Quote of The Week:

"Retirement life is a game. Happy people are the players. Unhappy people are the spectators. Which would you like to be?
from Ernie Zelinski's How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free"

— Ernie J. Zelinski

Boy has the atmosphere in the park changed. It is like a differedt place. In the winter all the snowbirds are calm relaxed and enjoying the park. They visit, craft, cook, have campfires and generally relax and enjoy the weather. Well......... welcome to summer.

The summer people are focused on fun fun fun. There are more of them of course. The park is full in the summer. Every space taken. They come on Friday and party hard until late Sunday. They have kids and bikes and boats and skidoos and cases and cases of liquid refreshment. They are younger, go faster, are louder, and generaly more active than the winter people.

Garry is taking pictures of the park today to show the difference. The sites are crowded with stuff. Water toys, chairs, bikes, boats, cars, golf carts and all manner of stuff. It makes the park seem more frenetic and less relaxing. That will take getting used to.

I am off to do the last touch ups at the rec hall. There is a small balcony that overlooks the rec hall from the storage area the needs some touch ups. Then we will be done with the special projects. It feels wonderful. I love looking around and seeing things that we have done to improve the park. It makes me feel like we have earned our space. Plus I love making things better as I go along.

I know it sounds corney, but I wish we had the money to just travel the country doing things that make places we visit better. We have been very blessed in our lives. We didn't have a lot of money, but more than enough to live a very rich life. We have great friends, family and keep meeting incredible people on the road that just add to the richness of our lives. I love giving some of those blessings back.

It is very hot here. I miss the 70's we had a couple of weeks ago. Of course I will miss these temps once we get up to Yellowstone and have snow again. We are just a couple of weeks away from leaving here. I seems impossible that it has been almost 6 months here. I have such a long list of things I want to do before we leave. I still haven't done the taxes!!!! Those will be simple this year. Well better get to work.

Well I finally have been able to take a few pictures of our park and get them posted. But the very first picture is one of my friend Ron Hall. You'll recall that I mentioned in the previous post that Ron helped us get internet service. helped us?! Oh heck, he gave it to us! Thanks again, Ron!

The pictures I've posted are some of the same kind of basic ones of the park that I've posted of the other parks we've been in. The entrance sign, ranger station, host site, etc. I'll have a bunch more to take and post, so that's why I'm calling this cut Take 1. Clever, huh?

Tuesday and Wednesday are our days off, so today we drove up to Bremerton and Poulsbo. Bremerton is the home of a Navy base, and I took some pictures of ships from across the sound. And Poulsbo blew us away because it's a whole Norwegian community right in Washington! But all of the pictures I took today I'll post tomorrow or the day after.

One of our duties as the "main" hosts is to take meter readings every morning from the 4 pumping stations located in the park, and to test the chlorine levels in the water. This has to be done around 8:00 a.m., so one of these days I'm going to bring along the camera. I'll take a picture from a certain location as yet to be determined, and then I'll take a picture from the same spot at about 1:00 p.m. when the tide is out. That'll show you how far out the water recedes, and where people will go oystering. I was amazed at how far the water recedes. I also will take a picture once a week from that same spot so that you can see the changes in the landscape over the 3 months that we'll be here. It's too bad it's not in the fall to see the color changes, but I think we'll see a remarkable transformation while we're here. I also want to get out and get some shots of people oystering, and later in May, there'll be shrimping going on in a different state park.

So I think we're going to be able to provide some very interesting posts for everyone in the coming weeks. I know we're looking forward to it.

Oh, I almost forgot. I've got one other picture essay planned. One of the things that is very unique to this part of the country are the drive up coffee shacks that are all over the place. These little shacks can be found in parking lots, alongside of the road, or almost anywhere there's about 40 square feet. They're really no larger than a little shack that most people have in their backyards. So I've decided to start taking pictures of the many different styles we've seen. Once I get a bunch of pictures, I'll post them for you. I took the picture of the first coffee shack today, and I'll post it with the pictures in the next post. But after that, you'll just have to wait for awhile!

( Belfair State Park - Take 1 )

First, I must apologize for not having posted for awhile. We've been in Portland, Washington for the last week, and we have had absolutely the worst internet service we've ever had. It's called RV Access. If we could log on at all, it would take forever for anything to happen. And then if you were in the middle of doing something, the connection might be lost. We called the service number listed in the park's information sheet, and the fellow we spoke to suggested that our computer was "weak". ??? We've NEVER had any problem with any other service we've used in the past. So I did try a number of times to download pictures and post some updates, but they would never get posted to our journal.

Here are some pictures of the RV park we stayed in. It was a very nice park, and the people were very friendly. We would encourage anybody to stop and try them out. But think twice about the internet service!

( Portland Fairview RV Park )

We've been here a week now, so I thought it was time we started showing you some things around this area.

I'll start with the RV park we're staying in. It's the Fallon RV Park, and it's only about a 10 minute drive from our son's, DIL's, and grandaughters house. Originally, we were going to stay in a little nicer park in Fernley, but that would have been almost a 1/2 hour drive one way, and we figured we'd get real tired of that real fast. So we opted to stay here. It's alright, although it could use some work to improve some things.

We're off in the back where the "long term" sites are located. As I mention in one of the pictures, we can't quite figure out why the long term sites have gravel sites while the short term sites have nice concrete pads. All we can figure is that the owners want to impress the people who only stop for a day or two. But it's working out alright, so it's not a big deal.

