We have so much to be thankful for this year. The love of family and friends among the most important to us, which makes being away from “home” on holidays that have strong hometown traditions, a little sad.
Our friend Mark is sure I am going to blog about how to cook a 22 pound turkey in an RV oven. Not this year, but Mark, you have given me some great ideas for future posts! *wink*
This year we are at Lake Conroe Thousand Trails (resort style camping Andy and Candy *giggle*) in Willis, Texas. It is a hot, muggy 80 degrees, not what either of us consider Thanksgiving weather.
This park is hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner for the campers. They will provide the turkey, stuffing, gravy and ham; everyone is to bring a side dish and desert. So I still have some cooking and dishes to do, but not a whole meal’s worth. I decided to make Aunt Lois’ baked corn and banana bread.
Several hours of cooking, baking and a sink full of dishes later I was done and ready to go eat some turkey! I’m a messy baker. Hmm.
Here is my baked corn. Didn’t turn out to bad, other than I should have cooked it a smidge longer.
The dining hall was packed. We found seats next to 2 families, and the kiddos kept us entertained. I was seated next to 4 year old Abby who was just adorable. She told me all about her doll, (she really has 3 dolls) who was dressed in an outfit exactly like her dress. Her favorite princess is Tinkerbell who she met for real at Disney. She also likes purple, pink, green and blue. I told her I like the color orange, and she said she liked that color too! Wow, how cool! Cute as a button she was.
There are people here from all corners of the US, and they all brought their Thanksgiving favorites. We were not at all surprised at the variety, and the very few duplicate dishes.
So much food and only so much space in the belly. They had the side dishes lining both sides of the dining hall, and the meat at the front of the hall.
The deserts lined the back of the room. Oh how I wanted to skip the meal and just do the desert table!
Our Thousand Trails’ host member, Sandy, thinks of all of us as her family and got really choked up about how many people turned out to celebrate Thanksgiving with her. This has been our general experience at Thousand Trail parks, the staff truly care about the campers.
But enough talking, it is eatin’ time. Round 1 had me pretty full, but we went back for seconds to try some of the food we missed the first time around. John keeps telling me I need to pack bigger plates when we go to these things.
I was really stuffed but John rallied me and we hit the desert table. It wasn’t mom’s pumpkin pie, but I ate EVERY bite, along with my cheese cake dip and graham crackers.
Some of the folks were planning to settle in for the upcoming football game.
Not being sports fans we were happy to stroll on home. It didn’t take John long to assume the after-Thanksgiving-dinner position.
Tomorrow we will be on the move again, heading for Louisiana for a lay-over stop before heading to Alabama where John and his crew will be disassembling two Blackhawk Helicopter simulators.
For now, we wait for the coolness of night so we can hit the hot tub. Ya know, that resort-style camping. *giggle*
We had our Thanksgiving dinner vicariously through you. We were on the road driving from the RGV (Mission, TX) to west of San Antonio heading for AZ for a couple of weeks. Looks delicious. We too have been “resort” camping but even more upscale. Watch for the next blog…..