Trip to Tutti Frutti

Eldo and Sparky have discovered a great frozen yogurt place called Tutti Frutti. They have 580 stores world wide. When we are hankerin' for ice cream, Tutti Frutti now runs a close second to hitting a D.Q. --that's Dairy Queen JUST in case somebody isn't familiar with D.Q. Some people DQ say is not true ice cream with all the corn syrup, chemicals and stabilizers added. But hey--any excuse for something that is supposed to be good for you and sounds like there are more health benefits than ice cream---well, maybe Sparky can get Eldo to switch! (We'll see...says he.)

Tutti Frutti adds probiotics to its yogurt..Probiotics are supposed to be beneficial to your gut...Dannon yogurt has probiotics in its line of Activa yogurt, and they make a healthy profit on it. Probiotics might help prevent constipation, diarrhea and bloating caused by some intestinal bacteria, according to Dannon's information AND Tutti Frutti's. If you read the claims on the Tutti Frutti walls, you'd think you were eating a miracle food!  "IMPROVE IMMUNE FUNCTION, PREVENT INFECTIONS, REDUCE INFLAMMATION(!)" But heads up, people are suing Dannon over these similar health claims, so the jury is still out on this...heh, heh, heh.....pun intended.

And now, Tutti Frutti has SOYBEAN frozen yogurt! Ewwww....Not sure if we'd like that. There was a soy based peanut butter frozen yogurt, but we didn't try that one. Sparky loves the strawberry banana flavor the best. She made a beeline for that one. Then the raspberry....

 "Recent research suggests that soy may also lower risk of prostate, colon and breast cancers and well as osteoporosis and other bone health problems, and alleviate hot flashes associated with menopause," says a Tutti Frutti brochure about their soy yogurt. That's some pretty heavy duty health claims...

Well, their heart is in the right place. They want you to eat healthy. And they have a "green" initiative/project with the Nutrition and Education Institute (NEI) with farmers in Afghanistan to help them make a living by providing them with soybean seeds and education to help put an end to poverty. Tutti Frutti contributes 10% of all its proceeds from sales of soy yogurt to help fight hunger in Afghanistan. Gotta love a company with heart, except Sparky wishes they were fighting to end hunger in the U.S. Lots of seniors and kids going hungry every day here in the good ole U.S. of A.

So load up on the yogurt, but not all the sugary candy toppings at the goodie bar at the end of the line just before you get your yogurt weighed and paid for at .42 an ounce. Just how healthy is this stuff?  25-30 calories in ONE ounce of yogurt for most of the flavors, and 5-6 grams of sugar per ounce.  Uh, that doesn't sound too healthy at all if you load up your bowl with about 12 ounces of frozen yogurt which is about what each of us ate today. But if you put some fresh fruit on it, that makes it healthy, right? Just not if you are watching carbs and sugars. Don't you just love this rationalization for eating something that is turning out not to be a whole lot better for you than D.Q. ice cream?

Sparky dumped on some fresh delicious blueberries on hers. They have great flavors like royal red velvet, mango, cheesecake, chocolate of course, and lots more flavors that they rotate in and out---Sparky had strawberry banana, raspberry, and "strawberry fields" in her cup, and Eldo had cotton candy and mango in his. They use fresh fruit cut up daily at Tutti Frutti, no frozen fruit.

What can I say? It was delicious! And maybe just a tad bit better for you than ice cream. Sparky is too lazy to do a item by item nutritional analysis of D.Q vs. Tutti Frutti. Bet there's an app for that! :-) We just eat what we like for now until the doctor commands us otherwise...and as my mom used to say, "Anything in moderation."  Now let's go eat some frozen yogurt....See ya later......

Quest for Bargains and Buyer Beware!

In our quest for finding good bargains  of all kinds while full timing in an RV, we have started signing up for different notifications from different sources, mostly restaurants...We do get Groupon notifications, and recently, we started "liking" our favorite restaurants on Facebook, hoping to get coupons for them. But--BUYER BEWARE!