Tom has commented to me how bad the dust is here. Well, certainly there is a dust problem here, but compared to Quartzsite, it's absolutely lush around here!

One of our goals while we're here is to get the awning over the bedroom slide fixed. Those of you that have been following along with us will recall that we lost it in Abilene. I found a local RV repair business, Buzz's RV Repairs, and I've been talking with Buzz about the fix. He's been calling back and forth to Carefree of Colorado (the awning manufacturer) to see about getting the replacement parts. But because we haven't been able to find any model numbers on it anywhere, and the manual doesn't give any either, the COC people seem to think that the awning doesn't exist! I'm the one who has been doing the checking for all of these numbers, but Buzz finally said he'd go out today and see if he could find them. He has a taller ladder than I do, so maybe I just can't see them from my viewpoint. I hope he can find them so that we can get the parts ordered and received before we're supposed to leave here.

Tomorrow we're taking Bailey in to a vet to be looked at. She's been limping on and off now for the better part of a month, and we think that maybe her luxated (sp?) patellas are starting to bother her. Our vet back in Janesville told us to expect some problems with this as she gets older, so we figured we'd better find out what's going on. She's not in any pain when she's limping, because she doesn't wince or wimper or do anything like that. But there certainly is something going on that we need to address.

I've posted a few pictures of the RV park for you to look at. Enjoy.

( Fallon RV Park )

We kept working in the lake every day. Eddie was cutting a keyway where the dam will go. The dam will ring the low side of the lake, and a keyway is a channel cut into the dirt about 4' deep and 24" wide. After opening up the keyway, you then fill it back in with a different kind of dirt. This is the dirt that I was piling up in the pictures you saw. When this dirt is placed into the keyway and then compacted, it "locks" it in place and provides a great deal of strength for the dam that will be built above it. Eventually, I used the backhoe to haul buckets of dirt to the keyway and fill it in.

Eddie had mentioned that he was working with the Tyler RV center in order to develop a relationship for when he opened his park. I decided that I should talk with them about a lingering water heater problem. Ever since we had the tanks freeze and then the subsequent repairs, we couldn't get very hot water out of of the water heater. We'd get a blast of hot water, and then it would turn it luke warm. Then we'd another short blast of hot water, and then it would turn luke warm again. So I stopped by one day and talked with a fellow there. As soon as I explained what was happening, he said that the thermostats were bad. He couldn't be sure which thermostats I needed, so I said I'd bring the manual in the next day so we could figure it out. The next day I came back, but the fellow wasn't there. I spoke with another young man who agreed that it was probably the thermostats. But he suggested "just to make sure", to go speak with the service manager. So I did, and he agreed too. So I bought the $26.00 thermostats and went back to the coach and installed them. When we tried the hot water, it was hot, then luke warm, then hot, then luke warm again! AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH! I'd read the manual 3 times, and couldn't figure out anything else that it could be. So we decided that we'd get it looked at while we were in Nevada for a konth, because even if we needed to leave the coach at a repair facility over night, my son extra room for us at his house. So we'll take luke warm showers for a few days, which is better than totally cold.........I guess.

Sunday evening, we made a spaghetti dinner for Eddie and Steph to thank them for their hospitality. We had a very pleasant evening, and Jenny outdid herself with the meal.

On Tuesday, after running in to town and getting the mail, we thanked Eddie for his hospitality and left, headed west towards our rendezvous in Quartzsite, Arizona.

We arrived in Tyler, Texas and met up with my TBN friend Eddie. It was late in the day, so we basically got the coach positioned and hooked up and called it a night. The next day we met up with Eddie and he gave us a tour of his place and he and I walked the property where he pointed the different areas of the park. He'll have not only wild animals roaming the pasture, but he'll have a nice swimming pool, a store, rv sites, tents sites, long term sites, and small cabins that people can rent. He'll also have a 5 acre fishing lake. That's where he said we'd be working.

After a short orientation session on how to operate the dozer, he turned me loose. Let me tell you, it's a WHOLE lot harder that it looks. You've always heard the joke about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time? Well try walking, chewing gum, tying a shoe, scratching your back, and combing your hair all at the same time! That's what it's like driving a dozer. You have to control your direction by pushing with your left and your right foot, control the blade with your right hand while using 2 different handles, and control your direction and speed with your left hand, ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Oh, and you also have to watch what the blade is doing so you know if you're moving the right amount of dirt the right way. Whew! I'm tired from just describing it. Well, after awhile I guess I got the hang of it. Eddie was very nice with his comments, but quite honestly I wasn't happy my performance. But I realize that I was just learning, so I figured I'd get better.

Later that same day I needed to run into town to check on our mail. I had our mail forwarding service send two mailings to Tyler while we were there, and the first one should have arrived. Before we had left to go down to Tyler, I had gone on line to check the Post Office address in Tyler, which I then gave to the mail forwarding service. So I drove to that post office and arrived just as they closing for the day. I presented my identification and asked for my General Delivery mail. The lady clerk looked at me and laughed, and then she turned to the clerk at the next window and told him that I wanted General Delivery mail. He laughed too. I asked what was so funny, and she explained that all General Delivery mail automatically goes to the main post office. I said that I knew that, and that was why I was here. She said that they weren't the main post office. The main post office was on Broadway. Oh. I asked when they closed, and she said I had time to get there because they closed at 5:00 p.m. and it was only about 4:35. Thanks - bye!

