Thanksgiving Dinner

Saturday, November 30, 2013
Thanksgiving Day
Today was another cold one as we spent the morning getting the rig ready for travel in the morning.
Thanksgiving dinner was hosted by the Park. They supplied the turkey, ham and dressing and did all the set up. We brought two pies, our drinks and dining implements. There were three long tables set up in a not very big room. I counted about 40 people all together. After the staff introduced themselves to applause, and after a short prayer of thanks, we politely lined up according to instructions (to maximized flow and minimize confusion). The food was plentiful and very good. Some folks went to a fair amount of trouble to bake/make their dish.  We didn't.

I'm of the buffet school "See it, take it." So my plate is a mish-mash of one of almost everything.

I was surprised to see a young couple come in and happy to see that they sat at our table. RVers are friendly, helpful and adventurous people with interesting stories to tell, but for the most part we are retired geezers so it is refreshing to see young blood and get their stories. Unfortunately for me Peg was sitting between me and them, and being the deaf geezer that I am, and as loud as the room was from all the other deaf geezers I couldn't hear  a word they said. So all my information is 2nd hand from Peg.

Rachel and Spencer

The kids are Spencer and Rachel and they are from the Bay area originally, more recently Lake Tahoe or Taos, I've forgotten - you  see, a  deaf and senile geezer. They have a blog and Facebook page which Rachel oversees (she's a journalist). All their pertinant info is there so I won't repeat it here. They have found a way to travel and work and have been doing so since December 2012. I don't know how much longer they plan on living this way, but Spencer told Peg it was cheaper living in an RV than living in the Bay area.

The man sitting across from me was Vern and his wife Kathi, both from Jackson, Wyoming (not Jackson Hole-that's the area around Jackson, as he seemed tired of explaining). They also were formerly from the Bay area. Vern worked for GE in their nuclear power plant division until he got laid off/retired. Now he works for GE as a consultant, since as he says "I guess I'm the world's expert on my little niche" and whenever there is a question they call him. He also does training for GE, which "pays enough to put diesel in the motorhome".  In fact he had just returned from a training session in Oswego, NY and was due to fly back next week.

Vern and Kathi

Next to Vern was another man whose name a never got and across from him, next to me, was his wife, whose name also I never got. I couldn't see her name tag and he seemed to be busy shredding his like it was a beer bottle label. Anyway, he didn't talk much until somehow the subject of apples came up. They are from Washington state and he owned orchards for many years. The gist of the conversation was that they ruined not only the Washington apple, but also the apple business by breeding the apples for color, shape and size while letting the flavor and texture decline. I told him the Washington Delicious was my favorite apple when I was growing up, but that I wouldn't eat one now. He said they forced the growers to grow ever larger and darker apples to where they were so deep red they were almost black, but the taste was lost in the process.

The conversations lasted longer than the dinner, which I suppose is the mark of a good dinner party. We both wished this had happened earlier in our stay so we could have gotten to know folks better. We also agreed we needed to take notes next time. Too much valuable information flies by and it is too hard to remember it all.