vs standard cat food.

But in the end, we decided that our pets health was worth it. After all, they are our family.

After a couple weeks on the diet we found ourselves amazed at the difference our kitties were showing. They had a lot more energy.  Playing with their toys more often.  And a general contentment came over them.  They don’t bother us as much for food because they are satisfied.

A couple bonuses to feeding them this diet is they shed a lot less.  That’s a big plus in a motorhome.  Another big plus…they poop less often and when they do, it does not smell!  How cool is that!  The reasoning behind that, in the store bought food, their bodies can not process everything in the food, so they poop more often (once a day) and it’s stinky.  On the raw food diet, their bodies absorb and process everything.  All the nutrients, the vitamins and the meat and water.  So when they do poop, it’s about every other day and way less stinky.  Bonus for living in small spaces!

For those of you who have met our kitties, you probably have not met Tory.  She was always shy and would run away every time company came over.  She was very skittish.  Even with us.  We usually only saw her at feeding time.

Now, she is out and about all day.  Exploring everything.  Playing with toys.  Our friends Joe and Lynn even came over the other night for a movie and she climbed up on Joe’s lap and fell asleep!  That would never have happened before.

I also just took Tory in for her yearly exam and the vet remarked on how well she looked for 15 years old.  The way she’s going, she’ll be one of those cats that lives into her 20′s!  Her eyes are clear, her teeth were white, her fur is silky smooth.

We can’t believe the difference this food has made in their lives.  We are glad we made this choice and only wish we knew about it sooner.

Yes, they eat better than we do.  We do not find ourselves heading down the raw food diet for humans.  But we can sleep better at night knowing that we are doing a good thing for our kitties health.

David Cutting Down Some Trees

So we had some dead trees in our yard.

How did they die when they look so young?  Well, the short story is we tried to drill a well to help keep our pond topped off.  We ended up drilling 102 feet and hitting SALT WATER!

Geniuses that we are, we thought we’d run the salt water into our swill way to see if it would clear up to fresh water.  Hours later, no fresh water.  The next year, dead trees because they sucked up all the salt water into their roots.

Sorry trees.

So we’ve left them alone for years.  I was hoping they’d come back.  David knew better but indulged me in keeping them up.

Well, this past winter we had some pretty heavy winds and some of these trees ended up coming down.  So it was time to break out the chain saw.

David Cutting Down Some Trees

I know David hated seeing these trees go too.  But they were completely dead.

We still have plenty of trees on our property.  So it’s not terribly devastating.

I’m very proud of David for felling the trees around the tree that we planted just 2 years ago.  Another talent exposed.

David Checking Out His Handy Work

Then the guys came and obliterated the carnage.

The Truck With The Wood Chipper Taking Care Of The Large Trunks

Here’s the after picture…

After The Trees Are Gone

You’d never know there were trees there in the first place.

And an added bonus is we can see our pond a little clearer now.

SNOW!

So we’ve been home for a couple weeks now.

We’ve enjoyed the 70 degree weather.

The warm evenings we left our bedroom windows open.

Gotten into Spring cleaning mode.

Then…

This…

Happens…

SNOW!

SNOW!

What the What!

OK…OK…Ok….

I know it’s only late March/early April.

I know we live in the northeast where this is not unusual.

But seriously?

After we had a full week of 70′s?

We get this?

SNOW!

I know I shouldn’t complain. This area of the country has had a very mild winter.

Almost non-existent.

But with the way the weather had been acting, I’m afraid we’ll be getting snow showers in June!

And that just is not right.

Hopping back into the motorhome doesn’t sound so bad right about now.

Our Home In Upstate New York

Well…we’re home now.  We made it from Houma, LA to Rochester, NY in 3 days!

Why you may ask?

Well, we saw the weather coming through the middle of the country and we wanted to stay in front of it.  All you RVers know how that is.

So good-bye to Louisiana.

Passing Over A Waterway In Louisiana

With your waterways intertwined.

Your shipping yards full.

Your shrimp boats prepping for the season.

Good-bye to the swampland.

The Louisiana Swampland

No matter how pretty you are, you can’t make me visit when mosquito season is near.

Good-bye to us on the road.

Our Reflection In A Really Shiny Truck

Yup…that’s our reflection in a really shiny truck.  We followed it for a little bit through New Orleans.

Good-bye to the beautiful wild flowers that grow plentiful in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Beautiful Wildflowers That Grow Plentiful In Louisiana And Mississippi

I want to say they were Wisteria?

Good-bye to Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Follow That Blue Bell Truck!

They don’t sell Blue Bell in New York :(

Although that may not be such a bad thing.  Our waistlines will thank us for that.

Good-bye to strange and unusual rest stops.

A Rest Stop In Alabama

This one was near Huntsville, Alabama.

Can you say Space Camp anyone?

Good-bye to oddities along the roadside.

Dinosaur World...Really?

While traveling through Kentucky….was that a big giant dinosaur I just saw?

Yup…you to can go to Dinosaur World…in Kentucky.

Good-bye to beautiful scenes like this one…

The Beautiful Waters Of Alum State Park In Ohio

This is traveling over a bridge through Alum Creek State Park in Ohio.  We’ve stayed at Cross Creek Campground near there, for the last 4 years, before we make a run for home.  Home is only 6.5 hours from here and this is the closest campground open this time of year. Recommended if your in the area.  Not much else around except the state park and the sites there are a tad to small for big rigs.

Good-bye to peacefully sleeping kitties lulled to sleep by the road.

BK And Whisper Sound Asleep While We Are Traveling Down The Road

Everyone sigh now.  Aaawwww.