So I drove out to the post office on Broadway, stood in line for 15 minutes only to be told that this was NOT the main post office. The main post office is on Martin Luther King Avenue. I mentioned that the post office people on Erwin Street said that the post office on Broadway was the main post office. This clerk didn't have anything to say about that, other than that the main post office was closed by now, so I wouldn't make it anyway. I thanked the lady for the information and left.

So the next day I drive to main post office and go through the same process of showing proof of identity, and when the clerk comes back from checking for the mail, he has nothing in his hands. Sorry, he said. There's nothing for you. So a quick call to the mail forwarding service confirms that they did, in fact, send a package of mail the previous Wednesday, so it should have been here by now.

Alrighty then....we have another mailing coming from the second Wednesday, which should arrive Friday or Saturday. So we'll check on Saturday and maybe BOTH packets will be there. Jenny and I drove in on Saturday, only to find that the main post office is closed on Saturdays. All of the satellite post offices are open until noon on saturdays, but the main post office is closed. O.K., we leave on Monday, so we'll check just before we leave. Oops! Wait a minute. It's Martin Luther King Day on Monday. All of the post offices will be closed. And now we realized that if that first packet still hasn't arrived, we'd need to submit a Change of Address card so that it could be sent to our next address. And we have to submit the Change of Address card in person, so we have to stay until Tuesday instead of leaving on Monday like we had planned. So on Tuesday I went back in to the main post office, and sure enough, we'd received the 2nd mailing, but not the first. So I submiited a Change of Address card to have it sent to our son's home in Nevada where we'll be by February 1st.

This post is getting a little lengthy, so I'll break it off and continue with a new post.


( Playing in The Dirt! )

I slipped up and forgot to post some pictures of Burns Park in Little Rock. I mentioned the park in the previous update. But it is truly something to see to believe. I was told that it is the 3rd largest park within a city limits in the country. It covers more than 1,600 acres, and offers just about any kind of recreational activity a person might enjoy from jogging, to a water park, to dozens of soccer fields, to batting cages, to.......well, take a look at some of the pictures I took, and you'll get just a small idea of what that park has to offer.

( Burns Park )

We left St. Louis on Thursday morning around 10:00 a.m. We would have gotten started a little earlier, but there seemed to be some problems with the communications to the shuttle bus. We waited for almost a half hour (after calling 3 times) before one finally showed up. We had a very pleasant drive, and we checked our Woodall’s directory looking for a nice RV park that had Wi-Fi to stop at for the night. We finally settled on the America’s Best Campground just outside of Memphis in Marion, TN. We got there early enough that it was still light (guess we have to leave AFTER 10:00 a.m. to get stopped early!), and so we decided to flush out our water system so that we could start using it again. Recall that it still had RV anti-freeze in all of the water lines.

So I hooked up the water lines to the faucet and started filling the tank so that I could flush out the anti-freeze. I quickly discovered water dripping from up under the panel that covers the tanks! AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!! I probed, I checked fittings, I unhooked everything and reattached the lines in hopes that the lines just didn’t seal properly. Nothing helped. We STILL had water leak problems!

I threw up my hands and went and used the campground shower. I figured that we’d have to call an RV repair shop the next morning to see if they could get us in for a repair. After I showered, I decided to get on line and see if I could locate a shop through the internet. I couldn’t get logged on. After repeated attempts, I called the provider service number listed on the campground’s brochure. According to the fellow I spoke with, the provider had canceled the service with that campground over a year ago. He even told me that another camper from this campground had called this evening asking the same thing. So no internet!

The next morning, I went down to the office to see if they could recommend any repair facilities that we could call. They gave me the name and number of 3 different shops. I mentioned to these folks what I had been told about the internet service, and they all but called me a liar. They said that they logged on to the internet every morning through the provider I had spoken with. I just ended the conversation by saying that as far as I was concerned, they were falsely advertising that they had internet service, and if I had known that they didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have stopped there.

Once I got back to the coach, I started going down the list calling these repair facilities. The first two would be happy to help me out……..in about 3 weeks! But the third said that I could come right over and they’d take a look for me. It happened that this place was in Horn’s Lake, Mississippi, which was about 20 miles outside of Memphis. The man I spoke with gave me directions, and I said we’d be there in about an hour.

The directions that I was given were absolutely perfect. We got there in just under an hour after speaking with them, and when I went in to talk with them, they put a guy on the job right away. The building was brand new, to the point that I could still smell the paint and they were still unpacking boxes. The name of the place is Southaven RV Center in Horn Lake, MS. After explaining what the problem was to the mechanic, and going over the history of our frozen water problems, he suggested that we go to get some lunch, and he should have an idea of what the problem is by the time we get back. So we did go to lunch, and when we got back, he told us that all he found was 3 loose clamps. He had tightened the clamps, and had the entire system under pressure with no leaks for better than a half hour. Leaks gone!!

I have to say that these guys were absolutely fantastic. They knew exactly what they were doing, and once they got started, they didn’t stop until the job was finished. If anyone ever needs road service on a motorhome while in the Memphi area, I would encourage you to call Southaven. You won’t go wrong.

We ended up spending only 2 hours at the service center, so we took off and headed for Little Rock.

We arrived in St. Louis after dark, around 5:30 p.m. I only mention this because we have always said that when we were traveling, we would always stop by mid afternoon so that we wouldn’t have to be doing things in the dark or feel like we’d wasted the whole day. To date, I think that we might have made that goal once since we started full timing. We’re STILL trying to figure out what we’re doing wrong!

