#274 Nomad Diary. 17-23 January 2026. Week 3 of 6 at Athens Airbnb. Grandkids. Travel Planning. Housekeeping, Again! Connecting with Friends.

A Beautiful Sunset Seen from Our Front Porch.

 

Saturday. 17. We both continue to wake up at about 5am or before, but wait quietly until after 5 to get up. Did our stand up routine for exercise. We ate our regular breakfast of apple pancakes and pork tenderloin with all of the sides. Today was the end of our prepared pancakes and pork. During breakfast we discussed a particular airbnb near Denali that I found yesterday. Darrell approved it, so after breakfast, I requested that airbnb for our week near Denali National Park in June. We are meeting up with Wes, our second son, for lunch at Veda Indian Restaurant in Huntsville. I have some shopping to do at Hobby Lobby and a sporting goods store too. We have packages from Amazon at Eric’s house. 

Sunday. 18. I woke up around 5am. I was in my bathroom getting my teeth brushed and felt all of the sudden sick. I had to sit down on the floor. I was there for about 15-20 minutes. I wasn’t sure if I needed to throw up or not. I had some sweating, but I was sitting on a cool tile floor and waiting. I was able to get up and walk back to the bedroom. I told Darrell that I needed to go back to bed after that. I later woke up about 6:30 and I felt okay to get up and go about my day. Darrell had made a new batch of pancakes this morning. I was able to eat some with berries, yogurt and cottage cheese. I was glad to feel recovered! Our Denali airbnb was approved by the owner, who sent an interesting note from Uganda, where they live and run a school half the year! Wow, to the incredible lives of people. Morning worship. Lunch at Craig and Lauren’s house with our group #4 meeting. We’re taking a salad (recipe from Susan Tant Moore in Nomad Notes below). Enjoyed lunch with others. Risa brought a persimmon pudding to this lunch. It was fascinating to me because of her history that she shared, and the fact that her husband, Bill, forages for persimmons every year. They moved here from Indiana 18 years ago. Persimmons are much more popular in Indiana than in Alabama. Bill has been able to find trees around here that he’s had all the persimmons he wants. He has been golfing with local friends who knew nothing about persimmons. One of his friends tried one and another wouldn’t touch them! Lol. Risa has her great grandmother’s recipe for persimmon pudding. It is pretty much the only recipe she uses for persimmons. She processes the persimmons and freezes them in batches for baking up her sweet recipe that her whole family enjoys and looks forward too! It was dark colored, sweet and moist with a sticky glaze and a light taste of cinnamon. Risa tops it with whipped cream. 

On our way back home, we stopped at Aldi’s for a few groceries. Then we stopped at Eric and Erin’s house to get our mail and stack of boxes from Amazon. In the late afternoon at home, I did a round of exercise, a lesson of Portuguese, and a walk around our neighborhood.

On the Phone with My Friend, Laura.

Monday. 19. Morning routines. 8am phone call with friend, Laura, for 2 hours of trading EPT sessions. Time before lunch was spent discussing our road trip stay in Mississippi in April. Darrell and I have both been thinking about this segment of our trip, and we’ve each looked at properties in Mississippi a bit east of New Orleans. Either along the coast or going up into the interior of Mississippi. We ask, ‘what are we wanting or looking for’? We settled on a nice condo for four nights in Long Beach, Mississippi, across the street from the ocean. We paused for lunch. I booked the airbnb afterwards. Decided on dinner: salmon, cheese grits and broccoli. I exercised, did my Portuguese lesson, worked on this diary and generally felt productive. A bit of laundry too.

Tuesday. 20. Up by 6am. Morning routine: weekly ab routine; dark coffee and Darrell’s pancake breakfast with a big dose of protein from pork tenderloin, greek yogurt and cottage cheese. Today is a 10am Bible class at the church building and a 1pm online class with our English church friends in Kent. Samuel came for dinner at our house tonight. We had our current favorite ‘Chili’. We have it once or twice a week. Then we played our ‘family’ card game of Contract Rummy.

Owen Watching Funny Videos with Grandpa

Grandpa and Owen Having a Fun Moment Together.

Kids Getting Parachute on Laundry Day.

The Fun of Being a Kid! Playing Sheet Parachute.

Wednesday. 21. Owen and Esther came over around 9:30 for a couple of hours. They arrived and Esther said, “I want to do parachute!” What a vocabulary! She’s remembering last week on Wednesday, they were here and we strip the sheets from the king sized bed and load them into the washing machine together. Owen gave up early today, but Esther stayed with me. She had her arms above her head to get the sheets into the washing machine! Very impressive. When the washing machine was finished, she came and helped put the items into the dryer. Once the sheets were dry and ready to make the bed, then they both were so excited to climb up on the bed and let Darrell and I lift each sheet above them and let it float down like a parachute on to them. We repeated several times, of course! When we weren’t doing sheets, I had several other things for them to do. Darrell and Owen watched some funny animal videos. They were laughing at one so hard that I had to see it. It was a magician showing a gorilla a trick where he makes a live dove appear in his hands. The gorilla’s reaction was priceless with stunned amazement. We also had some markers and long brown paper from shipping boxes to draw on. Owen had a lot of stories and wanted me to draw some of his pictures including a gorilla. He draws lines that are of particular interest to me to watch his process. We also played a beginners game of UNO. Esther lost interest in it, but Owen stuck with the game for 3 sessions. I fixed them some chicken nuggets which they ate. Esther had eaten a bit of everything through the morning including pancakes, yogurt, fruit, juice, and more. Owen ate chicken nuggets and he was satisfied. Their Dad came to get them and they were ready to go. I was very tired. After lunch we went to Darrell’s eye doctor in Huntsville for his eye pressure test. It was good and it was a fast stop. On our way back to our house, we stopped at 3 grocery stores to get items. This week there is a lot of talk anticipating a big snow storm for this weekend. This anticipation of the storm is causing the groceries to sell out of some key items. Kroger was out of bananas. Walmart was almost out of bread. We got most of the items on our list. Bible class in the evening.

