TravelStream™ news feed for member pykesonthego on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/pykesonthego en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:55:06 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pykesonthego/4/1257216933/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pykesonthego/4/1257216933/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pykesonthego/4/1257216933/tpod.html Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:55:06 -0500 2009 - Rose & Greg's 4th Full-Timing Year: Our Life on the Road, Shared on the Web

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Ft. Myers Beach, Florida, United States

  We've had such a fabulous week in Ft. Myers!  Spent lots of time reconnecting with Greg's Uncles Cliff and Steve and Aunts Agnes and Eleanor, who have a really nice timeshare condo on Estero Island, looking out onto the Gulf.  Mid-week, Greg's Cousin Claire arrived, after her long drive down from Toronto.    Greg got in a couple of bridge games with Cliff and Steve and Eleanor; we celebrated Agnes and Cliff's 59th Anniversary with Claire at Olive Garden; took Agnes and Cliff for a ride to Captiva Island so they could see the Bubble Room Restaurant; swam in the Gulf and beautiful swimming pools at our RV Park and at their Condo, had a great dinner of barbecued ribs prepared by Claire on our last night here; and were lucky enough to see dolphins playing in the Gulf and a most amazing sunset over the water!   Whew!  packed a lot into a week, didn't we?
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Webster, Florida, United States

  Sunny, Hot, and Humid - yep, we're in Florida, all right!
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Elko, Georgia, United States

Drove a little longer than usual today - about six and a half hours, plus stops for fuel and lunch.  A partly cloudy to sunny day, though, so not a bad trip.  We even drove right through downtown Atlanta on I-75 without any problems.  Saw the Olympic Torch sculpture from the year they hosted the Olympics, but did get the camera in time to catch a picture.  In a nice RV park tonight, about 40 minutes south of Atlanta, and it's a real pleasure to have windows open, instead of needing the furnace!Tomorrow - about 5 hours, and we'll be at Pat's Place in Webster, Florida!
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Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, United States

Despite the rain, we got going this morning with a goal of exploring Great Smoky Mountains National Park...fought our way through the heavy Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg traffic again and went to the Welcome Center for the park to see their movie, and to get my National Parks Passport stamped with the date (I keep meaning to count up how many of the National Parks we've been to, but the Passport is in the car, not in the motorhome, so will have to do that another day! )   From the movie (and the website), we learned, to our surprise, that this is the most visited National Park (although we question how they know that, as this is the only one we've ever been to that does not have an entry gate or an entry fee!) With the highway running through the park, I guess they figure every car that comes down 441 South is a "visitor to the park"!  The smoky-looking fog that always hangs over the Smokies, and that gave them their name, is due to the 85+ inches of annual precipitation that they get at the higher elevations...and because of their two unique climates, at higher and lower elevations, there are many species of living things (including several salamanders!) that are unique to the Park.   There are over 1600 varieties of flowers in the park  and a population of 1500+ bears,- but alas, we saw none of this, only a few leaves changing color, a few wild turkeys, and several deer grazing in the meadows in Cades Cove.This is the 75th Anniversary (actually, my birthday, June 15th, was the date!) of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Dolly arton was named the Ambassador for the 75th, so we were able to buy a fund-raiser CD written and sung by Dolly especially for the occasion!We spoke to a park ranger, who discouraged us from taking the drive down 441 through the center of the park, indicating that, at the higher elevations, the fog would be too thick to see anything, anyway, and it could be a little white knuckled driving the curves in the fog.   He encouraged us to travel the Cades Cove Loop, instead, which runs along the far western side of the park, and includes a number of the original Appalachian homes, churches and farmsteads of the early pioneers in the area.  One of the very surprising things Greg and I noticed while looking at a cemetery outside one of the original churches, was that, in this part of the country, people seemed to live much longer lives than was the norm in the 1800's.  Many died in infancy, of course, but we saw that a majority of the headstones indicated years that calculated to 60, 70, or even 80 years of age!  Guess those old mountain folks were made of tough stuff!   It was a nice drive, despite rain on and off all day, and we had packed sandwiches, so we stopped in a picnic area and ate lunch in the car.  I took a lot of pictures (are you surprised?!), but we're on the road now, and the signal may not be steady/strong enough to trust to the uploading process, so I will do that later.  We came back to the motorhome and had dinner after our day-long exploration, and decided to take advantage of a buy one/get one free coupon we had for a show called "Country Tonite". .  It was pretty good, with a cast of 17 people who sang and danced their way through classic and modern country music, gospel and patriotic tunes.  A couple of VERY good voices, and some pretty good voices, but an entertaining evening, to be sure!Looks like the second night in a row that we don't really need a furnace, heater, or electric blanket - this is a GREAT sign of things to come!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pykesonthego/4/1255382275/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pykesonthego/4/1255382275/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pykesonthego/4/1255382275/tpod.html Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:41:43 -0400 2009 - Rose & Greg's 4th Full-Timing Year: Our Life on the Road, Shared on the Web

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Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, United States