Anyway, we stayed at the Casino Queen Casino, Hotel and RV Park. Some other full timers we “chat” with on the Escapee’s forums had suggested that we consider stopping there because of the good deal you get. Well, they were right! It’s a reasonable rate, you get a Good Sam (or other program) discount, you get a 2 for 1 breakfast buffet coupon, you get two $5.00 credit coupons to use in the casino, and there’s free shuttle service to and from the casino. For a one or two night stay, it is definitely worth it. You do get an occassional train whistle (twice during the night we were there) because the tracks are about 200 hundred yards away. And there is vehicle traffic noise from the nearby interstate highway. But those little nuisance’s aren’t enough to stop us from going there again. And we even discovered something else. Wednesday nights are senior nights, and a senior is anybody 50 or older! So we ended up getting our evening dinner buffet for half price! But the breakfast buffet was even better than the dinner buffet. Very good food, with a nice selection of items.

I’ve included a few pictures from our stay just to show you what the park looks like. They are in the process of building a whole new casino complex, starting this spring and supposed to be completed sometime in 2007. They probably will get finished sooner, thanks to our contributions that we left there!


( St. Louis and the Queen )

I’d been watching the weather channel most of the afternoon, and I was getting real tired of the weather people saying that the snow in St. Louis had ended, but when I looked out the window, they obviously had not told the snow. Clearly, though, it had subsided somewhat. Around 2:30 p.m., it had stopped, and we started talking about what we wanted to do. We both wanted to push on if we could, but I wasn’t sure where we’d pull in for the night if and when we needed to stop. So we pulled the good, old trusty Woodall’s Directory again. That little book is fast becoming one of our smarter purchases. Anyway, we looked for any RV parks that were open along our route. We kind of zeroed in on Springfield, thinking that because it was a fairly good size community there’d be a better chance of finding something. BINGO! We found Mr. Lincoln’s Campground. We called and made the arrangements and off we went.

We were very surprised on finding the condition of the roads to be very good. Kudos to the Illinois Department of Transportation. The lanes of traffic were very clear, and traffic was moving at pretty much normal speeds. I decided to play it safe and run right at the posted speed limit for motorhomes. After a short time, it started getting very windy, which made the driving a bit more challenging. Since Springfield was about 60 miles north of where we were, we knew that it’d take just over an hour to get there. It actually took just about one hour and a half, so that wasn’t too bad. But the last 15 miles of the trip became really nasty. Basically, we had caught up with the storm, and we ended driving in exactly the same conditions that we had experienced in the morning. We were VERY happy when our exit showed up and we got off the highway.

The campground seems kind of cute. I’ve included a couple of pictures. I think they got at least 4 inches of snow. The lady that we spoke with when we called was very nice and had explained that she would not be here when we arrived. So she told us to just pull into whichever pull-though site we wanted and we could settle up with her in the morning. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen. It’s kind of refreshing to know that people can still trust people like that.

So, we have about a 4 hour drive tomorrow, under ideal conditions. We’ve decided that we’re going to leave as early as we can so that we can be in Janesville around noon. The weather is supposed to be clear, and they road crews would have had all night to get the highways in really good condition. But I can tell one thing we’re not happy about. The coach is a mess on the outside! I’ll try to take some pictures and post them so that all of our North Carolina friends can see what they’re missing.

Wait a minute! We’re retired and traveling……weren’t we supposed to be missing it too!?!?!?!?

	Mr. Lincoln RV Park This is the RV Park that we stopped at in Springfield, IL.
	Another Mr. Lincoln Pic Another picture of the RV park.

We decided that since it was the day after Thanksgiving, we’d try to do the decorating of our home. We always tried to do that when we had a house, so there’s no real reason to change those traditions, is there? Of course, it does take us a little less time to decorate the coach than it did the house. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of what we did.

Tonight we’ll be attending a campfire sing-along with Ranger Joe. Seriously, that’s his name. I don’t know how many (if any) will be attending. There aren’t that many campers in the park now. I guess if no one shows up, we’ll just chat for a little while and then come home. Next Friday, we’ll be going to a well known botanical garden called Airlie Gardens to go on the Garden of Light Tour. The entire garden is decorated with holiday lights, and it’s supposed to be quite beautiful. I will definitely take some pictures! And on Saturday night, Carolina Beach has their Flotilla of Lights boat parade. Many of the owners of boats that are moored in this area elaborately decorate the boats and they all parade down through the sound. We’ve actually seen this on some of the Holiday shows on HGTV. We will also take a bunch of pictures of that!

It’s hard to believe that in just a week and two days, we’re done here and will be headed back to Janesville. The time sure has gone quickly. We were discussing this the other day, and it’s hard to think that we’ve been gone for over 2 months. We’ve enjoyed every minute of our “adventure”. Well, almost every minute! We hope you’ve enjoyed coming along with us as well. And we hope you continue to follow our travels. We’ll have lots of things to post while were home for Christmas. After all, we’ve made lots of new friends that aren’t familiar with Janesville, so it’ll be all new to them. So Ken and Linda, Ron and Judy, Bill, Vince, Greg and Terry, Roger and Kathy, Tim and Marcie, lots of other folks and all of our family members, be ready to get posted! Because I won’t be going anywhere without my camera.



( The Decorated Room )

	Carolina Beach State Park Visitor Center & Ranger Station I've been meaning to post a picture of the Visitor's Center. It's a great looking building. It's also the ranger station for the park.
	A Little Holiday Decorating We don't have a lot space for decorating, but we did a little!