This month Eldy noticed our phone bill was 20.00 higher than normal. It's consistently a certain amount every month, and all of a sudden, it went up. Sparky had just recently upgraded her phone to an iphone, but that charge was expected and we paid it last month. This month's bill was beyond that....off to the AT & T store we went to get an explanation.

It turns out that certain offers and notifications that you sign up for are passed on to a "third party subscription service" and that charge is 9.99 attached to your phone bill when you sign up to get notices of deals. Problem is, we never saw any "fine print" about any third party subscription services ANYWHERE. Yes, the ordinary cell phone data charges and instant messages count, but not a hefty 9.99 or 9.95 phone bill amount! We don't know which application or company or restaurant or Facebook or bank (not likely a bank, AT & T said) farms out the signup process and bonks you with a charge. ARGGGGHHHH! So you get penalized for signing up for something to try and save money! We are going to look carefully at what we've done lately to see if we can figure out WHO was culprit that caused our bill to go up. While we were at the store, the AT & T rep called the central office and had the two charges taken off our bill. Yay! Now, for some detective work to see if we can figure out where those charges originated.

The AT & T rep said that if it happens again, to just come into the store and they will take it off. Wonderful! But I'd still like to know where it's coming from! I got a mysterious text message today, and all it said was...."0-93-d or -0"  I have no idea where that came from or what it means...I see a phone number at the top, but didn't want to call it in case someone is trying to gain access to my phone or hack into it. Sometimes if you reply "STOP" in the message line, that will cancel whatever service is using the texting, but I got a message a couple of hours later, "HUNH? Who is this?" I left it alone and deleted it. Technology can be daunting at times, ya know?

Until later.....

Neatly organized and ready for the baby--Heck, we are all ready!

Nothin' Happenin', Baby!

That's right, nothin's happenin'--no baby yet! We are on call for a hospital run during the day while Kerry's guy is at work...So, we don't want to venture too far out from Spring in case we get the call....So-o-o-o...what did we do? Laundry....Wash the car.....go check out the Woodlands, another nice mall on the north side of Houston...Trying to keep cool, you know....

inside the waterway "cruiser"

a glimpse of the waterway at the center plaza

We just walked around..we took a waterway ride on the Woodlands Waterway Taxi. Some people call it the Woodlands Waterway Cruiser. Cruiser is a stretch! It's a simple boat that takes you on a canal ride through The Woodlands shopping center and surrounding office buildings alongside the canal. The ride lasts about 45 minutes as you meander thru and costs 5.00 for adults and 2.50 for children. The boat seemed hard to steer. The captain, as we shall refer to him loosely, cranked the wheel first hard one way, then hard the other to correct the position of the boat. We bumped into the sides of things several times as he maneuvered the boat thru the canal. Although the boat had some roof top A.C, it struggled to provide any cooling at all, which made people open windows for more air, which made it worse. Oh, well...Would we recommend the boat trip? No....save your money! There wasn't much to see from the waterway other than people eating at a couple of waterside cafes along the way and some nice cloud reflections on the sides of the office buildings....

The Woodlands is a beautiful mall.....it's like another city within a city. When you've been traveling all around the country, and staying in mostly rural areas, avoiding large cities because of driving a motorhome with a tow and all the congestion that comes with big city driving, going into a mall like this is sort of a culture shock. Malls back in my hometown of South Bend, IN are really really small in comparison to this one. Usually, unless it's a holiday, there aren't a lot of people walking around, either. This mall was VERY busy!

The mall had some interesting metal sculptures in the center....

There are many beautiful balconies to walk across from one side to another on the second floor which overlook the floor below.....

It's nice to see carousels still in operation.....

And if this set of horses outside P.F. Chang doesn't clue you in that it's an pricey restaurant to eat at, then I don't know what does. But it's still great food! Have only eaten there once, but really enjoyed it.

