Yeehaw! We're in Texas!

Sunset from our front porch

We are in Texas and the hill country is just as beautiful as everyone said it would be.  Growing up in West Virginia, the mountain state, it’s hard not to compare what other people call hills to the ones at home. And no, the hills are not the same here.   Some curvy roads and beautiful vistas, but it’s not West Virginia. 

We are about three miles east of Fredericksburg , population 10,000 give or take.  What a great place!  I’m sure small towns all over the country are envious of its downtown where there are no vacant storefronts and there’s always people milling about.  Many of these people are tourists but the town residents themselves have a great sense of community.  We went to the Christmas parade a week ago and it lasted well over an hour.  

Pyramid on town square.  

A couple of things were done a little differently than we’d seen before.  We thought we may have had the wrong night when we went because an hour before it was scheduled to start there were still vehicles parked along the parade route.  Of course there were – everyone parks their pickup on Main Street early in the morning to have a prime spot to watch from that evening.  The street is four lanes wide with diagonal parking on each side so it makes sense.

Because the street is so wide they did something else we had never seen.  When the parade participants got to the end of the road so to speak, they didn’t stop.  They all made a U-turn and paraded in front of the other side of the street.  Again, different but very practical.  The participants didn’t have to hitch a ride back to their cars at the end of the parade – they marched back.

LBJ Hereford -- initials burned in horn.

We have done some sightseeing while here.  Lyndon B. Johnson’s Texas white house is only 15 miles up the road.  It is still a working ranch with descendants of his prized Herefords being well taken care of.  We went into San Antonio for a day, more to give us a chance to leave Bud at a kennel than to see the sights.  We did stroll along the River Walk and walked to the market square.  We didn’t go through the Alamo but will be doing that at a later date.  Maybe the subject of the next blog update.....

Bar Harbor

Our time in Maine is winding down as fall arrives.  Our RV is under a maple tree that has been dropping the most beautiful red and gold leaves.  It’s kind of cool to be back in the land of deciduous trees after living on the Isle of Palms for so many years.  My song may change next week when the temperatures are supposed to be more “fall like” according to the local weatherman.  “Fall temperatures” in South Carolina does not mean freezing temperatures.

We made the trip to Bar Harbor last weekend.  The town of Bar Harbor was nothing special – kind of like Key West meets New England.  It had all the sightseeing tours, cruise ships, tourist shops and so forth.  It was a nice town to walk around in but a little too touristy for our taste. 

Acadia National Park, however, was absolutely wonderful.  I kept thinking it was like the mountains of West Virginia merged with the Lowcountry of South Carolina, two of the most beautiful places on earth. 

 

There was a steady rain almost the entire time we were there but it couldn’t hide the splendor of the park.  It even created some waterfalls for just that day. 

When we woke up on Monday there were some rays of sunshine peeking through so we hurried back up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain (highest peak on the East Coast) to see what we missed the day before.  Wow!  You could see for miles. 

Bar Harbor from the summit of Cadillac Mountain

Sunday's drive

Dan commented on the drive up that he could see water in the rearview mirror where the day before we could only see fog.

We will be leaving Maine in less than two weeks.  Our next stop on the Grand Adventure is Fredericksburg, TX, about 45 minutes north of San Antonio.  Whenever a campground guest from Texas would check in and I would tell them where we were headed, every single person would say we were going to the most beautiful part of the state.  We can’t wait to see for ourselves.

Family and fun!

Wow!  I didnt' realize it had been over a month since I posted on the blog.  We're still in Maine and having a great time.  What a wonderful week we had last week!  Deb’s parents and her brother’s in-laws came up from Florida for a visit.   We saw some new places and shared some of our favorite places with them.

L-R Deb's dad, mom, Dan, Kathy & Richard (in-laws once removed)



The table was dropped off at one stop too!



