Our Summer Begins

OK. I know we’ve been out ten days already. But there really hasn’t been anything too exciting to report as yet. We took our first exploratory trip yesterday, but I’ll get to that a little later.

We left home on Tuesday, May 12, as planned. In fact everything on the drive up here went pretty much as planned. We spent our first night in our favorite “first night” place in South Carolina. This was at least our third (if not fourth) year stopping there.

Our second night was just outside Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. This was a nearly brand new campground and very nice. There were no trees to be found, but the sites were very level and spacious.

Most of the trip to this point was on the interstate – not very exciting stuff. But our friends, Mary & Gary, told us how to get around Washington, DC, on decent roads. It was great and a very pretty drive through northern Virginia. We stopped in Leesburg, VA, for lunch. Then it was on through Maryland and into Gettysburg, PA, for the night. We got there early enough to get out and drive around a bit. We went past the famed battlefield and drove around the town. We had a beer at a local pub and enjoyed the ambiance.

Friday brought us the rest of the way here, to Clayton Park, just outside of Scranton, PA. (In case you weren’t aware: we are work-camping here for four months. We will do 20 hours a week between us and get our campsite for free.) We met our bosses, Sonya and Maurice, and Sonya’s son, Jonathan. They are very nice people and we should enjoy our time here.

Over the weekend we mostly just got settled and acclimated. The weather turned nasty, too. We actually had the furnace running at night. It got below freezing for several hours one night. Last week in Florida we were in 95-degree weather and come up here and we get highs of 50. What’s wrong with that picture! Fortunately, it’s in the 80s the last couple of days and we’re fine with that.

We are super grateful for our GPS in the car. We’ve been into town several times already, but we still don’t have parts of it figured out. There are lots of turns through a residential area before we get onto the road that brings us back out here. But we have four months to get better at that. And we will.

Since the weather was so bad and we weren’t working yet, we found the nearest casino on Sunday. We didn’t win anything huge, but we came home with half our budget still in our pockets, so that was a big plus.

Julian spent a couple hours earlier in the week mowing. This place is much bigger than it might appear and there’s lots of grass. There is a riding mower to do the big areas, but he was using the walking mower for this time.

I just took some pictures around here and I’ll share those now. Here’s the boat dock. It seems to be a pretty popular place, too. I’m sure we’ll see tons of boats this holiday weekend.

This is a good shot across the lake.


Here are some of the sites along the lake frontage. People have their units here permanently and come out off and on all summer, I guess.


This is the main building. The owners live on the top floor. The middle floor is used for piano lessons and recitals. I think Sonya’s mom has taught for years and is still at it.


The bottom level is the office and store. That’s where I’ll be spending a good part of my working hours. Oh, and that happens to be Julian on the porch on the middle level. We have little or no cell coverage at our campsite, so he’s up there using his phone.

Here are a couple views of our home for the next few months.



Yesterday was our first day of exploring for fun. We sort of arbitrarily picked a place out of our PA tourist book and went for it. We drove east, almost to New York actually. It’s called Shohola Falls. We took Heidi with us and had a picnic after viewing the falls. (Be sure to click on the panorama to see all the cool detail.)



With this being Memorial Day weekend, our work will begin in earnest. I’ve got 9 hours scheduled in the store on Saturday and Sunday. Julian will be manning the guard shack for an hour or two tonight and a portion of the weekend, too. The place is pretty deserted right now so it’s hard to imagine the pace we’ve been warned about. But this will be the official start of summer, so we’ll be ready for it.

Christmas Trip

On Tuesday, December 23, we took off in the RV for Cortez, FL. This is on the Gulf coast, between Tampa/St. Pete and Sarasota and only about 120 miles from home. We had been to Holiday Cove RV Park before, a couple of years ago, but it was quite different now. They have done a complete makeover, including brick pavers on every site. It’s beautiful, but in the process they had to remove most of the trees which were large and gave plenty of shade. It was sad to see so few large trees left on the property.

Our friends, Gary & Mary, arrived shortly after we did. We had a drink and munchies and then walked to dinner at the Seafood Shack. Outstanding food!

On Wednesday, the four of us went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. Yes, Ringling as in Circus. Our first stop was Cà d’Zan, the mansion they built right on Sarasota Bay. It’s a beautiful house, fashioned after those in Venice, Italy. It was to cost about $100,000, but ended up at $1.5 million. Wow! This is the front of the house.

This is a photo of the rear of the house, taken from the terrace. You can definitely see a Venetian influence.

And a view of the terrace and the bay from the side of the house.

Here are our friends by the banyan tree outside the mansion.

From there we went to the Circus Museum. There were costumes and some props, but mostly wagons and even the private train car used by John & Mable Ringling when traveling.

And we HAD to have a photo of this:

Our next stop was the Museum of Art. Julian and I walked through very quickly as we were getting very tired. But when we got out into the courtyard, we had to slow down. It was beautiful.

I crashed when we got home as my back was really bothering me from being on my feet so much. Plus, Julian and I walked three miles that morning before we left on this excursion. Not the brightest thing to do, but … what can I say?