However, we didn't eat there, we decided to grab some supper at the Texas Roadhouse on the way home...They have a great budget conscious dinner special from 4:00-6:00 PM--- Mondays thru Thursdays. Several menu choices and smaller cuts of meat for 7.99 a person, that includes salad, their great rolls with the cinnamon butter, and potato. So that's what we did! Back home again to get out of the heat, and relax...and wait for that phone call.......Still waiting.....  :-)

Houston Galleria

inside center of Galleria

Sparky is not a shopper, but while passing the time waiting for her first grandbaby to arrive, she decided to go with Eldy to check out the exclusive Galleria Mall at the Westheimer exit off I-610 in Houston. It's too hot to sit outside the rig in the heat, so what better way to avoid it than go to a beautiful indoor mall. Sparky wanted to get a couple of questions answered at the Apple Store there, so she made an appointment with the "Genius" staff at the Apple Store. Anybody who understands computers and their technical workings is a genius! That excludes Sparky! But that's ok...it's fun to go into an Apple Store and have the techies fix things quickly and efficiently and they did. Another terrific Apple Store that we've been to...No wonder those geniuses are beating the competition handily.

We saw a Microsoft Store at the Galleria Mall, the first time we've seen one. They weren't anywhere near as busy as the Apple Store. Not even close....They've copied the Apple Store layout, and the way the Microsoft tech guys stand ready to assist and answer questions in their orange shirts reminded us exactly of the Apple Store geniuses in their blue shirts.

The Galleria Mall is an amazing place...lots of levels, part of the Simon Company empire of 337 retail/real estate properties in N. America and Asia, headquarters in Indianapolis, IN. Over 375 stores and restaurants to shop and eat from here at the Galleria, set beneath beautiful glass atriums....

There is an impressive, really big ice skating rink on one of the levels.

We watched lots of kid learn how to skate today, some hanging onto the wall for dear life and some appeared to be getting lessons with skills well under way. Posture, young lady, posture! Head up, straighten up that spine!

A future Michelle Kwan?

There's public skating sessions, beginner skating lessons and beginner hockey lessons offered at the Ice at Galleria. There's even circles stamped on the ice so a beginner can practice skating backwards! Sparky wishes she had had that when she was this little girl's age. Maybe she wouldn't have fallen on the ice rink at the local elementary school that fateful day in second grade, and lost BOTH her front secondary teeth!

This is SOME MALL! It is the 4th largest mall in the nation and has nine types of stone, suspended glass balconies, three types of wood and plush leather seating. It also contains two hotels and three office towers. You could say this is a city within a city. It was a very busy, bustling place today. Apparently, it's the number one tourist and shopping attraction in Houston. We enjoyed our visit to the Galleria today, and we were good! We didn't buy one single item today! Just walked around and gawked at everything.....We'll see what tomorrow brings....maybe a baby??????

VRA-VRA VROOM!!

It's hot today, hotter than hot...mid nineties...whaddya gonna do on such a hot day!?  Stay inside till late in the day, and then venture out to find some HOT bodies...CAR bodies, that is...Sorry to disappoint you if you were looking for hot women...heh, heh, heh. Eldy is conspicuously silent tonight because he's watching the Indy 500 first and now the Coca Cola 600 Nascar Race.

But if you are into muscle cars, reproduction cars, and elegant cars from the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, then this will probably almost be as good a visual treat. Come to Spring, TX, any Saturday night in the spring thru summer months and they are at the Kroger Signature shopping center on Spring Cypress Drive. Over 200 vintage cars usually, they said! Row after row after row in the big parking lot. They start lining up in late afternoon, and then into the evening, the parade into the parking lot continues.

Sparky doesn't know cars other than what cars she used to ride in in the fifties and sixties with friends, so you'll just have to look at all the photos today and do your own reminiscing! How about this beautiful blue mustang? I'm gonna guess it's a '65?

And she CERTAINLY doesn't know engines, but they sure looked purty under the hoods!

Sparky loves the grills...They are so elegant and classic. They kinda look like faces with character...

After looking at all the cars, she talked Eldy into visiting the local Tutti Fruitti nearby for some great frozen yogurt...yum!

And that was our day today...a visit to the car show late in the day and some frozen yogurt to try and cool down from the heat in Spring, TX....See you tomorrow.....

We Made it To Spring With BUGS on Board!

After a long, hard drive today from Kinder, LA, (about 205 miles) through much traffic congestion on I-10, bad roadway, construction zones and heavy traffic through Texas towns, we were pretty whupped. (Uh, Sparky wasn't whupped, just Eldo, clarifies Eldo.) Well, when Eldy gets stressed, Sparky absorbs SOME of that, too! So we're both tired.