We waited all summer so we could take them for a ride on the Casco Bay Lines mailboat run and we were not disappointed.  It was fascinating.  There are many islands off the coast of Portland and many of them are populated with year-round residents.  As we were boarding the ferry, a school bus pulled up and dropped off a busload of students who were going home after a day at school.  There were pallets of goods spread throughout the boat that were off-loaded at various docks.  Construction workers boarded at different stops for a ride back to the mainland.  Dogs were onboard with their owners.  It was a really fun day.

On the weekend we went to a car show in Old Orchard Beach.  Doug’s father-in-law, Richard, is a mechanic so it was like having a personal tour guide.  While everyone can appreciate a nice car, he made it interesting by pointing out differences between models and sharing his knowledge.  Over 200 cars were there and Dan found one that left the assembly line on the day he was born – a really old car.

The weather was perfect.  One thing we gave up when we hit the road was an inside dining area that seats more than two people comfortably.  The weather cooperated and we dined outside each time we cooked our own meals.  The sun left us in the dark but thanks to some citronella candles and a Tiki torch we were able to see what we were eating.  Lobster one night, grilled steaks another and pasta the last night they were here.  Dan cooked breakfast for us all one morning as well.  Lots of fun!

Still having fun!

We have been making the most of our days off and even sneaking in some fun on workdays.  A couple of weeks ago we took the four foreign exchange students working here to a minor league baseball game in Portland.  Try explaining baseball to someone who speaks little English.  There isn’t even a sport to compare it to.  Despite their limited understanding of the game we all had a good time.  If you have ever been to a minor league game you know of all the entertainment between innings and we took them to Walmart to do their weekly shopping before the game so everyone was happy.

We had a fantastic surprise the next day as one of our “Youth Kids” and his family stopped by to say hello.  We have known Andy Neipp, his parents and his siblings since Dan’s retirement and our return to Charleston.  He was up this way with his wife Christy and their daughter, Hadley.  We were working so the visit was much too short but it was great.

Last weekend our Workamping friends Fred and Sue came up from New Hampshire for the afternoon and showed us around Portland, their former home.  They took us to places only the locals know about (I’m sure we will be making a return trip to Tony’s Donuts) as well as showing us some of the most beautiful views of the area.  It was another beautiful weather day and we had a great time.

Today we went to Bath, a town that has been building ships for four hundred years according to our tour guide.  It is the home of the Maine Maritime museum as well as Bath Iron Works, the shipyard where Zack’s ship, the USS Nitze, was built.  We visited both and enjoyed every minute of it.  While Dan had been in shipyards while serving in the Navy, neither of us had seen ships being built from the beginning before.  It was fascinating.  The museum was located on the grounds of a former shipbuilding yard where wooden ships were built.  Many of the old buildings remain and had displays of the tools and equipment used in construction of the ships.

Until the next time!

Summer is here!

The weather has changed and Maine is beautiful!  The campground we are working at is in its peak season so we have been working 40 hours per week.  It can be tiring but it is a lot of fun and we are meeting some really interesting people from all over the country.  We are enjoying our days off and are seeing as much as we can. 

We took the train to Boston in June and went to Fenway Park to see a baseball game.  It was everything Dan was hoping it would be.  The owners have done a wonderful job of keeping the traditional ever present but modernizing where necessary.  There is not a bad seat in the house. 

Doug and his family came to visit for a few days and we all had fun.  We went with them to Kennebunkport, a little coastal town that looks like a postcard of Maine.  It also happens to be the location of Walker’s Point, the summer home of George and Barbara Bush.  They weren’t in at the time so we weren’t able to say hello but we did drive by and take some pictures.

This past Monday we went to the White Mountain National Park in New Hampshire.  It was a wonderful day.  We spent all day there driving around, stopping to take pictures now and then , enjoyed a picnic lunch and took Buddy on a hike through the woods.  He had a great time even if we didn’t see any moose. 

