Boone Over the 4th

We left Asheboro on Monday, June 30, for Boone, NC. This town is named after THE Daniel Boone and is situated high in the Appalachian Mountains. The drive was only about 135 miles, but it was just about all up hill on somewhat narrow roads making it slow going. But it’s beautiful country, so we didn’t mind it!

We got settled in and met several of the neighboring dogs, including a silver Schnauzer who was also named Heidi. We found the weather here to be completely different from Asheboro. It had been very hot there – not true in Boone. The temps dipped into the 50’s over night and it was still chilly for our morning walks. We aren’t complaining, mind you, just stating the facts. It was actually a very welcome change.

We were close to the Blue Ridge Parkway here. We only drove about 8 miles of it, though. These pictures make it easy to see why it’s called the Blue Ridge.

We took a 50-mile scenic drive one day… and it took all morning to do it. It was beautiful, but those mountain roads are very windy and very narrow. This scenic drive took us right by Grandfather Mountain.

At the Visitor’s Center there was a natural habitat area for a number of animals that are native to this area. We saw this beautiful bald eagle.

Not to mention more beautiful vistas.

And a black bear.

(“Show them the backside!”)

At the top, this bridge spans the two peaks of the mountain.

We did cross it. It wasn’t so bad. That’s me in the black sweatshirt. (I told you the weather was colder here.)

Here’s both of us and some of the fantastic view from up there.

We continued on with the 50-mile drive and arrived in Blowing Rock for a late lunch. We stopped at a pub and had a fantastic sandwich. We walked around the shops some and then drove out to the Blowing Rock. We decided we’d seen enough mountains that we didn’t want to pay for another one, so I don’t have any photos. From the brochures, I don’t think we really missed anything special.

There was a parade in Boone on the 4^th of July. We drove down and had no trouble finding parking or a place to see it all. Here’s the color guard who got the whole thing started.

I tried, but was too slow to get a picture of the Grand Martial. He rode in the back of an old pick-up and his name is Orville Hicks. He must be pretty well known around here. I checked and he’s got a book written about him and his stories. There’s a picture if you follow that link, and that’s exactly how he looked on the back of that pick-em-up truck.

These guys led the way for every fire truck in the county (if not beyond). That ax could not have been shinier!

Did I mention we were in the sticks? Can you hear the banjo playing?

Much of this parade was pretty similar to the one in Troy. There were the cars, the politicians, some very young beauty queens, a couple of dance troupes, and a few horses bringing up the rear. We were both surprised that there was no marching band. But it was a fun way to spend the morning.

As is our custom (even when we travel), we’d gone to bed a little after 9pm on the 4^th. It wasn’t long till we heard fireworks – and not what you’d expect in a campground. So we got up and checked out the skies where we could see a city display taking place. We knew there was a show at the armory but had no idea where that was. Apparently, it was just over the hill from our campground.

We visited the Farmers Market on Saturday. It was small, but we found a couple of things that we just couldn’t live without.

That’s the excitement for our time in Boone. Unless you want to count the fact that the shower was still leaking and the starter on the coach was still giving us trouble. This being the case, we made an appointment for repairs at a place that (fortunately) was right on our course to our next stop. Since we had to be there at 8am and it was 40 miles of windy, narrow, mountain roads, we left the afternoon before and stayed in a Wal-Mart a couple miles away.

We left there at about 3pm with a new battery and a fixed shower. Apparently there was never a rubber gasket in the drain, so it may have been leaking since day one. Yikes! But it’s fixed now.

They had a great customer waiting area at this place and we had to keep Heidi with us. She did great and even made friends with this guy (an employee).

OK, he gave here fresh bacon, but still.

We arrived at Creekwood Farm at about 5pm and it was raining off and on. Thankfully, not very hard so we could get leveled and set up. It was a long day and we were happy to sack out early.