After some rejuvenation, some cards, some appetizers and some drinks, we all headed out to dinner at the MarVista Pub. We’d eaten here on our previous trip and it was even better than we’d remembered. We ate outside, overlooking the water and really enjoyed it all.

On Christmas morning, Julian and I drove the mile or so to the Gulf beaches and did some fishing. We had a great time and the weather couldn’t have been nicer. Yes, we each caught a fish, but neither one was large enough to keep. But here’s Julian working it.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and then played cards, etc., with our friends. We brought food to make for dinner, assuming that it would be difficult to find a restaurant open on Christmas Day. We ate very well and really enjoyed each other’s company.

On Friday our friends went to the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. Not being a fan, Julian and I opted to go to the South Florida Museum. It could be called small, but it had very nice displays and exhibits. The wildlife dioramas were particularly good.

They also have a small aquarium where Snooty lives. He is the oldest know manatee anywhere and has lived his 60 years at this aquarium. We got in on one of their presentations and met all four of the manatees staying there right now. The other three are passing through, getting rehabilitation before being released back into the wild. But Snooty is the BMOC and demands attention. He’s fed by hand and here’s proof.

We also went to the planetarium while there. It was a great production, but we both felt it was way over our heads (no pun intended). It was called Extreme Planets and talked about finding new planets and stars and how they do it. Mind boggling!

We walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant in the middle of the marina. It was another beautiful day in Paradise and it was great fun to look at all the boats, many of which were for sale. They were into the Christmas spirit and we particularly liked the decorations at this gate to one set of slips.

We ate on the terrace behind the building in this picture. We had another yummy meal while enjoying the view of the Manatee River.

After reading and relaxing in the afternoon, the four of us again ventured out to dinner. We picked the Anna Maria City Pier Restaurant. We had eaten here 2 years ago, too, and it was no less wonderful this time. We have to quit eating like this!

After a great breakfast just across the street from the RV park, we “broke camp” and headed back home. We’d had a great time and a very happy Christmas week.

Here’s hoping you did, too!

Thanksgiving Trip

On Wednesday, November 26, we took off in the coach for several days in Ft. Myers Beach. We have been there before, but this was our first stay at San Carlos RV Park & Island Resort. This was a fairly small park situated right on Hurricane Bay, a waterway separating the mainland of Ft. Myers Beach from San Carlos Island. The photo on the home page of their web site shows how it's all laid out.

Our neighbors, whom we've traveled with frequently, also joined us there. The guys spent every free moment fishing the waters directly behind our coaches. One morning, this heron decided he wanted some of the fish the guys had caught. We shoo-ed him away repeatedly, but once our backs were turned he actually got his beak down into the bucket and took off with the largest fish that was in there!

Here's another view of the water. It was really beautiful there.

We had dinner at Snug Harbor Restaurant on Thanksgiving Day. We had requested a table near the window, which we certainly enjoyed. And the food was excellent. We'll have to eat there again on a future visit.

On Friday, we all went into the beach area of Ft. Myers Beach, on Estero Island. We had a great lunch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The weather was awesome and the food was pretty good too.

Afterwards, Julian went to the fish cleaning table to fillet all the fish that had been caught.

The birds were plentiful, snarfing up all the left-overs from the cleaned fish.

They seemed pretty used to people and let me get some really close shots.

We returned home on Saturday morning. It was a fairly short trip, but we sure had a good time.

Now it's time to plan our Christmas outing! Stay tuned!

South Carolina, Georgia and ...

Our next stop was in North Myrtle Beach, SC. We stayed at Briarcliffe, a very nice campground a mile or so off the beach.


This RV resort happened to share a boundary with Barefoot Landing, a large outdoor mall with lots of shops and restaurants. When we took our morning walks, we wandered throughout the mall and easily did about 2.5 miles each time.

We did a lot of exploring of the various fishing piers all over the area. One day we drove north into North Carolina. We didn't find the perfect place to fish, but we did find a great lunch.

We were able to find a great sports bar where we could watch the Sunday Denver Bronco games. This place even had individual TVs at some of the booths. So we were able to see and hear it all, one win and one ugly loss.

We went gambling a couple of times, once on the SunCruz ship which we didn't really enjoy that much. The second time, we took the Big M. It's a smaller boat, but much nicer. Plus, we actually made money on this jaunt, so we really did have a good time.


After talking with a guy who was working on the landscaping at Barefoot Landing, we found the place he recommended for fishing. It's a public park with boardwalks out to the Intercoastal Waterway. So we took our fishing poles and gave it a try.



We both got several bites and Julian actually caught a couple of crabs. But in the end, we didn't bring anything home. We really did enjoy the time spent out there, though.

Another day we went to the beach and tried surf fishing. Julian has good form, don't you think?


Julian did catch a fish, but it was too small to keep. Seems to be the story of our life! We also tried fishing from one of the piers on another day, but that proved fruitless as well.

On October 2, we got up early and headed south again. Our next stop was at King George RV about seven miles north of the Florida-Georgia border. It was a very long drive, but uneventful.

We took a drive to Jekyll Island, a place I've wanted to see for quite some time. It turned out to be a really beautiful place - one that we will return to again one day. We had lunch at the restaurant on this little pier and it was very good.


