Ellyn's Eyes - Only if You're Interested

Some of you might be interested in the my eye appointment so I've decided to put it into the blog instead of retelling it multiple times. Feel free to skip over if you're not interested.

One challenge, when fulltime RVing, can be following up on specialized medical problems. It's pediatric ophthalmologists who treat the adult strabismus that I have and, typically, it takes more than a month to get an appointment with one. I had surgery, in Maryland, on my strabismus 9 months ago. Yesterday, I had a follow-up appointment with a doctor, here in Houston, at Childrens Hospital because my eyes seemed worse than when last seen, six months ago.

The net of the visit is that my eyes started, before the surgery, pointed OUTwards by 12 diopters and the unexpected outcome of the surgery is that they are now pointed 8 diopters INward. I knew that they hadn't healed straight because I still had double vision when not using the prisims in my glasses but I hadn't expected it was that much.

The good news is that I now have a new eyeglass prescription with prisms to correct my vision. The bad news is that we came to Houston 10 days early so that would give time for me to get the glasses before we leave but now I learned it will take 2 or 3 weeks to get the new glasses. Fortunately, they can be mailed to me.

The ongoing treatment plan for the strabismus is that, once I have the glasses with the correct vision, that I will, gradually, start to use a 1 diopter stick-on prism to weaken the correction in the glasses so that my muscles will strengthen to pull the eyes out and then proceed to 2 diopters, etc. The goal is that when I have my next follow-up visit, in 6-12 months, that my eyes will not drifting more inward and, maybe even, will be better aligned.

Fredericksburg, Texas

What started out to be a 4 day visit in Fredericksburg, TX, on our way to Houston for Thanksgiving, turned out to be twice that. When arrived at Fredericksburg RV Park we quickly realized that it was very nice and so were the people. So we extended our stay to 8 days and will have to “hoof it” across the state to get to Ellyn’s eye Dr. appointment.

The next day after we arrived was the first rainy day we have had since Colorado in August. We even could have counted the cloudy days we had on one hand. So the rainy Sunday was the perfect day to do our laundry especially since we were both running out of underwear. With 8 washers and 8 dryers and no one in the laundry room when we arrived and with it only steps from our RV, the situation was perfect. Also, the dryers were very inexpensive. 50 cents would dry anything you had.

The RV Park had a schedule of events starting out with an Ice Cream Social the evening of our second day. It was great and everyone who came to it, mostly "winter Texans", were very nice and inclusive of newcomers. We have found this to be the norm for most of the RVers we have met on our travels. The guys mostly sat together and talked about their RVs. One of them had recently gotten new tires for his motorhome so this was of interest to everyone. The women mostly talked about their travels, crafts, and grandkids (we're decidedly younger than the others).

We drove into town the next day and window shopped in the downtown. There are several blocks of store fronts on Main Street and many of the buildings have historic plaques attached explaining when it was built and its original purpose. Fredericksburg was founded by people who emigrated from Germany and there are many German themed restaurants in town.

We found that the downtown was so close to the RV park that, the next day, we walked to the downtown area for lunch. We went to one of the German restaurants and had schnitzel and warm German potato salad. After lunch, we walked a few blocks to a bicycle shop to get a new inner tube for Geoff’s bike. We walked the rest of the way back by a new route which took us past a stockyard. It didn't surprise us to see it as, we had heard strange sounds from that direction the night before and Geoff thought it sounded like cows. Well, he was right because the stockyard was teeming with them as well as sheep and goats. We stopped to watch them unloading cattle from truck trailers and one of the “hands” came over to us. We told him we were just curious and he told us many of the animals would be going to packing houses but that some of the younger ones would go back to farms for grazing and for refurbishing of their livestock. I guess this helps prevent too much inbreeding. Ellyn said, about the experience of seeing the cattle in the stockyard on the way to processi, that as meat eaters, we need to accept/understand that this is what happens to animals on their way to being the food in our link of the food chain.

The next day, we visited the LBJ Ranch about a 1/2 hour away in Stonewall, TX, named for General “Stonewall” Jackson. It was interesting to see it. Ellyn and I were both teenagers when Johnson was President and, although we had seen pictures taken at his “Texas Whitehouse”, it was interesting to visit there. They have restored most of the house to the way it looked in the 1960s since “Lady Bird” Johnson passed away in 2007. Although his presidency was overshadowed by the escalating Viet Nam War, he did many good things while in office, like starting the “Head Start” school program and pushing for and then signing Desegregation and Voting Rights acts. Ellyn can still remember, vividly, her glee when LBJ Johnson announced that he would not seek a 2nd term.

Another day in Fredericksburg, we took a drive up to Inks Lake State Park about an hour away. We saw many turtles sunning themselves on logs and rocks around the lake, We pulled into one little lagoon to have a lunch we packed up for the trip and then we paddled to the highlight of the lake, The Devil’s Swimming Hole. This is a lagoon surrounded by granite rock. A stream flows into the lake over a little stone waterfall at one end. It was very peaceful back in there with just the murmur of the water to break the silence. It's possibly the most beautiful little portion of a lake we've kayaked and made it well worth the drive!