This past weekend was pretty busy in the park. The weather was nice, so a lot of people came out. Didn't have too many problems, but I'm beginning to be a bit more sinical about people. I'm sure I haven't seen everything yet, but I can't believe some of the things that people will do. A fellow asked us if it was alright to burn pieces of 2X4 lumber that they'd brough with them. We said sure it was, as long as they didn't leave any behind. The next day I was making a tour of campsites, and in his campsite I found the remnants of a fire that he had built on a piece of plywood alongside the regular firepit. So he had his fire, but he just didn't bother putting it in the proper location. And on top of that, I found 5 or 6 pieces of 2' X 3' plywood that they had just thrown in to the underbrush next to their campsite. Unbelievable! Here's a picture of Bailey. Can you guess what she's doing? I'll give you a hint. She's doing her favorite thing in the world. Give up? Take a look at the picture in the cut. ( The Rest of The story )

Contented Yorkie What would make a little Yorkie look so contented?

Here are a few pictures I took our first day at Carolina Beach State Park. It's quite different from Medoc Mountain.

One of the biggest differences is that about 5 minutes outside of the main gate we can find anything we'd like. Like this terrific coffee shop called Port City Java that is our hot spot! And in either direction on the main road are commercial establishments. We're also just a few minutes away from downtown Wilmington. So I think we'll have a few more things to do here!

We'll check in real soon again!


( First pics of Carolina Beach State Park )

Night hikes are cool. I went on a night hike with about 10 others and the ranger on Saturday night. What a unique experience. It was perfect weather and the park is so dark and the stars so bright. The trails in the park are so wonderful. semi easy and not really long. The longest is about 1 1/2 miles. We hav enjoyed hiking very much. It is very peaceful.

We had a wonderful fire last night and the stars were so bright. We see shooting stars often. We think we spotted Mars in the southern sky, but couldn't be sure as we are not very savy about that sort of stuff.

We have been loving the cozy atmosphere our home has. The evenings are crisp and clear. The air is full of those woodsy smells. I baked pumpkin bread day before yesterday and the whole coach smelled of cinnamin and pumkin. Of course when I cook broccoli it isn't so nice. I love being able to keep it picked up and clean and have so much time to just think. Garry and I have some wonderful talks about nothing in particular. I have been knitting and reading mostly. I want to get some sewing done too. I am working on a cute poncho for Teagan for Christmas.

Teagan had a bad bout with Croup. She had to be hospitalised for a couple of days, but is now home and doing well. AWe thank God for that.

Nothing much elso happening. We take great joy in really small things. There are so many quaint and beautiful small churches around here. I want to get pictures of them and make a compilation of them. I also want to take pictures of some of the unusual and different building from many years ago. some are fallen in in places or have worn signs painted on them. I really would like to start painting again so if I have pictures of some of them, I could paint them at a later date.

I really am surprised at how fast the time has gone. We will be back in Janesville soon and I can't believe Christmas is right around the corner.

It's Tuesday, which means laundry day. We had been coming in on Mondays, but the Hampton Inn, where I was logging on in their lobby, kind of subtely suggested that unless I booked a room, I probably shouldn't be using their FREE site anymore. So, we came in on Tuesday so that we could log in at a bakery/coffee shop called The Sweet Tooth. Now I'm being good and only buying a cappuccino while I'm here.

Last week was the the most quiet time in the park that we've seen. There was one couple that came in on Monday evening, but only stayed the one night as they were traveling. They were very nice folks, but after they left, we had the park to ourselves until Friday evening. The rangers had mentioned that there was a group, Parents Without Partners, that were coming in for the weekend. So after a bunch of them had arrived, Jenny and I walked over to welcome them. They seemed nice and appreciative of our visit. They had a number of kids with them, ranging in ages from about 6 to 15 or 16. There were going to be a total of 38 people in that particular group site.

We didn't see much of them on Saturday, but we had mentioned that the ranger was holding a night hike at 6:30 that evening, and they would be welcome to attend. I actually ended up working during the hike, as the main gate needed to be locked at 7:00 pm, and since Phil (the ranger) was conducting the hike, he asked me to do that. So Jenny went on the hike while I "manned" the gate. She'll post comments about the hike in a little bit.

On Sunday, things started to go down hill. Phil came by to let us know that during routine inspections, he discovered that the bath house/restrooms for the group camping area had been trashed, and someone had even let a dog defecate inside one of the showers. Then later in the day, he came by again to tell us that a bunch of the kids had broken the glass in the informatinal sign by the bath house. This group site is about 1/4 mile or so away from where we are, so we never knew that anything like this had happened. Phil was able to find out who broke the glass, and he had a very long conversation with the parents and the kids. They did say they'd pay for the damage, but like Phil said, he'll believe when he sees it.

There were some other odd occurrences during the weekend, not related to the problem group. During one of my walk arounds, I discovered a fellow and his wife who were camping in a non-electric campsite near the bathouse had a long extension running in to the bath house. This really amazed me, as the difference between an electric site and a non-electric site is only $2.00. Now I realized that it is not my place to say anything to these people, or at least that's what Phil keeps telling us. So I didn't say anything. I just unplugged the cord and threw it down towards their campsite. Of course, I don't know if they just went back and re-plugged it in. I sure wasn't going to walk over there every hour to check. But I did let Phil know so he could handle it if he wanted to.

