Hold Onto Your Hat…

Wow, was it windy last night ! Had 40-45 m.p.h. winds and it was rocking the rig and blowing the car around as we were driving around this morning. The guys on the ferry were all bundled up and I felt so bad for them. They looked like they were froze to death. I did see a little of the dolphins as we crossed on the ferry, amidst the white capped waves. There are docks for four ferries so we never have to wait to cross. It’s a very quick process to get across so we never have to add in a lot of extra time when we know we’re doing to Aransas Pass or Rockport.
Yesterday was gorgeous…temps of 82 when we went to Corpus Christi and a great breeze.
We’re trying to figure out what to do this weekend. There is a uninhabitable island that we can take a boat to and spend a few hours wandering around. There are no services, no buildings….nothing. Kind of like pretending we’re Gilligan for a few hours. Might be fun…a lot will depend on what the weather is going to be.

Last night, when we went over to the hot tub for our nightly soak, there were two women in the tub already. They are from Juneau, Alaska and have a large bus-type rig that they use during the summer months. They escape the winters in Juneau and travel around the warm states, performing for RV parks. They are called the “Alaskan String Band”. They were double booked last night so they got the night off. They will be back to perform on the 18th. There’s a mother, father, two daughters and a son who perform in the band. We’re hoping to go listen to them when they return to the park to play. We had a nice time talking to them. They said they already had four feet of snow before they left Juneau. They leave their rig in the states, when they return back home. It’s so nice to meet people on the road and learn about their lives and where they are from.
Anxious for the weekend to be here so we can explore the area. We’re hoping the temps will be warm enough that we can get the trike out and get a ride in. We’ll let you know what we come up with.

Memories...

Today Linda and I watched a really interesting show on the PBS channel. It was about animals and the way they help humans. One segment of the show was how dolphins are used for training with physically and mentally impaired children. Dolphins have an inherent sense of how to interact with children, depending on the severity of their disability. They know when to be gentle, as in the case of a little boy who had some severe physical disabilities. One family, who had a little boy with a rare neurological disorder, lives in England but they make the trip to the Florida Keys every year for two weeks of dolphin therapy for their son. The father tapes the sessions so that his son can watch the tapes when they return home. The boy is mesmerized by the dolphins and has a unique connection with them that has brought him out of his world of silence and he has learned to speak. It was pretty amazing.

Another segment of the show talked about chimpanzees who live at Lion Safari in Florida. These chimpanzees were instrumental in research projects in the 60's that led to vaccinations for hepatitis and polio. Many chimps were used early on in the space program, before it was deemed safe for men to travel into space. They were shot into space and then studied once they returned to earth to learn the physiological affects on a body so similar to that of humans. A woman who was one of the researchers, and worked with these chimps, went to Lion Safari to see her old buddies. She had not seen them in 18 years. Once the research had been completed on these particular chimps, they had been moved to this facility in Florida to live out the rest of their lives. It was very touching to see how all of these chimps remembered her and greeted her return with big smiles and hugs. It was very apparent, that even after such a long time, they still remembered her. One of the oldest chimps that she visited was in the hospital when she visited. She said that he had been very instrumental in the research on hepatitis and humanity owed a lot of thanks to him for giving his life for medical science. He died two days after she visited with him.

This woman's dream was to create a place for the hundreds of other research chimps that are throughout the country and have no place to go....now that they are no longer used in the labs. She has been given 200 hundred acres in Shreveport, Louisiana to create an environment where these chimpanzees can live out the rest of their lives in their normal habitat instead of in a cage. What a wonderful thing that will be for these chimps that have given so much to mankind. Seems like the least we can do for them, don't you think ?