Life is an Adventure not a Career!

October 22nd - Flagstaff Arizona to Las Vegas -

Our 5 motorhome caravan left New Mexico and stopped last night at Black Bart's Steakhouse and Musical Revue. Bart also had a campground out back where all of us spent the night. The waiters and waitresses sang and danced as they served us dinner and the piano played all night wether the man sat at it or not. This morning we made the last leg of our trek into Las Vegas via the Hoover Dam. While we were there they were filming a Marine commercial so the entire roadway was lined with young Marines in their dress uniforms.


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	Parrottrek Journal 2007

	That Frank, always a romantic

October 10th - The Great Outdoors, Titusville, Florida -

Yaaahhooo! 10 glorious days here in beautiful Florida! Ahhhhhh feel that sunshine! I am already a very nice shade of brown, well at least as brown as I, the palest woman in America, can get. The nice shade of brown comes from long bike rides every morning with Frank, Cody on his handlebars and Abbey safely snuggled in her carrier on my handlebars purring as we drive around the resort. After our 5-8 mile morning bike rides, we have breakfast outside by the lake in our backyard. After breakfast we take another bike ride to the post office, and then to the newsstand where we pick up either the USA Today or Florida Today depending on which title story grabs us. With newspaper in hand, we head back home. Frank reads the paper and I the book of the day sitting by the lake in our lounge chairs. I have finished three books already, all murder mysteries, which I love and have started a fourth, something I picked up from the library just up the street from our house, still inside the resort. It's a very sad yet witty and sweet story of a young widow titled 'Good Grief'. She makes you laugh and cry at the same time. The book makes me very thankful for a living spouse. Once the day begins to warm up, I again hop on my bike and head to the pool where most of my reading is done. Frank stays by the lake with Cody on his knee playing the guitar or power washing the driveway. I never noticed just how dirty the cement was until I noticed that Frank could leave sweet love notes on it. After two or three hours at the pool and lots of floating time in the sun, I head back to our lot, meet up with the boys, who by this time are done with their chores and back to playing the guitar. It now being about 4 or 5 o'clock in the evening we usually head to the restaurant on the premises via the bikes where they have the greatest snacks and Happy Hour from 4-6pm. We have met a ton of new neighbors and have caught up with a few familiar faces, including the mother of Cody's sweetheart, Casey the Harlequin Macaw. It's amazing how many people remember us due to the birds. They all see us on our multiple bike rides. After a couple hours of socializing we head home, make dinner, sit outside again for awhile watching the lake and the animals roaming around it including Blue Herons, cranes, and a few alligators. Once the sun sets we soak in the jacuzzi and relax from our hard day.


			October 12th - A couple mornings this week I have woken up before Frank and have taken long walks around the nature trail, which is behind our street and continues through half the resort. The first morning I walked, I saw an enormous flock of wild turkeys and 4 or 5 deer crossing the path. Of course I was unarmed and without my camera so the next day I packed accordingly. The deer were fun to watch. They would jump the fence that separates our resort from an enormous preserve and walk to the river on our side for water. Today, instead of hitting the pool, we headed to the beach. It was a perfect day. The weather was great and the wind was just strong enough to fly Frank's kite. In the picture to the left you can see Frank flying his kite in the background as he skips over the waves. We built a sand castle, well actually it was more like a wall since we were sitting in the water while we formed it and every fourth wave would take out half the castle. It was fun to see if we could rebuild it before the next tsunami hit. On our drive home, we stopped at a couple spots on the road where we could see Kennedy Space Center and view the Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, ready for it's flight into space.

	We will already be in Las Vegas when they launch it but we did watch a rocket launch last night from our backyard which was quite impressive.Since the last time we were here Cody got to watch the rocket launch with us, this time Abbey sat with us for the viewing. She was a little nervous when the ground began to shake but once she ran to the safety of her carrier and peeked out the side to watch the action she was happy again.

			October 13th - This afternoon as we sat outside with all three birds, Abbey hunted butterflies as they landed on the nearby flowers, Cody talked to all the neighbors passing by and all of a sudden Bradley started making his "something in the sky is going to eat me" noise as he nervously flapped his feathers. I looked up and only saw white fluffy clouds and a Turkey Vulture soaring above, which won't eat anything unless it is already dead so I thought all was okay. Frank looked up and saw the enormous Bald Eagle soaring right above us, which I apparently blinked and missed even though he took up half the sky. He moved around the air so quickly, and since Frank walking around convinced him not to dive for Bradley and eat him in front of all of us, he flew on in hope of finding one of the chubby bunnies that hop around the lakes here.

