Donut Day

 6-29-2021 - Tuesday

On the way to dinner last night, we saw two peacocks, but I didn't have the camera ready.  So every time we go someplace now, we are on the lookout for peacocks.  We got Andrew a license plate game so he watches every car to see what state it is from.  The kids like riding in the Jeep.  After dinner, we stopped off at a couple car lots -- Bridgette is wanting a new truck. When we got back home, we played a few hands of an old game Rack-o that I had left from when our kids were young.  John didn't remember playing it as a kid, but he had. 

Today we took the kids to the donut shop -- Joe had fond memories of taking them there the last time we were here, and Catalina was all for it, so that was first on today's agenda.  Andrew had thought about going into work with his mom, but in the end donuts won out.  

Catalina is a bit of a ham -- she likes to have her picture taken, but thinks she has to pose.

Donuts were a hit.

Then we shopped Walmart for a little bit.  The kids had a friend over today (Bridgette is actually going to tutor him this summer), so they were occupied this afternoon.  John spent his entire day in phone meetings, so we only saw him briefly, even though he was in the same house.  Andrew found a sticker book at Walmart he thought we could work together, and we spent a little time on that.  I told him we didn't fit in the chair as good as we did last year, so he was going to have to stop eating so much.

I finally got a good picture of Catalina.  I may have to print this one.  She is such a cutie!

We played a few games this afternoon, it's too hot to be outside (at least for Joe and me).  When John finished his work day, he and his dad made a trip to Home Depot and Lowe's, looking for parts to install a box for us to plug in to electricity here, and for John to be able to plug in his camper.  Bridgette and the kids were waiting for their friend to get here, so I sneaked off and got a nap.  When the guys got back, and the company left, we went out for pizza.  It started raining just before we left, and continued into the night.  The pizza was good, but we all got a little wet.

Joe and I are all set up in our mother-in-law suite.  Very comfortable, and very convenient.  We may stay until they kick us out.  Tomorrow Bridgette has to take Andrew to the dentist, so we are in charge of getting Catalina to her horse-riding lesson.  We will see how that goes, but we do know where to take her.

Before the rain, it was sticky hot, another yukky day weather-wise.  Bridgette  has a water quality grant that she works on, and had taken the kids Monday to take water samples.  She told us they saw lots of dead fish, due to red tide.  We were very sorry to hear this.  We hope to get to the beach sometime, but we may have to go below Tampa Bay to find good water.  Maybe tonight's rain will help move the red tide out.

We Have Arrived!

 6-27-2021 - Sunday

Well, 48 days after leaving home, we have arrived at John and Bridgette's in Brandon, Florida.  It took us 4,107 miles.  Just about 100 miles a day.  We had about 100 miles of Georgia left, which we came across on 441, into Florida, past Lake City, before we finally got on I-75.  Along the Georgia portion, we past tobacco fields and blueberry fields.  Some of the tobacco was blooming, which we didn't even know it bloomed.

We crossed the Florida state line at 10:30 and made our last fuel stop there before Brandon.  Gas was back up a little, $2.899.  We had dreaded I-75 because it had been so busy, with traffic and road construction, ever since Cincinnati, but actually it was good today.  The only real slow-down was 2 miles before our exit in Brandon.  We past the Don Garlitz Drag Race Museum near Ocala, at mile marker 339.  Every time we pass it, Joe always says he wants to stop there sometime, but we never have.  

We found their new house, actually didn't get stopped soon enough because it's right on the corner (which they forgot to mention).  They all came out to greet us and helped us get parked.  They have a place for our RV right in their driveway -- very nice and convenient. We toured their new house (very nice),

 then watched the kids play outside.  It sprinkled a little, which drove us adults onto the screened-in porch, but didn't bother the kids.

We got to the Froeschkes at 3:00, 272 miles today. It was 75 Yuk degrees this morning.  We stepped out of the RV and I said it was 75 degrees, and Joe said yuk, it's yuk out here.  At that point, humidity was 91%.  

The kids are very energetic.  And they have one new dog and one new kitty since our last visit (Dory and Sophia).  So that's 3 dogs and 2 cats, a pond with fish, and 3 aquariums.  We have some busy days ahead.  We aren't quite at the half-way mark of our journey -- Indian River is the final destination, which we will head over to on July 10, with them. Time to post this and play with the kids.

Almost to Florida

 6-26-2021 - Saturday

We took a few minutes to walk down to the river this morning with our coffee.  It was a nice morning. 

