O'Leno State Park - Florida

Jolley and I broke out our teardrop and were joined by Dave and Doris (dancing in their campsite above), our friends from Sarasota, for a couple of days at O'Leno State Park, which is a little northwest of Gainesville Florida. The park has two camping loops. We were in the Magnolia Loop and it was great. The campsites are wooded and large. Of course, when you have a teardrop or an ALiner most sites are just fine. The park has plenty of hiking trails and the Santa Fe River flows right through it. There are several springs in close proximity and the Ichetucknee River is also very close. We rented some kayaks one day and paddled down the Ichetucknee and then into the Santa Fe. The total trip was about 12 miles and took about 4-41/2 hours. The Ichetucknee was the highlight. The river is crystal clear and beautiful. We were joined by several manatees for part of the trip. We also sighted a family of otters and about a million turtles. If you look at the picture above you'll see the manatee following us as we kayak. Although it was raining around the state, we were lucky in that it only rained one night, from about 11pm to 5am. This is a great park to visit.

7/31/09 - Sarasota, FL

We made it. We're home! It feels good.

After over a month of traveling, it felt good to sleep in our own bed and to walk in our own park this morning. We had a wonderful adventure and saw many things we had wanted to see for a very long time. The TD lived up to our expectations.

I walked with my neighbor this morning and she asked what the worst and best places I stayed were. That's a really hard question to answer. I know the worst place was the campground in Gardiner, Montana. The best place? Impossible.

Yesterday and the day before were days spent driving in a lot of rain--lots of white-outs. One high point was our lunch in Fernandino Beach, FL. We've heard a lot about Fernandina. Many friends seem to have spent childhood summers on the beaches there. We decided to take a detour and check it out. It really is an adorable little town. One of Kalin's friends, Nan, is partners with a chef who has a very good restaurant there. The restaurant is called 29 South, in case you're ever in that neighborhood. We had some amazing food there and also got to meet Scotty, the chef. Even more important was that we got to see Scotty and Nan's baby, Audrielle, who's a real looker and has quite the personality, too.

When we first arrived in Fernandina, it was a little early for lunch, so we parked our "rig" across from the restaurant and decided to take a walk around town to check it out before eating lunch. We noticed a woman circling the TD. She started talking to us about how cute it was, etc. When we told her it was ours, we all started to talk more. She knew Scotty and Nan, loved them, loved their restaurant, etc. She and her husband have a shop in town, too. They travel to Morocco three times a year to buy merchandise for the shop. We followed her over to her shop where we looked at her stuff, which we liked a lot. We picked up a few little things. She said they were thinking about getting a TD to leave in Morocco for when they go on their shopping trips. Apparently, TD's are quite popular there. Who knew?

David will probably be adding some photos to this later. Right now he's swimming in the Gulf. Now we have to get down to the serious business of unpacking and cleaning! Ugh!

7/29/09

Our visit at Pipestem Campgrounds was cut short by rain. When we went to sleep last night, the weather was ideal. We never suspected rain. Some time after midnight it started to rain and continued all night. That was fine. We were perfectly dry and comfortable. However, when we wanted to get up and get going, it was still raining and didn't look like it would change, so we packed up in the rain and left. We drove through rain all day. At times, it was really bad. It's still raining! We're sorry we didn't get to explore more of Pipestem, but we can always go back.

I know that some of you have had trouble commenting on this site--I don't know what the problem is. Now I have another problem. I'm receiving e-mail but when I want to send, I'm required to use a password. I've never had to do that before, except when I try to access my e-mail from a different computer. I tried that password, but I didn't get anywhere. I haven't had time to explore the problem.

Maura, I'm sorry about Jerry's mother. I didn't know that she was 92. Keep us informed.

We're probably going to be home tomorrow! We're excited. It's been a great vacation, but it's always good to get home.

7/28/09 - Pipestem State Park, WV

Here we are at Pipestem State Park in WV. It was a total surprise to us. We expected a small state park similar to ones we've stayed in before. Not so. This place is a resort. They have a lodge, cabins, camping areas--anything you can imagine. The lodge is huge with spectacular views of the mountains. The mountains here are definitely not the same size as the ones we saw in the west, but I have to say I love the green.