We were so tired, that when a GIANT beetle/bug was seen crawling across the captain's chair up front, Sparky didn't have time to take a photo, she just swatted at it, stunning it and knocking it into the wastebasket which just happened to be conveniently underneath the bug. What a shot! She was  hollerin' the whole time, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? WHAT KIND OF BUG IS THAT? It's HUGE!" She's shrieking practically at the top of her lungs for Eldy to take the bug outside which was now trapped inside TWO grocery bags with the wastebasket shrouded in a THIRD grocery bag on the outside.  "Eldy, GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE, it's not funny! TAKE THE TRASH OUT, PLEASE!" Since I said please, he did. That was the biggest beetle/ bug we have ever seen. Sparky didn't think anything more about the bug, once it was gone, UNTIL tonight.....

ANOTHER BUG, the same size and the same color came sauntering across the floor until Eldy calmly exclaimed in a rather loud voice, "THERE'S ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE THE ONE FROM YESTERDAY!"  And then the bug/beetle/cockroached boogied across the floor, rapidly picking up his pace.  CRAP! Sparky grabbed the flyswatter, (actually, she grabbed the camera FIRST! Can you believe that? asks an incredulous E.) Well, yeah...I wanted to take a photo so I could identify it! She then grabs the flyswatter, SWAT!  Missed! Just as the cockroach scurried under the living room slide. GONE! for the moment. Hopefully, for a LOT of moments. Arrrrrgggghhhh! Great, now we have creepy crawlie thingies inside the house. How many? We don't know. But, these beetle/bugs are about TWO INCHES LONG! Sparky started investigating Mississippi beetles/bugs/cockroaches and found a photo that looks just like the ones we saw in the rig. To top it off, she remembered the conversation with the two fellows back in Mississippi at the casino, where they talked about the bugs, snakes and reptile problems home owners have been having since Hurricane Katrina wiped out a lot of the predators that eat these things. They actually asked, "Have you seen our cockroaches? They are HUGE!" Well, now we can say we actually HAVE SEEN THEM, and YES, they are HUGE! Two inches long, Sparky thinks three, actually! UGH! How to combat these, we don't know, and are open for suggestions. Naturally, having stayed in a bayou campground for several days, we're sure they hitchhiked along for our ride thru Louisiana and now here they are in Texas. Or maybe they are TEXAN cockroaches/beetles. We are not totally sure if they are cockroaches or not, but they sure look like the ones on the internet that identifies them as cockroaches. Everything is BIGGER in Texas, right?

Ok, back to the important stuff. There are two RV parks in Spring...Over the last week in our travels from South Carolina thru Alabama to Mississippi, we have met four sets of couples who have children in Spring, TX! Amazing to run across that many people in such a short period of time who all have adult children living in Spring.  Everybody says you can stay at Trinity Spring Oaks RV Park, or you can stay at Rayford Crossing. Of the two parks, Rayford Crossing is much nicer, but costs more. Here is the first park which we will be staying at for one week--Trinity Spring Oaks RV and Mobile Home Park off of Spring-Stuebner Road. That's the first clue that this is not going to be a "resort" type park, that it is a mobile home park and RV park. Which is fine...we just wish there were a few more amenities, that's the second clue this is a "no frills" park...There aren't any except for a small laundry.

This is a small park....It starts out with 30 sites at the front of the park by the office...15 back in, and 15 pull thrus. The pull thrus are short, barely enough room for a 40 foot motor home and tow car. Some sites have odd placements of nightime security lights on posts, so it was a little tight pulling into our site.

