JoDo Chasing Rainbows
Exploring the US and Canada from our RV
Two Months in Hondo, TX
I cannot believe that we have been in Hondo for two months now. We have settled into our new spot. Now that we have a shed we can store some of the items that we don’t use everyday. This has also allowed us to take everything out of our basement of the RV and clean it. We have not started repacking the basement but will soon since we will leave in early April to go to Wyoming. Yes, we have committed to working at Bridge Bay Campground once again in Yellowstone National Park. This will be our third time in Yellowstone. We are very excited to be going back.
We have become active participants in our CO-OP. I co-chaired our CO-OPs New Years Eve Party. I have also volunteered to chair our Annual Flea Market on March 4, 2023. Many volunteers put in lots of effort for our largest fundraiser for the year. I am excited about it but also will be grateful when it is completed. I have been co-teaching Sit to Fit in our CO-OP twice per week and also teach Sit to Fit in our local town twice per week. I am enjoying that I can use my talents as a Certified Personal Trainer to use. This has been fun for me. Donna has joined the local American Legion to continue her work with veterans as well as joined the Community Emergency and Disaster (CED) committee. She participated in our community wide drill to make sure everyone knows what to do in an emergency.
You can see that we have become fully engaged in our community. We have been very busy. We plan on traveling a lot this year. After Yellowstone we plan on heading West to hope to visit Washington and Oregon before heading back to Hondo. It will be nice to get on the road again. Until we leave in April, we plan on getting out for short trips in February and March.
Jesse James Birthplace
Jesse James is part of US folklore. Many movies have been made about him and his exploits. We visited his birthplace in July 2022. I was more interested in getting beyond the myth and learn more about him and his family. I learned that this part of northern Missouri was sympathetic to the pro-Civil War South. Many of the families in this area were southern transplants who also kept enslaved people. The James’ family was very much aligned with the Confederate South. Jesse was too young to fight in the Civil War but he and his brother were ‘bushwhackers’. These guerilla like units operated in Missouri and Kansas during the Civil War. According to some of historians, some of the early robberies after the Civil War were banks or operations aligned with Unionist sympathies. What I could not find is whether the money he stole ever was given to anyone beyond his band of robbery friends. Movies almost make him seem like he is a Robin Hood type of character.
The family is very good at telling the story. Many personal items have been preserved and passed down to tell the story of the family. Jesse’s mother was an enterprising woman. After this death he was buried in her front yard. She would sell stones for $.25 a piece. That tradition lasts to today. There is a bucket with rocks where you can drop a quarter and take a rock.