I also found another campsite where the campers had run a water hose across the road to hook up to a water source. That's O.K. to do, but they can't leave it hooked up 24/7 like these people were doing. Heck, even the camp hosts don't get to do that! So I walked in to the campsite and had a very pleasant conversation with the people. I mentioned that they were'nt supposed to leave their hose hooked up all of the time. Oh, they didn't know that they claimed. We'll unhook it right away. Later, I mentioned it to Phil, who said that when he came through, he found it hooked up too. This was some 2 - 3 hours after I'd been through. I did notice that they did keep it unhooked after Phil talked with them. I guess the fact that he wears a gun makes a difference!

So, all in all, it was a busy weekend. We helped the staff clean up the group campsite after those folks left, even though the staff kept telling us we didn't have to do that. It seems as time has gone by, Jenny and I have become rather "possessive" of our park, and we don't like it when people mistreat it. It just amazes us that people would be that careless, or have that much lack of respect for such a beautiful and well maintained state park.

We can't believe that we have only 9 more days here! the time has flown by, and we are definitely going to miss the park and the people that we've become friends with. Even though we had hoped that this first camp host position would give us a chance to get a feel for the job in a fairly low key environment, which it has, we can't believe how lucky we were in getting this park. This is absolutely the PERFECT place for us to get started in. The only concern is that these folks have set the bar awfully high, and we're afraid that other places we go to in the future will be somewhat of a let down. We're not really concerned about that too much, because we know there are wonderful people and places all over. And that's what our little adventure is all about!

NO!!

There were two screwed up entries that I deleted, so you are NOT going ceazy. They really were there. I messed up posting a picture, and didn't have time to correct it at the time. And I didn't even realize that I had posted twice.

Sorry!

I'll post the picture in the next update. We did receive some good news the other day. We've been accepted as camp hosts at the Carolina Beach State Park at the southern tip of North Carolina from Novemeber 10th through December 5th. So we'll finally be fullfilling one of Jenny's life long dreams - to live on the beach. We're looking forward to going, but we
're also saddened about leaving Medoc. This has been a GREAT place to spend our first month as camp hosts. I was kidding Jenny the other day by saying how nice it was of North Carolina to give us our very own state park to live in. we've had nobody in the park this entire week. We do have a group coming in tonoght, but don't know about any others. And the staff has been super. We've all become great friends. But, we are looking forward to seeing new things.

If I have time, I'll come back and post that picture today, but I've got to do alot more on line stuff first.

See you all later! (Geesh, we're even starting to sound like North Carolinians!)

It's Monday, so it's laundry day and journal catch up day!

We're feeling the effects of hurricane Wilma today. Getting lots of rain and some strong, gusty winds are due in later today and tonight. Of course, we're only on the edge of the storm, so nothing really to worry about.

It's amazing that we're already halfway through our stay here. It's really going fast. Sorry, but no pictures to post this time.

We continue to be amazed at the low usage of this park, considering how well maintained and beautiful it is. I think the most number of campsites that have been used at any one time is 7, and that's out of 34 campsites! People are still learning about this park. It had originally opened in 1972, but was let go for awhile. I'm not exactly sure for how long, but it was reactivated just 4 years ago. The staff is slowly building the park back up to what they want it to be, and from what we've seen, they've done a great job. I need to get some pictures of the staff that I can post and add to our scrapbook.

This past week, we only had about 5 campsites used the entire week. One fellow rode in on a bicycle. He was an English fellow who is riding from British Columbia to Washington D.C. He's been riding now for over 4 months. I never really did figure out what he's doing down here, but it didn't seem to bother him. Another man and his 5 year old came out on Friday because his wife had gone off with some girl friends for a weekend of scrapbooking. So the two "guys" decided to go camping. They loved the park, but they disappeared by Saturday morning. I have a feeling that a nasty storm that blew in over night may have put a bit of a damper on their plans.

We've sent a message to the Carolina Beach State Park offering our services for 3 weeks or so once we're done here. We've not heard back from them yet. If that doesn't work out, we'll keep looking for some place to land for those weeks before we head back in mid December.

We're really enjoying the quiet and the solitude every day. We had a nice campfire the other night, and we just sat around listening to the silence with just an occassional comment from either one of us. We didn't have any s'mores because we didn't have any fixing's for them. We'll pick up some things to day so that we're better prepared for the next campfire.

It's very interesting driving around the area. Clearly there are few, if any, zoning codes in most places. You can see a really nice brick home that would sell for + $200,000.00 back home sitting right next to a delapidated trailer with junk cars siting outside of it. I plan on snapping a few pictures so I can post them. There is no question that the majority of the area is very depressed. But there are also some very beautiful, well developed areas around some of the larger communities. And the locals are very friendly, at least from our experience. Someone mentioned to us that they thought the locals were not very friendly, but we certainly have not seen that. I know that I've never been called "honey" and "sugar" so many times by so many strangers in my life!

If we don't get on-line this week, we'll check in next Monday again when we come in to do the laundry. See you then!

Well, I promised you some pictures of Medoc Mountain State Park. By the way, we had been pronouncing it as Medic, but we discovered that it is really pronounced Meedoc. We'll post more pictures as we take them and as we have time to post them.

Enjoy!

	Main entrance sign to Medoc Mountain
	They put out signs so we couldn't hide!
	Here's our temporary location.
	This is where we take showers and, uh, do other things. It's only about 50 yards from where we're parked, so we use it instead of using our "home" resources".
	Here's a picture of the Ranger station. If you look REAL hard, you might someone doing some weeding in the lower right hand corner.
	This is one of the informational signs located throughout the park. You should be able to read it if you try.
	This is the main picnic shelter in the park. It's got a beautiful see through fireplace in it.
	This is looking down the road from our campsite at some of the other campsites in the area. There are more, but they're scattered throughout the park.