We got the rest of our stuff set up this morning and felt great about getting to start enjoying things again. We went into town to our favorite pizza place for lunch. (It’s still wonderful pizza.) When we got back, the air conditioning was making a funny noise and then pumped out some hot air before starting to cool. This was NOT normal. Even after we turned off the A/C something up there kept running. Julian climbed up on the roof to inspect things and realized that whatever wasn’t shutting off was VERY hot. So we cut power and called the RV repair place again. We’ll be going back there on the 16th to get the A/C fixed and will be without it until then. Pray for cooler weather here! And while you’re at it, pray for things to quit breaking! (Thank you.)

And now for the fun stuff...

We left home on Thursday, June 19, as scheduled. The weather was great, traffic was relatively light. We stopped in Hero, FL, (just north of Jacksonville) for Krystal Burgers. I closed the laptop, putting it in sleep mode… from which the screen never recovered.

I was able to squint just right and see things on the screen just enough to get the exit number to the RV Park where we planned to spend that night. I was glad I mostly remembered the way there – this was our third year stopping there on the first night of our summer trip. Anyway, they were expecting us and this sign greeted us at our site.

I was able to hook up the printer and get the directions to our second stop printed out. I found out just how dependent I’ve become on having GPS navigation. We took a couple wrong turns, but were able to recover fairly easily.

Setting up at Banjo Creek was a bit of a challenge. The sites aren’t particularly level. But we got it worked out. The site and the campground are very nice. We look out over a little pond and a small fenced area where a family of ducks is living. (The babies have grown tremendously in the week we’ve been here.)

First order of business was getting the laptop screen fixed. It was a bit of a run-around, but we finally had a functioning PC by Wednesday. (I can’t believe how many e-mails piled up in only a week!)

We drove through the old downtown part of Asheboro on Saturday. We stopped and walked around to see the chalk drawings on the sidewalks. Apparently anyone who wanted to could pick up a bucket of chalks and go to it. Several kids had some fun drawings and a few adults had made some great art. It was just a fun thing to see.

Some old friends from our days in Colorado are now living in the Winston-Salem area, maybe 60 miles or so from here. We called then Sunday and they were happy to have an excuse to get out of the house and meet us for lunch. They talked about coming to Maggie Valley next month for a weekend get-away. We’ll see – it would be fun to see more of them.

On Monday, we drove about 10 miles south of here to a town called Seagrove. It’s got a pottery museum and lots of potters in the area. We envisioned a downtown with shops to peruse. We never really even found a downtown, much less any shops. I guess the potters work out of their scattered homes and we’re not into pottery enough to go all over. So we just drove further south and enjoyed the scenery. We stopped at this covered bridge which is one of only two in the entire state. It looked so small to us, probably only big enough for one carriage at a time.

On Wednesday we decided to go to the North Carolina Zoo. This is the one attraction attributable to the Asheboro area. And it was well worth it! We walked around 4 miles or so inside the park. It’s fairly spread out, but it has lots of great habitats and displays.

This polar bear was just basking in the sun.

There were black bears, too.

… and lions.

… and lots of other animals and birds. We enjoyed it thoroughly and would recommend it to anyone who visits this area.

When we got back to our car, the key simply would not turn in the ignition. Neither would our spare key. We’ve had similar problems, but it usually works itself out fairly quickly. This time it didn’t. Julian finally got out of the car and rocked it as much as he could. And voila, it was functioning again. (But here’s another problem needing to be fixed! Geez!)

So we treated ourselves to lunch at Rockola, the best food we’d had so far on the trip. And while eating, we got the call that the PC was fixed and we could pick it up. Hooray! Some good news.

When we got home, we found a small puddle of water on the kitchen floor. This had happened the day before, but we just passed it off. Well, Julian got more into it and discovered that the new hose & shower head were leaking and sort of following the tile cracks into the kitchen. Argh!! “If it’s not one thing, it’s another!” – Rosanne Rosannadana.

So the next day was spent getting a new shower hose and fixing the leaks. After this kind of day, we decided we needed dinner out! We had a very good meal at Sagebrush, a steakhouse chain. But this is a dry county – you can’t even get a beer! Oh, well, this too shall pass.

