Lake Greeson Day 1

We made it to Lake Greeson!

Visiting in the MotherShip are left to right,

Chuck(FL), Pete Marks (TX) with Oscar on his lap, Karen and Tom Whaley(VA) and the furkids Doogie Bowser and Scotty.

When we arrived, Pete and Oscar were here to greet us! So were Fran and Al! Betty and Larry (aka Mountainborn) were back in Mena on business but due back at camp around 7 pm. Shortly after we got set up, in rolls Karen and Tom with their furkid Susie.

We all got together just before dark down at Mountainborn's camp around a big warm campfire!

Day One drawing to a close. So glad to be here, it's so beautiful! For those of you not familiar with where it is, look on your Arkansas map for Crater of Diamonds SP. It's about 20 miles north of that! Highway 27 north out of Murfreesboro to Highway 84, look for the Lake Greeson Kirby Landing sign! Beautiful campground! $9.00 a night for senior citizens!

Lake Columbia Arkansas

We left our beautiful campsite on the Mississippi River in Vidalia LA Sunday April 25th. Beautiful morning after 2 days of stormy weather. Clear blue skies, nice spring breeze. We followed highway 425 north to Arkansas. All was good road, pretty scenery and mostly 4 lanes..... until we ventured north of I-20. Then everything went from good to .... not so good. Extremely narrow roads with no shoulders, full of potholes and old patches. Twisty, turny, hilly roads! At least they were doing some road construction... which slowed us way down when the road wasn't beating us up! What should have taken us an hour on 425 from I-20 north to highway 82 in Arkansas took us more like 3 hours! That big Ford 450 duelly isn't the easiest thing to handle and the seats ride harder than a buckboard!

By the time we got to ElDorado Arkansas, we pulled into a Walmart parking lot and I made sandwiches for lunch... Chuck was worn out. To make matters worse, once we began heading due west on 82 we hit a strong headwind.  We knew Lake Greeson was another 4+ hours away. Once back in the truck. I started looking for an Arkansas State Park. You know how on all the maps they show state parks with a green fir tree and a tent under it? Well I found one 11 miles north of Magnolia, Logoly State Park. Well the road there was worse than the road we had left behind in LA!  Then we get there and find out it offered only walk-in tent camping! YIKES! The ranger was nice and told us of another place about 20 miles west called Lake Columbia Campground, a county owned and run park.  It is beautiful there! So I had to take some photographs to show you!

Tall trees!

Nice restrooms w/ showers

The MotherShip all tucked in the woods!

All campsites were $15, full hookups, with nice picnic tables on pads, each site had a garbarge can and each site was very large!

 

We were glad we found this place! Both of us went to bed early after a rough ride on the highway that day!

We got up early and headed for Lake Greeson feeling much better after a good night's sleep!

Mississippi River

Mississippi River Barges

Our new 5th wheel travel trailer looks right at home with all the other sun blockers now!

The bad weather seems to have made it's way east after taking 2 lives and destroying the town of Yazoo Mississippi. We pulled in 2 days ago and the weather was going badly then. We made the decision to stay 1 or 2 nights where we hoped to avoid all the tornados. We got the wind and the rain, but no reports of tornados. This is a great little campground, http://www.riverviewrvpark.com/  right on the Mississippi River! Great showers, food store, library swap and swimming pool! You can get free shuttle rides to the Casino across the river. Chuck and I tried our luck.... I had none and Chuck had a little!  LOL!  Slot machines don't like me! Address is 100 River View Parkway, Vidalia LA 71373. If you are ever coming this way, nice folks here!

Tomorrow we get on the road again and continue the trip to Lake Greeson Arkansas and some good home cookin' with catfish being the main item on the menu! YUM!!!  Several of our friends are there already catching catfish with yellow empty antifreeze jugs! Jug fishing they call it! I call it supper! Grin!

We are on the Mississippi River!

We left Florida April 21st and camped the first night in Alabama. We left AL yesterday and arrived here on the banks of the Mississippi River in a beautiful camp ground called River View RV Resort in Vidalia LA. The weather turned bad overnight. Reports of severe thunderstorms and possible tornados kept us here for at least one more night and possibly two as the weather reports don't sound good for tomorrow either! Better to be safe here than sorry out on the highway!  PLUS we are pooped! We have been rushing around trying to get everything done for a solid 2-3 weeks.  We have been napping all day, as old folks should! Haha! It's been raining off and on all day and now it's raining hard and just heard a loud clap of thunder so I'm gonna close the computer down. Just wanted ya'll to know we are safe and sound beside the Mississippi River!

Our Summer Adventure Begins!

