REMEMBERING PAST THANKSGIVING

Brian and I have full time RVing for a long time now.  When holidays come around, it gets a little depressing sometimes for me.  I miss the family gatherings and all the trimmings that goes along with it.

But as Brian and I do travel we are making new memories for the holidays-making each year a little better for me to accept.

I remember our first Thanksgiving on the road.  We were staying at a Corp of Engineer park near Hot Springs AR.  Brady Mountain campground to be exact.  We were newbies to the RV full-time lifestyle; fresh on the road-not even a month.  In fact we still had temporary tags both on our Coachman 5th wheel and dodge diesel truck.

Our small little 5th wheel had a very small oven and we couldn’t even fit the smallest turkey in it-even if we tried.  So the next best thing was going out for a Thanksgiving dinner.  We called around and being on a tight budget-we settled  on Shoney’s Thanksgiving buffet.

Thanksgiving day rolled around and we decided to keep a tradition that we started when the girls were young and that was having pumpkin pie for breakfast. (now that’s another story to be written at another time).  It started to rain like the dickens as we hopped into our truck and headed to town.  Got into Shoney’s and waited a short time to be seated.  The turkey turned out to be rolled turkey meat-not even a real turkey!  The dressing I think was to be cornbread dressing; which we were not use to.  When it came to the pie, a waitress came around and asked if we wanted pumpkin, apple or sweet potato pie.  Of course we said pumpkin.  We got a small sliver of a slice and a dollop of hard cool whip on top (it’s a good thing we ate a small one for breakfast…).

It was the most disappointing Thanksgiving meal we could possibly ever had!  Next thing was laundry to do and there was a laundry mat open.  Two of the machines ripped me off and no one to complain to…

We soon discovered that the Wal-Mart supercenters were open!  Never been in one until we came to AR before; we manage to pass over 3 hours of just walking around, while it poured outdoors. 

So that is how our first Thanksgiving on the road turned out.  Each year did get better.  We soon found private parks and spent holidays in them; which helped the holidays go much easier for the both of us. 

We did not try another Thanksgiving meal out again-until a few years ago when we spent the holiday down in North Padre Island for winter.  We went into Corpus Christi to Golden Corral.  They did do carved turkey.  We were there early enough-but it just still didn’t seem like it was the best.  I guess there just isn’t anything like a good home cooked meal….

We did have fun with holiday dinners in the private park.  You had a huge variety of food along with both types of dressing-bread and cornbread.  The only bad thing about that was-no left over turkey to take home! 

So from now on it’s a given with us-We will cook our own Thanksgiving dinner and make our own memories each year!  And we can pig out as much as we want to!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and hope each year brings new memories….