Buddy has been enjoying Maine as much as we have.  He loves guarding us from the chipmunks and squirrels that surround our trailer.  Everyone he meets tells him how cute he is and he loves going to the dog park to chase the ball.  Life is good when you are a Nesbitt dog.

Rain, rain go away!

The bikes keep falling over because the ground is so soft

The weather is much different in New England than it is in the Lowcountry of South Carolina or Lower Alabama.  It rains here – a lot.  We had some of what my grandpa used to call “gully washers” in Alabama, but it would rain hard and then be done with it.  Pretty much the same scenario in Charleston.  We would have four inches of standing water on some of our streets but the next day it would be dry.   But when it rains up here it can go on for days.  It started raining at 8:00 yesterday morning and really hasn’t stopped since.  The weather man just said we have had 6.5 inches of rain with this system.  Everyone keeps saying it has been unusually wet this spring but I think they are telling us that so we won’t pack up and leave.  It has rained for at least two days out of seven every week we have been here.

But when the sky clears it can be breathtaking.  On one clear day we went to Portland Head Light, one of Maine’s many lighthouses that dot the coast.  It was a beautiful day – we even enjoyed a picnic. 

On another day off we drove inland a little to Sebago Lake (if you said se-bah-go you were wrong, it is se-bay-go).  We enjoyed another picnic on a very pretty day.  Many people were swimming in the lake but without even sticking a toe in I can tell you it would have been much too cold for me.

This week we will mark off an item on Dan’s bucket list – a visit to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox play.  The Weather Channel is giving a 40% chance for showers.  Cross your fingers for us.

Hello Maine!

We made it!  We arrived in Maine on the 26^th of April – a day later than we had hoped.  Being true southerners now we delayed our trip a day because of snow in the mountains of West Virginia.

After we left Alabama we spent a month in Florida with Deb’s mom and dad, helping with projects and preparing for a huge yard sale.  While there we made a trip to Winter Park to see Dan’s nephew and a trip to Titusville to visit with one of his cousins.  We had a great time catching up with them. 

From there it was on to South Carolina for a month of doctor and dental appointments and seeing our kids and grandpups.  It was wonderful to attend services at our home church and to get together with our friends in “the hood”. 

We left South Carolina after Dan’s last doctor appointment and headed to Raleigh to finish a bathroom remodeling project Zack started before he left for a seven month deployment.  We removed the linoleum flooring and replaced it with tile and we removed tile from the walls and replaced it with wainscoting.  Dan also replaced a window that the only way you could close it was to go outside and push it shut while someone locked it from inside.  We didn’t get it completely finished but it’s much further along than it was.



Ray and Mary Jo Piaskowski and their son Will



After saying goodbye to Sarah, Kolo and Hooch, we headed to Virginia.  We spent a few days there visiting some dear friends in Stafford we hadn’t seen for many years.  They are the reason we are in Maine now.  We came here 27 years ago for their wedding and decided we didn’t get to see nearly enough of this beautiful state.  We were also able to visit some friends who live in Front Royal.



Dan sharing USS Alabama stories with neice and nephews



Our next stop was in West (by gosh) Virginia, our home state.  We visited with family and friends for several days – the highlight being able to see our great niece and nephews.  They are adorable.

We finally made it to Maine after almost three months on the road – subject of the next blog installment!

Goodbye Alabama

Wednesday we left Alabama for the next leg of our grand adventure.  While we’re looking forward to having cable television again (Deb missed the entire fall season of The Closer and we spent the night in a hotel so Dan could watch WVU humiliate Clemson), as is the case every time we move there are a few things we will miss. 

One is the food of southern Alabama.  If you like good old fashioned country cooking, this is a great place to be.  While Deb still can’t bring herself to eat grits or greens, she decided she likes okra and fried catfish.  Cooking is as much a pastime here as hunting and fishing.  All of our coworkers have either cooked for us or brought us food from home and all of it has been great.  And while the restaurants around are nothing fancy they have some of the best food we have ever eaten.  One of our favorites was the Stagecoach, about 45 minutes from the park.  We tried to eat at a different place each time we ate out so we could hit as many places as possible and it is the only restaurant we ate at more than once.  We discovered cornbread salad there – a dish that is very simple but mighty tasty.

