I Visit Bethlehem… (GA93)

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 4,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 22nd year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

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The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails RV Resort in Chehalis, Washington. I’ll planning to depart her June 11th.

 

 

Since my RVing life is changing (see above), I’m starting to re-visit previously visited places. So rather than constantly re-blogging past entries, I’ve decided to do something different.

 

 

In 2011-2013, Mary and I did a 682 day, 12,679 miles in the motorhome and 8,000 miles in the Bronco, circumnavigation of the United States, which I called The Great Adventure. I called it so because other than my oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation in June in Connecticut, I didn’t know where we would be going or when we would be there!

 

 

So, unless I do something really different and unusual warranting a new blog entry, I’ll be posting entries from that trip.

 

 

 

This entry was posted April 27, 2012…

 

 

 

 

A few days ago I passed through Belen, New Mexico. I had read that everything in this city revolved around the railroad. So I parked the motorhome nearby to the Harvey House Museum in the old station. There are actually three stories here…the railroad, the Harvey House and the Belen Model Railroad Club. The city name in Spanish means Bethlehem.

 

 

Rather than me try to explain the history here…it’s easier if you will click the below links and read for yourself…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belen,_New_Mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Harvey_Company

http://www.donaanacountyhistsoc.org/HistoricalReview/ThreeHistoricalReview2011.pdf

http://www.belenharveyhouse.com/BMRC/index.htm

 

 

Once again I was faced with difficult photography conditions…rather dimly lit interiors and brilliant sunshine showing through the large windows in the background. Nonetheless, forward I went…

 

 

Shortly after my arrival I was fortunate enough to meet up with Maurine McMillan. She’s been at the museum for 20 years and now serves as the Director of a staff of 14 volunteers…

 

 

 

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She was very knowledgeable and told me all about the history of the railroad, station, museum, the Harvey Girls and the Belen Model Railroad Club.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some photos that I took while there…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To see the other 50 photos that I took while there, click this link…
https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/BelenNewMexico

 

 

There’s no way that I can show in the above photos the details of the model railroad club’s layout. Only an in-person visit can allow for the full appreciation of their efforts.

 

 

To appreciate how big the railroad is here, I’m presenting three Google Earth images.

 

 

 

 

 

The first one show the full railroad yard and how it relates to the city…

 

 

 

 

 

Then a closer look. Can you count how many sets of railroad tracks there are? I can’t…

 

 

 

 

 

And then a view looking down on the building that serves as a station, museum and home to the Belen Model Railroad Club…

 

 

Another joy of the full-time RVing lifestyle is visiting unique and interesting places. Belen certainly qualifies for that category!

 

 

 

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE! MARY WROTE A MANY GREAT BLOGS…SO WHENEVER SHE PUBLISHED A BLOG POSTING THE SAME DAY THAT I DID…YOU WILL BE ABLE TO READ HER BLOG BY CLICKING THE BELOW LINK! DO IT NOW…!!!

https://otrwjam.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/apples-and-dentists/

 

 

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS.

 Yesterday was partly cloudy with occasional rain  and 64 degrees. Forecast for today is cloudy with occasional rain and 59 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2017

WE NEED A RAINY DAY.

There’s a song that starts I LOVE A RAINY DAY, … Well it’s cold and wet and miserable today, especially since I turned the pilot off on my heater and cleaned up my wood stove for warmer weather.

I can’t say I’m loving this rainy day, but we definitely need it. And, there is comfort to hanging out in your robe and slippers for half a day, to work on a project set aside and waiting. For me, a couple of unfinished rugs and one needing repair. And a chance to slog through saved scraps for quilts and begin another while other blocks lay forgotten and tucked away.

I took the time to read some poetry and I like this one enough to share. It is in the public domain.

Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry, Now

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

By A. E. Housman

And, another:

I normally don’t like poems that don’t rhyme, but this one reminded me of journey’s I’ve had on trains and it was just as described in this narrative poem.

The Dining Car of the Southern Crescent, By John Campbell

The Southern Crescent
snakes its way through
the rolling fog shrouded
piedmont landscape;
a young man on spring break,
returning home from
college, crosses the creaky
passageway that leads from
Pullmans to the dining car.

Breakfast smells give rise to
an ambitious order of fresh coffee,
country ham with red eye gravy,
grits, scrambled eggs and
biscuits with blackberry jam.