 But we were on the road by 8:30, knowing we needed to make miles this morning to get to Atlanta.  It was 69 degrees when we started out, got up to 88, then cooled off a few degrees when we were getting to our campground because we had a little rain shower.  We know Atlanta always has road construction, no matter how you go through it, so we just headed down I-75, hoping for the best.  Actually, it wasn't too bad, we got through in about 30 minutes, with just 2 road closure back-ups and one wreck. But I had plenty of time to take pictures.  Here is our traffic, with downtown Atlanta in the background.

The only other downtown picture I took is of this 123-foot torch obstruction deck built for the 1996 Olympics.  I missed the picture of the baseball stadium.

 Its about 30 miles across Atlanta, from the exit to the bypass to where it comes back in.  After we cleared the city, we exited and had breakfast.  But no sooner did we get back on I-75 that we hit road construction again.  Traffic was backed up 2 miles before construction started, so we got off and headed over to Hwy 41.  This put us back in Joe's old stomping ground from his trucking days, so he was familiar with many of the little towns on this road.  We zigged and zagged across Georgia, staying off I-75.  We missed a turn, made a turn too soon, but managed to keep moving south and east.  Along U.S. 41, we passed the Atlanta Motor Speedway, which is a long ways from Atlanta.  We were surprised to see it out here.

Not too many miles further, we came upon what looked like a motorcross (or quad) track that someone had built.

Joe made a bathroom stop right beside a peach orchard, so I walked over and checked it out.  The peaches were looking good, but were all pretty hard.  I picked up the one on the ground, but it was not ready.

Then we noticed across the road they were cutting and baling hay.  That was cool to see.

Just as we pulled back onto the highway, we saw a peach stand across the road.  Although I had just concluded the peaches were not ready yet, we pulled in to check them out.  We could see they also had cantaloupes.  Well, they did have some ripe peaches, from trees right behind them.  We bought tomatoes, peaches and a cantaloupe.  We ate one of the peaches for dinner and it was good.

Our original plan was to get back on I-75 after we thought we were past the road construction, but we enjoyed driving through the countryside on the regular highways so much more than the interstate that we just stayed with them.  We even marked up my state map with the route we had figured out, and even then missed two turns.  But I had found a campground that was sort of in the right area, so we called and found out they had a spot for us.  It really was out in the boondocks, back a dirt road (Joe's favorite kind), and by then it had started raining just a bit.  No one was around, so I called the guy again and he came right over and showed us where to park.  It was nothing fancy, but adequate for the night.  I think we are about 50-60 miles from the Florida state line.

Under Bridgette's pressure from yesterday, we drove longer and further today than we had been.  312 miles, almost 9 hours driving (with an hour stop for breakfast, then a few other (very brief) stops.  We didn't get off the road until 5:20.  And then I had to cook since we are not close to civilization.

Bridgette called not long after we got set up to see what kind of progress we had made today.  She told Catalina we would be there tomorrow, so Catalina was going to go to bed at 6:00 so we would be there when she got up.  They are supposed to go to the Tampa Bay Rays baseball game tomorrow, so I told them to go to that, and we should be there by the time they got home (it's an afternoon game).  Hopefully we can keep that promise.

The only wildlife we saw today was some geese we spooked right beside the road.  But we saw lots of fields, lots of lakes, ponds and rivers, and lots of traffic. Joe found gas today for $2.769 so he was happy about that.  One more day on the road and we should be at our destination! 

Overnight in Georgia

 6-25-2021 - Friday

We are now in the "making miles" mode, so the only sightseeing is what we see from the road, until we stop for the night.  We were next door to a Costco, so we fueled ($2.739) and were on the road by 8:30.  It was 77, a little windy but not bad.  We had a late breakfast somewhere at a Cracker Barrel (they let us in today).  We stayed with I-75 past Knoxville, then went over to highway 411 into Georgia to avoid Chattanooga.  Traffic was heavy on I-75, especially the northbound lanes.  And that situation was not helped by the burned up semi trailer they were loading onto a wrecker.  Coupled with road construction, there was a several-mile long back-up over there.  We felt very fortunate to only get slowed down by road construction occasionally.  We crossed two state lines today: Tennessee at 11:20, and Georgia at 2:30.  We went past the turn-off to Rocky Top, which made me think of my ex-brother-in-law Larry Sullivan, who is not doing very well these days.  He and his band sang that song a lot.

Sometime after we went over to Highway 411, we went through an Amish community.  I missed the first horse and buggy (I was on the phone with Bridgette), but I got the next one, and a business of some kind with several buggies parked in front.

