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