Leslie and David's Wanderings

Monday, July 20, 2026

8-10 July 2026 Happy B-Day Veronica

On the 8^th, we went over to Veronica’s Apartment, took her out to lunch and then visited for a while. She is looking better than the last time we visited almost two years ago. We heard from our cousin, Amy, that her surgery had gone well the day before but that her daughter had to go home early. We found out our cousin Beth was flying in late that night to take care of Amy, so we arranged to pick Beth up at the airport and take her to Amy’s. The 9^th was Veronica’s 89^th Birthday and we took her to her favorite restaurant, Twisted Olive, where we were joined by her other step son Bob and his girlfriend Darlene. We had a fun meal. The morning of the 10^th, we picked Veronica up and went down to Bergholz to visit with Aunt Joyce. We had lunch with Aunt Joyce and stayed to visit for several hours. The old family Apple Tree is looking pretty good for being mostly hollow inside. Aunt Joyce reminded David he had a couple of things stored there (Heart shaped medicine cabinet, iron rabbit) which we loaded up to bring home with us. She is still doing a lot of weaving for fun and she gave many pieces to both Veronica and Leslie to take home. Keira got a chance to run around off leash and work through some zoomie’s. We got a late dinner at Pappa Bear’s and dropped Veronica back at her apartment and said our goodbyes. It’s always hard to leave her.

Veronica's Birthday Dinner

5 - 7 July 2026 Heading out to visit Family

We left home in the morning on the 5^th to Little Rock (a 6.5 hour drive) where we stayed overnight in Lonoke. We found a great Mexican Food restaurant, Mariachi Grill, within walking distance of the Best Western. The 6^th we drove from Little Rock to Nashville (a 6 hour drive) where we stayed in North Nashville at the Salt Ranch. The Salt Ranch is a remodeled 1950s era motel but the central building was a hospital during the civil war. The remodel was done very well and the central building housed the bar and restaurant where you check in. The street the hotel is on looked pretty sketchy but the areas just a block off the street were nice neighborhoods. We went down to the Five Points area of Nashville where we had great BBQ at Edleys. The first room they assigned us resulted in David getting stung by a couple of wasps which had a nest at the front door. Our second room was good. Only complaint we have about this hotel was that they refused to honor the Booking.com price we had made our reservations through (Difference was about $8). On the 7^th we drove from Nashville to Canton (a 8 hour drive).

1-4 July 2026 Happy 250th Birthday America!

We spent these four days getting ready for our next trip and prepping the property for us to be gone for 10 days. On the fourth of July, we cooked some beautiful steaks for dinner and sat on our back patio to watch the fireworks. We could see and hear over 3 dozen firework shows across the Brazos River Valley below us.

24 - 30 June 2026 Good Bye Betty.

On the 24^th we left for Maryville Tennessee. We drove 9 hours the first day to Memphis and then 7 hours the second day to arrive in Maryville. We traveled there to attend the funeral of the mother of our friend John Johnston. Betty Johnson was a wonderful woman who adopted John’s friends as her own sons. We were always welcome to stop in and visit. She passed in May at the age of 98 in Waco but wanted to be buried next to her husband in Maryville. She moved to Waco several years ago to be closer to John and his family. We met up with our friends John, Cheryl, Davis, their friend Gala and Darrel for dinner the night we arrived. The memorial and interment were held on the 26^th. On the 27^th we all met at their AirBNB, drove over to Smoky Mountains National Park and drove the Cades Cove loop before heading back to Maryville for Lunch. On the loop we saw some deer and black bears. The 28^th, after dropping Gala and Davis off at the airport, we had lunch and went over to their AirBNB and just hung out, watched movies and caught up. The 29^th we headed back for Texas but took the southern route. We traveled along with Darrel for the first half, but he peeled off after lunch and we stopped at Jackson for the night. We arrived home in the late afternoon of the 30^th. It was our first trip with Kiera staying in hotels rather than the RV. Every hotel had different pet restrictions and most had an additional pet charge which we had not been informed of at the time we made the reservations. Kiera did really well with only a few incidents of barking at noises in the hallways late at night.

Dinner in Maryville

The Smoke in the Smoky Mountains

Grist Mill in Cades Cove

15 - 23 June 2026 Working on the punch list.

