Summer in New England

We have used the 2008 PW on and off this summer for short things like my volunteer days in southern CT, a few trips overnight in NH, upstate NY and a long weekend down at the RI shore.  The humidity has kept me low because we have had 4 heat waves.  I hated the one in early September- bahh, humbug!!.  We are off to Hershey, PA for a class B rally for almost a week starting tonight.  We have attended this rally in the past.

This PleasureWay Excel is a good rig and everything is working the way it should.  We have even used it for a second vehicle on occasion.  I miss the excitement of traveling but do not miss the rig itself.  Although it is so much harder to pack the small rig it is so much easier to travel in.  Life is one big compromise!  I am dreaming of a trip next summer by way of the Canadian Rockies to Olympic National Park.  We will see what the future holds.  John wants to travel south for a month or so this winter. 

He used a golf membership very often this summer and I am taking 2 college art courses this fall. (Old folks can fill in space for free if there is room in regular courses).  I am taking it for audit for I do not need the courses.  I have a degree in Fine Arts. We will give a talk on the NPS at the end of October, we have joined a Learning in Retirement Association at our local college and we are going to lectures there so we are just not slaves to the house!  LIFE IS STILL GOOD!

New PW and Trip to Parris Island, SC

Where has the time gone?  We have purchased a 2008 PW Excel TS and I have used it for Weir Farms NHS volunteering and we used it on a trip to see Grandson graduate boot camp last week.  The rig is working great. We have purchased new tires (originals were on it). NEVER travel with dated tires.  An RV needs decent, not over 7 year old tires with good tread.  You take a very real chance if the tires are old.  We know people who have learned the hard way and their RV was damaged (one beyond repair).  We had a tire go flat on our original PW on a trip years ago.  Thank Goodness, it was a good experience with pleasant helpers, but we were running on an old tire, the only old tire on the rig, the former spare.  Never do that! It looked perfect with no cracks but..........it blew!

 

We have also had to purchase a battery. The refrig went out while traveling to SC.  It was the house battery and not the refrig. problem. The refrig had a kill switch that turned it off instead of ruining the refrig.  I would rather get a new battery (old was original) than a new refrig. - $$$$.  Battery and tires are just maintenance issues that are part of owning a vehicle.



The Visitor Center - a 1700's old farm house of the 2 farms there.



The studio I am docent at Weir Farms
 

New PW

This week should go by very fast.  "Big Boy" is going to his new home.  I start training at my new volunteer NPS position at Weir Farms, Wilton, CT and we travel to Pennsylvania to get "Baby B II".  We have found a 2008 Excel TS, a little different from our last one but it has only 22,000 miles on it and in our price range.  Of course it is contingent on us seeing the rig.  Saturday one of our granddaughters is graduating college so that will end a busy week! 


Our new to us travel companion - a 2008 Pleasure Way  (kind of small compared to Big Boy!

We Are Making a Change

We have a deposit on "Big Boy" and we put a deposit on a RAV4 so we can go to the dump (oops-transfer station).  We had a truck, different car and the PW before our adventures of the last 4 years.  We now must think of one vehicle that can do some truck stuff and also something I can ride in more comfy.  We are also looking for a used Pleasure Way Excel TD about 2007. (emergency 2nd vehicle and traveling partner) We decided we can't give up traveling completely!  It must get in the blood! Anyone know of one????????????


This was our 2001 Pleasure Way in 2009.

I can finally show pictures of Georgia!

My horse picture grouping is from Cumberland Island.  They are everywhere on the island.

We saw a few things while we were in Georgia.  We went to Cumberland Island National Seashore and took an all day island tour including a ferry ride.  We visited St. Mary's and we saw a traditional procession honoring George Washington.  We saw different animals and a burn in Crooked River State Park.  We went to a submarine museum.  A sub base is right next to Crooked River State Park.

We toured Plum Cottage. It is from the Carnegie era when the island was a rich man's winter retreat.  JFK Jr. was married in a tiny, tiny church on Cumberland (no picture). That is why it was a private ceremony.  We saw the church but I cannot find the pix. Plantations were on the island before/during the civil war and in the colonial era live oaks were sold for timber for sailing ships.  Now it is a national site which you must take a 1 hour ferry ride or your own boat to see.  We took an all day tour with a NPS guide, Robin, who was wonderful.  No vehicles (except our tour vans) are on the island now and roads are bumpy sandy one way paths.  There is primitive camping - what you bring in you bring out and one small campground with showers.  Young people in groups were on the ferry and ready to camp there.

Around President's Day there was a ceremony honoring George Washington in St. Mary's.  The president knew people who had connections with Cumberland Island so the first ceremony was just a few months after Geoge Washington's death.  That tradition continues today. There was a riderless horse with backward boots in stirrups in the procession.

 

At Crooked River State Park they did a prescribed burn.  Some of the burn area was in back of our rig.  Note below how close to the MH is was.  They knew just what they were doing.  The next few nights after dark fires in dead trees were still burning as patches in the woods glowed and flamed. 

 

What is now and what we left behind

This is what we left behind and below is what we arrived to this past October.
  We will stay put in this beautiful place for a time.  I have a painting studio here.

Spring is here....Really????