We left Crittenden Kentucky this morning at 9 AM, traveling south on I-75 and picking up I-40 in Tennessee.  It was pretty much a standard travel day for us,  covering about 250 miles total, with a half hour or so lunch stop around Noon time.  We stopped at a very busy Tennessee Welcome Center (that's where we made our sandwiches and ate lunch) to pick up brochures so we could make good use of our one day in the Smoky Mountains National Park area.  We arrived at our campground, (a small park right on Walden Creek that managed to squeeze a lot of RV's into very little space), at 1:15.  We were horrified, when we turned off of I-40 to head into Pigeon Forge, to see traffic at a standstill as far as we could see.  Pigeon Forge (Home of Dollywood) and Gatlinburg have become huge tourist attractions, with miles and miles of T-Shirt Shops, Ripley's Believe it or Not Museums, Buffet Restaurants, Music Shows and Auditoriums, and more go-kart tracks than we've ever seen, in all our travels combined!  It turns out that most of the schools in Tennessee are closed this week for Fall Break, so a lot of the tourists were families, here for the amusement parks more than the National Park.  Neither of us enjoys this carnival-atmosphere, so prevalent now in towns like Branson, Wisconsin Dells and Orlando...so once we got the motorhome in our site and parked - we chose to just stay in and watch lots of good stuff on TV ("good stuff" being defined as the Angels beating the Red Sox to win the Division Title, my favorite driver Jimmie Johnson winning the Nascar Race at California Speedway, and the not-so-good NY Yankees beating the Minnesota Twins).  Tomorrow, rain or shine...we're doing Smoky Mountains National Park!
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Crittenden, Kentucky, United States

Well, we started out a couple days later than we had planned, due to a blown clutch in the Trans Am and the resultant repair...but we're on the road now, and happy to have escaped the cold temps in Michigan!  It's only about 10 degrees warmer here, but it sure felt good to be able to go outside without a jacket this afternoon - the first time in quite a while!We're staying in a park called Cincinnati South Rose Garden, but it's actually in Crittenden, Kentucky, and about a half hour south of Cincinnati.  It's a pretty nice park, but I'm afraid we might not sleep a lot, since the railroad tracks run RIGHT behind our site - and the freight trains rumble through frequently, always blowing the required long-long - short-short blasts on the whistle as they go by the crossing!  It will be a rude awakening, for sure!Tomorrow, we'll drive about 4 hours to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, home of Dolly Parton, Dollywood, the Dixie Stampede, and the gateway to Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  We'll stay there two days, so we have a chance to do some leaf-peeping!Oh - for those of you who enjoy the statistics:  We have traveled 3,440 miles in the motorhome this year (most of those miles were put on in April and May).  We have used 392 gallons of diesel fuel at an average of $2.068/gallon.  We get an average of 8.4 mpg, so the fuel cost per mile averages $.255.  The cheapest diesel fuel we've purchased this year was $1.989/gallon in Missouri on April 29th.  The most expensive was today's purchase in Beaverdam, Ohio at $2.539/gallon.
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Hartland, Michigan, United States

  After saying our goodbyes to everyone at Cedarlane RV Park this morning, we're on the road to Michigan, in the home!  Gray skies and cool winds can't dampen our spirits - we are SO looking forward to this next week's travels - when we leave Michigan, we'll head south on I-75 towards Florida, with a two day diversion into Great Smoky Mountain National Park to see the fall colors.  A week from tomorrow, we'll be back at our friend Pat's Place, in Webster, Florida, where warm weather awaits!  The colors have started to change up here - will upload a couple of pics taken today as we're traveing.
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Port Clinton, Ohio, United States

As we move so close to moving on, I realize that I've been miserably negligent in updating the TravelPod.  Even though we were working 20 - 40 hours per week at Cedarlane RV Park, we still managed to enjoy ourselves on our days off (generally Sundays and Mondays).    We explored a Confederate Officers' Cemetery on tiny Johnson's Island; visited nearby Marblehead Lighthouse a couple of times; enjoyed baseball in many venues:  The Toledo MudHens playing at Fifth Third Field; The Detroit Tigers at ComericA Park; and the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field;  and base ball (yes, two words is correct) in its vintage form when we spent a lovely afternoon watching the Spiegel Grove Squires play in Spiegel Grove, behind Rutherford B. Hayes' Presidential Home and Museum in Fremont, Ohio.   Daughter Keri came to visit from Boston, and she and I had a great afternoon at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (where I also toured Johnny Cash's Motor Coach to see how the star's home on wheels compared to ours...I still like ours best!!).  Many Sundays, we drove the hour and a half to Ann Arbor, where we enjoyed having a lot of time to spend with my Mom and my Sister, Jill, and her family.   Most of these days included lots of food and good times at Jill's house, and several Scrabble games each visit with Mom (and yes, she still beats me most of the time!)I've heard that photo uploading has been improved and is quicker now here at TravelPod, which means I may be better at keeping you all updated as we move on.  One of the things I have been doing more frequently is uploading photos to my FaceBook page - usually a quicker process than TravelPod's has been.  Today's my last day of work - and this afternoon is Cedarlane's Halloween Celebration, so I'm all gussied up as Gypsy Rose (not the stripper - the gypsy!!).   I figure a Gypsy is a good costume for me, as I'm so excited about getting back on the road again tomorrow!
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Port Clinton, Ohio, United States

  Just wanted to upload some more pictures of our life and times around Cedarlane RV Park.  We're both working LOTS of hours (~40/week apiece), which is more than we had expected...but it will certainly help the finances, which is why we're doing what we're doing! 
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Munster Hamlet, Ontario, Canada

  According to Satellite Sally (I keep thinking i should change her name to GyPSy!), we'll be ready to start partying at Pyke's Place betwee 3:30 and 4 this afternoon (depending, of course on how the Border Crossing goes!)
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