Living on Beach Time

 Once we left Myrtle Beach, Denny and I made a brief stopover in the Savannah, Georgia area to visit River Street near old Savannah.  The roadways in the photo below show the rock that paves the roads here; the rock itself was the rock used for ballast in sailing ships that brought cargo and goods to Savannah.

 Cargo ships still travel the river in Savannah, bringing stack after stack of containers full of goods to the port.

 After a couple of days of adjusting to the lack of the sound of surf outside our bedroom windows we moved on to the Flagler Beach area.  Here we're three miles from the beach instead of 50 feet.  *Insert sad face emoticon.*

But it's a lovely beach of cinnamon colored sand created from crushed coquina shell.  Not only does it line the beaches, but it can be found in large formations guarding the tee boxes and along some of the fairways at the Halifax Plantation Golf Course.  Plus coquina was used to build the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida which is about 45 minutes up the road.

Denny and I have been wandering around the general area here checking out houses, townhouses and condos.  Upon reflection, we feel we would be comfortable here because it's a bit less touristy than most beach towns.  But once again as we started making plans to look seriously at homes we backed off once we got to talking about the places we still wanted to see out west.  Thus we're going to tuck this area in the back of our minds and prepare ourselves to head out in a few days.  We have some friends to visit here in Florida and a couple more beaches to visit not only here in Florida but in Alabama and Mississippi as well before we head north to visit kids and take care of medical/dental check ups before turning Black Beauty's nose to the northwest.  A vague checklist of things to see/places to go includes Banff National Park in Canada, the Tetons, the Oregon coastline and, well, who knows?  For now, all we know is that we're going to give this lifestyle until the end of the year before we start looking at houses again.  That is, once we've done a "are we really ready to settle down?" check again.

Wrapping Up 2012

The photo above is the very first photo I took in 2012.  Sunset in Arizona.  Me taking a photograph of a sunset--go figure.  I guess I should start a blog post about our year's travels with a photo of a sunrise but oh well.

 
First, the boring facts; we traveled 7,019.9 miles this year with The Beast.  We started the year in Arizona and ended it in South Carolina.  We visited the Pacific Ocean coastline and have stayed three months on the Atlantic Ocean coastline.  During our cross country travels Denny and I stayed at forty-three different campgrounds in eighteen states.  Of those forty-three campgrounds, twenty-two were membership campgrounds or affiliated with our member parks so we either stayed for free or at a greatly reduced ($10 a night for example) price.  Of the remaining twenty-one parks, I'm sure probably one third of those were Passport America parks where the cost of the stay is discounted at 50%.   We don't boondock, dry camp or spend the night in Walmart parking lots.  When counting up our restaurant stops I was surprised to see that Denny and I tried one hundred and nine different restaurants, cafes, diners or bars over the course of a year.   Hmmm, I can see right now where we could cut our expenses a bit!  I think Denny and I managed to play about ten new golf courses before I injured my back.   And as is usual with The Beast, we had numerous repairs to be made to the furnace, to leaking slide outs, lights, propane regulators and hoses and right at the end of the year the microwave/convection oven blew for the second time in one year (thank goodness for extended warranties.)

Ah, but the good part of traveling by RV comes next; we saw full moons over the ocean, over rivers, over lakes and over the desert.

Over the past year Denny and I have seen birds and critters and flowers galore, except when we specifically went to see something special like the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve where there were no poppies.  Sigh.  At the Mesa flea market in Arizona Denny splurged on a pair of 20 x 70 binoculars and boy have we had fun with those.  They allow you to see rock climbers and soaring birds and things you just wouldn't be able to see normally or with a regular pair of binoculars.

  

During this year's travels in California we were finally able to see the Lone Cypress and to drive Seventeen Mile Drive in Monterey.

After fourteen years on the road we finally made it to Yosemite National Park.

And the Reno/Lake Tahoe area.

