TravelingMorgansBlog Working our way around the contiguous 48 states in our RV.

November 10, 2010

2010 November 09

Filed under: 2010 — admin @ 9:01 PM

2010-11-09 Traveling Morgans Newsletter

The Traveling Morgans have arrived in Rockport TX and will start their winter job Monday, Nov. 15, 2010.

Larry has been diagnosed with a partially torn rotator cuff on his left shoulder. He has had a round of physical therapy. He will continue his exercises and consult a doctor in the Rockport area if necessary.

Our time in the Black Hills brought us to some interesting sites, and a visit from our daughters. The beauty of the Black Hills is STUNNING.

On Labor Day Monday, we went with our daughters to the “under construction” Crazy Horse Monument. For anyone who does not know, Crazy Horse already dwarfs Mount Rushmore. It is a multi-generation effort, with over 60 years of dynamite mountain sculpting and perhaps as many to go.

This particular night was one of the two “night blasts” of the year. It was something that will always stay with us.

You can see the amazing video at
http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CrazyHorse.shtml#CHnight

On the way south, we went to Lawton Oklahoma to visit a former workamper friend who has recently married. We parked in their backyard. You might call it a tight fit. Pictures will be on the 2010 travel pages within the next few weeks.

Larry has been working on TravelingMorgans.com with most of the time going to South Dakota.

These pages have now been removed from the “under construction” and are now in very good shape:

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/BlackHills.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CrazyHorse.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/MtRushmore.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CusterSP-Wildlife.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CusterSP-Sylvan.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/BadlandsNP.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/SheepMtnTable-BNP.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/MissouriRiver.shtml

These will be updated as needed, of course, but are now well work seeing.

The folowing pages are “under construction” and should be finished up by Christmas:

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/IronMtnRd.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CusterSP-Needles.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CusterSP-MtCool.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CusterSP.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Year/2010.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/WindCaveNP.shtml

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/

We currently plan to go to the Tennessee – North Carolina border to work next summer.

Tell us about events in your life and your plans for the coming year.

October 1, 2010

The Traveling Morgans are On The Road Again Fall 2010

Filed under: 2010 — admin @ 8:33 AM

We have finished our season in The Black Hills and are heading south.
Our first night is in Cheyenne WY at a Flying J.
We will see how well this works. It is a little noisy.

We plan to head south on I-25, stop in areas that look interesting and at some point turn east to San Marcos TX (scheduled to arrive Oct 11), and then on to Rockport TX.

Our most likely places to stop are Rocky Mountain National Park at Carlsbad Caverns. Nothing is written in stone. No place is certain to be on our agenda, and nothing close to a reasonable route is written off.

Let us know if we might possibly be intersecting your route or location.
We will meet with you if it is feasible.

Larry has done a lot with the South Dakota pages of the web site, but there is a lot more to do. We saw a lot and took a lot of pictures. He will send out a notice when the SD pages are finished.

In the meantime, you may want to look at these 3 pages that are pretty well finalized.

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CrazyHorse.shtml
This includes a NIGHT BLAST VIDEO. Very interesting.

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/MissouriRiver.shtml
The original Highway to the West was the Missouri River.

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CusterSP-Wildlife.shtml
The Wildlife Loop of Custer State Park is amazing!

Please write and let us know what you are doing.

September 12, 2010

End of Summer

Filed under: 2010 — admin @ 10:02 AM

Wow! The summer of 2010 is now history. The Traveling Morgans are getting their plans together for our trip south. We plan to head from the Black Hills of SD to Cheyenne WY, Rocky Mountain NP in CO and south to northern NM, then through the Texas Hill Country to San Marcos TX, and on to our winter job in Rockport TX.

Please let us know if you are anywhere near where we are traveling and if you would like to meet with us. We are ALWAYS glad to stop and visit with friends — even friends we are meeting for the first time.

We have enjoyed our time in the Black Hills. We have seen even more wildlife than in our previous visits. These pictures are being prepared for our web site and will be posted soon.