Friday found us at the Saturn dealership in Greensboro getting the ignition switch cleaned and oiled so that we won’t run into that sticking problem again any time soon. We felt very lucky to have gotten out of the zoo parking lot without having to call someone. It was a fairly quick fix and we were off to the Farmer’s Market.

It was Blueberry Day at the Market and they were giving away small cups of blueberries and a little cup of ice cream. Both were very yummy! We walked through all the areas and bought several items of produce. Then we found the healthy snacks and loaded up on pumpkin seeds, soy nuts, corn nuts and dried peas. Mmmmm, yummy snacks.

Troyfest beckoned on Saturday. This is the annual Independence Day festival in Troy, NC, about 18 miles south of here. After a big breakfast at the campground, we headed off to see what this was about. And what a hoot it turned out to be.

Several blocks of the down town main street were lined with vendors selling everything you might imagine at a festival like this. Tons of food, politicians campaigning, garden flags, church groups selling home made breads, jewelry, the whole nine yards. And then there was the parade! Small town America is alive and well! We decided that if you wanted to be in this parade, you just signed up and rode along. We found no rhyme or reason for some entrants, but it was all fun.

There were lots of political types hoping to be re-elected. There were church groups and the Shriners, of course.

Police cars, regular cars, and beat up stock cars on trailers came by. Even guys on tractors came by.

High school championship sports teams waved and one marching band performed. Quite a few junior beauty queens had “the wave” perfected on the backs of open cars.

Every fire and rescue vehicle in the county participated (glad there wasn’t a fire anywhere).

Military personnel and cub scouts were there. And there was this group of girls who apparently were championship caliber, but I couldn’t figure out in what event.

And the horses came through at the end, followed by their clean-up crews.

It was so much fun! It was reminiscent of my childhood, but a longer parade than we ever had in David City, I’m sure. But mostly it was reassuring to see the family and small-town values that still exist in this country. It’s good to get into the rural areas to experience it again.

That pretty well wraps up our adventures since leaving home only 10 days ago. We leave tomorrow for our next stop and hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy more and not have so many things to FIX!

Happy trails to all!

If it's not one thing, it's another!

This will be quick and dirty. We've not had a marvelous start to our trip. Don't worry, we're fine.

We left the house on Thursday morning, 6/19, as scheduled. The laptop screen crapped out on us after stopping for lunch. I only got the PC back today with it fixed. And that was a run-around chore, the details of which I won't bore you with.

So not having a computer meant no blogging and a lot of hanging around, waiting for phone calls. But, we have been running around Asheboro, NC, some and trying to enjoy the in-between times.

We've just discovered a leak from the shower into the kitchen. This could take more of our time this week. It's a good thing there isn't a whole lot to do here in Asheboro.

We leave here on Monday. I hope to get some pleasant blogging done between now and then. But I wanted everyone to know that we are on the road, we are fine, and we are going to have fun! ... we're just not sure when the fun will begin. (giggle)

Ten-Day Tune-Up

We spent 10 days in the RV as sort of a “tune-up trip” before heading out on the 3-month summer trip. This way we can make note of things we forgot, etc., so we don’t do the same thing on that trip. But not only are we “getting the kinks out” we’re also having FUN!

We arrived in Ft. Myers Beach, FL, on Friday, April 18. After getting settled in, we went to Anthony’s for dinner. We had very good dinners and the view was marvelous.

On Saturday, we drove the 40 miles or so to Immokalee where there is an Indian casino. (What? You’re surprised?) Anyway, Julian had some pretty good luck (I didn’t) and we walked out of there even for the day. How much better could it get?

Sunday found us driving around Cape Coral and Pine Island. The island has more nurseries than I’ve ever seen in that small a concentration of land. They must have great growing dirt out there.

We stopped at the Sandy Hook for lunch. The food was good, but not great. The atmosphere was fun. These “totems” were outside the restaurant. (Click to make the photo bigger and see the faces better.)

We spent the afternoon reading, napping, generally relaxing. We had great weather during this trip and sure did enjoy it.