We have been back a week.  It snowed on March 21st, the first day of spring.  We still have over a foot on the ground and it has been very cold (20's or teens at night).  I have started the chores of unpacking and placing everything away.  We left right after Christmas with an in progress livingroom.  We replaced all flooring in the house Nov-Dec 2014.  After 26 years it was time to replace and improve things in our home.  I am sad to sell our traveling home.  After 9 years and over 100,000 miles of travel, the shock of staying put is daunting.  But we are older now and I need to stay put a bit more.  "A rolling stone gathers no moss." my grandmother told me and it is very true.  We JUST HAD A BALL TRAVELING and I recommend it to anyone.  If you really want to travel "where there is a will, there is a way." (another grandmother saying) then GO FOR IT!!!!

MOTOR HOME UP FOR SALE

We arrived on March 15, 2015 to more than a foot of snow and cold weather. Thank you grandson, Thomas, who plowed our MH driveway so we could arrive.  He borrowed a bucket loader to plow our separate MH driveway which was covered with 4 feet of snow at the time.  2015 has not been going as planned.  The weather all along the east coast has been unusual.  It has been cold down south and there has been snow where it usually isn't.  We had to wait for good weather to travel and we winterized in the West Virginia Welcome Center parking lot!! 

First we waited in western Georgia to go north, gave up and headed south to Florida for some warmth.  We spent a week there and then the weather cleared just enough for traveling north.  We travel slowly and stopped to visit people.  From Florida it took us 6 nights on the road to arrive from the Tampa area.

THE RV IS UP FOR SALE.  Anyone want a great 2009 Monoco Monarch that has lovingly been kept up and used often?

Above is the RV while we were in Florida.  Below some of the inside. 

 

The Bait Shop at Crooked River State Park

 We have given our notice and will be leaving this park next week but these pictures are of one of the volunteer gigs we learned.

The bait shop we sometimes worked together

John getting dead shrimp out of the tanks

See, there is shrimp in there!

Above is the road kill the turkey vultures found.  Below is the vulture who would not share.

This hawk above would like some pickins!!

The Cruise

With 13 other members of our family I cruised the western Caribbean stopping in Honduras, Belize, and Mexico.  That was my 70th birthday present from some family members.

Our ship - Vision of the Seas

Carribean Sunsets

Myan Ruins

Shipboard extravanganzas

 

And younger members watching older members dance it up!

A birthday treat to be remembered!

Crooked River in January

We have volunteered here for 2 weeks and it has rained quite a lot.  It is raining hard today also.  We have seen the sun a few days but the majority has been cloudy if not raining.  They did a prescribed burn for 3 days after canceling the previous week because of wet weather.  They burned within 15 feet of our motor home.  I came home from lunch to them setting fire to our "backyard" so I stayed home for a few hours (just in case).  It went without a hitch and the green will be back without the pine undergrowth.  The small smoking little hot spots throughout the park will be put out today.  It looks blackened looking out our windows.  Tonight John takes me to JAX airport, just over the line in Jacksonville, Florida for my 1 hour flight to Tampa.  I will return next Saturday while John is taking care of Emma and doing his volunteering in maintenance this week.


Burning right in back of our motor home

Around the 2015 Corner

We had Christmas with family and I will be going on a cruise at the end of January.  My 70th birthday present is a Carribean cruise/sightseeing week given by family members.  Fourteen members of our family will be cruising together including me! It is ironic we start in the Tampa area (my dad lived around there for 15 years) and we leave on his birthday.  He would have been 94 on January 24th.  He would be very happy for me.  John will be holding the fort down and attending to Emma, our dog.  John will not cruise.

Fort Frederica is in a beautiful setting

This is the Visitor Center we ALMOST staffed at Fort Frederica National Monument

John looking at the remains of the fort itself

 

The beautiful live oaks with moss are everywhere on the grounds of the soldier town.  Ruins of the town have been located and researched. It is next to the fort and was a very early settlement - 1734-44.
 

Where we would have taken visitors on a tour of Fort Frederica NM, GA

BACK TO OUR VOLUNTEERING AT FORT FREDERICA NATIONAL MONUMENT:  To make a long, long story short, we started out from CT on 12/27/14 and traffic was very heavy heading down to GA.  We spent New Year's Eve at midnight on the beach watching fire works on Tybee Island, GA visiting with friends.  We arrived at St. Simon's Island on January 1st to find we could not get into our site at the RV park because of our height AND it was the only site available.  Wires and live oak branches were just too low.  We stayed at Fort Frederica NM for one week while they explored options to keep us volunteering.  We dry camped (no permanent room for us) in the volunteer area while waiting.  It just did not work so we headed south thinking we would just be exploring GA in the warm weather until spring arrived.  My flight is out of Jacksonville, FL for the cruise. At Crooked River State Park, almost in Jacksonville, we paid for 5 nights. We must stay around for my flight out of JAX so we planned on a few GA parks to explore. Now the ironic part..............

Our state park view from the campsite is a small pond with a bird blind across the street

Emma in her bed ignoring the wildlife, palms and pines

They had a volunteer couple who could not come. We were casually talking about our situation and as fate was with us we now have filled that volunteer Crooked River State Park position.  We will be volunteering here until the end of March.  When a door closes a window opens.  So Tuesday I start at the nature center learning the ropes.  We will be jack-of-all-trades volunteers.  On MLK Day a special nature program is planned and we will be helping with that. We will be training at a bait shop (I worked one in SD at the fish hatchery),  maintenance, and housekeeping, as well as the nature center.  I think we have the skills to do the jobs required and the chores do not seem hard at all.  All is well that ends well, I guess.


Our home for the next 2+ months