When you’ve lived as long as we have we’ve experienced many phases of life for us and our friends. One of our long time fishing buddies has also semiretired and is traveling the US in an RV as well. They are currently in Calrose, TX, so we decided to go see them for a week. We try to check out the area while we are there and found out that in Calrose, TX, they have fossilized evidence of dinosaurs roaming at the same time as humans. We were super excited to be able to see that.
We got down to Calrose and are happy to see our friends DJ and Julie Shrapps. DJ was one of Kurt’s employees years ago who like many of Kurt’s teams learned and excelled to advance his career. But once he found out we were fishermen, it was friends for life. We’ve caught many a fish together and our kids spent good times together.
For those of you looking to full time RV you to consider doing what DJ and Julie are doing. They are working for a season, 3-6 months, in an RV park as hosts where they get free parking and a small wage in exchange for part time hours. So DJ does some maintenance tasks and Julie does some office and cleaning tasks. So it is definitely a win win for them. Then when they are done there, they will find another park they can do it in near Julie’s family in Maine and spend some time with them. Then they rinse and repeat and travel to the other areas and climates they want when they want.
It was exceptionally hot and dry for several weeks there so Jake, DJ’s grandson, and I take off to go take Blue dog to the river. The river is pretty mucky and you can’t see anything. We’re out in the middle of the river playing and having fun then all of a sudden something clearly hits Blue under the water so much so it startled him. He’s immediately looking for it. Just then Jake sees it and it’s a snapping turtle. So we decide it’s probably about time to get out before Blue gets in a losing battle with a snapping turtle and we can’t get it off. Remember everything is bigger in Texas, even turtles.
DJ has all Thursday off so we are excited to go to the dinosaur museum there and see the fossils. But once again covid strikes again. We go online to look up the hours of operations and find out it still hasn’t reopened since Covid. So we can’t see the fossilized remains of human footprints in the same strata as dinosaurs. It was such a bummer :-(, but worse yet because poor DJ woke up and had to go to ER because he thought he was having a stroke. It turned out to be a side affect from the Covid vaccine and he had bells palsy, where his left side of his face drooped.
So we just sat around after working each day, telling fish tales and catching up. They have these crazy fish there called alligator gar so it was fun to hear about them and noodling. Don’t worry we weren’t quite crazy enough to do that, but there’s always Jake and his crazy buddies. Anyone that is willing to stick their whole arm into a hole that could contain snapping turtles, or any other creatures with sharp teeth and jaws is a new level of crazy we have not crossed yet. We also got to see DJ and Julie become great grandparents as Jake’s 1st child was born while we were there so it was good times all around. But once again the time is short and we must set off on the next adventure. Next stop Jonesboro, Arkansas.
