Camping Trip, Day Four

Saturday, Nov. 6:

We were up late this morning, around 8:30. After breakfast, we went to a Christmas village, where we saw a Santa in Victorian wear...very neat. Hubbie snapped a picture of Mother and me standing near him, but our faces are in shadow.

This village features three or four stores stocked with everything Christmas, including large Christmas figure displays on balconies above the decorated trees. The shops are beautiful, but there is so much that it's difficult to choose something. But we did find a few very pretty ornaments for the "white tree" in the living room.

Then we visited a shop that was giving free samples of dips and drinks. Mother rested outside while we wended our way through the small store. The aisles were narrow, and folks had to squeeze by one another to access the treats.

Here, we sampled a delicious flavored chai tea, and bought three bottles of it...one for Mother, one for us, and one to give as a thank you gift to our neighbors for stopping by our house and feeding the outdoor cats while we were gone.

From the Christmas village, we went to a craft store. This store was very large, so Mother rode in her wheelchair. As with the other craft store, this one also featured artisans at work...a man creating beautiful pictures from brass, and another making metal jewelry.

At this store, we bought food items...dried pineapple slices for me, and gumdrops for Mother. I also bought another Christmas tree ornament...an "I Love Sudoku" one that features a puzzle and a pencil.

We returned to camp at 1 p.m., and cooked hamburgers/turkey burgers, which we had with microwave baked potatoes and coleslaw. Lunch was ready about 2 p.m.

Afterward, Mother stayed at camp to rest, while Hubbie and go back to the Christmas village and then to the outlet mall. At the mall, I bought two pairs of shoes, and Hubbie bought one pair, at a buy-two-get-one-pair-free sale. By the time we used a 20% AARP discount, we got real bargains on popular name brand shoes.

We skipped supper tonight, since we ate such a late lunch. At 5:30, we left camp to go to the Moon River Theater to see the Andy Williams Christmas show at 8 p.m. We picked up our tickets and then meant to run around town until showtime, but as we were leaving the parking lot, we were stopped at the exit to the main drag by police cars leading a parade of veterans and their spouses on motorcycles. We estimated between two and three hundred cycles passed by...a very stirring sight.

When they had passed, we toured the town for a while and then returned to the theater, where we were shown to the handicapped parking lot. Just because spaces are identified as handicapped reserved doesn't mean that the spaces are accessible to the building. In this case, the spaces were on a steep hill that made it difficult to push a wheelchair. Hubbie did the honors this time, but even he strained to push the chair up that hill.

We had to change our reserved seats to an upper level, to keep Mother from having to walk down and then up a lot of steps. The seats we were assigned were way above the stage in this huge 2,054-seat theater, but there were only two steps for Mother to negotiate. There were only a few empty seats for this performance. Andy Williams knows how to pack a house.

The seats are very comfortable, and the rows are tiered so that everyone has a clear view of the stage.

The set onstage was gorgeous..a winter wonderland, where the band was unobtrusive. The lighting for this show was fantastic. Andy Williams was great, though at 80 years old, his voice is showing some age, and he totters a bit when he walks. But he's still quiet capable of mesmerizing an audience.

"Mr. Christmas," as he's known was born in December, and he has named two of his children Christmas names...Noelle, and Christian.

This was an hour and a half show with no intermission, so you'd think folks would take the hint and visit the potty ahead of time. But no, lots of them stumbled over people to get to the exits.

Something I dislike is all the people who insist on flash photography during performances. Except for those in the first few rows of seats, most people were too far away to get decent pictures with their little cameras or cell phones. I didn't bother taking my camera to any of the performances.

By the time we got back to camp, we were all hungry, so we had sandwiches and decaf coffee before going to bed. It was a busy, but pleasant day.