Of all the amazing things we have seen, and there were many, the night blast at Crazy Horse Memorial was possibly the best. Larry succeeded in recording a good video. You can see it at our web site

http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/CrazyHorse.shtml#CHnight

Many things have been updated on the web site
http://travelingmorgans.com

One is the section on the Missouri River in SD.
http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/MissouriRiver.shtml

We have recommendations for visiting South Dakota and the Black Hills in particular.
http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/BlackHills.shtml and
http://travelingmorgans.com/SD/SD-recommended.shtml.

March 15, 2010

The Traveling Morgans prepare to head north for the summer

Filed under: 2010 — admin @ 2:12 AM

It has been a few months since we have written to all of the friends we have made on the road.

This note will give website information and our 2010 travel plans.

First the web site:

Larry has finally finished the 2009 Travels Overview on
http://TravelingMorgans.com specifically
http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Year/2009.shtml .
He also has 2010 started at http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Year/2010.shtml

If you have a FACEBOOK page or a BLOG or participate in any other Social Networking site or forum, please consider putting any of the above links (or any other Traveling Morgans links) on any of those provided they are within all appropriate guidelines.

There is a lot more work to be done to the web site.
The Yellowstone and Texas sections are due for a major revision after our 2009 travels.

South Dakota and Arizona will be major additions.
Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho are also due to be added, with a revision for Montana.

We also will continue to add RECOMMENDATIONS for each state.

If you have any suggestion for the site, please let us know.

Now to our travel plans:

We have spent the winter working at Victoria Palms RV Resort in Donna TX.
If your main interest is activities in the park itself and you don’t mind being near a road, it is a pretty good to good place to be, depending on your site.

We will be leaving March 31 and heading to The Black Hills of South Dakota, where we be working at Beaver Lake Campground near Custer.

Our planned stops include a week at San Marcos TX for medical appointments and visiting friends, and Canyon TX (just south of Amarillo) where we will visit the renowned Palo Duro Canyon.

From there we will head north through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, eastern Colorado, western Nebraska and South Dakota’s Black Hills.

Let us know if our paths might cross. We will try to meet.

Please write and let us know what you are up to this summer and what you have done this winter.
Go to our CONTACT US page at http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Main/TM-ContactUs.shtml

November 29, 2009

Traveling Morgans in Donna TX, and Web Site Updated.

Filed under: Beginning — admin @ 3:32 AM

We hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!

We recently had to rebuild our address book,  You may be getting an email for the first time in sometime. If you receive a duplicate message, reply to the one you want removed and it will be removed. If you do not want to receive our messages, reply with instructions and we will follow them.

If you are one of those who has not received emails from us for awhile, we should tell you we are near the toe of Texas at Donna, just north of the Rio Grande and about an hour from South Padre Island.

Larry has been rebuilding the http://TravelingMorgans.com web site. You can see why at our site news page
( http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Main/TM-SiteNews.shtml). The new drop down menu system makes navigation very easy. If you are still using an older browser (such as IE6), the menus will not drop down, but the navigation buttons will take you to an appropriate section of our site map.

Please remember to click on any picture or map to see a larger version.

Our recommendations pages are now in pretty good order. You can select the ones you want to see from our site map at
http://travelingmorgans.com/Common/TMsitemap.shtml#TMsmRecommended

Our 2008 Travels page was never completed in the old format. It is now on line in the new format at
http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Year/2008.shtml.

The 2009 Travels Page is nearly finished. There are a lot more pictures to add, but the comments are up to date at
http://travelingmorgans.com/TM-Year/2009.shtml

One of the highlights of 2009 was the Texas Skimmer boat out of Rockport TX.  We saw about a quarter of the whooping cranes currently alive, plus many other birding highlights and had dolphins swimming in our wake.

Scott’s Bluff NE and Custer State Park SD are well worth a few days of anyone’s time.

Yellowstone was fabulous. Everyone should have a chance to spend several weeks there. Since it takes a long time to select and prepare the relative handful of pictures we post out of the thousands we have taken, it will be months before the YELLOWSTONE pages include our recent trip. The other locations mentioned will have their own pages also, but they are not up yet.