We drove to another part of the island where we found this fishing pier.


It is made of concrete and was so inviting! One of the fishermen out there commented that we "would be back". He said once people see Jekyll Island, they always return. I know he's right in our case.

Our neighbors drove their coach up to stay in the same park for the weekend. So on Saturday, the four of us went to St. Mary's for the Rock Shrimp Festival. We got started with a parade - not unlike those we'd seen in other small towns earlier in the summer.





I don't know if the main target of this photo is the dog or the hottie walking towards the photographer (aka Julian).


There were booths with all types of arts and crafts, but interestingly there was no place to actually buy rock shrimp - the thing that the festival was about! However, we did get some in our dinner, along with peel-n-eat shrimp, fried fish, cole slaw and hush puppies. It was all pretty good.

That night I shot this picture from the restaurant where we had our final dinner out.


It's a fitting final photo as it really was the sunset of our trip.

We drove the remaining 180 miles or so, and arrived home at about 12:30pm on Sunday, October 5, 2008. In 109 days, we drove through 12 states and about 3500 miles.

So, until next time, happy trails to you all.

Coastal Virginia

On 9/11 we drove about 170 miles to our next stop in Virginia Beach, VA. Our route took us south on the peninsula from Delaware, through Maryland, into Virginia.

And then we took the Chesapeake Bay Bridge onto mainland Virginia. This bridge is 17.6 miles long with two mile-long tunnels in the middle. The bridge itself was not a big deal. As you can see it is two lanes going each way. And it wasn’t very high up off the water, so I wasn’t all nervous about that part of it.


The real FUN part were the tunnels. The four lanes of divided bridges came together into two lanes of very narrow tunnel. This photo was taken shortly before going into the second tunnel.


I must say these were the longest single mile sections of road I think we’ve ever traveled. Even going at about 35 mph, it felt like we were careening out of control - with cars coming directly at us! There was a walkway with a railing on the passenger side and I just knew we would lose the mirror on that side of the coach. But in the end, all was well. I’m sure if we’d been in a car it would have been no big deal, but we weren’t and it was.

Then we drove through miles of Virginia Beach city streets. That part of the state seems to be highly populated. But in time we reached our campground, which was very nice. This was the view to the rear of the coach.


We went to the beach at Virginia Beach which had a boardwalk. Only it was cement, not boards, and it was almost all hotels, not fun little shops like we’d enjoyed in Rehoboth Beach. But we did find a great place to eat. (Don’t we always?) And I had the best crab cakes on earth, I think.

There was a great beach there, too. It was very broad and we did walk it some.


Another day we drove to Sandbridge Beach, a little hole-in-the-wall town just a couple miles up the road from where we were staying. We walked a couple miles on the beach.


We checked out the fishing pier. We drove around the town and then headed back to the coach for a fairly lazy afternoon.

We had booked a “party boat” fishing trip for Thursday, but the weather turned bad and we decided not to go out in the wind and rain. We started to go to the Farmers Market, but Julian’s glasses broke and we headed out instead to find a place to get them fixed. Once that was accomplished, we headed back to the beach area and found another place to have another really good meal.

Our week there went really fast. Even though I don’t have many pictures to share, we did have a great time and enjoyed the area very much.

The First State

We took two days to drive from the Finger Lakes to Rehoboth Bay in Delaware. After having to re-route our drive due to excessive highway tolls, we spent one night in a Wal-Mart in Exton, PA. The good news was that this store was a part of a very large shopping mall. We walked over for dinner and found some really great food. It helped wipe out the aggravation of the re-routing process.

Then it was on to south Delaware. Again we re-routed to avoid tolls. (What’s up with these people?) But it turned out to be a lucky thing. One of the first things we saw was this gas station with the lowest prices we’d seen since leaving home. So of course we filled up.


Before getting to our destination, we found even lower prices. Go figure!

We had lunch just a couple miles from our destination. Julian had one of the best soft-shell crab sandwiches he’s ever had. I guess we really do eat our way across the country.

We were able to choose our site at Leisure Point. We found a really nice one with lots of shade and a view of the river.


We were in the back of the park and it was very quiet and relaxing here. Not many people in this section, probably because it was past the high season. But that was just the way we liked it.

The season opener for the Broncos happened to be on ESPN, which we had with our cable package. However, it didn’t start until 10:15pm - WAY past our bedtime. So we bought a cable and a video tape for the VCR and taped the game. The hard part was spending a day out and about without hearing the outcome. But we did that and watched it in its entirety on Tuesday night. What a game! We were so glad we got to see it.

We drove to Rehoboth Beach that day. We walked a mile or so up the beach and then back on the boardwalk. It was a great place.


They had these signs all up and down the boardwalk with all sorts of great facts which we enjoyed reading.


The next day we drove to Lewes (say loo-iss). This was a cute little town, but very little and not nearly as fun as Rehoboth Beach had been. So we then drove to Dewey Beach. This was even smaller, with not much to do. We had lunch and then headed back to the coach.

We were only here for three nights. It went quickly. But we really did have a good time.