Jim Hogg Army Corps of Engineers Park, Georgetown, TX March 24-31

Lots of deer around the campground

Our drive from Mill Creek to Jim Hogg was an easy drive of about 4 ½ hours and, thankfully no wind for most of the trip. We did have a bit of a scare as we pulled out of the site, though. The engine RPM's ran way up and stayed even when Rich released the fuel pedal and depressed the brake. He had the good sense to turn the key off, then tried again with the same results. After checking things out, he realized that when I had vacuumed the truck the afternoon before I had replaced the floor mat on his side on top of the gas pedal. Oops! That won't happen again.

The scenery changed fairly quickly from the tall pines to short oaks, junipers, wide-open grasslands, and long trains. Where in parts of Texas we had seen crops and cattle sharing the land with oil firlds, the farther west we travel this trip, we saw more and more land used solely for oil production– derricks and pump jacks abound along with oil storage tanks and tanker trucks parked within a ten-foot high chain link fencing and a lone travel trailer or fifth-wheel presumably providing security or management for the area.

We passed several places where the stench from the oil was overpowering. I can't help but wonder about the health risks the oil field workers are being exposed to. Remember all the health problems the volunteers who helped with the cleanup of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that happened in the Gulf in 2010? And these volunteers were not exposed nearly as much as the workers in the oil fields. Did you know that the earliest known oil wells were drilled in China in 347 using bits attached to bamboo poles to a depth of 790 feet?

We grabbed a bite of lunch in Rockland at Taqueria Banda and were pleasantly surprised with soft chicken tacos and Mexican Cokes. Mexican Cokes are made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup and are so very much better – they taste like the Cokes from years ago. It is the only kind we buy now.

Campsite

We were pleased to see a good variety of shopping within only four miles of the park – a nice change from twenty or more! We were the only ones occupying a site in the first half of our loop – I'm sure that won't last long, but we'll enjoy it while it does.

The weather was wonderful – not bad in the sun and in the shade with a light breeze (and there is always a breeze in Texas in the spring) I need a light-weight jacket. Rich, of course, was happy in shorts and a tee shirt. In spite of the great temperature, we were thankful for the covered shelter – these were about twice as large as usual and it was nice to be able to put our chairs and Dicken's bed in the shade without worrying about the ever-present wind taking the awning down. And, thinking about the strong winds in the southwest in the spring – it would be nice if the slide covers could be easily removed or unhooked from the slide so they don't get torn in the wind but could still be used in low-wind conditions. We saw deer every day in the park and I saw my first roadrunner! No photo, but it was cool to see.

Yummy Greek food!

We noticed a soft spot in the floor in front of the sink and stove and also found a crack in the fiberglass siding – both worrisome. Forest River says the soft spot is from high use compressing the foam under the floor (better than a water leak), but we have to get an estimate on replacing the entire side before they will talk with us about that problem. Not real happy on that one.

As much as we liked the park, the showers and restrooms were some of the worst we've ever seen. No dressing area outside the small shower stall and I'm too old and heavy to strip in front of anyone other than my hubby and doctors! To 

Equally as good Mexican food

add insult to injury, they were push-button activated and no temperature adjustment. In spite of that, we will probably spend time there again – with a near-by H.E.B store, big-box stores within 20 miles if we need them, cheap prices in Texas, and two wonderful family-owned restaurants a few miles away Placka Greek Restaurant and Sierra Mexican Restaurant – it's hard to beat. Add in the park is rarely crowded, and it's hard to beat. We'll bathe in the RV :)

Our one side trip while at Jim Hogg's was up to Waco to see Kevin, Anna, their three kids and new dog. It was great to see them again and we were pleased they had time to 

Anna and Kevin

spare with their crazy busy schedule. Kevin is staying busy at Baylor and Anna has her hands full with three little ones only a year and a half apart (the two younger ones are twins). We spent a delightful afternoon and evening with them and enjoyed a wonderful roast beef dinner.

