Oh Deer

We are in Sevierville, TN. We have been here since April 8, and have not really scouted around the area like we normally do. Why? Too much fun at the rally. We had a small rally with Chapter 29 of Escapees, then a much larger rally for SKP ACRE following the small rally. So we have seen many people come and go and a lot stay. That is a good thing.
But the weather has not played nice. It has rained and rained. The ground is soaked. The river is rising.

     

I am a bit paranoid about the rivers since that whole campground washed away in Arkansas several years back. But, since we never park on the river side of any campground, we are fine.
Today was less overcast than most of the days so we took off. We were supposed to take a motor trail through the Smokies but it was closed.

So we just hung around played with the camera. That is my idea of fun anyway.

We found a picturesque old cabin,and signs of Spring everywhere.

But the best part happened when we were discovered by two deer who were so intent on eating lunch, they didn't mind me being five feet away. I think they actually posed for some of the fifty shots I took.

States in which we have stayed at least one night in our camper

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We are Home!

We have been home for about 2 weeks now. We had three weeks between getting our level-ups installed and the SKP ACRES 2015 rally. At first, we thought we would just  find someplace in NC, stay at one campground for the three weeks and let the tires cool off. Then we thought ...why pay for a campground when we can go home for three weeks, get a few doctor visits taken care of, see family, etc. Plus we were just tired.

The first week was incredibly busy. There was an illness in the family, so I was busy running back and forth from my house to theirs, trying to be helpful but thinking that I am in the way. Then, there were all the doctors who missed us while we were gone. Isn't it funny that now a regular visit is really two visits, one for blood work and one to see the Dr. So two days screwed up. If you get your eyes dilated that is two people who have their days taken over.We still have a cardiologist to visit and a dog groomer.

But Thank you, Lord. We are in good health. We have good insurance and wonderful supportive family.

The weather has been typical for this time of the year in Charleston....rainy, beautiful, cool, warm windy, humid. You name it we have it.

I have been busy downloading pictures to my computer. I want to make one of those picture albums from our trip, but how many pictures of sunset and cactus do I include?

We are planning to sell our condo and buy a house.o We would like one with no HOA.. But to buy a house without a HOA means probably buying either way out in the country or buying in an old neighborhood. I do not want to live thirty miles from the nearest grocery, doctor, etc. and I don't want to live in a construction zone as we redo an older home.I have lived with  both of those options and really don't want to experience it again.

For now I think I just want to think about our trip and how fortunate we were to see:

The Mississippi River. It had ice and snow in it.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis

The friendliest goat, ever.

Arizona Sunset

Tucson bird

This land is my land

One of the best days ever.

We had so much fun in Sequoia National Park playing among the big trees and trying to use our camera lenses. We drove to the park from Visalia Elks Lodge where we are camped.On the way we noticed how thoughtful the farmers were. For us city-folk, they had signs on fences telling what was being grown.We passed orange groves,

 lemon groves, grapefruit trees, walnut trees, almond trees, and kiwi. Kiwi is a tricky thing. The fields look like vineyards.

We had two things on our must do list: to drive our truck through a tree intentionally without getting hurt and to see the largest tree in the USA. We did both successfully.  There was still snow on the ground

up in the higher elevations even though the temperature was in the 80's at the base of the mountains and in the high 50's up near 6000 ft.
I must say the road should win some sort of prize for all the twists and turns. The forest ranger said some people turn and come back due to the roads, but not us! We had a  list and we were going to do it.

How I spent my day:

The tunnel tree

The largest tree

One of many twists and turns

Speed dating

Today was our day to go exploring. I had studied the maps and the books and mapped out our trip. Me? why does he let me do these things? But off we go. I want to go to the date farm and Death Valley.But Death Valley is too big to do all in one day so we decided to go to Badwater, the lowest point in the Western hemisphere.
As most of you know I am very "distance challenged". It is only this far on the map is my favorite saying when having to plan these things. But we had already traveled from the Atlantic side of the USA and I was not about to stop.

 So far so good. Then we reach the dirt road to the farm. Dirt roads here are not like the ones in the South. Here they are hard as rocks and white dust is everywhere. Plus they spare no expense on road signs. We were on a windy road often times not being able to see what was on the other side of the curve. Plus this place is down, down down.

 The sign below is one of Mr. Fixit's favorite saying. In case it is too small to read: "No matter where you go, there you are."

No outside parties here.