Good-bye to beautiful country scenes with the fog just lifting, while traveling through Ohio.

The Fog Just Lifting On This Farm In Ohio

The Fog Just Lifting On This Farm In Ohio

Hello home.

Hello yard work.

Hello large house to clean.

Why are we here again?

Tucked Away For Now

I don’t know.

Large bed…large shower…our own theater.  These just pop in my head.

Oh yeah…our family is here to :)

The Motorhome is all tucked away for now.

Waiting for the next adventure.

Sometime soon we hope.

David Enjoying The View From Our Friends "Camp" House

Where is Houma, LA you ask?

Don’t worry, we did to.

Houma is located in the Terrebonne Parish, about 45 minutes south west of New Orleans.

You would wonder how people can live down there.  You would think it was full of water and swampland.

The Swamp Land Driving Down To Houma, LA

The Long bridge That Travels Over And Through The Swamp Land

Well, there is swampland. They just built everything up, including the roads.  Above is a picture of a bridge that travels right over and through the swamp land.  You can click on it to enlarge it and see the trees in the swamp rising up and over the roadway.  Through the two lanes and just surrounding the road.  It feels as if the swamp is trying to take the road over.

But the people of Houma are perfectly dry 10 feet above sea level.

Yup, I said it.  10 feet.

It’s no wonder that when you drive further south, which you can do, into the village of Cocodrie, LA, the houses are built up on pillars.

A House In Cocodrie, LA

A House In Cocodrie, LA

Some are real scary looking.  By that I mean, I would not want to be in them in a wind storm.  Let alone the hurricanes that come through this part of the country.  And these pictures show the better ones.  There were ones that had even less support.

A House In Cocodrie, LA

A House In Cocodrie, LA

Some Nice Houses In Cocodrie, LA

Others, like these above, are a little more stable.

However, I would still not be caught in them with a storm coming through.

Cocodrie is a quaint little fishing and shrimping village at “Land’s End”.  This truly is the furthest south you can travel on this road.

Our friends took us down here to show us around the shrimping and fishing village.  It’s quiet right now as it was a little early to be out fishing.

They have a beautiful house right on the water.  They refer to it as there “fishing camp”.

From the looks of it, it is bigger than some people’s homes and nicer too.  Not what we were expecting for a “fishing camp”.

Nice Place To Sit And Just Enjoy The View And The Breeze.

Their View From Their Widow's Peak

Amazing views every which way you look.  A wonderful back porch that’s up on the second level.  So you can just sit out their, enjoy the nice breeze, as their is always one, and nap the day away.

The Lower Level Porch

If you get bored of the upper level deck, but let’s face it, who could?  Then you could go down to the main (lower) level deck and sit on that swing.  This is also where the boats are stored.

Our friends tell us when the shrimpers are out, they come right past there house on their way back into dock.  So they call out to the shrimpers to come over and they can buy fresh, just caught that day, shrimp…right from the boat.

You can’t get any fresher than that people.

What a wonderful life.

Oh…

I forget to mention.  On the way down to Cocodrie, we stopped at a local restaurant, Sportsman’s Paradise, for lunch.  Oooooo…. Was that good!

Sportsman's Paradise Restaurant on The Road Down To Cocodrie, LA

David Giving An Enthusiastic Thumbs Up To His Lunch

David was in heaven.  He said he had some of the best fried shrimp and shrimp gumbo he’s ever had.

The restaurant from the outside doesn’t look like much.  But let’s face it, those are usually the best places to eat.  Their was even a tv crew with a famous bass fisherman there eating lunch.  Seeing that I’m not into bass fishing, I had no idea.  Our friends told us about them at the next table.

That’s how good this place is.

We were only in Houma for 4 nights.  The local Houma Civic Center has over 200 water and electric sites in their parking lot for rv’s to park.  At $20 bucks a night, it was well worth it.  And if you know the secret to the parking lot, you may even snag yourself 1 of the maybe 4 sites that have sewer.  Bonus!

While their we met our friends family, toured the area and had a great visit.  Their family was super nice to let us into their homes and share their parents and a great meal with them.

We went out to the local frozen yogurt shop for a treat…in the middle of the afternoon of course.  YUM!

The Orange Leaf Store In Houma, LA

We enjoyed it so much we went back 2 more times.  Is that so bad?  It’s ok…it was frozen yogurt.  It’s good for you :)

Wouldn’t you know it though, while there David had some repairs that decided to pop up.  By that I mean, on our way down to Houma we went through some rain.  Well, the windshield wipers decided that would be a good time to break and stop working.  So picture this (as I didn’t get a picture of him because I felt really bad for him having to stand out there in the pouring rain)…David standing out in the pouring rain, not just sprinkling, working on the windshield wipers.  It was so frustrating.  He did get them to work…after a good 45 minutes…mostly…until we got down to Houma, got parked and was able to really take them apart and repair them.

David In The Houma Civic Center Parking Lot Fixing The Wipers

Then, with the wipers fixed (yup…that’s a wiper blade on the ground in the above picture) wouldn’t you know it, Murphy took over again.  My hard drive in my computer decided to die.

David Replacing The Hard Drive.

I’m sooooo lucky I have a guy that seems to be able to fix anything.  He’s so handy like that.

Some Farmland Around The Area

We didn’t get to see any of the historical sights in Houma.  As there are many and we just ran out of time.  Houma is deep in Cajun country.  With swamp tours, the Cajun culture, tons of charter fishing, too many restaurants to try and their are museums a plenty, you would have a hard time not finding something to do.

We relaxed with our friends and took in the culture.  Had a great cook out with their family.

Thank you to our friends.  We had a wonderful time.

We will be back…some day.