I rode a duck for the first time in Wisconsin Dells.  It was there that I slipped and fell, ending up with compression fractures in two vertebra which ended our travels for six weeks while we saw a back surgeon and had our normal check ups with our family physician and dentist in Ohio.  Because it was so uncomfortable for me to ride in the truck for the long distance to our hometown from our campground Denny and I didn't get to visit with as many of our friends and family members that we would have liked.

After the back surgeon cleared me for travel Denny and I headed north to visit both sets of sons and their families before turning the nose of the truck towards Myrtle Beach.  Our intent was to check out homes in the area as a possible location to settle down, but when we found a place that we liked Denny and I found ourselves getting cold feet about the whole idea of staying in one place.  Together we realized that there are still coastlines to explore, lakes to picnic beside, bends in the roadway to follow.  Yes, if we bought a house we could always fly or drive to other areas and stay in motels but traveling in a RV allows us to take the cat with us without worrying about her care (or if she's clawing her caretaker to shreds), sleep in our own bed, cook local produce in our own kitchen and enjoy having a different view out of our windows every week.

So while we will continue to look at houses as we travel I have a sneaking suspicion that at the end of next year we'll be nestled among the saguaro cacti with a view of the Superstition Mountains out of the rear window of The Beast.  While missing the sound of the surf at Myrtle Beach.  And so it goes....

Wishing We Had Skipped Wisconsin

If ever a nice campground/city had bad vibes/bad mojo, for us it's Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.  Starting with an emergency room visit for Denny immediately after we arrived in town and got set up at our campground things went downhill after that.  Kidney stones, refrigerator malfunctions, the coffee maker died, the stove attacked Denny and then it was my turn for the ER.  Not a good week.

After a week of suffering bouts of extreme pain off and on all week, Denny agreed to go to the casino but we only got as far as Walmart when he started feeling pain again. So we turned around and I told him I would drive back home. Denny pulled over part way into a driveway on the two lane roadway and I stepped down from the truck, only to slide on the newly laid loose gravel and land on my tail bone. I immediately knew something was badly wrong due to the pain and the weird feeling in my arms. Denny wanted to raise me up right away but I knew I'd have to figure out a way to position myself for causing the least amount of damage and pain and eventually pulled myself back up into the truck. We drove to St. Clare hospital in Baraboo where Xrays showed I had a compression fracture of the T12 and possibly also of the T7 vertebrae. After pain meds and laying there several hours the nurse tried to get me to stand up to walk to go home and boy, that just wasn't happening. So they admitted me to the hospital overnight for observation only, just to attempt to control the pain and make sure there wasn't any obvious spinal cord damage.  I was able to walk with assistance the next morning so I was so out of there.  Not that the hospital and staff of St. Clare's Hospital weren't terrific, because they were.  The two of us wanted no more of the hospital.  Did I mention that while I was upstairs trying to walk Denny was once again downstairs in extreme pain asking if he could be referred to a urologist in Madison so he could have his kidney stone lasered or broken up by ultra-sound?  Yep.  And naturally the staff down there did blood work and found his blood sugar was sky high and they freaked out about him getting follow up care.  

After being released from the hospital we drove to Madison so I could be fitted for a back brace until we can get to Dayton and see our own doctors for our individual problems.  Denny has passed one of the two kidney stones, we purchased a glucose monitor and Denny's blood sugar has come down quite a bit.  After we rest a couple of days we're taking the rig to Elkhart, Indiana for whatever repairs are needed to remove the gremlins and then we'll head for Ohio, cancelling several weeks worth of travel plans and visits with the kids.  We need to get ourselves patched up and back on an even keel before we hit the road again for a while.  We're kind of reeling here right now.

Posting may be even more sporadic at this point, but we'll be back.

