Two weeks in Florida

We went to Tampa Florida for the FCOC Rally at Lazydays Rally Park there. It was great, so relaxing and we were able to spend a lot of time with some of our friends that we met last year.

Lazydays provides breakfast and lunch everyday for all the people staying at the RV park, and the Freightliner Rally included our dinner and entertainment every night.

When the rally was over we stayed one more night so we could check out nearby McDill AFB in Tampa. That is a beautiful base and of course we wanted to visit the commissary before we left.

We went back to Lazydays and met a few of our friends for dinner that night and pulled out the next morning. We then headed for St Augustine FL, to visit the World Golf Hall of Fame, and spend some time in St Augustine, the oldest city in the US. The drive across Florida was beautiful, through Orlando area and Daytona Beach too.

We arrived at Jacksonville NAS RV Park, this is a very nice park has about 40 sites, and some of them are near the water, the St James River. The price was great and free laundry too. It rained and rained while we were there, so we stayed for five nights, so we could do some tourist things and visit the Fountain of Youth. We need all of the help we can get. Ha Ha !!

From Georgia to Florida

Well we had a great time at the Family Motor Coach Association Rally in Perry Georgia and now we are on our way to the Freightliner Chassis Owners Club Rally at Lazy Days near Tampa Florida.

There were a total of 3,297 coaches at the FMCA rally, including the exhibitor coaches and all of the attendees. That was a pretty nice turn out in these economic times, but the fuel prices being low was a great help I am sure.

We volunteered for early security at the rally, that was very nice, we arrived 2 days earlier and were able to park closer to the exhibits and seminars, so that was nice and we worked our security shifts prior to the start day of the rally.

We attended all of the seminars we wanted, and visited all of the vendor booths. We saw a lot of people we had met at some of the other rallies we have attended, and we met some new people too.

FCOC had a rally scheduled in Florida and we had not planned to attend, but since we were all so busy at the FMCA rally, we decided to go to this rally also. We will have more time to visit with some of our friends there in Florida as this is a much smaller group. We attended one of these rallies in Illinois last year and we had a great time, so I am sure that we will enjoy this one too.

We have an appointment on April 7th in Gaffney SC for an oil change and lube for our motor home, so will have more than enough time to get there. Then we have friends we plan to visit in North Carolina.

Arlington TX to Perry GA

We spent two days at a nice campground, Treetop RV Park, in Arlington TX, we found an Elks Lodge about a mile up the street from us. We went in there and had a couple of drinks, everyone was very nice there, Joe found out they had a golf course, so of course he had to play golf too.

We went to Stockyard Station in Fort Worth, and had a good time there. Nice shopping area, old restored buildings, restaurants and saloons. We had lunch there at H3 Ranch a nice restaurant in a beautiful hotel in the center of this old town.

Then about 4 pm they close off part of the street and have a "longhorn cattle drive" go through town for all of the tourists to watch. That was a lot of fun.

We headed out the next day to continue our journey to Georgia.

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We left Texas after what seemed like a month, Ha Ha !!

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This is a picture of the sun setting in our mirror as we leave Texas, on our last night in this big state.

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Went into Shreveport Louisiana and stayed at Barksdale AFB for 3 nights, they have a good fam camp there and the price was right at just 14.00 per night. We went out to eat, and Joe had to have Gumbo since we were in Louisianna. In fact he ate Gumbo everywhere we went, 4 times in all.

We stayed at an Ameristar Casino in Vicksburg Mississippi the next night, that one was a little more costly, especially if you count the money we spent at the casino. They did give us a free breakfast the next morning though. Ha Ha

Our next stop was at Maxwell AFB near Montgomery Alabama for one night then headed for the fam camp at Fort Benning Georgia.

This campground is called Uchee Creek Campground, Ft Benning and is, 75 campsites, 45 cabins, all in the forest. This was a great place and we wanted to stay for 4 nights, but we got an email asking us to volunteer at the rally we are going to, so we cut our stay down to only 2 nights.

We have now arrived in Perry Georgia on March 12th and will be a part of the early security crew here at the rally. We are looking forward to this next week, lots of fun and lots to learn.

Traveling toward Georgia

We left Southern California at about 1pm on the Friday the 27th of February, our first day took us to Phoenix Arizona. We spent the night at a Flying J Truck Stop and then called our friend Gina Minkin (Kyle's wife), she was happy to hear from us and we met her at a restaurant for lunch. It was great seeing her and hearing about Kyle's daughters Fallon and Kayleen, they each have a baby now, so we saw pictures and enjoyed our visit with Gina.

Then we were off again, to Lorsburg New Mexico this time, we stayed at another Flying J and met a couple in a motor home from Canada. They told us to make sure check out Old Town Mesilla near Las Cruces NM. We took their advise and drove there that day, we parked the coach at a Truck Stop in Las Cruces, and unhooked the car to drive the short distance to Mesilla, this place was well worth the stop, beautiful place, well restored buildings, cute little shops and a great Mexican restaurant.