Something else we will miss is the people.  Since the first day we felt welcomed.  Everyone became like family to us so quickly we attended both a wedding and a funeral in the short six months we were there. 

Uriah United Methodist Church is a small church (47 were in attendance last Sunday) with a big heart.  Even though most of the members have been going there for their entire lives and know everyone that lives in a fifty mile radius, we never felt like outsiders.  

Our coworkers quickly became friends and just the other day one of them told us he would “miss us more than family”.  Our boss, Thomas, has been great.  He let us do things our way and was a very patient teacher.  Remember Deb on the zero turn mower?  He taught her how to do it.  Don has a story for everything and has gotten Dan in trouble more than once keeping Deb waiting.  Doug has been our go-to guy for information and Deb’s rescuer on more than one occasion.  Wayne worked with us for awhile and was the little brother Dan never had.  Fred and Sue, Workampers like us, helped us know we made the right decision to do this.  Their travel and work camping stories have given us so many places to think about!  Danny was a board member that showed up whenever we needed an extra hand.  Allison and Justin worked with Dan on the zip-line and invited us to their wedding! 

We enjoyed our time in Alabama and take with us fond memories.  While here in Florida we hope to visit some friends from Guam and one of Dan’s cousins.  We’ll keep in touch!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Lower Alabama!  Winter has found us and taught us a few things about living in an RV full-time.  Propane tanks need to be filled about every other week when the furnace runs frequently and the garden hose that brings the water to the trailer from the spigot will freeze quickly even though it doesn’t seem that cold outside.  These inconveniences have not put a damper on our Christmas spirit, however, and for this post I will tell you the story of our Christmas tree.

We live in a state forest and are surrounded by pine trees but are not allowed to cut down any live trees.  Living in a trailer we don’t have room for one inside anyhow, so we decided to dig up a small tree, keep it in a bucket until after Christmas and then replant it.  On one of our morning walks we selected the perfect tree and marked it for later.  In case you were not aware or maybe have forgotten, not all pine trees are made alike.  Little River State Forest is mostly a longleaf pine forest so we don’t have any of the cute little triangle-shaped Christmas trees that we drew in first grade or find on a Christmas tree lot.  Most of them look like this one – kind of shapeless and sparse. 

We went back after lunch and Dan dug it up for me.  Did I mention we live in a state forest?  Our tree looked small enough so the root system shouldn’t have been too big, but we didn’t think about the hundreds of trees within a twenty foot radius of it.  Dan prevailed though and we got it out without too much carnage, put it in its temporary housing (i.e. bucket), and took it back to the trailer.

Dan hard at work

 

 With memories of the Christmas tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas special I watched as a child (and actually watched the other night on ABC but was terribly disappointed because it had been edited from an hour long show to thirty minutes.  I was upset because they edited out the part where Linus tells the Christmas story – but that is a whole other post) I set out to make decorations to make it sparkle.  I strung some borrowed lights all around it but when I finished the branches were sagging under the weight so I took them off and put them straight up instead.



Before Deer



I spent all afternoon stringing popcorn together and ended up with five strands, each about three feet long.  Buddy thought I had two strands too many so when my attention was elsewhere he quietly ate two of them, string and all.  He thought we could go without one more but I disagreed and rescued the third one.  I put them on the tree and added some stars I had cut out and was pleased with what I had accomplished.  But it seems everyone’s a critic and that night the deer decided the popcorn was too fluffy and proceeded to nibble it down so it wasn’t quite so big.



After Deer



 

While I don’t think it will win any awards I thought it turned out kind of cute.  It brings me joy when I see it and reminds me that Christmas is coming – what more can I ask for?