No Fun in the Dells

Years ago Denny vacationed in the Wisconsin Dells area with his first wife and he thought I'd enjoy taking a ride on "the Ducks" so I arranged a stay at one of our affiliate membership campgrounds a few miles south of town.  Of course they snagged me into signing up for a sales pitch with the offer of discounted golf here at the resort as well as a gift card before I had hardly finished registering for our campsite so we had a commitment for that before we'd be able to do our sightseeing.  But first we had to find our campsite and set up, which we did.  Too many trees for our DISH TV satellite, but the resort has decent cable so we were okay with that.  Cell phone reception is very spotty but the aircard works for Internet access with the use of the Wilson antenna and the amplifier so that was good.  What wasn't good was as soon as we had eaten Denny became nauseous and his back started hurting.  I gave him aspirin and he rested a while but when he said he was hurting worse I took him into town to the urgent care center which was getting ready to close up for the day.  The nurse practitioner said from Denny's symptoms and the location of the pain she thought he might be getting shingles rather than suffering from a kidney stone as he has in the past.  However, she didn't take a urine sample and told us simply to watch for a rash and to continue taking aspirin.  So I took Denny home.  Which only lasted a couple of hours before I had to drive him to the hospital ER in Baraboo, Wisconsin where it was discovered he had two 5 mm kidney stones.  After absorbing a full IV bag of medication for pain and nausea Denny was finally comfortable and after getting his prescriptions filled at an automated medication dispenser in the lobby of the hospital (because it was after midnight and there were no pharmacies open for 50 miles) we were able to leave, arriving back at the rig shortly before 1 AM.  That made for a pretty long travel day!

We were able to make the sales appointment on Monday but by Monday afternoon Denny was uncomfortable for the rest of the day.  Tuesday dawned pain free so we left early in the morning to ride the Ducks and take the boat tour of the upper Dells (another post) but by the time we were finished the pain was creeping back.  Yesterday was a very bad day with Denny staying in the recliner most of the day trying to find a comfortable position and having to make use of the pain meds.  Today so far there's no pain but he's still queasy/not hungry so I figure the stones are lurking around waiting to make their moves once again so we're just kind of hanging around waiting to see what will happen.  It's raining today so it's a good day to just hang around and the rest of the week may just be too hot and humid to play golf even if he felt good so we'll just play the wait-and-see game, hoping the kidney stones will pass soon.  I have to say, it certainly is hard to watch someone you love be in so much pain and not be able to do a thing about it.  Stupid stones.

The Wisconsin Dells area is really popular with families as there are water parks and miniature golf as well as an amusement park along with the various resorts and campgrounds, somewhat along the lines of a Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  Baraboo is a few miles down the road with its circus museum and show and there are shops and touristy things to do all around the general area.  Denny and I located a farm stand and were able to enjoy some real field grown tomatoes and corn on the cob before he lost his appetite.  I think I'd like to come back to the area again, perhaps later in the season and minus the hospital visit and the kidney stones, of course.

Laying Low Again

Well, there's certainly no escaping the heat, is there?  No matter where you travel (unless you're on the Pacific coastline) it's hot and humid.  Blah.  Last week we had one breezy, not-up-in-the-100-degree day, so Denny and I went out to play golf but for the most part we were closeted in the Beast's air conditioned interior.  We did have a good day of thunderstorms as evidenced by the photo above but it didn't cool things down a bit.  During a break we wandered down to Big Pine Lake since our campground had a little bit of lakefront but most of it was taken up by the marina and so it wasn't a really pretty view.  Nice if you had a boat, though, and great for the fishermen.

Our campground was about 30 miles south of Detroit Lakes, a popular tourist area but there wasn't a ton of things to do in our general area and it was just too danged hot anyway.  The good news is that I didn't pick up any poison ivy from Patches who I simply could not keep out of the beds of it that lined the woods since that's where all the mice and ground squirrels played.  The great (gray and) white hunter actually reduced the rodent population a bit while we were there--of course once Patches catches a critter she has no idea of what to do with it.  She just knows she has to hunt.  Or as much as I'll allow her on a leash which isn't much but sometimes she manages to find something despite me.  And that was our exciting week.  Which if we had known what was coming the next week we would have appreciated the relaxation a bit more.