The waiter, agile and accomplished,
dressed in a white starched apron,
steadies himself against the swaying
motion of the train; with serving tray
in hand and balanced, he places the
piping hot breakfast on a table decked
with a linen table cloth, pewter
creamers, thick silverware, coffee
cups and saucers and plates etched with
a crescent moon insignia; a small
bundle of daffodils sit in a crystal
vase near the window.

The young man with the vittles before him,
relishes a feeling of adult composure
and delight. “How could life be this good?”
A breakfast fit for a king, waiters
eager to please, railway views of
rural Carolina: tenant shanties,
grazing black angus, abandoned junkyards,
brownstone depots and sleepy towns.

He, still unfamiliar with the niceties
of the wealthy elite, or even the
acquired dignities of his college
professors, avows, while pouring
coffee from a silver carafe into
a Syracuse China cup, that the
dining car of the Southern Crescent
is a place of utmost refinement.

 

John Campbell’s poem was delivered to my mailbox by A Poem A Day, that I subscribe to. His poem is available framed from Poem A Day, and is not in the public domain.

 

 

 

 

Roscoe, Texas

Mary remains at home in California tending to medical issues.

Yesterday I drove the motorhome the about 125 miles from Lubbock to Roscoe, Texas. In doing so I dropped from 3,256 to 2,358 feet in elevation and from 229,000 to 1,322 population. I was driving southeast on U.S. Highway 84 and fighting a constant 30+ mile per hour wind hitting the motorhome broadside on the passenger side. It was a very tiring 2.5 hour drive driving directly into the sun once again. When you are in West Texas you are in WIND COUNTRY! I saw hundreds of wind generators along the way.

I’ve got the motorhome hiding behind American Legion Post #217 trying to shelter it from the wind which still manages to come around the side of the building. I’ve done a lot of rocking and rolling since I arrived here just before noon yesterday.

I expect to depart later this morning. Here are some photos…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

Driving into the sun once again…

Here I am hiding behind the American Legion Post…

Looking out the motorhome windshield and using the zoom lens overlooking the railroad tracks you can see some wind generators along the highway…

I might as well show you the trains going by. !00+ car trains passed by about every hour. I did not get a great night’s sleep…

And I always like to show the view from the dinette widow…

Finally, sunset over Roscoe, Texas at 6:30 PM…

Dealing with strong and constant winds is not another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…
http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2012
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

I Visit Bethlehem…

A few days ago I passed through Belen, New Mexico. I had read that everything in this city revolved around the railroad. So I parked the motorhome nearby to the Harvey House Museum in the old station. There are actually three stories here…the railroad, the Harvey House and the Belen Model Railroad Club. The city name in Spanish means Bethlehem.

Rather than me try to explain the history here…it’s easier if you will click the below links and read for yourself…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belen,_New_Mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Harvey_Company

http://www.donaanacountyhistsoc.org/HistoricalReview/ThreeHistoricalReview2011.pdf

http://www.belenharveyhouse.com/BMRC/index.htm

Once again I was faced with difficult photography conditions…rather dimly lit interiors and brilliant sunshine showing through the large windows in the background. Nonetheless, forward I went…

Shortly after my arrival I was fortunate enough to meet up with Maurine McMillan. She’s been at the museum for 20 years and now serves as the Director of a staff of 14 volunteers…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view...

She was very knowledgeable and told me all about the history of the railroad, station, museum, the Harvey Girls and the Belen Model Railroad Club.

Here are some photos that I took while there…

To see the other 50 photos that I took while there, click this link…
https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/BelenNewMexico

There’s no way that I can show in the above photos the details of the model railroad club’s layout. Only an in-person visit can allow for the full appreciation of their efforts.

To appreciate how big the railroad is here, I’m presenting three Google Earth images.

The first one show the full railroad yard and how it relates to the city…

Then a closer look. Can you count how many sets of railroad tracks there are? I can’t…

And then a view looking down on the building that serves as a station, museum and home to the Belen Model Railroad Club…

Another joy of the full-time RVing lifestyle is visiting unique and interesting places. Belen certainly qualifies for that category!