Oaks and Pines RV Park, Lake City, FL; 2014, January 17-20

The pavillion at Oaks and Pines

 As I'm sure you've noticed, we rarely stay at private RV parks. For one thing, they don't often meet our budgetary requirements, and even more important, they are too parking lot-like where we enjoy more natural surroundings. We couldn't find any state parks or national forests near Gainesville with an available site, so here we are. It was typical of an older private park and in dire need of improved                                                        restroom facilities - there were 

Our site

only two for all the sites and while clean, were sadly outdated. The woman (presumably one of the owners) was perfectly pleasant, but the man had a reall attitude. He insisted that everyone park their towing vehicles behind their RVs and when I asked why, he got huffy and said he had kicked out the last folks who didn't want to park where he told them to. I reminded him that I had simply asked the reason for                                                the rule and he finally calmed down enough to tell us.                                             While we didn't necessarily agree with his reasoning,                                               we parked behind the RV, but his quick temper pretty 

more of the rv park

  much guaranteed we won't be back.

On Saturday, we left Lake City around 6 AM, drove to Gainesville, picked up a U-Haul trailer (I won't even go into that fiasco), went by the house and picked up some extra furniture and took it down to the new (to them) house my daughter and her family were moving into. We go to their place around 11 and shortly thereafter, Beth and the three kids showed up. We got a complete tour of the house, caught up with what Charley and Lizzie were doing in school, were appropriately amazed at how quickly Pete is growing, and had time for a good

The new house

chat with Beth. By that time, Kevin arrived with lunch, we ate, and headed back for the U-Haul store, then got back to the campground around 7 PM. Thank goodness, that's an unusual day for us, but seeing the kids made it all worth while.

The next day, we caught up on some cleaning and tried to get onto the advertised wi-fi, but couldn't at the campsite. Rich was determined enough to walk over to the pavilion and work

Beth, Pete, and Charley

at a picnic table, but it wasn't worth it to me, so I stayed at camp and read.

We left Monday for Stephen Foster and a week of exploring.

View from the master bedroom

Lizzie, Pete, Charley

Pete playing by Beth's cello case

Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park, Keystone Heights, FL January 3 – 5, 2014

My son and daughter had come here a number of times during their school years, but we had never been to the park before. Although we had water and electric hook-ups and good restroom, shower, and laundry facilities, the rest of the campground was unimproved. The sites were identified by a site number on a post, as in most other campgrounds, fire pits and electric hook-ups were visible, but they were the only things that indicated a campsite. The area was beautiful with oaks, pines, but not much in the way of buffer between most sites. The parking area of the sites were sand with stumps and rocks in the middle of soem and since we've been in an RV instead of a tent, we appreciate a little more in the way of improved sites, such as gravel parking areas on sites. .

There is a National Forest Campground about 16 miles away and part of the Ocala National Forest which was just the opposite of Gold Head, where RV were parked lined up as though they were in a parking lot. Each to his own, which is why there all different kinds of campgrounds and campers.

Cool intertwined trees

Typical forest 

Pretty view

We took a little walk along a trail and saw more pretty country, lots of mounds of sand indicating pocket gopher holes, and caught up with a former co-worker of Rich's whose husband is a ranger at the park. 

Pocket gopher holes

Pocket gophers are rat-sized rodents, adapted for a life underground, and rarely seen in the open. They have orange-colored incisors behind which they can close their lips, allowing them to dig and cut with their teeth without getting soil in their mouths. They also have external, fur-lined cheek ouches where they can carry food and nesting materials back to the burrow. The pocket gopher digs extensive systems of tunnels up to 36 inches deep. While we never saw any pocket gophers, we saw ample evidence of their tunnels.

From here, we go back to Paynes Prairie, then to Oleno, and back to Paynes Prairie. We didn't do anything of interest at these locations and I didn't take any photos so the next one post will be from Oaks and Pines.

 
 

Paynes Prairie State Park, Micanopy, FL December 20 – January 3, 2014

We landed at Paynes Prairie in time to get a few decorations out for Christmas and finish wrapping presents for Beth's family. It seemed strange to be back in Gainesville, and I can't say either of us had any particular desire to be back. We are so enjoying the full-time RV living and really hope we can continue it for years.

Pete and Lizzie

Pete loving on Dickens

Beth and her family came out to celebrate the holiday and Charley and Lizzie spent the night. It's hard to believe how fast the kids are growing – that's the only down side of our nomadic life style and them living in Florida.

Lizzie playing with her puppet

Charley, Beth, and Lizzie

After Christmas, we got busy at the house doing some yard work, and making some changes and repairs that were needed. Because Paynes Prairie is booked up on weekends, we'll be moving to different campgrounds around the area so we can be at the house a couple of weeks and take care of some other things here in town. Then, when the weather moderates, if luck holds, we'll head west.