We were here for 3 hours, and then hooked the car back up and headed for Pecos TX to spend yet another night parked in a Flying J Truck Stop. Then got up early Monday, had breakfast, and headed out to see how far we could get through Texas. We stopped at Weatherford Texas for the night (at a Pilot Truck stop this time - we wanted a change -Ha Ha).

We had to check on getting our window tint on the car replaced on three windows, so stopped in Arlington Texas (near Fort Worth) to see if we could get the work done. Well, we found that they use a different type of film here, so Saturn of Wichita (where we bought this Aura in Sept '08) is checking on where we can get this done on our way to Georgia, or after the rally. We may decide to stay here in Arlington for a night or two to relax a little.

January and February

We spent these two months in Sunny Southern California, although it was raining for about 3 weeks in Feb. We spent some time with our son Charles, and we were able to see most of our friends. Due to our being so tied up with doctor and dentist appointments, motor home repairs, etc. there were a few people we wanted to see and just did not get to visit this time, we feel bad about that, but we have to get on the road, trying to get to Perry Georgia by March 15th.

Joe became an Elk while we were in California and we spent some time at the Elks Lodge campground in Ontario CA. We have a friend, Jim Hicks, who is an Elk and he was Joe's sponsor. We attended several dinners at the lodge when we were camping there, and Jim and his wife Toni joined us for dinner a couple of times. Joe had his initiation into the Elks on Thursday Feb 26th and our plan was to leave for our trip on Friday the 27th.

We were able to spend time with some of our friends, we met for dinner a couple of times, and Joe played golf a few times. We were invited out to dinner on our last Wednesday in California with a few friends, Tim and Marcia, Ron and Bev, Tom and Sue, had some laughs, lots of fun and we will miss them a lot during our trip.

A lot of our time was spent getting some repair work done on our motor home, but I think it is pretty good shape now that we are starting out on our trip up the East coast. We got physicals out of the way and dental appointments done. We are in good shape, and we think the motor home is in good shape too. We are ready to go now.

We also spent a lot of time getting our '67 El Camino ready for a trip to Indiana. Joe sold his beautiful El Camino while we were in California. It was a difficult decision, but with us traveling 9 or 10 m0nths each year, we realized that it was not a good idea to have it in storage and only use it a couple of times each year. The new owner is a friend of ours so we will be able to visit the El Camino when we pass through Indiana. That is nice, however, I am not sure that made Joe feel much better while watching his long time friend being loaded on the truck.

We will keep you all posted on our trip across the Southern states and up the East coast. I will be entering things in this blog more often now that our lives are back to normal (if you call this crazy life normal)

Happy New Year

Well it is the new year now and hope everyone had a great holiday season. We are in Southern California now for a couple of months. We will leave here at the end of February and start another journey.

Our trip from Elkhart Indiana was a pretty exsiting one, lots of winds, lots of ice storms, and lots of snow. We finely made it through the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona, about 1 day before they had even worse snowstorm.

We arrived in Las Vegas about 3 days after they had the big snow storm, about 8 inches in some areas, but it was melting fast, so we did not have a white christmas. We went out to dinner with our friends Ed and Joann Crouse and had a wonderful time, they are always so much fun to visit with.

Our Christmas was very nice, we spent it in Henderson with our son Kevin and his family.

We went to Laughlin for a couple of days to visited our friends Frank and Regina Parker. Spent a couple of days there then we were off to California.

The weather here in California is great, 60's to 70's during the day and 40's at night. We will enjoy visiting with our friends and family while we are here.

Chicago by train

We are still in Elkhart IN but should be heading South sometime this week. They finished the paint repairs last week, they have a few more things to work on. They will do a rain test, a density check and propane test, if all these are ok, then we will be on the road soon. It's very cold and snowy here, temperatures range from 11 degrees to about 26 each day.

We took a train over to Chicago the other day, it is only about 70 miles there and it took 2 1/2 hours on a train (about 20 stops) It is a commuter train and runs all day, every day. We left about 7am and spent about 5 or 6 hours there, walked around a lot and went to Millennium Park. We had a great time, and got back about 8:30 pm. We watched ice skaters at the park, that was a lot of fun. We saw a lot of policemen on horseback and on bicycles all through the park and on the sidewalks.

We went to the Chicago Cultural Center and saw art displays and learned about the display at the Millennium Park too. The buildings there are very old and beautiful. he first pictures are of Cloud Gate (the people of Chicago call this "the bean") and it is in Millennium Park.

We are getting to spend some time with Kristy and her six kids since they live in this area. We enjoy seeing them and getting to know them, they are all so different, and have their own personalities, it has been a lot of fun to spend time with them all.