They finally got the floors fixed after David stepped in and showed them how the floors were moving and how they could remove the stress points by putting in transitions at the doorways into the bedrooms to allow the main room to move independent of the bedrooms. He also suggested they pull off a couple of baseboards and cut the floor at the doorways. When they did that they found the floor was all the way up against the door jams. Once they did that, the floors fully relaxed and finally lay flat. Then the base boards had to be reinstalled and the painters brought in to fix the holes and caulk and paint them. Kelby came in and changed the ports in the burners in the stove. They had incorrectly installed natural gas ports when they did the installation. When they changed them to the propane ports our soot problem has gone away and the stove works much better. They also came in and worked on the front door which was sticking badly. The had to remove the trim around the door to access the lag bolts holding the door frame into the jack studs. After some investigation, they figured out how to widen the steel door frame and secure it enough the door could close easily. No more sticky front door! Then they had to reinstall the door trim and caulk and paint them. They also installed the bolt lock on the shop door. We are STILL working through a few other items on the punch list. Can you believe it has been almost a year since we broke ground!

Our backdoor bullfrog

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

7-14 June 2026 New Critters

We are STILL working through our punch list with the builder. But were down to just a few items. Luckily it looks like they may have a final fix for the floor buckling. This week we discovered several new critters on our ranch. We have seen deer, mice, hawks, wild bee swarms, wild turkey, barn swallows nesting in the shop rafters, humming birds and signs of bobcats and coyotes. This week Leslie found a scorpion in the house (dead), we had a large turtle come through the yard from the stock tank out back, found a huge toad at the backdoor one night and finally a cute tarantula on the porch! The fun of living in the Texas country! We continue to work on the landscaping when time permits. Added a new bed out front for our address stone. Still a few boxes to unpack and plenty of items to find a new home for.

Turtle in our yard

Cute tarantula on the porch

Sunday, June 7, 2026

10 May – 7 June 2026 Alot completed!

We are STILL working through the punch list with the builder. It has been 12 and a half months since we signed the contract to build this house and it is still not complete! Leslie ended up staying with her sister for two weeks to get her over the hump from her surgeries. Once she got home she went on a decorating binge! The HVAC people have been in twice to adjust the system to attempt to reduce the humidity in the house. We bought a dehumidifier from Amazon which got lost in the shipment to us, so we had to cancel that one and order another that also was delayed in shipment. The builder finally sent someone out to close the portal between the garage attic and the main house attic. That produced a noticeable reduction in the humidity in the house. Once we got the dehumidifier and set it up, we were able to pull the humidity in the house from the high 70% down to the upper 40%. Just the first few days we pulled 10 gallons out of the house! This had a noticeable impact on reducing the floor buckling. But we still had them come in and put a transition with an expansion joint between the primary bedroom and the hallway. That immediately fixed the floors in the primary bedroom and the hallway. After a few days, the floors in the foyer were noticeable better, but it identified a different issue. Instead of the floor panels being pushed up widthwise, the ones in the foyer were now showing they were being pushed up lengthwise. There is also some lengthwise buckling by the fireplace in line with the foyer. The floor guys are coming back this week to see what they can do to alleviate that issue. We found that the circuit breaker for the outlets in the primary bedroom kept popping when it should not have. David called the electricians that he had developed a working relationship with early on and they came out the next day to replace the faulty circuit breaker. Much faster than going through our builder. We noticed our pots were getting a lot of soot on them from the propane stove indicating the fuel/air mixture is not right. Either they did not put in the correct valve for propane (IE they have a natural gas valve inside) or it needs to be adjusted. The builder is supposed to get the appliance installers out to look at it. We still have issues with the door locks that need to get resolved and some issues with the masonry work on the outside that needs fixing (they still have not fixed that conduit that we have been on them about since last September). One evening we saw a big Tom Wild Turkey in our backyard in full display mode trying to woo three hens. We had seen the turkey around the neighborhood and even in our back yard before, but not with his feathers all fluffed out. David mowed the majority of the 2 acre lot with the hand mower over the last few weeks. We had hoped that when the native grasses got cut they would go dormant for the summer, but it just reinvigorated them to grow. We decided to spend some more of our savings and get a lawn tractor a few months earlier than we had planned. We got a Toro Timesaver Zero Turn lawnmower with a 54 inch deck. Where David had spent six hours mowing each time with the hand mower, that lawnmower did it in only 2 hours! We also started laying out new flower beds in the from that the tractor will be a big help with hauling material. Besides which it is fun to drive! We put up Plantation Shutters put up in the front windows, curtains on the back windows and got pictures/paintings put up on the walls. We found places of honor for our family heirlooms to remind us of where we came from and the sacrifices made to bring us to this point. It’s starting to feel more like home. We have adapted quickly to having all the extra room! We have unpacked the Wanderer and gave it a thorough cleaning so it is ready for our next trip. We are thinking this fall we may take the wanderer out to Big Bend for an extended visit to our favorite National Park,. Meantime, we are planning to visit family this summer, but not with the Wanderer since RV sites are hard to come by in the summers up north if you don’t make reservations early.