Pete, Charley, and Lizzie

Pete loves it when Grandpa swings him!

Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, White Springs, Florida December 15-20, 2013

We had heard the Christmas show put on by this park every year was a nice one, so were anticipating a good surprise. We were more than surprised with the light display and model railroad display as well as decorations in the museum. They also had Santa each evening, a man-made snow fall for the kids, popcorn, and hot chocolate. It takes about two months for workers and volunteers to put up all six million lights! 

Along a divided drive is a santa, sleigh, and reindeer on a runway, preparing to soar into the sky to deliver toys, and farther on toward the carrilon tower there are lights all over – comets flying through the air, a train ready to disappear into a tunnel, a snow family caroling, and the buildings were decorated so they looked like gingerbread houses.

There were two high points of the evening: one was the dulcimer music and the other was the model railroad. Michael Vickey, the dulcimer player, was an award winner in several competitions and over several years. He had played the banjo for 25 years before moving to the dulcimer, which he has played for a number of years. He plays both the hammered dulcimer (my absolute favorite) and the mountain dulcimer. The hammered dulcimer is mentioned in the King James Bible, Daniel 3:5. It may have originated in Persia, but some evicdence suggests that its birthplace is Byzantium (Turkey) in the 10^th century. By this yardstick, the mountain dulcimer is a newbie, having thought to have been made by early residents of Pennsylvania who migrated to the Appalachian Mountains in the late 1700's. In spite of its youth, the mountain dulcimer is an important instrument, since it is considered to be the only truly American stringed instrument and is also referred to as an Appalachian, lap, or plucked dulcimer. While the mountain dulcimer is a beautiful instrument, the hammered dulcimer makes more music than I've ever heard come from a small instrument. I was amazed and completely fell in love with the instrument. Some day, perhaps I'll make an attempt to learn it. (BTW – Michael doesn't read a note of music!)

The model railroad display was mesmerizing. The first night we were there, there were probably eight or ten different trains running. The display was remarkable in its detail and scope and we'll look forward to showing it to Rick and Beth and both their families Christmas of 2014.

Santa's Station

Fort Clinch State Park, Fernandina Beach, FL December 2-15, 2013

Fort Clinch is a large park located on the north end of Amelia Island and has water on three sides. One campground is on the beach on the Atlantic, Fort Clinch sits on the northern tip of the island at the mouth of St. Mary's River, and the river campground is nestled in the forest on the river side. Although the fort was only partially completed, it served as a military post during the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War II. The location of the fort was chosen to protect the natural, deep-water port of Fernandina – the eastern link of Florida’s only cross-state railroad. The fort is open to visitors and there are rangers to answer questions about the history of the area and have interesting stories to impart to those interested. There are several walks and historic sites in the park that are also enjoyable.

The Land Rover

The Land Rover

Handmade Teardrop Camper

Handmade Teardrop Camper

Beautiful truck

Handmade Teardrop Camper

We had visited the fort and walked some of the trails the last time we visited, and this time we had no particular plans other than driving to St. Simons Island for the day and visit our favorite restaurants – Palmer's Village Cafe and Sal's Neighborhood Pizzeria. JB, the chef at Palmer's, does miraculous things with food. It is always well worth the nearly four hour round trip to have breakfast there. They do other, more traditional breakfast items as well, but I have made it a practice to order the special no matter what it is and I've never been disappointed.

We had a couple of unusual camping rigs come in during our stay: one was a proper Land Rover with a cool camping unit in the back and the other a teardrop camper and 1952 Chevy truck. The Land Rover was a unique unit and there is a blog that gives all the statistics. The folks who travel in it are from Australia and have the vehicle shipped from continent to continent. The Chevy-Teardrop unit was the antithesis to the completely utilitarian Land Rover. The owner had rebuilt the truck from the ground up and while it looked original on the outside, the engine was a 350 and had had made some other alterations under the hood as well. The teardrop trailer was beautifully crafted with some nice innovations to set it apart from the commercially built units.

We were there two weeks and the middle weekend was completely disrupted by the noisiest, least diciplined Cub Scout troop we've ever had the misfortune to camp near. We have heard from many rangers and campground hosts that any time they have a scout troop or church group expected, they cringe. To be fair, we had a troop of boys camped near us at Petit Jean State Park in Arkansas and you would never have known they were there!

