Plains Georgia

Well, here we are in Georgia! Home of former President, Jimmy Carter and the Peanut! On Saturday we took a sightseeing train through a few small towns in central Georgia.  The towns have some historical significance and include stopping in Plains.  As you probably know, Plains is where President Jimmy Carter grew up and still currently lives.  He and his wife Rosyln still live in the only house they ever owned.  On Sunday, President Carter teaches Sunday School at the local Baptist church.

This is a picture of downtown Plains, Georgia.  The community displayed pictures taken in 1925 and I swear, they could have been taken yesterday. The building below was Jimmy Carter's headquarters during his presidential campaign. Small, but none the less, a national landmark.

This is a picture of Jimmy Carter's boyhood home. It is furnished as it was when he lived there. To the right of the house is a clay tennis court where Jimmy and his father used to compete in tennis matches. The Carter family also owned a small store next to the house, which was only open on Saturdays.

It was a long day and I thought I would take the opportunity to catch a couple of ZZZZ's.  I guess Donna had a good nights sleep the night before because she certainally looks more wide awake than I do. We were in the first class section with tables. However, the seats in coach class were more comfy!

Donna, looking a little more tired. After all, she did walk all the way down Main street in Plains! The train cars that are used were manufactured in 1949.  The train is operated by the National Park Service and is operated mainly by volunteers.  It was a very relaxing and scenic trip and we would recommend it to anyone who is in the area.

Lake City, Florida

Well, here we are in lovely Lake City, Florida as we continue our journey northward. On our way to find an interesting (non-franchised) place for dinner, we gave the town a brief tour. We like to try to find local eateries as often as we can, to get a taste of the local fare. For my interest, we stopped by an antique shop, which turned out to be mostly junk but still fun to look at! Some of the things bring back memories, especially when you see something and remember seeing the same thing in your grandparents house! As you can see, Walt usually goes for the older technology of tvs and cameras.                                              Not to mention this old tv tube tester!

Remember when tvs had big tubes in the back? When the TV would screw up, we would take the vacuum tubes out and go to the drug store and check them on this machine.  When you found the bad tube, you would replace it with a new one and everything worked fine.  Walt was also drawn  to these old coke machines - some of which he has fond memories of how to sneak drinks out of! Just give him a straw or a church key and a cup! No more thirst!

Lake City also offers a small museum in an old house where they proudly display momentos and artifacts of times gone by in the community.  The picture of the outside of the museum actually reminds me of a house my grandmother (Bootie) used to live in, in Poca, WV.

Above is a picture of an antique slot machine.  Big M always looks for the 5 cent machine, I bet this one is just for her.

Lake City was also home to the first J.C. Penney store in the state. All in all, it is a quaint, friendly little town and we enjoyed our visit very much. Now onward - northward!Soon we will venture on to our next destination - Georgia!

Blue Angels

As you can see, we recently went to an air show. The show was at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida, Sat. 3-20-10. It featured the Blue Angels. The technology put into these planes is amazing and the training of the pilots is unbelievable.   The precision is nothing short of perfection. The entire show is pure art! If you ever get the opportunity to see this performance - do! I promise you, it is worth every minute of your time.     Today was a gorgeous day to be out! The temps were in the high 70s with a light breeze and the sky was beautifully clear. We not only saw a fantastic show, we also put in a lot of walking - just what the doctor ordered for both of us! We shared the day and activities with our good friends Joe and Marcia Jones. They are full-time RVers too. They are presently residing at MacDill AFB. After the show, we went out for Mexican food. Although Mexican is not one of my (Donna) favorites, this was quite good! Good friends, good food = good times!     

Today, Sunday 3-21, was a quiet day for us. We stayed in, did laundry and made homemade veggie soup. Not much fun going anywhere when it rains all day.                                                                                                                         We are about ready to "hit the road", finally! We will be leaving the Tampa area Sunday, March 28th.  We plan to slowly travel north toward and through Alabama, Tennessee, east to Virginia, north to Pennsylvania and end up in West Virginia by the end of May for Chris's graduation.  When we leave WV, we will head out to Ohio, Indiana, up to the Chicago area, on to Wisconsin and then wander our way out west.  We hope to see Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone on our way up to Seattle.  From there we will work our way down the coast all the way to southern California. We will keep you posted on our adventures! Anticipation!

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"Big Daddy" Don Gartlets

Many readers have no idea who Big Daddy Don Gartlets is.  Back in the 60s he was the hottest thing in drag racing.  He broke many track records including being the first person to exceed 200 MPH in 1/8 mile!  Not 1/4 mile but 1/8 mile.  Talk about G force!

Don has a drag racing museum and a classic car museum in Ocala Florida.  Attached are a few pictures of some of the items in the museum and a few of the wilder cars.