The lodge here has an indoor swimming pool. Somewhere there are tennis courts and basketball courts, as well as an archery area. Kids are riding their bikes everywhere. They have large rooms in the lodge they rent out for conferences and reunions. Apparently, there are rooms in this lodge, too. They have a couple of restaurants in the lodge and a few restaurants--one is supposedly by reservation only and is excellent. There's a sky tram you can take to have a better view of the mountains. All in all, this is one cool place.

We're so glad we spent a couple of nights with Linda in Columbus. We don't see her nearly enough. She just had her 70th birthday, so we took her out and had a nice dinner. We really didn't do anything else special. We just got a lot of talking done, hung out at Barnes and Noble for a while and relaxed. She's a fantastic quilter and we got to see her latest project, which was a treat.

We don't know what we'd do without our book downloads. My friend, Lynn, recommended a book by Michael Connelly. I'd seen his books on the shelf before but had never read one. We both enjoyed The Brass Verdict. David wanted another one, so we downloaded The Poet. It was fantastic.

David's partner, Bob Mazur, just wrote a book called The Infiltrators. It came out yesterday and we saw it at the Barnes and Noble in Columbus, Ohio. We bought a copy and gave it to Linda. Maybe David will narrate the book for the audio version. (That's a joke, in case you can't tell.)

We've both decided we're getting a little homesick. I don't think we're going to stay at any one place for very long--we're both getting a little anxious to be at home.

7/27/09 - Columbus, OH

We don't have too much to report. We've just been driving. Yesterday we spent some time in Wooster, OH, looking at the house David lived in when he was in the 5th, 6th and 7th grades. He also looked at the houses of some of his friends--just to see if they were still standing. We took a quick look at his school, too. There's a new one in its place. We went to a place called Smithville Inn--a few miles down the road from Wooster. David's family would sometimes have Sunday dinner there. It's also still standing and we ate lunch there. It was OK. The place could use a few renovations. One of the waitresses has been there for 52 years, so you can see that the staff could use an overhaul, too.

Then we drove to Columbus where David's sister Linda lives. Her daughter, Mary and husband, Dennis, joined us for a nice visit. Then we went to a nearby place for a great dinner. We had a great time catching up on all the family news.

Today we've been getting some errands done. We're killing a little time until the oil change place has time to take care of us. Meanwhile, we've got a load of clothes washing. It's always good to get these things done.

We'll spend tonight here, too. I think we'll be taking Linda out for a belated birthday dinner--her birthday was in June.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

July 24, 2009 - Coralville/Iowa City, Iowa/Fairfield Inn

We decided to stop at a hotel tonight. We had intended to reach Davenport, Iowa, today but got a late start and didn't make it. Since we had no internet connection yesterday or today--until now--we didn't have a clue about campgrounds. So here we are at the Fairfield Inn. They're pretty nice and we redeemed points, so we got it for free.

David has a friend, Kenny Klein, who was a fraternity brother at Loyola. When David and I were dating, we used to double-date with Kenny and his wife Kitty. We've stayed in touch with them all these years--they still live in N.O. Kenny is from a little town in Iowa called Rock Valley(about 3000 people). It's in the very northwest part of Iowa, just below the So. Dakota border. Kenny talks non-stop about Rock Valley. When we decided to start going east, David realized we weren't very far from Rock Valley and thought we should stop there, take a few pictures and surprise Kenny. We got there at about 5:30 yesterday afternoon. As luck would have it, they had a very nice new campground there, so we checked in. We've gotten pretty good at setting up camp after all this time and can now, after a month of camping, do it quickly. We then looked for a place to have dinner and drove about a mile to downtown Rock Valley. The Steak House looked OK, so we went in and had dinner. We saw a few people who looked about the right age and David asked them if any of them knew the Kleins. They were all familiar with the family and knew that one of Kenny's brothers had recently moved back to town. They said Leo would "probably have finished playing golf for the day by then and that he might be having a beer at The Cue which was across the street. But, you know, it might be a little late for that--maybe he's at home by now. Let me call a friend and get his number. He lives in some apartments over by the Dollar General. If you see a guy in a wheelchair, it'll be Leo. He has Parkinson's now. "