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2012
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

THE HENRY FORD MUSEUM, DEARBORN, MICHIGAN

Henry Ford was like many of us, he liked to collect “things”. When titans of industry collect it touches every walk of life: invention, history, work, employment, people, machines and how they changed and grew America. Sectioned off into themes, Truth and Justice, Jewelry, Pewter, and Prefab Housing- those are the places we didn’t get to. Art, Sue, Jim and I must have walked ten of the twelve acres under one roof, because the transportation and wheels of industry collection is immense. When you walk in the door, you are face to face with one of the biggest train engines ever made, the 1601, an Allegheny, built with two engines working in concert. Its 76 feet long and could haul 27 million pounds of coal up over the mountains at a fast clip of 60 miles an hour.

A surprising number of successful electric cars, including some made by Ford, were in this museum. In fact, his wife liked the quiet, easy starting car so much, he bought one for her from a competitor after he quit making them. It was considered a ladies car from the start. They didn’t have much range but distance wasn’t an issue when the roads were bumpy and people didn’t travel far from home.

This electric car was one of Henry’s. He sold a lot of them. Others were much earlier models from the late 1800’s made by small companies that faded in time.

The convertible that Kennedy was killed in, with the steps on the back for the secret service. A top was made for it from bullet proof glass and President Reagan used it.

The first motorized school bus made was assembled by an employee of Ford Motors. He built a box with bench seats and attached it to the bed of a Ford Pick-up. It fell apart on the bumpy roads. He quit Ford and began making buses in earnest on a Ford Chassis and started the Bluebird Bus Company that still makes school buses today.

Every Day the museum is open,  a new Model T is assembled on the spot with the help of people visiting the museum. It will run when finished, except, it has no gas in it. They build one each day and are now on their 845 one. Not only do you get to see it put together, and sit in it, etc. but a mini assembly line floats above with the parts for a complete car hanging on wires overhead and moving to their position on the line.

Besides just about every imaginable vehicle, their development, engines and builders, the museum contains unusual vehicles of interest such as one of Charles Kurault’s motorcoachs from his famous television show, On The Road With Charles Kurault.

And Hector Quevora’s Model A, driven from South America to Detroit  because his son wanted to see the museum. There was an early diesel-electric hybrid, from the 1920’s I believe, if memory serves me, and every early bicycle and tricycle known to man.

Consider this “ten speed”.

And this home made model with a fancy eagle head bar.
It was actually bikes that led to flight as Oliver and Wilbur Wright tinkered in their bike shop.

This model of the Kitty Hawk has the actual fabric from the real Kitty Hawk.

There were many women pilots, including barnstorming daredevils in the 1930’s. It only seems like Amelia Earhart was the only woman flier. Bessie Coleman was the first African American Woman in the world  to get her pilots license. (In 1921.)
Then there were the bizarre things in the museum, such as a sealed tube with the last breath of Thomas Edison captured in it. And this letter from Clyde Barrow.

Clyde Barrow so admired his stolen 1934 V-8 Ford that he wrote Henry Ford a congratulatory letter about his “fine car.”  Not long after this letter was received by Ford, Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death in that very car.

He lived wild and free until the guns brought him and his Ford to an end.
Then the little oddities such as this sheet music in the museum.

Jack Frost wrote two songs about the Ford, You Can’t Afford To Marry If You Can’t Afford A Ford and I Didn’t Raise My Ford To Be A Jitney. What a hoot!

I got a kick out of this ad with the sorry looking Amantha and her Cod Liver Oil fan.

And when you read about the wheels of industry? They really were wheels.  Gigantic wheels, that turned turbines and kept those early steam engines pumping.

The oldest known remaining steam pump is in this museum. You will find farm equipment, huge combines and corn planters and threshers, both old and fairly modern. There are craft shops here for younger people to learn how to run and maintain and build working machines of all  types.

If you are traveling with kids, there are a number of places in the museum that have kid’s activities. Here kids are making vehicles that can be tried out on a couple of slide roads.

Or maybe you might simply want to wrap yourself up as a hot dog in the Oscar Mayer Wiener exhibit.
We certainly could have spent another day in this museum. We started the day with breakfast with Art, Sue, Art’s parents and a friend, Lillie. And ended it with the Lambart’s traditional Sunday dinner at home with Art’s parents.

In fact, Lillie, on the right, wrote a song for Faith Hill, the country singer. They were waitresses together when they were young girls.
For more pictures, check out the link below:
http://picasaweb.google.com/1579penn/82210FordMuseum#