Quick  and Cute Art Class on You Tube, and Voila, I Have 3 Cards!

Thursday. 22. We met Eric and the kids at a playground in Madison this morning. Afterwards he’s going by Costco to stock up on some kid foods for our impending weather event. Darrell and I headed back to our house, again stopping by a couple of stores on our way. I felt good today. I enjoyed doing a YouTube class for cute art by Ronnie Walter. I made 3 cute cards. Darrell needed to go pick up a car part in Huntsville at a dealer. He has been waiting for a couple of days to get another part for Jeremy’s car in Brazil. After getting the part, he went by a post office to mail it. The first post office he tried had a line of 15 people that was not moving. So he drove to another post office to complete his errand. Now we all get to wait for the completion of this story. Dinner today was tacos for Darrell and a chili bowl for me. We decided on and booked our July stay in Fairbanks, Alaska.

My New Neck Pillow. I Side Sleep on This at Night. No More Snoring.

Friday. 23. We have stayed home all day, except Darrell went to the grocery again. Lol. We made a plan for our weekend meals and he did the shopping. My friend, Melanie, came by for an ept session and we enjoyed our time together. Dinner is thin cut steak, broccoli, mushrooms and baked potatoes with toppings. My potato is sweet. Friends, Jamie and Cynthia were supposed to come for a card game tonight after dinner, but Cynthia has been sick for a couple of weeks. Today has been particularly difficult for her as she is still showing up for work. We’ve also seen her at church, but she just had to back out. Our late afternoon walk around our neighborhood was a chilly 42 degrees. The wind was blowing more toward the end of our circuit. We thought the temp had dropped, but online it indicated that the wind chill was 34 degrees! Brrrr. People around here are pretty good about loving their inside warm houses and closing off until the storms are over. This particular storm has gotten a lot of press. Today I read that several southern states have already declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm. This is a newish kind of response compared to even 10 years ago. That kind of declaration before an event wasn’t ever heard. It comes with warnings for people to stay home and when to expect what. Late Friday night we are supposed to begin our part of this storm. More to come. Since staying here, we’ve often been watching tv shows in the evening. We are watching property rehab shows. One of our favorite designers' names is Vern. We have enjoyed his most recent shows where he finds someone rehabbing an historic building into a house. He comes at the beginning of their project and offers some design advice and then remains available throughout their project. Many nights we make some air-popped popcorn with olive oil for a night time snack.

Nomad Notes:

Airbnb at Denali. Cooking. “Working” our nomad life.

My Denali airbnb request is ‘pending’ for up to 24 hours. I baked two pork tenderloins for our upcoming breakfasts. I also put a pound of black beans into our Instapot and got them cooked per our current recipe, with one exception. The last batch I made seemed a bit saltier to us, and I’m not sure why. Today I have reduced the salt in my recipe by 50% to 1 teaspoon of salt. I overcooked my pork because of my newer timer app and my learning curve with using it properly. The meat turned out fine after all. I keep trying to get back to looking at airbnb for a week-long stay at Talkeetna. Meanwhile, we had a video call from Jeremy in Brazil. Also, Darrell has been looking into a December and a January cruise to and from England on Cunard. We’ve never been on Cunard, and he’s studying all sorts of details. We watched several youtube videos, mostly while I was cooking, to answer some of our questions about Cunard. Questions about: the size of the interior cabins vs. the balcony; the amount of storage in the room; the bathroom size; the comforts of the cabin; and the dress-up codes for the dining room.

These past few days have included our individual look into properties for our future stays listed on our calendar. We discussed, researched a little and booked several accommodations. Our furthest one out is for January 5th for a Cunard cruise beginning in Hamburg, Germany and ending in Ft. Lauderdale. We are hoping to spend the prior month in either England or another European place to meet up with Jeremy’s family, who will be in Moscow, and taking their leave then. Darrell’s eye treatments and the specific dates are unknown depending on his condition. We also confirmed stays at airbnbs near Denali, Alaska and in Talkeetna, Alaska and in Long Beach, Mississippi. We’ve been busy continually looking for nice places to base ourselves and to enjoy a perspective and local vibe and history that we enjoy. 

Susan’s Salad. 

Keep items separate and toss together with serving tongs just before serving.

6 cups torn or cut romaine

¼ cup thin sliced red onion

½ cup shredded parmesan

2 teaspoons lemon pepper

Mix together and add just before serving

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons vinegar (I used white this time)

2 teaspoons water

This salad is the one I learned last year from our friend, Susan Tant Moore, in Montana, who we stayed with. Romaine with thin sliced red onion and parmesan, lemon pepper (sprinkled on the dry salad) and oil, vinegar, water and garlic or a bottle of vinaigrette as Susan served beside her salad.

The measurements are suggested by me. I prepared my ingredients and kept them separated until just before serving. I mixed everything (except the oil mix) together using serving tongs, then I added in the oil vinegar mixture. Several people commented how much they liked it, and wondered what the spice was. I had done the same when I had Susan’s salad in Montana last year!

Our Current Self-serve Chili

Self serve into a dinner bowl: 

Black beans that I make in the instapot and then boosted with spices

Lean ground beef with spices added (cumin, chili powder, garlic, pepper and salt)

Fresh tomatoes (I avoid these for now)

Chopped green onions

Chopped hot peppers (serranos or jalapenos)

Chopped garlic

Shredded cheddar cheese

Light sour cream or plain greek yogurt

Tapatio hot sauce

Blue tortilla chips