National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer

March 30, 1863

"It is the duty of nations...to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins...with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy...

The awful calamity of civil war...may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins."

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven... We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God.

We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."

"Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for...forgiveness."

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

The Good Reason...

A friend of ours wanted to know what was the good reason we had for driving or leaving warm Arizona for what has to be one of the worst areas for weather in the U.S. Oklahoma. Here he is, the best reason!!!

Grandson! If you are a grandparent, then you know why we had to brave Oklahoma weather for this little guy. Do you know why they are called grandchildren? Because they are really grand. We think grandchildren are more wonderful than children, but don't tell the children. In fact, if we had known just how great they were, we would have had our grandchildren first! Leo loves chicken.

Finally, a nice day...

If you have ever seen the movie, 'Food Inc', you know what this is. If you have not, this is a feed lot. Someone gave them a fancy sounding name, but I can't remember what it is. This a good sized one, but I have seen bigger, in Colorado and Nebraska. For the reader, fortunately, you cannot smell it, which depending on which way the wind is blowing, is brutal. The only time they smell worse than normal is when it is raining. That smell is hard to describe.

This is the 'Cadillac Ranch' just off Route 66. We always say we are going to stop and this as close as we get to stopping. Some people we talk to are disappointed after walking all the way out there. I'm not sure what they expected. I think it is junkyard art, but I am no art critic.

This is the world's largest cross. It should be, it is in Texas.

The Results!!!

After going five miles in two hours, getting stuck on a half of a degree hill (that is being generous in the angle) and being towed by a vintage 1980 Ford pickup truck, I arrived in this Smiths Foods parking lot where I spent the night shivering in a sleeping bag. I was never so glad to be parked. I promptly reported to the night manager, that I was spending the next eight hours parked in his lot. I soon had lots of company parked all over. Both the night and day manager were very kind and now Smiths is my favorite food store on the move. The real upside was that they had a Starbucks coffee shop inside!

What you cannot tell from the photo is about four inches of sloppy wet slush everywhere. When you are towing your only home, I cannot tell you how stressful it was. Every time I applied the brakes I expected the trailer to come up beside me. Not owning a snow or ice scraper, I used a piece of PVC pipe to remove most of the snow. Twenty four hours later I will be using my Flying J frequent fueler card to scrape ice from the truck.

I just stood there wondering, how I could be here.

Sunrise on my second day. Leaving New Mexico and about to enter west Texas. If you look real close you can see the solid ice that covered the entire truck. I think I found the best use for any credit card.

Thirty miles to far...

Sometimes, it is good to take a moment and reflect where one has been.

This is eastern Arizona or western New Mexico, this is also the end of good weather for me.

No one that is towing their home and all their possessions should keep going into this! If Norm would have been with me. I would have been sitting in our house in front of the heater.

A solo RV trip...

For sure, it snows in many parts of Arizona.

Very pretty day, outside it was 37 degrees.

All of the photos in this blog were taken in and around the Flagstaff area.

All these cars were passing me, I was busy taking photos.

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief training...

The pride and joy of the chainsaw crew.

It is a lot of stuff, but we use all of it at one time or another.

Here are some new shelves that Ernie made and I helped install.

They tell me this oven weighs 700 pounds. Wow! No wonder those trailers are so heavy to pull.