A Week With A Geek

While there have been numerous problems and complaints about Facebook, I have to admit that Facebook enabled me to locate my best friend from high school, Shelley.  Shelley and I spent the summer of 1971 working at a factory whose assembly line was staffed with women only and the two of us middle class white bread innocents got an education there that we could never have gotten in school.  Working the 4 PM to midnight shift meant meant we had a lot of energy to work off at the end of shift so we would go to the dance clubs after work (while Shelley continued her college education) and we partied hard for a while.  When we each got married we stood up for each other at our respective weddings but then drifted apart after Shelley's divorce.

Notices began to appear on FB about our 40th high school reunion and that's when Shelley and I saw each other's name and got in touch.  In 2010 Denny and I were due to pass through the area in Colorado where Shelley now lived, but when we arrived in town Shelley had to fly back to Ohio as her mother had suddenly passed away.  We managed a brief meeting the night she flew back into town and a breakfast the next morning as we were leaving but had no time to catch up. 

This year our visit was complicated by the fact that the High Park wildfire was burning out of control in Fort Collins, Colorado and my buddy had taken on the responsibility of providing a temporary home for half of the wolves and wolf mixtures of the Wolf Sanctuary that was located in the area of the wildfire.   Temporary dog kennels were installed on her property and her large outbuilding was converted into an air conditioned pen for some of the wilder wolves.  So when Shelley wasn't working she had a lot going on at home helping in the care and feeding of these stressed out, beautiful animals.

Denny and I also got to meet Shelley's newest furkids that she adopted last year; this is Beauty.  You have to love that face (the dog's, not Denny--hee!)

The geeky part comes from what Shelley does; she has a whole bunch of letters after her name and is co-owner and CTO of a company that is involved in technology and research.  Part of her job involves checking the company's product under an electron microscope.  Shelley allowed me to accompany her to see what an electron microscope can do.  Running on 100 kilovolts (that's 100,000 volts mind you) I watched as Shelley magnified some of the particles she was studying to the 105,000 power.  As she explained it "think of it as looking at a house that sits a mile away.  Now visualize being able to see that same house from 105,000 miles away--that's the magnification of the microscope."  Totally geeky.  What was fascinating to see was the shapes that nature created when gold was added to seed particles in solution; rods, spheres and in a new experiment that didn't work out the way she wanted the shapes ended up as triangles, diamonds and pentagons (second photo below).  Remember, these photographs are of invisible to the naked eye; the particles are magnified 6600 times in the second photo.  Mind boggling.

Shelley, who is a vegan, also introduced me to the vegan lifestyle in the form of several meals out where I tried a variety of dishes that were incredibly tasty.  I can see that with an effort you could eat quite well without having to resort to smoothies for eating your vegetables and fruit.  I don't think at this stage of the game I could ever convert Denny to the lifestyle but I can see perhaps adding a few more meatless meals to my repertoire.

Our week flew by, Shelley and I still didn't get caught up with each other but we made a dent in the last 35+ years that have passed since we hung out together.  It was a great week despite the constant threat of wildfires around us and the occasional pall of smoke hanging over us.

And the wolves are finally back home in their sanctuary.

This One's for Linda

I promised my blogging buddy Linda from New Mexico that I would post photos of the burros at Custer State Park in South Dakota.  I haven't gotten a post together yet so I thought I'd upload a short video that Denny took while I was busy getting in a little donkey lovin'.  Enjoy.

Denny's Nightmare

Denny said he was awakened by a nightmare this morning; when he told me what is was I had to laugh.

The background; Denny and I have friends we met while working at a campground in Virginia years ago.  Tim and Penny gave up the RVing lifestyle when Penny starting having problems walking due to a still undiagnosed neurological problem.  The two of them settled in Florida and then moved to Alabama where they started a successful business and created a home for themselves and their two cats.  But the wanderlust was still running through their veins.



Last summer they took a couple of weeks off and drove up to Maine to meet up with us and eat lobster.  That road trip by van was enough to get them thinking about doing some travel by RV so I started looking around for a company that could build some sort of lift for Penny's electric scooter to install on their newly purchased travel trailer.  I located a gentleman in Texas that came up with a really neat solution and all of a sudden I hear that the two of them have put their business up for sale and they are anxious to get to Texas to have the lift installed so they can get on the road.  I figured that any day we'd have them knocking at the door to our rig here in California saying "hey, good to see you!"