We had dinner out again, at a restaurant called Chloe’s. This was the best food of the whole week and it was really great!

We drove to Sanibel and Captiva Island on Monday. Our first stop was at a public beach where we walked and looked for shells. They were certainly plentiful.

And the birds were having breakfast; I think some were eating scallops, right out of the shell.


We drove the entire length of both islands and then headed back towards home. We stopped for lunch at Jimmy’s Pink Cadillac near our campground. Very 50’s and the food was really good, too.

On Tuesday morning we went to Estero Island, the actual beach area of Fort Myers Beach. We parked the car and walked out onto the pier. These guys were pretty used to people, apparently, because they let me get pretty close.

We walked a good part of the “tourist” area, enjoying the sights.

Wednesday’s entertainment was a drive further south to Bonita Beach and Naples. It is so pretty in that area. And there’s LOTS of money there. Some of the houses on the beach seemed way too big to be single family dwellings. But if you have enough money, you can have anything, I guess.

We had lunch in a great little sidewalk café and then headed out to the Naples pier. It was beautiful out there. It was fairly busy, too, for being off-season. We saw several dolphins playing near the pier. They were hard to get pictures of, but here are a couple of our attempts.

We went out to dinner again, our last night in Ft. Myers Beach. We picked Fishmonger’s and were not disappointed. We’ve been so lucky in finding great food everywhere we travel.

We packed everything back up and headed south on Thursday. We traveled to Homestead, which is southwest of Miami. We got settled into our campground and then our friends, Ken & Stacy, came over for the evening. It was sure fun seeing them again after nearly 2 years. (We met them the first summer we spent in Maggie Valley, NC.)

We spent Friday with them also. They own an avocado grove and park their RV (they are full-timers) amongst the trees. It’s a gorgeous setting. The weather was great and we were able to sit out on their patio and just drink in the location and the friendship.

Saturday morning found us packing up again and heading back north. Ken had showed us an easier way to get to US27, without taking the turnpike and the interstate through the city. This also took us right past another casino. Well we had to go in for their buffet breakfast, which was really very good. And hey, why not play a machine or two while there? We walked out with an extra 60 bucks, minus the cost of breakfast. So it was worthwhile, wouldn’t you agree?

Then we drove on to Sebring and our friends’ driveway. The first order of business was to clean off the front end of the coach. It’s love-bug season and a lot of them gave up their lives as we drove along. We could barely see out of the windshield. They have a high acidity and it’s important to get them cleaned off quickly so as not to pit the paint.

We met this couple when we first moved to Royal Highlands. Mary Jo is a fabulous cook and she and Julian have developed a sort of culinary war. They each challenge themselves to come up with something different and it’s been going on for years.

She told us ahead of time that she was serving something that she guaranteed we’d never had before. She wasn’t kidding! Dinner that night was pickled rabbit and pickled frog legs. It sounds a bit bizarre, but I have to say it was very good! Plus she had some tongue on hand and she made me try that. I was leery, but it pretty much tasted like roast beef.

On Sunday, after a great breakfast at a Mexican restaurant, we went fishing. Unfortunately only one little, scrawny fish was caught and returned to the water. But we had a good time in the great outdoors.

Just across from where we were was this osprey nest. We could see a couple of chicks in it. One of their heads is sticking up in this pic.

We spent the rest of the day at their house just enjoying each other’s company. We had another terrific meal of fried catfish.

After blueberry pancakes for breakfast on Monday, we headed back home. I am pretty sure we’ll need to go on a diet since we ate so incredibly well over the past 10 days. But it was worth it. We had another great time!

From Bummer to Boone

Yesterday, we sat down to make the initial reservations for our Summer Trip. It's only two months away and definitely time to get on it. We are using Coast to Coast resorts whenever possible, as we can save quite a bit on nightly rates. Our plan was to spend two weeks in Banjo Creek near Asheboro, then three nights in Stone Mountain State Park (where they don't take reservations). Then on to Maggie Valley for a month, beginning July 8.