We also had wonderful times visiting with friends, even more than we list on the web pages.

There will be pictures added a little at a time, and the 2009 page will change a little almost every day. Some other pages will change also.

We will only send out a notification when a page or section is completed.

We had some hard times this year also. We had a good job go bad. Roscoe (miniature Schnauzer) had to have a second surgery for bladder stones. Our new trailer lost a wheel bearing while we were on our way to Yellowstone. There were others. We mention these only to provider perspective. It has been a wonderful year and we remain flexible and resilient.

We would sure like to hear from  you.

Thank you, and an early Merry Christmas.

June 16, 2009

Leaving San Marcos TX, going to Indianapolis, then on to Yellowstone

Filed under: Beginning — admin @ 6:56 PM

Hello and belated greetings.

Larry has been negligent in keeping everyone updated on the Traveling Morgans, and there have been no significant web page updates.

Here is what is happening for the Traveling Morgans.

First we have a new travel trailer. We have been making it into something that works for us — customizing our new home, as it were. [post links to pictures here].

While we were customizing the trailer and shaking out the bugs any new unit has, we had planned staying in San Marcos Texas. This would have also allowed us to get on social security (2010  for Larry, soon for Phyllis), but it was not to be                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    .

As to why we left San Marcos, the crux of the matter is the hours Larry was expected to work increased and Larry found he could not work them. When attempts to work things out were unsuccessful, the Traveling Morgans had to travel.

We were on our way to visit our children in Indianapolis, and calling to check on jobs, when we got an offer from West Yellowstone Montana and accepted it. We are due in West Yellowstone by the fourth of July. We will leave Indianapolis about June 24 and head for Yellowstone. Instead of July and August in Texas heat, we will be exploring the wonders of Yellowstone with its cool summers.

While we were in Texas, the most amazing thing we did this time was to take a skimmer boat trip out of Rockport TX to view the bird nesting areas of the Texas Gulf Coast. We saw more than 20 whooping cranes (largest and nearly the rarest of North American birds) and had dolphins swim with the boat.

For those interested in the technical information, here is what is keeping us from updating the web pages for now:

Larry found the software he was using to build the TravelingMorgans.Com web site was causing some problems. The html code it produced was bad and hard for browsers to load unless you had a high speed line. The “application builder”  html also causes Google to rank the pages very low. Larry is now learning HTML and related items from the ground up, and will then get some test pages up this summer.

We have seen some new things (like the Rockport boat trip) , and discovered other things we should post. New content will be coming. Old content will be converted.

Larry also reached the breaking point with Microsoft’s security issues and decided to migrate to Linux. He is learning a lot of new software. The changes to the web site encouraged this change. As long as Larry needs to learn new web development software, why not something free he can use for a long time in a free operating system?

May 10, 2009

Traveling Morgans Blog to Complement Web Site TravelingMorgans.com

Filed under: Beginning — admin @ 5:13 AM

The website http://travelingmorgans.com has thousands of pictures and some in depth treatment of issues.

This blog will begin to compliment this as a change to put preliminary information in place quickly.

When we travel, Larry will update the blog.

That being said, The Traveling Morgans are staying in one place for the longest time ever. We are in San Marcos Texas until May of 2010,

Many projects are coming together requiring a lot of time.

We are migrating from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.
We are getting new tools for writing web sites and getting familiar with them
We are still “working our way” and will be back to “working our way around the country” in 2010.
We have purchased a new RV and are working out the bugs.
We are getting all of our old photographs digitized and organize. Some of these will eventually be on the Web Page.

We still need to organize our Arizona and South Dakota web pages from our 2005-2006 time.
New experiences — primarily in Texas — need to be added.

We are going to get our recommendations page in a usable order.

The Traveling Morgans are still following our dream of seeing the natural wonders of this great country.
We want to share this will many others and encourage them to follow THEIR dream. If it is the same as ours, that is great, but it is also great to see people following whatever noncompetitive dream they have.

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