Yesterday I got a call from Penny saying that she and Tim took a quick car trip up to Cherokee, North Carolina to hit the casino there and take a look at a local campground that was advertising for seasonal workers.  Darned if Tim didn't sign up to work there for the summer!  Naturally the first thing Tim said to Denny while he was on the phone is "come work with me!!!"



And that's where Denny's nightmare came in.  He dreamt he told Tim yes.  Heh.

A Missile and A Mission

Duck and Cover--for those of us growing up in the 50s and 60s practicing this drill was standard procedure in elementary school.  So when I was perusing the list of places we could visit in Tucson, Arizona it was natural for me to be intrigued by the idea of visiting a Titan Missile silo to see one of those awesome harbingers of doom.

Located just a few miles south of Tucson in Sahuarita, Arizona there's just a small sign by the turn off for the Titan Missile Museum.  After we parked by the Discone Antenna (ignoring the radioactivity sign at our own peril) we entered the small storefront/museum entrance to discover we had missed a tour by 15 minutes and had another 45 minutes to wait for the next tour.  The tour itself lasts one hour and there is an admission fee with multiple types of discounts for seniors/military/AAA, etc.  There are a few displays and plaques with the history of the Titan missile program but most of the area is given over to touristy souvenirs in the shop. 

Your tour starts with a brief video explaining what you'll be seeing inside the missile silo and then you are led to the open area on top of the silo complex where a tour guide explains the mechanics of the missile itself, including its size, its propulsion system and fuels, the outer security systems and spoke about working there, as many of the guides are former employees of the base.

 One set of four motion detector systems along the outer perimeter of the missile silo area.

Then we walked to a metal staircase the led to a glass topped area that looked down into the actual silo for the now-deactivated Titan II missile.  Unfortunately the glare of the sun on the glass meant I was unable to get a photo looking down into the silo.  Those beige panels are the huge sliding sections of roof that covered the silo and that rolled open for launching the rocket.

Next we traipsed down 55 steps to the inner sanctum of the missile silo, entering through three ton steel doors that had to be opened with special codes that were once burned after they were entered.  Our tour guide, Bob, explained the tasks and preparedness drills the staff went through on a daily basis and even showed a dry run of what a launching would have been like.  Of course, no missiles were ever actually launched from any of the bases.  Back in the 60s there were a total of 54 missile silos; 18 in Tucson, AZ, 18 in Little Rock, AR, and 18 in Wichita, Kansas.  The silo here in Tucson is the only one still in existence.

The long hallway leading from the command center to the missile launch silo.

The halls weren't built for tall guys.

Looking through a cut out in the wall at the deactivated Titan rocket and warhead.

Looking down towards the base of the silo.

Bob, our tour guide, was a font of information about the Titan Missile base, the program and the mechanics of the rocket itself. If you are interesting in learning more I found a great site here. What I should have done was bring my small digital recorder because the amount of information given is vast and it was all fascinating.  Unfortunately, I find that as I age I can look around and listen and process, but I can't always do all three at once.

After leaving the Titan Missile Museum we headed for the Mission San Xavier del Bac just a few miles north off Interstate 19.  I've seen photographs of this history church on other RV blogs and wanted to see this "white dove of the desert."

The Mission of San Xavier del Bac is still in use as a church and is available for weddings and funerals for the Native American Tohono O'oodham people who worship here.  There are no admission fees to visit the church and you are free to wander the grounds and the church itself as long as services are not in session. 

 Now a National Historic Landmark, construction of the current Mission San Xavier del Bac began in 1783 and finished in 1797.  The artwork and craftsmanship inside are amazing for the time and restoration has been ongoing for years due to lightning and storm damage as well as earthquake damage.  Built of brick, stone and lime mortar originally, over the years cement plaster was added and now the restorers are removing that cement plaster and working on returning the walls to their original lime plaster. If you look closely at the first picture (double click to enlarge) you can see the difference between the completed tower on the left versus the tower on the right side of the photo. 