October 16th - Lazy Days RV World - Tampa Bay, Florida -

Today was such a gorgeous day and since the Jeep's top has been down all week and we haven't left our surroundings here much, we decided to take a road trip. We were originally going to try and make it to St. Petersburg which is a very nice beach on the Gulf of Mexico, the west coast of Florida, but didn't make it quite that far. We stopped in Tampa for lunch and then walked through Lazy Days, which is the world's largest RV dealership. No, we aren't looking for a different motorhome, as ours is perfect and we love, love, love it, but we did want to see what new things they put in this year's models. We looked at all sorts of sizes of RVs from van conversions all the way up to 45 foot Class A's. It's crazy the things that they put in motorhomes these days. They had a chassis on display that a majority of motorhomes are built on. Wouldn't Frank look a bit funny driving this down the road without the rest of the house? Besides, it might be a little cold and we might just loose a few things along the way. Late today we spent some time at the pool, where Frank made friends with a very brave little lizard.

114 Windsong Way -

Just to give a bit of a visual we have included a couple pictures of what our lot looks like now, and what we will build on it someday when we decide to settle down here. A 'Florida Room' is essentially an 800 sq. ft house with a kitchen area, living room/spare bedroom and bathroom, but it also has a large screen room built on the back so you can still enjoy the beautiful views of our backyard, the animals and surrounding trees along with the soaring rockets and Space Shuttle launches from over the ocean, while keeping the area cool in summer and bug free in the early evenings when the bugs do come out and we don't want to go inside yet.

	We girls spent a little time on the slots, I won about 6 dollars, but then I'm a very frugal gambler, and take 5 dollars in with me and play whatever penny machine has a parrot on the pay lines. The guys spent their time trying to figure out how to get a stripped bolt out of John and Maureen's step that was causing it to collapse. Once they ruled it an impossible feat, they gave up and we all went to dinner inside the casino. The lay out of the restaurant was quite unique. We had our own room with a TV so we could all watch the football game and some very comfy couches that were huge and circular that enabled us all to lounge and still see and talk to everyone. Since they don't allow you to take any pictures inside a casino we have none to show you. I did however think you might appreciate seeing just where this year's adventures have taken us, and what those routes look like on the map. If you follow the green lines and the numbers above, each number represents either a race location or a fun detour that took us a little out of the way, you can see just how many times we crossed this great country. It's crazy to visualize. We have literally been to all four corners of the country. Yes #6 is on the map, but for some reason it's tucked below #25. Before we left on our trek, the country seemed so enormous. Now that we drive across it on quite a regular basis, it is all beginning to feel like home to us with many familiar areas. However we do already miss Florida, since the days here in New Mexico are about 50 degrees and nights get down to somewhere between 28-35. No more sleeping with all the windows open, unless of course you want to catch pneumonia. We have had to use our heater almost all night long these last couple nights. Even the birds start to get the shivers when the sun goes down. Cody climbs under the covers of the bed at night and snuggles up against us to warm up even more. It's quite cute.

	Every so often they would stop traffic, so we all at one point pulled off to the side of the road to have lunch and watch for a clearing in the traffic. That's just one more advantage to driving around in your house. You always have a stocked fridge and most importantly, a potty just in case the line of traffic lasts longer than you do.

October 28th - Las Vegas, Nevada -

22 races down and one to go. Wow! This exciting year has flown by so quickly we can hardly believe it. The Budweiser Team had a great weekend and the championship is still within reach which will make Pomona very exciting. Along with the views of the drag races we also enjoyed watching all the jets fly over head from Nellis Air Force Base just over the hill. Some would fly in formation, and others on their own. In order to get a picture you had to have the camera already on and open and pretty much watch the sky through the lens since once the jet was in a picture perfect spot and you could see them, they were going about 700 mph and would be out of sight by the time you blinked. Gary and Kathy came out to the race from New Hampshire to cheer us all on, and to get out of the cold weather for a brief time. They even helped us tear down the Monster hospitality tent this evening. With the extra help we were done in record time and were able to have dinner with them and visit for a few hours after work, which is always nice. With them, they brought some fun pictures of their property, which if you remember we visited earlier this year along with some photos of the NASCAR race at the track where Gary manages the concessions.

	Halloween always makes me think of Kari, since the two of us went trick-or-treating almost every year from kindergarten to about 8th grade. We always came up with great costumes. One year we were mimes, which came in quite handy when we didn't want to talk to anyone other to shyly say 'Trick or Treat'. Another year I went as a ballerina which wasn't quite as warm as I hoped for nor as comfortable as I expected. Considering I am not the most graceful of people and at one point ended up one the other side of a small picket fence with my hoop skirt around my neck, talk about embarrassing when you are 10 years old, it was my least favorite costume of all time. My truly favorite costume of all time was the year my dad made a turtle shell out of enormous piece of cardboard that fit on my back. It went from my neck to my knees, and was flexible it the middle so not only could I wear sweats and stay warm, I could move around while wearing it. Deciding against costumes this year, we had a fun cook-out with everyone that we camp and work near since it might be a few weeks until we see them again. While we were hanging out, Tony Schumacher, a Top Fuel Dragster driver, came over with his guitar to jam with Frank. He gave Frank a few lessons on strumming and Frank introduced Tony to the wonderful world of finger picking. It's amazing all the different styles people have when playing the guitar. They played for about an hour which was great to listen to, especially since Tony sang as well and he wasn't have bad. Hey, if racing ever ends who knows?

