ON THE ROAD AGAIN! (the devil made me do it ;-)

This blog is coming to you from two very happy campers because we are on the road after almost five months of parking in one place. Wow! That is the longest length of time in almost six years that Penny the Pace has remained motionless. Actually, we can only blame my health problems for one extra month so we would still have broken our record without them. The original schedule was to leave mid-March and move up to play tourist in Washington DC and see the Cherry Blossoms in bloom. That adventure had to be scratched for this year but I found a blog on the Internet written by a lady who lives right in the heart of the city. She is an intriguing Blogger and an excellent photographer so I was able to witness the spring bloom vicariously through her camera lens. The trees were extraordinarily beautiful this year and I was so sorry to not be there in person but Phil has promised me he will bring me back one day and we can try again.

We also had to scratch visiting several much loved family members and friends which was difficult but we look forward to another chance at seeing each other soon. And, of course, leaving our friends Margie and Roger was very tough after spending so much time together the past 4-½ months but we made promises to see each other soon, hopefully when they come through WA on the way to Alaska during a spring in the not too distant future. Margie took several pictures of us as were leaving and I’ll share those with you down below.

Our first night was spent at the Tallahassee Elk’s Lodge. They have 6-7 FHU sites in the woods beside the lodge and there were only three other rigs parked. No chance of any satellite reception so we were really glad we had the new Verizon Air Card. It worked perfectly so we had Internet. Because Phil hasn’t hooked up the converter box yet (and we don’t have HDTV) we couldn’t use the antenna so no TV, which was fine with us, … we went to bed early, as both of us were pooped from our first day on the road. It was a bit noisy from the neighbor’s heat pump that went off and on continuously and the streetlights near us turned off and back on which looked like spotlights being shined at our windows all night long. Not a significant problem however and for $12.50/night donation it was fine for one night.

The second day took us to Robertsdale, AL and we found a nice Coast-to-Coast Park (Wilderness RV Park) with full hook ups just a mile or two off the freeway. Very quiet and peaceful and also very friendly and accommodating. Phil had a great visit with our neighbors, also from Washington State near Seattle. It really is a small world. We unhooked The Lone Ranger and drove to Foley where we ate a wonderful dinner at the Shrimp Basket. We missed the “all you can eat Shrimp night” but even so, we got plenty to eat. Phil had shrimp I had fried oysters and they were delicious.

On the third night, we drove as far as Vicksburg, MS and settled into a nice FHU site at the RV Park owned by the Ameristar Casino for $22.50 per night. We took the shuttle to the Casino across the road and made a very small donation. We considered eating dinner at the seafood buffet (we walked in and checked it out) as it looked absolutely delicious but for $24.95 per person neither one of us were that hungry so we came home and had leftover fried chicken (from dinner in Tallahassee) and my homemade potato salad. Nothing fancy but the price was right.

We got up early and managed to be on the road a little after nine the next day (our fourth in a row) and drove 384 miles! A real accomplishment for us since we made it a rule to never drive more than 250 miles a day. Of course, another one of our rules is to never travel two days in a row. We broke that one too ;-) but I paid for it last night with an aching back and a bit of swelling in my legs even though we stopped three times and managed some good walks. We are in Mansfield, Texas and will spend four nights here so we can both get some needed rest and visit family that lives near by. We’ll be back on the road next Wednesday, hopefully recovered and ready to roll.

Thanks for stopping by!

Until next time …