Yarn Winder

For my birthday back in October, Rich had bought a yarn winder, which I had wanted for some time. It's a great little device and works like a charm to make flat-bottomed balls of yarn that pull from the center. Much better than hand winding! Now I just have to get back to work getting some blankets crocheted!

Flat-Bottomed Yarn Ball

Although we caught some nice fish the last time we were here, we were skunked this time, so will have to put off the fresh fish dinner.

From here, we travel to Stephen Foster State Park in White Springs, just north of Lake City. We had heard lots about the Christmas decorations and were about to see if they were as good as reputed.

(BTW: In case I haven't groused about the lousy photo placement options in blogger, consider it done. I haven't use such such archaic software in years. I've got to find better software.)

St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL November 25-December 2, 2013

After a difficult trip to New York and back, we spent one night at Blackwater River to pick up the RV and then headed to St. Andrews. We were especially looking forward to this stop since our my son, his wife, Sam, and their seven month old daughter Emilia are there. On the way to the park, we stopped by Rick's work location and saw him for a quick tailgate lunch in spite of the windy cold weather and threatening rain. St. Andrews was another new park for us and apparently it is one of the most popular Florida state parks – it's always difficult to get a site here. The weather had been very rainy (unusual for winter in Florida) and many of the sites had muddy ruts all through the site, but especially near the road. Luckily, our site wasn't too bad in spite of the continuing rain.

Rick and Sam

Rich and Emilia

On Wednesday morning, we met Rick at work and picked up – we got to keep Emilia for the day. We had a great time with her – she's one of the happiest babies I've ever seen. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we had Rick, Sam, and Emilia were over for a home cooked dinner – roasted chicken instead of a turkey, but mashed potatoes, gravy, escalloped oysters, bread dressing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. Not bad for a tiny RV kitchen. The weather was still cold and rainy, but we were comfy and cozy inside - that's the beauty of the RV over a tent, in which we camped until our mid-fifties!

Since clean clothes and fresh veggies were getting scarce, it was laundry and grocery shopping on Friday, then cleaning. That is another of the beauties of RV living – it only takes about an hour to clean unless I do the walls and ceilings!

Cute little hedgehog

Emilia and Rich at the zoo

Black swan

Colorful bird

Aren't these the cutes

I fell in love with this beautiful wolf

She fell in love with Rich

Goat in the petting zo

Donkey in the petting zoo

See the stored fat on his rump?

Baby giraffe

This is an I-Can't-Remember...

Rick and Sam had taken the next two days off toand on Saturday they took us to Zoo World in Panama City, a non-profit educational facility. We arried mid-morning and wandered through the exhibits. We saw a cute little hedgehog, lynx, several kinds of monkies, a number of different parrots, budgies, and the like, swans, ducks, groundhogs, lions, leopards. By this time, the bird show was beginning. We watched and enjoyed. The birds were beautiful and it was fun to see the things they had been trained to do. By this time we were all ready for lunch, so we had a picnic outside the zoo then went back in for the wolf exhibit. There were three wolves, but only two were calm enough to be a part of the talk. They were abolutely beautiful and Montana loved meeting all the folks in the audience.

We then went through the reptile exhibit and on into the petting zoo where they had a baby giraffe, turkeys, a pony, donkey, and goats and all sorts of other animals – all of which were expert beggars for the pellets of food sold by the park. The donkey was obviously a success as large lumps of fat were visible on his body. Apparently, many visitors were afaid the collections of fat were tumors, since there was an informative sign about it.

After finishing up at the zoo, we then drove over to the marina to watch the boat parade. It was a perfect night for the parade – the rain had let up as had the wind and the sunset was spectacular. We saw some nicely decorated boats, and lots of happy folks dressed up on them.

At the marina

After the parade and all of our walking at the zoo, we were ready for a good meal which we enjoyed at Los Antojitos, one of Rick and Sam's favorite spots. It was a family-owned restaurant, which is what we look for rather than chains, and the food was very good.

It had been a great day and Emilia was again a happy baby. The next day we did some Black Friday-on-Sunday shopping and had lunch with the kids at Outback. The next day we headed out to Fort Clinch for two weeks. It was great to spend so much good time with Rick, Sam, and Emilia and are already looking forward to next time we can get together.

Waiting for the parad

Boat Parade

• Boat Parad

Boat Parade