Our first week as camp hosts is complete. And boy, what a week! It was GREAT!!

We posted last Thursday (the 13th), so I'll pick up from there. We started seeing a few more campers come in to the park on Friday, but we were no where near being full. Actually, there were only 3 sets of tent campers, another Class A motorhome, and a fifth wheel. This, of course, is not counting the Cub Scouts that were camping in the group camping area.

We met the other couple in the Class A. I posted their picture below.

Two (three) New Friends - Calvin, Mari & Bandit

What nice folks they are! We really hit off with them. Mari and Jenny both do beading and quilting, so they had a great time chatting about all of that stuff. Calvin was retired from a civilian job working for the Navy. I thought I was doing well to retire at 55. Calvin retired when he was 48!! He and I really enjoyed just sitting around talking about RV'ng and other stuff. They're not fulltimers yet, but they plan to be in the next few years. They've invited us to a campground near their home in Chesapeake, VA, and we definitely want to go visit them. Last Friday night, they fired up a campfire and we introduced them to pudgie pies. They said they loved them, but I have to tell you that they didn't turn out the way I expected they would. I think I may have missed a step in making the pies. But I promise to figure it out and fix them some really good pudgie pies when we meet again! We had planned on hosting a S'mores party at our campsite on Saturday night for any campers in our area. But everyone left on Saturday, so we donated all of the S'mores fixings to the Cub Scouts that were spending the night. I'm sure they enjoyed them.

We had our first "bad" experience on Sunday. On Saturday night, a local race track had big races planned, so we had a few folks who were attending the races come in to camp. Two couples came in on Harley's, and each cycle was pulling the neatest little trailer that unfolded into a real cool tent. As with any campers that came in, we walked down to their site to welcome them and see if we could help them in anyway. When we got there, they had already made camp and left. I noticed them come back through around 11:30 p.m. that night. The next morning, Jenny went up to check on the bathhouse, and in the ladies side found mushy bar soap stuck to everything in the shower area and even into the bathroom area! What a mess! It looked like at least two people had had a huge soap bar fight. Some other campers we talked with told us that they heard a lot of laughing and horsing around late Saturday night. So we called the ranger to report it, and he came up to look it over. We offered to help clean up the mess, but he said absolutely not, that wasn't our job! So he did some basic cleanup, and then the regular cleaning crew came in this morning and finished it off. what a shame that was. Here is a beautiful, well maintained facility for the public to use, and a couple of thoughtless individuals think they can come in and just trash the place. We were happy that were no other campers in the park that would have seen the mess before it was cleaned up.

We've started looking around for another short term assignment somewhere around Myrtle Beach or Savannah after we leave Medoc Mountain. We figure we could work somewhere for about 3 weeks before we head back to Wisconsin for Christmas. The next time I get a chance to get on line, I'll post some pictures of the park we're in.

We really seem to be getting in to this new lifestyle. We're enjoying everyday, regardless of what we're doing. We feel more relaxed and comfortable with everything, and it feels good when we tell people that we're fulltimers. And almost in every case, the repsonse is "Wow, that's so great! We want to do that someday." So it's working just exactly the way we hoped it would.

Thanks for stopping by! Don't be a stranger.

Boy, it feels like it’s been a year since we last posted! A lot sure has happened since then! It's Thursday, October 13th, and we're in a coffee shop called Java Mott's in Rocky Mount, N.C. It took us awhile to find a hot spot, but we finally did. Maybe we'll be able to provide a few more frequent updates for the rest of our stay. I mean gee whiz, it's only about 30 miles one way to get here!

We left Columbus on Friday, October 7th in very rainy conditions.. We had a wonderful visit with our daughter, Lori and her roommate Rachael. We drove from Columbus to Milton, West Virginia. We stopped there just for the night, and we definitely needed the rest. We had decided on going to a particular campground that we’d found in the Woodall’s Campground directory. We took the exit that the directory identified and started following the signs. The last sign we saw said that the campground was 4.4 miles ahead. When we had driven the 4.4 miles, we came to a point where we either got back on the interstate, or continue to follow the country road we were on. Well, we figured the campground MUST be just up around the next bend, so we followed the country road. WRONG! We kept going, and going, and going, but unlike the Energizer Bunny, we were losing our energy real fast! This road was unbelievable! I don’t believe I ever got much over 25 mph, and many times the curves were so sharp that I was down to 5 mph! Narrow, windy, hilly country roads are not something that you would voluntarily drive a 40’ motorhome towing a pickup truck! Trust me! We drove for at least 45 minutes or more, and finally came out to another highway only about 15 minutes from another campground we had considered that was 30 miles farther west!! So, being the flexible types that we are, we went there.

The campground, which was called the Fox Fire Resort, was very nice. We had a pull through site, so we didn’t need to unhook the truck at all. But no Wi-Fi. Bummer.

We left on Saturday morning, still in very rainy conditions. We continued eastward until we arrived at a campground just outside of Arart, North Carolina called Homeplace Recreational Park. There was no one in the office when we arrived, but a nice lady and her grandson took Jenny for a ride in a golf cart to show her where we could park. She told us just to leave $22.00 in the mail slot the next morning when we left. It was a very pretty park with a lot of trees and windy roads (oh no!). But we easily got to our pull through site and spent the night. The next morning we dropped off our money and left, never having seen anyone from the park!