After we visited the museum we had linner at Outback steakhouse.  Donna has been talking about steak lately so we had one at Outback and I will be doing some Rib Eyes on the grill today.  That should conclude her need for steak and we can get back to chicken.

After we had linner we drove around Ocala and on the way home we stopped at an antique mall.  I always like looking at the old magazines.  Ads for old free standing TV's in color and you can even get it with remote control!  Ad's for '57 Chevy's selling for a little over $2,000.00.  Wish I had 10 of them.

The weather here has been extremely cold.  Most mornings we wake up to frost on the car.  The highs have been in the upper 50s to lower 60s.

We are in Bushnell, FL now and will be returning to the Brandon area again next weekend.  I have a physical with the VA the following Monday and Donna has an appointment at the Cleveland Clinic in Ft. Lauderdale the following Thursday, for her leg problem.  We will be staying around the Brandon area until the weather starts getting back to normal.  In the worse case, we plan to start heading North by the end of March.

Below are a few pictures for the nostalgia file

Rained out

We were down in Wauchula, Fl yesterday camping at Thousand Trails, where we are members.  They have 400 sites.  200 are on high ground with full hook ups and 200 are on much lower ground with water and 30 amp electric.  We were planning on staying until Monday but we had two problems.  The first was, we couldn't get CBS there and that means we would watch re-runs of some old shows when the Super Bowl is on.  That is never going to happen.   Yesterday afternoon we had a great linner at a local Italian restaurant.  After we left and headed back home, it started to rain like crazy.  Water was building up all around the RV and we were parked on grass.  We decided we had better get out of there before the RV sinks in the mud.  The RV weighs about 35,000 lbs. and even though it has a lot of neat accessories, one of them isn't 4 wheel drive.  We unhooked the utilities and hitched up the car in the middle of a Florida downpour with no end in sight. We didn't know where to go, so I thought we would try a nice paved Wal Mart parking lot.  Donna didn't like that idea, so instead, we just headed for Lazy Days Campground.  We wound up on a site with full hook ups, a paved site and CBS.

Monday we will go to Bushnell which has an Escapee's (we are also members) park and stay there for about 2 weeks.  We will be baby sitting or should I say bird sitting for our friends Joe and Marcia.  They are flying to Kentucky for a week to take care of a few things concerning their new RV. 

We will be back around our old stomping grunds (Brandon, FL area) for the month of March.
We planned it this way because we have a rental house there, that we thought was going to be vacant and we needed to be in the area to get it re-leased, but I signed a new lease with the tennant today.  We will be heading north on our journey as soon as the weather up there improves.

Monday 2-1-2010

Yesterday we decided to go to the TECO (Tampa Electric Co.) power plant in Apollo Beach to see the Manatees.  They like to go there because of the warm water.  TECO has one side of the pier blocked from the other to keep the warm water in.  One side is 66 degrees and the other side is 82 degrees.  There were many Sting Rays jumping out of the water but they are too quick to get a picture.  Here are a couple of pictures of the Manatees.  We went with Joe and Marcia Jones who are also full time RVers.  They have been full time since 2007.  Joe and Marcia just bought a new Kountry Star motorhome and are moving all their "stuff" from a storage garage to their motorhome.  Believe me, that is not an easy task.

After we went to see the Manatees, sand crabs and Sting Rays, we went to Circles for linner, (lunch and dinner combo)  The meals were fantastic and we all had a great time.  After we ate we went to MacDill Air Force Base and visited the commissary and did a little shopping.  We got in because Joe and Marcia have a pass.  Marcia had a very persistant cough and chest congestion. She is going to visit a doctor today.

We didn't go with our original plans to leave Florida in November.  We were tied up with doctors because Donna had her left leg swelling and didn't know why.  She visited 16 different doctors, had 3 blood tests, an MRI, CT scan, X-ray, 5 doppler tests....  The end result?  She will live but the cure is unknown.

We are going to leave Florida in late March and head up through Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  Chris will be graduating from Medical school the end of May.  It's been a long dedicated haul for him and we are very proud of his accomplishments.  Now we get free medical advice.

After we leave West Virginia we will head toward Chicago with some stops along the way.  We will visit Kim, Ashlee and Hoot in Cincinnati, I want to go to Elkhart, Indiana and see the RV Hall of Fame.  After we leave Chicago we will head up to Wisconsin and work our way across the country to Seattle, WA.  After that we will work our way down the west coast.  We will visit David, Ashley, Avery and Olivia in Bakersville,CA.  After that, we will work our way across the country via the southern route back to Florida.

I put a couple of random pictures in this blog so I could get a little practice.  They are of Elvis's boyhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi.  By for now