We named our new 5th wheel travel trailer "The MotherShip"! So many of our camping friends camp with the smaller Casita's and Oliver's that now when it's freezing cold outside, or raining we can all gather inside The MotherShip for good conversation and a game of dominoes!


I can hardly believe how busy we have been since we got back in Florida late November!  Time flies! We put new floor down in the house! We spent Thanksgiving with family! We got married in January! We went camping in freezing weather with Pete Marks, Oscar and Tom and Karen Whaley. We went down to Bradenton again to celebrate grandaughter Aubrey's second birthday in Feb. We went down to Cape Coral to visit my cousins Danny and Annette Morgan. They had just sold their house there and were moving up to Myrtle Beach SC! Then we went to Dade City to visit my doc who was very happy with my weight loss since lap band 2 years ago, We met up with friends Paul and Diane Thibodeaux several times. We spent several weeks visiting Florida State Parks Myakka River and Highlands Hammock! We spent months looking for new travel trailers and bought our MotherShip in March, went back to Bradenton to celebrate Glorianne's 40th??? birthday and 8 weeks after we left we were back in Eastpoint!
 We had to go back to Crystal River where we bought The MotherShip to get an awning installed over the slideout. Darn! The factory sent the wrong size! But the time was not wasted! We and our friends Randy and Nancy Fife, owners of the Nature Coast RV where we bought this beautiful 5th wheel and they also own the wonderful campground across the road "Quail's Roost! We all went down to Homosassa and met Sherry and Paul Cavannaugh at a great restaurant called The Freezer. Amazing!  It is as much unlike a restaurant as you can imagine! Most of it is outdoors under a Seminole built Chickee! See the link below!


http://thefreezertikibar.com/


We went on Wednesday night, steak night! It was packed with people! You gotta stand around and drink beer until a table or a place to sit becomes available! Tough huh ??? It's right on the water... you just have to go there one day to experience it! Everybody got steak but me, I got snow crab legs and they were YUM!
We then went over to Leesburg to visit with niece Dawn, her husband Dan and daughter Danea. We got home yesterday, Sunday, so now our Florida days are numbered... well over! It's time to head out. But while we were coming home yesterday, we got a call from Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood AZ asking us if we would like to work there as camp hosts from Aug until end of Oct! Sooooooo of course we want to!  Soooo now here is our planned trip so far... 


1. Lake Greeson Arkansas for Jugfest 2010 our catfishing camping families meet there!  We can't wait to see all of you again!
2. Branson MO to check out the possibility of winter Workamping jobs and to listen to country music live!
3. Spearfish SD to visit Paul and Diane Thibodeaux who will be workamping there for the summer and possibly we will apply to work there next summer!
4. Trujillo Meadow CO to visit with Mountainborn and Betty who workamp there at 10,000 feet!
5.Then down to Truth or Consequences NM to our home there. We will explore some ghost towns from there and do some rock hunting etc.
6. Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood AZ from Aug to Oct.


After that... who knows ???




We love you all and I will try to do better on my blogging!!!!!

Myakka River State Park

Myakka River State Park

A Florida palm forest!  So many of the original wild stands of palm trees were raided by new residents demands for palms in their yards, or torn down by need for land to build these new housing developments. It is rare to find a fully intact palm forest!

I hope you get a chance to visit here one day and visit a real palm forest.

Myakka River State Park

Where River and Prairie meet the sky.

Myakka River State Park is one of Florida's largest and most diverse natural areas. The river and the 2 shallow lakes attract many wetland creatures making birding, canoeing,fishing, and wildlife observation popular to many visitors here.

There are more than 39 miles of hiking trails here, so bring comfey shoes and lots of skeeter spray!  Here are some of the wild critters found on our walk abouts!

  

A good sized gator and lots of hungry vultures!

A photographer, intent on shooting a photo of the above gator, seems oblivious to being surrounded by vultures! Note the gator warning sign!

 Another alligator in another area of the park, looks like he was just cruisin' by.....

A tree full of comorants! (sp?) I have never seen so many comorants in one spot before!

RACOONS!

Chuck went to throw away some trash he had picked up and found this family of raccoons living in the garbarge container!

 

We reported that the raccoons had taken up living quarters in the garbarge container

but the park rangers said it was a never ending battle to keep them out!

        Awwwww!  Aren't they cute ????

The anhinga is definately a prehistoric leftover from the past!

A bird with both feathers and fur!  There is fur mixed with the body feathers which is great while swimming (think of fur creatures like the beaver an otter!) but when this bird wants to fly, the fur is too heavy and it must dry out first before it can take flight!

River tours are available by water or by land in a huge air boat or by a tram! If you buy a combination tour, you get a good price reduction! It was so cold when Chuck and I wew there, we decided not to take the tours. Considering how many folks were keeping the boats and trams full, we must have been the wimps of the park!


