Good Friends

We had a great time with our great friends Linda and Bill Forrest on July 11^th and 12^th.

They live in Auburndale, Florida. Barbie worked with Linda at Mann Middle School. She is still teaching 8^th grade history there. They  became close friends and just love it when they get together. They had bought a Class A motorhome this past year and stopped to visit towing their utility trailer, which houses their Gold Wing motorcycle. They stayed for two nights here at River Vista. They were headed to West Virginia to pick up their son and his family and then travel to Maine to visit family and have a good time. We took them to Fatz Café in Franklin, NC, which is 20 minutes north on US 441, Monday night and had a fantastic meal! After eating breakfast out Tuesday morning at Kountry Vittles (which took 45 minutes to get the meal), Linda and Bill went for a motorcycle ride to South and North Carolina. The weather was nice and not hot so their ride was fantastic. Barbie and I went to Ingles for some grocery shopping for the barbeque that we were making for the night. When 6 PM came around, Linda and Bill came up and we ate grilled burgers, potato salad and pea salad and then topped off the evening with homemade blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. It was a great meal with great conversation. Linda brought some Reisling wine which made it even more entertaining. We went down to their rig at 9PM and they showed us their homemade laundry line made with PVC pipe which was attached to their ladder. That will be a project for me in the near future. We said our goodbyes Tuesday evening with the lightning bugs flashing in the night’s soft breeze.

Thursday, July 14 and Friday, July 15 were rainy type of days. We need the rain up here and we just sat around and read and cleaned up a bit. Our other great friends, Sandie and Pat Gregory and their two grandchildren, Kyle and Katherine, came by Friday to visit us.

   

They live in Brandon, Florida, and have the grandkids for two weeks. They own an rv site in Franklin, North Carolina in a place called Great Outdoors RV Resort.

They have a beautiful rv site at the crest of a cleared off hilltop with long range mountain views. They also have a cabin site in another area of the resort which will be developed later on. They stayed for a couple of hours and the grandkids are getting big and are very well behaved. Kozmo mainly stayed in my lap the whole time they were here. But Kyle did give her a treat which she tenderly took from his hand. They brought us some great corn on the cob which they picked themselves in North Carolina along with some beautiful sunflowers. They were headed to Santa’s Land in Cherokee, NC, on Saturday followed with horseback riding on Sunday before departing for Stone Mountain, Georgia, on Monday. We don’t have the energy to keep up with all that they do. They always have a great time though. After they left Barbie fixed us a taco salad dinner, which was very good.

Barbie has been cooking a lot so we treated ourselves to Mishima Express late Saturday afternoon. Kozmo stayed in the truck with the windows down since the temperature was 73 degrees. The food is great! We both usually have the hibachi chicken which comes with brown rice, carrots, and mushrooms on the side. With two iced teas, the bill was only $16 and it is a filling meal. Their house “shrimp” sauce that you can top off the meat and rice is truly outstanding.

We took a ride to Clayton on Monday to pick up prescriptions at Walgreens and then went to Highlands, North Carolina via Warwoman Road and Highway 28. It is a very curvy ride with nothing really around to look at except some beautiful mountains.

   

Our purpose was to make a deposit and get cash from the Bank of America, which has the closest branch for us in Highlands, NC. Highlands had temperatures of 73 degrees at 3:00 PM, the elevation being 4034 ft, and the place was very crowded. There wasn’t a place to park on the main drag so we decided to head back down to Dillard. You can really tell that the tourists are back when you head to Highlands on a Monday and see it so crowded.

Since my birthday is this Friday, Barbie has a surprise planned for me, so she says, on Thursday. She told me to pick a place to eat on Friday, which is what we usually do for our birthdays. She is hoping for great weather for the surprise Thursday, so my guess is a picnic up at Black Rock State Park??? She has been wanting to do that all summer. I’ll let you know.

‘Til next time…remember to live for the moment.