We didn't see him at The Cue, so we drove out to the Dollar General. Since we weren't sure where his apartment was, David called him. He started off by saying, "My name is Dave Siegwald and you don't know me, but", and Leo interrupted by saying, "Of course, I know you!" He gave directions to drive the block and a half to his apartment. He couldn't believe we were there. (I can't believe we were there! It was actually pretty crazy to go there, but I can't say I regretted it. We had a blast.) We visited and talked for quite a while before returning to our campsite. Leo and David naturally had to play a joke on Kenny. Leo called him and started talking and then pretended that somebody was knocking on the door. David then got on the phone and started talking to Kenny and pretended that the wires must've somehow gotten crossed. You have to know David and Kenny and how they operate. They're always trying to play jokes on each other--get one leg up on the other, etc. They have a good time with it. We met Leo at his golf club for breakfast the next morning and didn't leave town until after 10. We loved Rock Valley. It's the prettiest little town. We didn't see even one house for sale. Every yard had the greenest grass. It made me want to move there, but I know I really wouldn't be happy there. It was fun for a day, though.

All we really did today was drive, drive, drive. There really is a lot of corn in Iowa. Tomorrow we're just going to drive, too--just drive as far through Illinois as we can. On Monday, we hope to be in Columbus, Ohio, to visit with Linda, David's sister, for a while.

The weather here looks ominous. We just saw some clouds that look unlike any we've ever seen before--like giant cotton balls. There are some tornado and hail warnings, so I'm glad we're not camping tonight!

July 23, 2009 - Rapid City, SD/Lake Park Campground

Lucky again! Another beautiful start to the day. It's cool now, but weather forecasts indicate it will be in the 90's here today. We're moving on, though. We're moving east to Iowa.

I don't want to forget about yesterday. We went to Mount Rushmore. Our visit coincided with some news about Greenpeace protesters who had "visited" earlier in the month and climbed up on top of the presidents' faces to hang a banner against global warming. There was criticism that security at Mount Rushmore was not tight enough. Oh, well. We had a good time. The place is huge with lots of indoor and outdoor space and it was packed with people. We saw a short video about the origin and building of the monument.

Then we went a few miles to see a similar monument to Crazy Horse, also carved out of granite. One man started building it alone in the 40's. His family is continuing it today. They have funded the whole project with donations only and will not accept any federal money.

We drove to Hill City for lunch, hearing that it was a cute town. Cute town if you like tacky, in our opinion.

Then off to Custer State Park. We saw more wildlife there than in all of Yellowstone and Teton. It's a huge park with some incredible natural rock formations. There's an area they call Needles Highway. Just imagine very tall, skinny rocks that seem to grow out of the ground. On Wildlife Loop Road we saw over a hundred buffalo. Just when we were about to think we wouldn't see a thing, we started seeing a few here and there and then we saw large herds. Some were in the street. It's crazy that they have all that beautiful green grass to eat and then they seem to be eating sand. You should hear the sounds they make! They're just grunting and growling all the time. We also saw tons of prong horns. They're a lot smaller and didn't come so close to the road but we had an opportunity to get some pretty good looks at them. And let's not forget the lowly prairie dogs. It was fun to see all the little mounds on the ground and see them scurrying all over the place.

One thing I've noticed about this area is how perfectly lovely all the lawns are. They talk about how dry it is here, but they don't know dry. The grass here is so green and it's the kind of grass you just want to sit on because it looks so soft and fine.

We got some new neighbors last night--a couple from Vero Beach, FL, driving one of the campers that people rent. Maybe you've seen them--they say Cruise America on the side. They're a really nice couple who are originally from NJ. One of their sons is a West Point grad who served two tours in Iraq. The guy told us such an interesting story about how he started camping before it was cool. His father was a postal worker and got 5 weeks vacation every summer. He would pack up the wife and four kids in the station wagon with a rack he built on the top. They would head out somewhere to camp. They actually camped in Alaska in the 50's, if you can imagine. He said one day his brother was out on a "nature walk", so he could smoke a cigarette without being caught. A forest ranger grabbed him and put him to work fighting a huge forest fire. His parents had no knowledge of this and were left to wonder for 2 days what had happened to their son. The forest ranger returned the son with an apology. He had a number of stories like that to tell. We had a good time listening!