USS Alabama

We recently made a trip to the USS Alabama in Mobile.  This is the ship Dan’s father served on during WWII making it a very special and often emotional day.  We went on November 1, the day before what would have been Jeep’s (Dan’s dad) 87^th birthday.  Memories of the many stories he told us about his days on the ship kept coming back as we walked the same decks he would have walked.

Jeep was a Boatswains Mate and served as gun captain on one of the big 16 inch guns.  It was very humbling to crawl up in one of the turrets and imagine what it must have been like to be in that cramped space when the guns were firing and you were fighting for the survival of your shipmates.

  

 

One of the most emotional moments was when we found his name on the list of sailors who had served on the ship between 1942 and 1947.  Of course we couldn’t remember the names of any of the men in Jeep’s stories – everyone went by a nickname, but we knew many of them knew Jeep as a young sailor and probably featured him in their stories as well.  Probably some of the men listed are still alive but the majority of them have passed on making it even more touching.

Being retired Navy Dan obviously has been on his share of ships.  But visiting the USS Alabama was one of the items on his bucket list and meant a great deal to him. 

Work, work, work

While we are enjoying getting to know the area, we also put in 40 hours a week working at the park.  Our duties include anything and everything but there are a couple of things we do on a regular basis. 

 Every Saturday and Sunday we have opened the park at 7:00 a.m. and closed it at 7:00 p.m.  For you non-math people that’s two twelve hour days in a row.  Most of the visitors to the park for the week come on these two days so we are kept pretty busy meeting the needs of our guests.  Deb stays in the office taking gate fees, renting boats, assigning campsites, etc.  There are times when it is really slow so she has a chance to catch up on her reading.  So far she averages one novel per weekend.

Dan gets to play on the four-wheeler.  He says he is working, picking up trash and so forth, but he looks like he is having too much fun riding around for it to be considered work. 

On Mondays and Tuesdays we wear our groundskeeper/maintenance hats.  When we first arrived there was a young teacher about Zack’s age who did all the mowing.  Once school started the bulk of the mowing fell to us.  We each have a zero-turn tractor that we use to cut grass.  Dan’s is called the Grasshopper and Deb’s is the Hustler.   As you've seen in previous pictures there are lots of trees here but at one time there were a bunch more.  We know because the areas we mow are filled with stumps and holes where trees once stood.  By the end of the day you feel as if you have been riding an old-fashioned, wooden rollercoaster for eight hours straight.

Every once in a while Dan gets a chance to use his carpentry skills.  Thomas (our boss) says that once the grass mowing season is over there are several projects he wants Dan to do.  Recently he built a storage area for the park’s trolling motors and batteries.

Another workamping couple is scheduled to arrive next Saturday so our duties most likely will change somewhat.  Because we work for a non-profit agency, any work we do is appreciated so it really doesn’t matter what we are tasked with, we’re happy.

Our NIght on the Town

We had our first overnight trip last weekend.  We left Buddy with his friends at the doggie day care and went to New Orleans which is only a little over three hours from the park.   Mapquest and our GPS disagreed on the best route once we hit the city but we found it ok.

 

 

We stayed at the Inn on Bourbon Street, right in the heart of the French Quarter.  It was built in 1859 as the French Opera House, the first opera house in America. 





Our restaurant -- sorry guys, Dan was too shocked
 to get a picture of the girl.



We had dinner at a nice restaurant and walked around for a while – nothing too exciting.  I guess we are getting too old for all the carousing that was going on after dark.  We headed for the hotel around 9:00.  Kind of early you might think but it was late enough to see the bare bottoms of dancers hanging out of barroom doors and for Dan to see a girl turn around in front of him raising her shirt to show she wasn’t wearing a bra.

It was nice to be able to watch television in the hotel -- we still haven’t figured out how to get any consistent reception here.  For the trip back we followed the coast through Mississippi.  That was truly beautiful.  US 90 literally hugs the coast for much of the state.  Beachfront homes are across the street from the gulf.  It was such a beautiful drive.