There are more RV sites located deeper into the park, we think there are about 70 total RV sites but we were not placed in the back of the park. Those RV sites must be for longer stays. When you come in, they assign you according to a site "suitable for your electric needs." Then they give you a written notice in big CAPITAL LETTERS that says, "WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR POWER SURGES OR SHORT CIRCUITING OF THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM. Please make sure you have surge protection and internal breakers in your RV." (Use 50 amp service only) Hmm-m-m-m-mm...What do you make of that? That electrical service has been problematic in the past? That people have fried their electrical systems in their rigs due to not using surge protection? Well, at least they've informed us of our rights. :-) They've got some other rules that don't apply to us, as we don't have pets, but here's what they say about THAT:
       "No dogs or cats over 20 pounds, full grown weight...No labs, dobermans, chows, etc. "  (Wonder   what the etc. covers?) So if you have a furry kid over 20 pounds, this park is not for you....

This is a "no-frills" park...no pool, no clubhouse, no place to hang out other than the tight space between your rig and your neighbor's....That's the neighbor's satellite dish, he must have had a little bit of a problem getting a signal because of how far he had to come out of his site to get out of the trees.

Some of the rigs are even closer, depending on what row you are in....

If you get lucky, and get a corner site, you have LOTS of room to spread out a bit and sit outside, although the sun is completely full blast all afternoon on the passenger side of the rig for most of the pull thru sites. This toy hauler has one of the nicer, more spacious sites of any of the RV sites in the front section of the park.

There is free wi-fi here, but it's sketchy...sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, it kicks you off at any moment, sometimes you can't get on after multiple tries, other times, no problem. It's kinda slow but we're grateful for the wi-fi to help us not zip through all of our allotted data for the month. (Too late--we're gonna be over...Eldo says as he heaves a big sigh.) Lots of bars for AtT & T and 4G on the cell, that's nice.

We are here for a week, waiting on the baby to come....Our weekly rate is 150.00, not too bad, but we've stayed in much nicer parks with a few more amenities for that price. But this is the big city and we're bracing for all the traffic, congestion and crazy drivers we're going to be encountering while we are here. We've already seen how Texans drive--CRAZY!

Did Sparky say it was HOT? And getting HOTTER, high of 93 today, it's hot all over the country, so there's no escaping the heat at the moment. And Sparky and Eldo are in a holding pattern, anyway, waiting for Sparky, JR., to have her baby. (Patience, Sparky, patience, soothes Eldo.) Patience is NOT one of my virtues. It's VERY difficult for Sparky to sit still, be calm, and wait....and read.....and knit....and not go anywhere and DO something! There's not a whole lot of nature around here to go off and hike, or kayak to pass the time, so it's QUIET time. Until Sparky sees another bug.....Bye for now.....

Kinda Nice in Kinder, LA

courtesy of the internet

Kinda nice? Better than that! On our way today, we had picked out the Coushatta Casino in Kinder, Louisiana, because of the very high ratings in RVparkreviews.com for their park, called Red Shoes RV park. Red Shoes was a Choctaw Indian chief.  However, the casino is owned by the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana. I'm not sure how these two are related, but there's a history lesson on how they are related, I'm sure. The casino is run by the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, and they are famous for their longleaf pine needle baskets. The baskets are beautiful!

We knew the casino was about 22 miles from I-10 and the town of Jennings, a little far, but it sounded like a very nice place to stay --VERY reasonably priced. How does 18.00 a night sound for a 40 acre park with a little lake, spacious, full hookups, a nice pool, a lodge with a fireplace, free shuttle to the casino, laundry, and a lovely atmosphere? We thought so, too!

On our way here, we took I-10 out of Ocean Springs, MS to I-12, back to I-10, then 26 north to 190 west, then to 165 north. We passed over the Baton Rouge Bridge and thought of Nick Russell (Gypsy Journal fame) and his nerves of steel...heh, heh, heh..(For those who don't know, Nick has a fear of heights on bridges)..

Piece of cake! The driving, that is....It's a great park--normal rate is 20.00 a night for all of the above, but there was a little discount which brought it down to 18.00. Terrific!

The grounds at Red Shoes RV Park

There is a nice pool...a d.j. was playing music poolside late today.....

Our site...plenty of room between us and the neighbor....

Here's a view of the RV spaces around us....The trees are young, so it will be a few years before every site has lots of shade.

We are just here for an overnight stay but we'll definitely come back when passing through the area on our way to and from Texas and points east or west. Tomorrow, we will be in Spring, TX, where we will be planted for the next five weeks. Until later.....