We hit a big obstacle at our first campground. We wanted to stay through July 4 and leave on July 5. Well, they don't let CtoC members in at that low rate over holidays. OK, so we called them directly to see if we could come and pay the higher rate for whatever holiday dates they required. But NOOOOO - they are already booked to capacity with a waiting list. Bummer!

So we booked only 10 days at Banjo Creek (near Asheboro, NC), leaving on June 30. Getting into a State Park campground without reservations would be next to impossible on those dates, so we needed to fill all the time between then and July 8 somewhere else. After trying several places and still being unsuccessful, we finally stumbled onto Flintlock CG in Boone, NC. They had space available over the holiday, so we'll spend 8 nights there.

All this is a prelude to saying how excited we are that this "problem" occurred and put us in this current situation. We did some research and found out that there are TONS of things to do around Boone, including Stone Mountain (so we won't give that up), Grandfather Mountain (which I've always seen ads for) and fireworks & the 47th Annual Roasting of the Hog on July 5 in Beech Mountain. What could be more fun!

So it works out in our favor - we'll get to do WAY more stuff in a part of NC that we've not had a chance to see thus far. And all because of a silly rule that keeps us from spending all that time in Banjo Creek!

Sometimes a big negative can spawn an even bigger positive!

(Our current planned departure date is June 19. We'll be traveling this year for 108 days. And, absolutely, I'll be blogging it! You'll have to wait till then to see where we go after North Carolina. Stay tuned!)

Weekend Getaway

I guess weekends aren’t really that much different from the week days in our retired lifestyle. But it seemed the only time we could get away from our many activities and commitments. Besides our schedule, we needed to coordinate with our friends who went with us.

Anyway, last Friday we packed up the coach and headed west to Homosassa Springs. We’ve been to that area several times, but this was the first time in the RV. We stayed at Nature’s Resort which fronts the Halls River and was not far from the Gulf Coast.

Friday night we went to the Margarita Grill, one of our favorite restaurants. It was every bit as wonderful as we remembered. Our friends liked it so much they wanted to go back on Sunday night, which we did.

On Saturday, our friends went to Homosassa Springs State Park. We stayed at the RV since we’d already been there several times. It’s a great little park, though and we highly recommend it.

Julian wanted to do some fishing, but that just didn’t pan out. The brochure from Nature’s Resort refers to a fishing pier, but there were too many boats docked there to allow any fishing at all. He went out looking for a nice place to go, but was unable to find anything. So we spent the afternoon reading and napping – great activities for a chilly, overcast day.

The guys grilled steaks on Saturday night and they were wonderful! We sure eat well when we go “camping”.

On Sunday, we decided to drive down the coast to Weeki Wachee Springs. In case you’ve never heard of it, that’s where the mermaids live. They’ve been there since the 1940’s and it’s quite famous as a Florida attraction. There is a natural spring there and the temperature of the water is 74 degrees, year-round. That’s pretty cold for swimming in if you ask me!

The first show we went to was “The Little Mermaid”. They did a great job and here are some pictures.

See, mermaids DO exist!

After this show, we hopped on a boat and went down the river which was fed by the spring. The water was crystal clear. And, unfortunately, not very deep due to the drought conditions we’ve had over the past several years.



It was a trip through “old” Florida. Beautiful! If you look closely, you’ll see a bird perched in this tree.


Then we went back to the theater for another mermaid show.



It just amazes me that these people can be in that water at 74 degrees. I’ve been in spring water and it is COLD!


Last stop of the day was at the animal show. (Talk about low budget!) I think most of these performers were rescued in one form or another. And I’m all in favor of that!




By this time we had seen all the shows and were VERY hungry. Here’s a shot of our friends and the front gate as we were leaving the park.


We went to Applebee’s for a late lunch, and really enjoyed it. They’ve really improved the menu.

After a hard day of sight-seeing, we spent the afternoon napping and reading and generally relaxing. This was followed, of course, by another terrific meal at the Margarita Grill.

We packed up on Monday morning and were home before noon. It was less than 60 miles from home, but a really nice getaway with some really nice friends. It was a great weekend.