We were also met on this highway by a funeral procession, with cops leading and following the line of cars.  We were happy to see everyone pulled over to show respect -- you don't see that very often any more.  

We see more farmers in the field.  Joe didn't think I could catch this picture of a combine cutting the wheat, but I got it!  He always checks out the farm fields.

Not far past the Georgia line, we came upon an inland port of cargo containers for trains and trucks.  They were stacked pretty high, out in the middle of nowhere.  

Then we started seeing big carpet factories in the little towns we were going through.  We don't know what mountain range we are seeing, but the mountains are hazy, like the Smokies.  Very pretty.

We didn't have a destination in mind, thought about trying to get through Atlanta before we stopped.  I kept looking ahead and would get something in mind, then we would go past that area.  After we passed the area of the first park I had found,  I picked out Fort Mountain State Park in Chatsworth as a possibility.  I said, "it's 3:00, so if we are going through Atlanta, that will be 5:00 at least."  He agreed, mentioned rush hour, so I tried to call the state park, and was put on hold (at least 8 callers ahead of me, the recording said).  Suddenly, Joe sees a campground sign, looks down the road and said it looked nice.  We pulled over and tried to find it in our "tools" but couldn't (didn't have the name right), so he just made a u-turn on the highway and we went back to it.  Fortunately, they had a spot for us (if we had waited much later, I don't think we would have been so lucky).  So we stayed in 411 Rivers Rest Campground, about 9 miles south of Chatsworth.  I told her I had been on hold with the state park, and she said it was a very hard pull up to the campground for RVs.  But this one is really nice, right on a river.

 

I love the way the limbs hang out over the water.

The river is right behind those trees, and fence.

So after we got situated and had a little rest, we drove back to Chatsworth for dinner.  Joe had googled restaurants there and had picked out a couple.  The first one we tried to go to was "closed due to lack of help."  The sign said they would open Monday.  So we went to Edna's, really good food, very busy.  They were short of help too, by at least one bus-person.  And they ran out of several items on their menu.  I think a lot of people who would have gone to the other restaurant moved over to this one.  I felt sorry for the help because they were really working hard.  They also were doing a pretty good carry-out business.  

From there, we decided to go for a little drive in the Jeep, up to the Fort Mountain campground.  On the way we saw a sign that said "auto tour," so we drove that for about 10 miles, which looped us back in town.  I think it was a 53-mile drive, so we missed the biggest part of that, and didn't see anything on what we did drive to warrant a scenic drive.  So back around to our starting point, we took the road to the state park.  It went up in elevation probably 2500 feet, very curvy, a steep pull.  Pretty drive though.

This must be considered a romantic spot, because one guy turned his pick-up around and he and his girlfriend (wife?) sat on the tailgate to watch, the sunset? the moon (strawberry moon was last night)?  They were still there when we came back down from the top, and as we went down the mountain there was a beautiful sunset through the mist from the mountains. 

 I couldn't get a shot through the trees, but I got this when we got to the bottom.

We drove through the State Park, and the campground.  We only saw 3 motorhomes, the rest were pull-trailers, pop-ups, or tents.  It was a long, hard pull.  They had bear warning signs posted, and bear-proof trash cans, so we looked and looked for bears, but we didn't find any.

  

On the sign post, it said "lake," and "beach".  Joe said, "how in the heck did they get a beach up here?"  But there was a lake, and a beach.

The sun hitting the top of the trees behind the beach was really pretty.  

They also had cottages, which looked to us like full-size houses.  We couldn't see inside, but there were several of them, and they looked nice.

The drive up and back to the state park was about 16 miles.  Our little evening jaunt took about 2 hours, and we got back to the RV just before dark, at 9:20.  We drove 289 miles in the RV today.  Bridgette is pressuring us to get to Florida.  I told her we were probably going to camp somewhere north of Atlanta tonight.  She asked me when we would be at her house, the kids are asking (more pressure!).  I told her Sunday or Monday.  She said, "It takes 3 days to drive 600 miles!"  Then she brought the kids into it, reminded them of where they went on vacation last summer (past Atlanta), which they drove in one day.  (I was thinking, 200 miles/day, x 3 days = 600 miles, sounded about right to us.)  So I told her we would probably get there Sunday.  Jeez.  She keeps forgetting we are old.  And slow.  I'm sure she has more in mind for us when we get there than we do.  That's why we need rest every day.

Tomorrow, we have Atlanta first thing (85 miles).  Then we will see where we get.