When we left the campground, it was STILL rainy, and continued to rain all day. We arrived at Medoc Mountain State Park around 4:00 p.m. or so. We stopped at the Ranger station, but no one was there. There was a sign on the window that said that any campers should just go on down to the campsite area and select a vacant site and a ranger would be through later to register them. So, we drove on down to the campsite area. As we slowly wound our way around the paved roads, we came across campsite # 4 that had a camp host sign posted in front of it. Hey, that’s us! And we’re only about 50’ from a brand new bath house/restroom building. That’s going to save on having to fill the fresh water tank and dump the holding tanks. The site has 50 amp electric, but no fresh water hookup or sewer hookup. The closest fresh water is about 70’ away. I stretched out all my hoses and was about 3’ too short! But the ranger brought me some more hose, so no problems.
We can’t stay hooked up 24/7, but he told us to keep the hose so we can fill anytime we need to. And the dump station is only a short drive away, so it’s no big deal. Actually, having to be careful with our water usage will be a good learning experience for us. We’ve already figured out some ways to be a bit less wasteful.

The rangers are GREAT here! In fact, the entire staff is super. After we arrived and got setup, I drove in to the closest town to get some ice. When I got back, Ranger Wilkerson (Ed) had arrived and was talking with Jenny. He was very nice, and gave us our camp host packet. He asked us to come to the station the next morning around 10:00 and we could meet everyone else. We drove down there the next morning and met Sherry, the staff receptionist. We chatted with her for awhile, and then Ranger King (Phil) arrived. He’s the one that actually “hired” us. While we were talking, the Superintendent, Ranger Lyndon Sutton arrived, so we chatted some more. We went back into their offices so that Phil could complete some paperwork. That’s when we learned that we were the VERY FIRST camp hosts the park had ever had! Talk about the blind leading the blind! But they were really cool about everything. They gave us the basic rules, and then said that we were free to do pretty much whatever we wanted to do, because we would be setting the bar for all future camp hosts. Thanks, no pressure huh!? And then they mentioned that we would have a really good learning experience the next weekend, as they are hosting a Boy Scout Jamboree kind of event! This should be really fun!

We had the park to ourselves on Monday night, but then on Tuesday, two sets of folks showed up with a couple of small travel trailers. On Wednesday, a Class A came in and will probably be staying through Saturday. Then on Wednesday evening, a 5th wheel came in, but they’re only staying the night as they’re heading south on Thursday.

Since we haven’t posted for awhile, you may have figured out that there is no Wi-FI here. Heck, there isn’t even cell phone service! We are OUT OF TOUCH! We went into the closest town (Hollister) and couldn’t get any cell phone service there either. We finally found phone service in a town about 18 miles from here called Roanoke Rapids. The local librarian told me that they do not have Wi-Fi, but there was a sweet shop out by the WalMart near the interstate that she thought had it. I haven’t had a chance to get back there to find out. Tomorrow we’re going into Rocky Mount, which is about 22 miles away. We actually stopped there on our way out to the park on Sunday to get some groceries. That’s also where we found the cheapest diesel fuel at $3.02. We’ve fueled up 3 times since we started our trip, and the fuel costs have been $3.30/gallon, $3.17/gallon, and $3.02/gallon in that order. So at least it’s going down! We’ve been averaging 7.7 mpg, which we’re fairly pleased with, considering that better than 2/3rds of our trip has been through the mountains.

We’re really enjoying our time. We sleep as long as we like, or at least as long as Bailey will let us sleep. Unbelievably Bailey has been sleeping through the ENTIRE night every night since we moved in to the MH. We’re NOT complaining! Once we get going, we take Bailey and go for nice walks through the park. Even though we weren’t asked to, we check all of the restrooms for supplies and pick up any litter we might find. We’re really looking forward to the ground drying up (remember, it’s been raining for like 5 days!) so that we can start hiking the regular trails.
We’ve decided that unless all of the campsites are full on Saturday night, we’re going to host a Smores party for everyone in the campsites. We’ll supply the ingredients, but they bring their own marshmallow sticks, beverages and chairs. We just thought that it’d be fun to meet some of these people. Everyone we’ve met so far have just been wonderful! We find ourselves meeting folks for the first time and we end up talking with them for an hour! But that’s exactly what we’re looking forward to! In fact, we couldn’t be more pleased with the way things are going. Our budget seems to be holding up just fine, even with the extra cost of the fuel. We’ve traveled the way we wanted to – no rushing and stopping when we wanted to. We’ve got a great campsite for a whole month at n o cost, for which we really don’t have a lot to do. We’re even going to get a golf cart to use on the weekend, but Phil said they’d probably let us keep it for the whole month. The only real down side is not having phone service or internet service. Trying to use Wi-Fi Hot spots doesn’t seem to be working out very well. We’re going to need to look at this very closely!

Next week is the North Carolina State Fair. It’s only about 1 hour away, so we may sneak into it on one of the days. Other than that, we don’t have any real firm, hard plans. And THAT”s kind of nice!

I hope we can post some more here very soon. If not, please be patient and keep checking. We’ll eventually get back here! Now that we've found this place, my next posting will include pictures of the inside of the coach for all of you that have been panting over what Jenny did, and/or pictures of Medoc Mountain. Since we have to "work" the weekends, it probably will be next Monday, as I think we'll have some paperwork we'll need to fax to our banker.

Catch up with you soon!