Saturday, January 28, 2012

This Is My First Experiment

Hello, my name is Merlot Gilliland-Muse and this will be the first of my reports on the progress of my masters' new adventure.  I am a long-haired papillon/chihuahua mix and my masters are Harley C. Muse and John D. Gilliland.  I was given to my masters by my aunt Ginny just over a year ago as a companion to their greyhound JoJo since their dear beloved cat Virginia had been killed by the neighbor's black labs.  JoJo and I became very good friends and he was my mentor until his untimely passing in June 2011 after a short illness.

My master Harley will be retiring after close to 50 years of active employment as of February 24th, 2012 and will be joining his partner and my second master John who has long been retired and longing for a constant companion to share his retirement with.   I have decided to write about their "New Adventure" in this blogspot and promise to keep up with it.

Our first adventure will begin shortly after Harley's retirement.  We belong to a group of Airstream trailer owners called the Wally Byam Caravan Club International and their Washington DC Unit, which is a unit of Region 2.  Our trailer is a vintage 1974 Trade Wind and we tow it with a 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche.  We have signed up for a national caravan called the "Louisiana Cajun Heritage Caravan" which starts March 13, 2012 near Baton Rouge, Louisiana and runs for two weeks covering a 300-mile track south to the Mississippi Delta.

But before the caravan begins we will travel from our home in Colonial Beach, Virginia to visit with family in North Carolina and Georgia and then head south to Savannah, and to points further south in Florida as far as Key West.  After a few days we'll head up the west coast of Florida stopping in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area to visit friends and then continue on through the panhandle of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi to Baton Rouge where we'll arrive a day or so early so as to visit Harley's first boss of his Air Force career whom he has not seen since leaving for a tour in Vietnam from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida back in February 1970.  Harley says it will be interesting to see how people have changed in 42 years.

I'll keep you posted on our travels and send pictures now and then, hopefully to keep you interested.

Until then,

Merlot (MGM)