November 3rd - Potential Poison Pepperoni -

Warning!! Millions of boxes of Totino's pizza may be contaminated with e-coli, so check your freezer and the stock numbers. Cody was very helpful with this. He looked at the number, tasted the pepperoni on the outside of the box and said sure enough it was contaminated. Bradley took over from there. He verified the stock number and threw it in the trash so we are all safe from the potential poison pepperoni. The funny part of this story is, back when we were pizzeria owners, we would always sort of joke around that all is great until you get that poison batch of pepperoni and people take you for everything you have. That obviously never happened to us, Thank you Jesus, but you can see where the reality of poisoned pepperoni would hit close to home.

November 4th - National Finals - Pomona, California -

The Budweiser team could taste the championship. All they had to do was beat the U.S. Army. As if the name isn't intimidating enough. The U.S. Army Racing Team has won the last three consecutive World Championships, and the last one they achieved by breaking every record ever made in the sport, so beating them at the National Finals is not an easy task. As the anticipation grew we all made our way to the starting line to watch it live. Luckily for us, the Clydesdales were there for added support and a definite happy sight to take everyone's mind off of the race before them. As the cars entered the staging area the crowd silenced. The lights turned from red to amber to green and both cars flew off the starting line. Brandon was in the lead and we all started to get excited... ... Unfortunately the U.S. Army was victorious, mind you this is the only time those words will ever be uttered where one won't get arrested for treason, and the Budweiser Team, which ended up dropping a cylinder at about the 1000 foot line and watched as the Army car sailed passed, took third place in the standings. Not too shabby out of all the other great teams out here, but of course the Budweiser Team was a bit disheartened to walk away from today without the Championship Trophy. Earlier in the week Brandon, the driver of the Budweiser Top Fuel car, finally received his personalized motorcycle given to him by Dale Earnhardt Jr, who also drives a Budweiser car in some other circuit that a few people watch (ha ha ha). The motorcycle was presented to Brandon back in June, but it took a national tour to be photographed by all. It is probably the most beautiful bike I have ever seen and the detail is amazing. It resembles a Top Fuel Dragster as much as a motorcycle can. Well as you know our season is now officially over at the commencement of this race and we will heading to the Santa Barbara area to visit and catch up with all our friends and family that we haven't seen since we left earlier this year. It's amazing how fast this year went, and all the things we did. We certainly hope you all enjoyed reading along as much as we did experiencing it. We of course will keep you up to date on all our California adventures, but just wanted to say thanks for being loyal followers of The Whitmore Adventures '07... ... and all our previous years for that matter! XOXOXO!!!!!

	There were lots of pretty birds to watch		Holy @$%#! What a rip off		Dinner and coffee with the Whites		Sissy guard's Frank's guitar

	As you look up into the sprawling tree above, you can see the American Flag wave through the leaves, and as you look out into the field, there are dozens and dozens of birds taking full advantage of the bird feeder and bath. Bradley was even brave enough to float in his pirate ship on the waves of the warm water. We spent a day in Lompoc with Frank's Aunt and Uncle and their darling kitties who were extremely curious about Frank's guitar and it's case. We met up with good friends in Santa Barbara over coffee and others at good old Antonio's Pizza where we had lunch almost everyday since we have been having withdrawals since we hadn't visited Santa Ynez since January. It's still, without a doubt, our most favorite pizza in the country, and that still holds true since we are now on the having to pay for it. As As beautiful as California is with it's beaches and hillsides and views, even though it could about 27 inches of rain, the fuel prices here are higher than any other part of the country and considering we have been to and bought fuel in pretty much every state we can safely say this without any exaggeration. Thank God we only have to refuel the Jeep here since the motorhome won't need fuel till we drive it to Arizona where fuel is less than anywhere else in the country.

November 12th - Pismo Beach -

One of our favorite locations to camp when we lived here in California was this very place. The RV park is literally on the beach and the darling city of Pismo Beach is the perfect biking distance away, so we rode around for a couple hours visiting the old shops that we used to frequent like Poncho's Surf Shop and the Kite Store. Along with gorgeous sunrises, walks along the romantic ocean front and the best clam chowder anywhere on the West Coast, is the greatest little theatre we have ever been to. The Great American Melodrama is where we spent many evenings over the years. We laughed, booed and cheered with the best of them. To relive some old memories we once again visited the little Oceano theatre and watched 'The Bride of Frankenstein'. It of course was a spoof on the horror movies of old, and kept us laughing and cheering the entire night. After the main performance they have a Vaudeville Revue. Tonight's was a spoof on all the reality TV shows and it was great. We will have to hit the Melodrama again in a couple weeks when they have their annual Christmas performance of Scrooge. We will be here all week so the birds will get lots of sunshine a bike rides by the ocean.

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