We took one other trip into town on our bicycles for shopping and sight seeing. It was a nice day but ended with a flat tire on Ellyn’s bike. Geoff peddled back to the RV park and brought back the car to pick up the bike and Ellyn. He tried to repair it, and though it was successful, but after we peddled to the grocery store and back on our last day, the tire was soft again a few hours later. Try, try again, I guess. As far as the grocery store, it was a great one. H-E-B was the name. Apparently they are only in Texas, but they have everything. And at very good prices too, at least for us. I guess the cost of living is generally lower in Texas, except for gasoline. I would think gas would be dirt cheap here, with all the oil wells around, but I guess it doesn’t work that way.

On our last evening, we took in The RockBox Theater, a local venue in Fredericksburg which is popular with people as far away as Austin. They have 4 shows each weekend, except for Christmas Season, when they add another show. They have a new show each weekend, performed by resident actors, a team of about 8. They do all kinds of classical rock music numbers some comedy, and a few more mellow numbers. They end the evening with some patriotic themes, as can probably be expected in middle America. All the cast were incredibly good musicians and singers and we were thoroughly entertained. It would be fun to be able to see them, again.

So, with the nice RV park, shopping/eateries within walking/biking distance and the great entertainment plus some lakes to kayak, Fredericksburg was a great place to stay for eight nights. Perhaps, we will plan to come back to Fredericksburg next year.

Down on the Rio Grande

November 3rd to the 6th, we were in Big Bend National Park, on the southwestern edge of Texas. Ellyn had a desire to go there for her birthday on 11/3. We parked in the campground at Rio Grande Village with no hook ups, and made ourselves comfortable for 3 days. As with most of our travel since August, it was 3 days of very good weather.

On our way into the park, it looked like there was miles and miles of nothing. The route down US 385 from Marathon, TX goes through some very flat and very sparse Texas desert. Big Bend National Park is probably the most remote place that we'll be at during this trip. Even with Verizon, there wasn't any cell phone coverage.

Once in the park, we did start seeing some different terrain, as there are some hills and rocky mountains on the western side of the park. On the way down to Rio Grande Village on the east side, we could make out the Rio Grande valley with trees along the river and some shear cliffs on the Mexico side. But most interestingly, when we looked at the desert floor, we found an incredible variety of cactus and other plants...some with flowers and fruits.

The Chihuahuan Desert became more and more beautiful to us as we got to know it. We took a short hike to overlook the Rio Grande and one of its canyons. While there, we saw the Mexican border town. Before the days of "homeland security", visitors to the park could very by row boat over to the village to buy crafts and eat in the restaurants. The border is now totally closed but we found that some village residents sneak over to put their crafts and cash jars along the riverside trails. The US government had signs that we could get prosecuted if we bought some of the crafts. One resident, we learned his name was Victor, sang from the other side of the river and had a tip jar in the trail. He came over to our side and we took his photo. It made us sad that world events way out of this little town's control, now made it so that their tourist trade was eliminated. The Park Service tries a little by having some of their stuff in the shops but twice as expensive.

Other things we did in the park....

We took the walk to the Hot Springs right along the Rio Grande. On the way there, we saw swallow nests along the cliffs. A woman in the hot spring, said that sme people take the clear water, from the source, to drink. We just soaked our feet at the edge of the pool. There were several stone buildings in ruin left from the days a Hot Springs Resort had been at that location.

We drove up to the Chisos Basis which is like being in a large volcano with a rim of rocks all the way around. Despite the recent sightings of black bears and mountain lions, we took a hike around the basin loop. We are noticing that we're getting in a bit better shape for hikes and this one was a perfect length and challenge half of the trail was a steady uphill. We had lunch, that day, in the Lodge restaurant with a beautiful view and we used their wifi for a while. One thing notable about the hike is that the basin has an amazing diversity of vegetation - evergreens, trees and cactus all intermingled. The most amazing thing was the HUGE century plants that were just past flowering.

We went on a bird-watching walk with a ranger and several experienced birders. One funny thing was a Common Roadrunner came but and all the birders ignored it - I think they consider it as uninteresting as us northeasterners consider squirrels. With the birders, we did see sparrows, woodpeckers, doves, flycatchers, and more. It's amazing what you can see when you look closely.

As for wildlife, there is supposed to be an incredible diversity of wildlife in the park. Of course, we only saw a sampling of it but we did, in addition to the birds, see bats each evening in the campground, a snake on the road, a coyote running, a HUGE wasp, and little fish in the river. Unfortunately, we did not see any Javelinas.

The one thing that was most amazing experience at Big Bend National Park was that there were very few people there to interrupt the vast silence and wide expansive views to the horizon. No highway noise, no sirens, no trains. Just the occasional sounds and sights of birds and bugs.

Click below to play a slideshow of more of our picture from Big Bend National Park.

Follow the bouncing time zone

Ok, I'm glad I'm not too diligent about changing the clocks each time we move from one time zone to another.Here is the history of our time changes over the past few days.

10/30 - In Phoenix,AZ - MST (they do not do DST in AZ).
10/31 - In Las Cruces, NM - MDT (+1 hour)
11/1 - In Las Cruces, NM - MST (-1 hour)
11/2 - In Alpine, TX - CST (+1 hour)

What time is it now?

The Great Arizona/New Mexico Loop of 2009

After leaving California, we traveled through Arizona to New Mexico to attend the Balloon Fiesta and then backtracked to Las Vegas for the AARP Convention. Then we looped back to the south, caught up with some friends in AZ before continuing on through NM again to Texas. Click a picture on the map to see a larger size.