There is a small museum and gift shop on the grounds, as well as a snack bar and a couple of shops operated by local Native Americans.  In the parking lot you'll find several stands with local folks cooking tacos and Indian fry bread for sale while the music of a wooden pipe wafts on the breeze.  It's only a recording coming from one of the nearby shops, but the sound is magical here in the desert standing in front of the white dove.

Warming Up a Cold Day

My intended plans for the day included going to two museums (one wasn't open) and getting a photograph of us with some of the hokey alien creatures lining the streets of Roswell. What I hadn't planned on was cold, dreary, drizzly, windy weather so the photographs were scrapped for another year's visit to the area and instead Denny and I headed for the warmth of the Roswell Museum and Art Center.

As we entered the doors we were greeted by a staff volunteer who immediately informed us that the gallery to our left was closed for remodeling and I thought "hmm, this doesn't bode well" but I was wrong. How can you not love a place that has a modern version of "The End of the Trail" statue where the horse has red glowing eyes glaring at you as you enter the building? The Roswell Museum is large, bright and airy with plenty of room for exhibits to come. Currently exhibitions include the artwork of Peter Hurd, Peter Rogers, women artists of New Mexico, the collections of Rogers (not a misspelling) and Mary Ellen Aston and a display on the life and inventions of Robert Goddard. I fell in love with the work of Peter Rogers, especially a small pen and ink drawing of a dove superimposed over an angel superimposed over Pegasus.The museum displays are housed in glass paneled sections with laminated flip-page books explaining each piece inside the glass wall. That was a little strange and hard to manage if you wanted to look closely at the piece and match it up with the book as the books were set at the edge of one side of the exhibit so you would have to walk back and forth to read what the difference displays were. However all the artifacts they have gathered are well displayed and beautifully kept. And as always we learned something new as we read our way through the exhibit about Robert Goddard, who advanced the science of rocketry, starting off small with rockets that went a whole forty-one feet in the air to inventing propulsion system that eventually led to man being on the moon.

There is also a planetarium attached to the complex but Denny and I passed on that for this visit. We needed to pick up a few groceries and top off the truck's fuel tanks since diesel prices were twenty-eight cents a gallon cheaper than in Amarillo, Texas. I was still feeling the chill of the wet day when we got home so I made a pot of spicy vegetable soup. How do I do that, you might ask? Make up a potful of vegetable soup using your favorite recipe and then instead of dicing up tomatoes or adding a can of diced tomatoes (you DO add diced tomatoes to your vegetable soup, right?) toss in a can of original style Rotelle tomatoes with green chiles. Yum! It adds a surprising kick and went very well with our roast pork loin sandwiches.

All in all, a very good day despite the lack of hokey tourist photos of us standing next to lime green aliens.

Down Time

I realize I've been AWOL for several days.  That will probably continue as the RV Vagabonds are spending the next five weeks here at Myrtle Beach.  That means a lot of walking the beach looking for beach glass and sharks' teeth with the main destination being the state park pier where there is an ice cream freezer.  The park staff is very generous when they make ice cream cones and the mile long walk back to the campground helps remove a few of the calories said ice cream cone adds to our bodies.

We have a couple of repairs to be made to the rig, which will be worked on here on our campsite this morning.  Gotta love mobile RV repair service.  It's raining so I didn't make it to the beach for the sunrise but there will be other days.  After the repairmen leave I might work on replacing the wallpaper border in the bathroom, or read a book, or update my journal.  That's how life goes on the beach--there's a lot of quiet time.  If I need activity, there's the Wii Fit or Just Dance 2 or Walk with Leslie or even some Sweatin' with the Oldies and Richard Simmons.

What there probably won't be are a lot of blog posts.  You may find some photographs on my Facebook or Webshots page but that will be about it.  MB for us is a place to kick back, socialize with the neighbors at happy hour, get maintenance done and breathe deeply.  None of which makes fascinating blog fodder, although you never know what might pop up.

Until then, I'll be on the beach--see ya around.