Still iced in. Not quite as cold, but ice is everywhere. We only got the tip of the storm.Midlands and Odessa really got hit...Plus they have the weather people telling them how bad it is. Our lights have flickered but so far we still have power. We have been working on a jigsaw puzzle.

All New Years Eve festivities have been cancelled in the area.

A Little Ice... I think not.

As most of you know our favorite place to camp is in Fort Davis, Texas. There is absolutely nothing there except quiet, good smelling air, no radio station, no TV station.I don't even know if they have a a police department or fire station. So when you are cut off from the world you can't worry about things over which you have no control.

We drove in on a beautiful day. We set up , no problems and waited til the next day to go looking around. We drove to Alpine and to Marfa.

In Marfa we decided to have lunch. We drove around that 3 block town for about 4 circles before we finally spotted a diner/cafe. In we go.The menu was very limited....organic beef meatloaf, grilled chicken and vegetables of the day. The servers say they start serving at 11 and when it's gone it's gone and they run out every day.

As we were leaving the wind got colder and the sun started disappearing.
No fools..we hotfooted it home.
The next morning we thought we had turned left into the Arctic Circle. I don't think I have ever been soooooo cold.There was ice everywhere. Our steps were frozen, the poor trees were bent down from the weight. But ya know we did not have some ditzy weather woman showing us what ice looked like or telling us to stay off the roads while she drove all over the county. Nice.

Straight down the road

For most of this trip we have been on I-10. The speed limit is 80 and we are going 65. So everything is passing us. But we get to see  and take pictures. Plus we have seen many cars stopped by the Texas Hiway Patrol

. Guess 80 is just not fast enough on this long straight road. We also passed this huge wind farm, Desert Sky Wind Farm. I think the website said it had 160 units.

Highways

We traveled from Seguin to Ozona. What a small town! It is right off I-10. We had stopped here once before, but this time we stayed for the night. That was quite long enough. On the road again.

Seguin Part 2

We found all kinds of fun things to look at. Of course, my love of animals and Mr. Fixit's patience led to this:

Seguin

We stayed in Seguin one more day than we had anticipated. We always get our medicines on the road from Walmart. But for some reason they were out of both our medicines. We had to wait for them to restock. Even then, they didn't have what we needed and we had to go elsewhere and have prescriptions transferred. What a mess.

But being the seasoned travelers that we are, and being very flexible, we made the best of it.
Seguin is a small town whose only claim to fame that we can fine is that Juan Sequin was born here and is buried here. Juan was the messenger sent by Col Travis from the Alamo to Sam Houson to request more troops. He was not at the slaughter at the Alamo, but came back to bury the bodies and help those that did survive to escape. He laster became Mayor of San Antonio.

And then there was Fountain

Our second stop is in a small, little,tiny town called Fountain, FL. Mr. Fix It decided to be Mr. Cheap and booked us into this campground in the middle of nowhere for a minimum dollar amount. For it to be in No-where-ville, it is big. We stayed in the front part but there was at least an acre behind us with electricity and water sites and no one there. I don't know how he did it but we certainly did not pay the rates listed on their website.

The sites were average size and level, but the town only has a Dollar General Store and a Piggly Wiggly Express ( one half step up from a convenience store). We did a lot of five minute chores, read, and tried to get interested in Babylon 5.

We had to go to Panama City for his eye appointment. All went well and we travelled on.

Big Adventure

Today was the day! We have waited since the middle of November to start the Big Adventure. Each week something came up that delayed our trip. But finally we are out of Charleston.

We had to leave about two hours later than we had planned. We had a slight problem with the hitch...it didn't.

 So the whole camper landed its front weight on the tailgate of

Lt. Rosie (our Chevrolet 2500 pull mobile.)Thank God for Mr. FixIt! With a little physics and physical manpower we were able to lift the trailer and re-hitch. We did lose the tailgate,

but that is ok...We are on the road.

We drove to Jacksonville, flinching each time the hitch made a sound. We were afraid it would unhitch again although we knew it was well connected..I had visions of it passing us on I-10 but it didn't.

For a while we had been talking about staying in FamCamps, campgrounds sponsored by the military for retired military, military,  and DoD retirees. since Mr. Fixit at one time held a security clearance higher than most, we were pretty sure we could get on base with his ID but ya never know.We enjoyed our stay, got to play golf and go to St. Augustine.

The view from my front door:

 Cute little cars in St. Augustine to tour the city.

 Brother-in-law this is for you!

 Shady Campground. See Lt.Rosie?