Ft. Mountain State Park - Georgia

Georgia is a state where neither of us have ever spent any time. Driving across the corner of it or flying in and out of Atlanta airport is about it. We have always known it was a beautiful place just from those glimpses. Now we are having the opportunity to experience it first hand camping out at Fort Mountain State Park. I must say that I am very impressed with Georgia State Park system. The state of Georgia has invested a lot in making them great places for families or retirees to spend time. The campgrounds are well developed, campsites are level, well drained, with all the facilities in top condition including a laundry in each campground. At the same time, they do not take away from the natural beauty of the forest. There are lakes, beaches, picnic areas, mini golf, hiking trails. The area is also steeped in history dating all the way back before the revolutionary war. I have included a picture of part of an old fort that was built around the top of the mountain that pre-dates even the earliest Cherokees in this area. No one knows who built it, but the tower remains and the ruins of the stone wall circles the entire mountaintop. It was a mile hike uphill to this fort if I look a little ragged...well.

Mel has spent his weekdays working with park directors and the local merchants to produce their annual site map and tourist guide. They seem to appreciate him. I have done a few projects around the house, cooked three meals a day and enjoyed the park. I realized the other day that I haven't even listened to much music during my days at home because the sounds of the woods all around us is the most beautiful music. The birds singing and the breeze through the pines, well it just doesn't get any better. On weekends the park fills up with families and children. Mel and I rest and play and go sightseeing. It would be a perfect world if we had our families around us. Black bear are active in this area, but we haven't seen any so far. That's okay with me, Mel is a little disappointed.

Wednesday we leave here to head back to Abigail-land. We will be back in Raleigh for about two weeks, then back to Georgia to "work" another state park.

We love and miss everyone. Hope to see you soon.

ANNIVERSARY WITH "OLD BALDY"

April 10 was our anniversary. We celebrated by visiting a lighthouse named "Old Baldy' off the coast of North Carolina. Pictured above is Mel standing in the doorway of its base. You can see beautiful pictures of the lighthouse and explore its history at the website http://www.oldbaldy.org/

We had some great seafood for lunch at Southport, NC. Then we rode a ferry across the sound (about 30 minutes) to Baldhead Island, given its name by ancient sailors who thought it looked like the top of a man's bald head sticking up out of the water. We both climbed to the top of the old lighthouse which is no longer being used and enjoyed the museum and history surrounding it.

The weather was perfect that day. We spent the afternoon walking around the island and had refreshments at an outdoor cafe. We were able to take our Nala and Gretel with us. Gretel enjoyed the outing and the attention from strangers and all the new smells. Nala was frightened by the ferry ride and did not enjoy it as well, but she got some good exercise. She was glad to get back to the haven of the truck when we got back to shore that evening.

For Easter, we went to an early church service with Amy & Josh & Abigail. Abigail looked like a little doll. The service was a very worshipful celebration with full orchestra and choir and message from the pastor. After church we visited the grave of our little Emma Cate. We look forward to that resurrection day when we can hold her in our arms and watch her grow up all because our Lord Jesus conquered death and the grave. He is our life and our sure hope of eternity. Hallelujah!

USS North Carolina

We have enjoyed North Carolina. Of course our number one reason is our little Abigail Joy. We are having a great time "spoiling her". But who can resist those big baby blue eyes. She is healthy and smart and beautiful and cute. She has a personality that won't quit at 8 months she can entertain a whole room full of adults for hours.

Recently we had the oppotunity to get to know a group of bluegrass musicians that love to get together at every opportunity. We have hosted them at our campground community room and have made fast friends. They love for Karen to sing with them and say that if we will only stay, they will make her a star. One guitar player threatened to let the air out of our tires. We have several guitar players, two banjo players, one ukelele, one mandolin, and a dorbo, in our group. It's great! We will miss them and have had such a great time.

We are traveling to Chatsworth Georgia next week to Fort Mountain State Park. You may ask "Why Georgia?" That is long story, but to state it as briefly as possible, we must have a way to supplement our income while traveling. That is especially true when we travel east or stay around any type of tourist area. We can work when we want to, for a publishing company that produces site maps and tourist guides for RV parks all across the country. These publacations have ads in them for local attractions and businesses. Each park's publication is renewed every year and advertising contracts sold or renewed for the coming year. We stay rent free at the RV park for two weeks, and armed with a list of businesses to call on, we make personal calls on the business owners. The company is Southeast Publications, Inc. out of Florida. It is very reputable and we both had to be bonded and trained. We have done two parks so far and will be doing two more in Georgia before we return to Texas. I promises to work out very well. Of course when we are in Lubbock, Karen still has a job at Covenant and Mel gets some speaking opportunities as well as working on call at Lakeridge Funeral Home.

That brings us to another RV story update from last October. We took our fifth-wheel and traveled to Las Cruces, NM for training with our regional supervisor for Southeast Publications. There were three route options from Lubbock to Las Cruces. One via Ruidoso, one via Cloudcroft, and one through El Paso. We wanted to avoid as much mountains as possible, not that our truck has trouble or anything, but it does use more gas when climbing. That ruled out the Cloudcroft route since we were informed by a couple of people that way has very steep, windey, narrow roads. We finally settled on the El Paso route, not much scenery between Lubbock and El Paso, but certainly more level ground, and away we went.

Much to our dismay, we still were getting terrible gas mileage, we did go through the edges of the Davis Mountains and really had some trouble pulling our fifth-wheel over some hills. We had not run into this before. Fuel-wise, we barely made it across the desert on fumes. There is a long stretch between gas stations between Carlsbad and El Paso! Traveling from El Paso to Las Cruces was less than 50 miles but we had to climb over a mountain range to get there. We crept up the long incline coming up out of El Paso. At times we thought we were going to completely stall. We finally made it to Las Cruces, parked for a few days and had our training.

We decided to return to Lubbock via Ruidoso. We wanted more scenery, we do so love the mountains! It seemed it would be more downhill than up. We also wanted to stop at White Sands. We did not have any real steep climbs like the one out of El Paso, but we were still chugging up even small inclines and getting terrible gas mileage. I thought we must have added much more weight than we realized to our fifth-wheel after getting back to Lubbock! I was contemplating what on earth else we could do without to lighten our load. We picniced and spent some time at White Sands National Park. See the pictures below.

Our campsite in Ruidoso was off the road and up the side of a mountain ---oh no!. We finally got into it after a couple of hairy encounters with large rocks and drop-offs we had to maneuver around. I'm not sure which one of us was closer to a heart attack. Karen had visions of our home rolling down the mountainside. It was worth it, though. We were in a remote area surrounded by tall pines and crisp, cool, mountain air. We stayed a couple of days and just relaxed. On the morning we were getting ready to leave, Mel happened to check all the holding tank indicator lights and "lo and behold", our fresh water tank was completely FULL! We have always hooked up to city water and never filled it up to our knowledge. We have a couple of theories as to how it happened, but if you know anything about RVing, you know that is a real NO-NO. Our fresh water tank is huge and I don't know how much all that water weighed, but apparently, we pulled a tank full of fresh water from Lubbock all the way to El Paso, across the mountains, and back to Ruidoso. Ooops!

Needless to say after we drained it, we were able to take any hill or mountain with no problem and got much better gas mileage the rest of our trip home. ---Lesson learned, always make sure all your tanks are empty before leaving on a trip.

God Bless!