Another tour we missed was exploring the treetops using Myakka/s canopy walkway! There is also a 70' tower for an awesome view of the wetlands, forest, and prairie that make Myakka River State Paark so special. There are bicycles. canoes and kayaks for rent if you so desire to spend your time this way. Well worth a few days stay here, lots to do!

One of our last trips in our Oliver and the Suburban!  We had lots of good times in both!

OK!  I am trying to catch all of you up on this, our exploration of Florida!  Next blog will be on Highlands Hammock State Park!

Happy Trails from Geri, Chuck, Scotty and Doogie Bowser



Our new rig

OUR NEW HOME ON WHEELS!

Chuck and I have been talking about buying a new, larger home on wheels for several months. It was mostly daydreaming. We weren't really unhappy with our Oliver, but we are more than week end campers and just a tad less than fulltimers on the road. This journey was supposed to be just for a few weeks, it's now been almost 8 weeks since we left home base!  Seems like we aren't getting any younger either, that climb over the wife bed was getting harder and harder to accomplish! Then about 2 weeks ago, we started actually looking, walking through pull behinds mostly. Chuck didn't want a 5th wheel and of course that meant a new vehicle too and we both loved the Suburban! So the first lookandsees were all bumper pulls.  Then last Wed. we headed up to Crystal River on a heads up from a friend about a trailer they saw at the Tampa RV show a few weeks ago. It was called an Everlite by Evergreen. It is made from about 50% recycled materials and it is 100% recyclable at the end of it's lifespan.  I laughed when I found out that the pillop top of our mattress was filled with recycled water bottles!  I laughed because I could only imagine a lumpy mattress! I promise you that the mattress is one of the most comfortable mattresses we have ever slept on! We liked the bumper pull they had on display at Natures Coast RV in Crystal River, it was ok, more room than the Oliver.... but I just had to go lookng some more and ended up next door at the 5th wheel. At 30' it was only 2 feet longer than the bumper pull but it felt much bigger and much roomier! It felt HUGE!
Chuck came looking for me calling out, "Geri, where are you?" and as he came close to the door of the 5th wheel, I answered, " Honey, I'm home!" and he knew it was all over now!
He walked in and loved it as much as I did! A full sized fridge you holds more beer.... ya know ???  So....  still not convinced we asked our friends Paul and Diane to come up with us. They are on their third 5th wheel and knew more about them and what to look for than we did.
So on Thursday, we all went back and took a look! Diane loved the interior! Paul gave us a thumbs up on the construction. This trailer is put together as well as the Oliver with full length beading welds, aluminum frame construction and all! So after Paul and Diane went home, we decided to go look for a truck! We drove down to Dade City and found the perfect truck at the perfect price and we knew we were done for! We were gonna be pulling a 5th wheel! So here are some photos of our new home on wheels.

Still parked at the RV lot, Nature's Coast RV in Crystal River, Chuck looks over the Everlight.

The pantry area is huge, the fridge is huge and I now have a 3 burner gas stove and a convection/microwave oven!

The dinette is big enough for four or a good game of dominos! Like the Oliver, it makes into another bed. There are large storage bins under the seats.

From the back of the trailer, looking forward, you can see the kitchen to the right, dining area to the left, 32" Jensen TV and entertainment center and the steps to the bedroom! There is even storage under the steps!  Look at that jazzy light fixture over the dinette!
I even have a double sink now, to wash AND rinse my dishes in.

Chuck loves the two swivel rockers at the back and both come with great reading lamps overhead!

The couch is also a hide a bed! Will make into a double bed! All the furniture is soooooo comfey in our new home! We have one slide out which you can see here, includes the couch and dinette area.

We now have a queen bed where we can each get out on either side of the bed with no more climbing over each other. There is hangable storage closets on both sides, foldable storage above and AND the bed lifts up offering even more storage under the bed!

As you enter the bedroom area, the full sized shower is on the left with a full sized sink and medicine chest outside the shower area and on the right is the private bathroom. In the bedroom we also have a Jensen 19" tv, more counter and storage space beneath that!

Chuck and I with our new (used 2004) Ford F-450 and our new Everlite by Evergreen 5th wheel home. What was so amazing is how well the colors of the trailer matched the color of the truck!  I just wish the colors on this page really did justice to the interior and exterior of the rig! Such pretty browns and bronze tones!    We love it!

Chuck and Geri are happy campers!  Now, if you want to know all the details of the new rig, contact Chuck at tumblwede@yahoo.com.  I don't know any of that technical stuff! I just know how to say, "Honey, I'm home!"