Bound2Win Travels

Changes

2009-10-06T14:28:00.003-05:00

This year our travels seemed to consist of one big change of plans after another. Whether it was because of family, the weather, or just our "crankiness", we just didn't complete our planned route this year.

We did enjoy going through Utah and got as far as the northern edge of the Grand Teton National Park but then turned and headed south much earlier than usual.

We are back at our "home base" in Comstock, Texas, now and will stay in this area through the winter.

The good news is that being retired makes changing your plans pretty easy. So even though we didn't complete our "travel loop" and Roy still hasn't gotten to Branson to listen to the music, we still had a great year.

All the changes made me even worse than usual about updating the blog (June to October is a pretty big gap!) and web site. However, I do still have several photos that we took so I do need to upload some of those.

Cooler!

2009-06-16T17:46:00.003-05:00

Our week in San Angelo was a hot one. The temperatures set record highs for at least two days. But we had a family reunion and enjoyed seeing everyone.

We are on our way to Las Vegas and know it will be hot there, also. As a respite in between the two hot spots, we are now at Lyman Lake State Park in eastern Arizona where the high temperature was 88. That is much better! I think the low tonight is supposed to be about 50. That will feel good after 105 for highs last week.

We plan to leave tomorrow and stop for a few days in Williams, AZ. We have always wanted to stop there, but it never fit into our schedule before. I'm sure we will drive up to the Grand Canyon, but I also want to drive south and see the area around Prescott and Sedona.

'09 Adventure Begins

2009-06-09T07:34:00.005-05:00

It didn't take very long for our first event in our 2009 adventure. We had only gone about 30 miles along TX 163. We were traveling along the Devil's River just north of Baker's Crossing and were looking at a wild turkey in the left bar ditch when I noticed a movement to the right. Another turkey had flown up from the right side of the road. Since we are 12 feet tall, he didn't get enough altitude fast enough and hit the RV on the upper right corner of the front (but thankfully missed the windshield). We think (hope) it was just a glancing blow since I didn't see any feathers fly and watched the rear view mirror and didn't see anything hit the ground. But it is hard to turn a truck around on this road, much less a 35 foot motor home towing a car, so we couldn't go back to look. We just hope that is our only "hit" of the trip and that the turkey survived.

Angelo Tire and Alignment special ordered us two new RV tires. This is the first time we have used this company and were hoping they would do a good job. The tires were in yesterday just as they had promised and they did a great job of mounting them. We are now all replaced, balanced, rotated and ready to roll. We will be here a few more days before we head on up the road.

Ready!

2009-06-07T15:28:00.003-05:00

We have everything cleaned, polished, shampooed, oiled, greased, emptied and ready to go. Today was "pack up" day at our spot in Comstock. We put things away and tried to get the place ready to be deserted until the fall.

While the spring was really mild down here, the temperature has risen the last couple of days so we are ready to eventually get further north where maybe it will be cooler. It will likely be July before get actually get to the mountains of Idaho but it will feel wonderful when we do get there.

We have an appointment to have two new tires put on the motorhome tomorrow. We don't want to take any chances, especially in the hot Nevada desert. Hopefully, we will be in good shape for the miles to come.

Last One

2009-06-05T10:22:00.002-05:00

This will be our last weekend at Comstock. We are headed out on Monday. We made one last trip into Del Rio to see a show. It is pretty amazing that the two of us can see a show for $6.50 ($5.50 on Bargain Wednesdays). That is for BOTH of us - not each!

We will have to think hard to remember what to put up, lock up, and turn off. We have been in one spot for about three months and that is the longest we have stayed in one place without moving the motor home in five years. We weren't even sure that we could remember how to move it, but we took it to Del Rio for service last week and it drove just fine.

Roy is getting "itchy wheels" so he is ready to hit the road.

Almost Time to Travel

2009-05-29T15:33:00.006-05:00

It is almost time to leave on our 2009 journey. This year we will be going West again and are really looking forward to the trip. Last year the Northeast was interesting and all of the historical sites were great, but we just love the West!

I know I didn't do too well on updating this blog last year (and this year will probably be no exception), but I am going to try to at least keep it active so they don't close my account. I will also still put travel entries and pictures on my web site from time to time. Maybe, on this trip, we will have more open views of the southern sky so we can stay online better!!

Spring Cleaning

2009-05-28T09:43:00.002-05:00

It has taken a while but we are finally finished with our "Spring Cleaning" and almost set to begin our 2009 travels.

We have really enjoyed the spring at the Comstock RV Resort. We made some improvements to both the lot and the "club house" this year. We cleaned another spot on the lot and have it ready to make a new "sitting area" that will be in the shade in the afternoon. The weather did get too warm before we got our gravel hauled to fill the spot but that will leave us a project for next spring when we return.

We had to replace our washing machine. Four years in the weather seems to have done it in. This year Roy fixed a spot in the barn for the new washer and hopefully, that will keep it protected a bit more. We added a big screen TV to the "rec room" and an air conditioner in the kitchen of the club house and are happy with the improvements there.

The motor home is washed and polished both inside and out. Wood is oiled and carpet is shampooed -- it looks like new!

The weather has been surprisingly nice with only one or two days over 100 and the others in the low 90's or upper 80's. We have about another week of odds and ends to do and then will head out from here.

Boston

2008-08-27T09:13:00.000-05:00

Too many trees for a signal at our coach.
We are just south of Boston.
We took a boat into town,
rode a trolley to see the sights,
had lunch at Cheers.
Great fun!
Will leave for Maine next week.

Sent from my iPhone

Florida to Scotland

2008-08-16T20:18:00.000-05:00

It certainly sounds like we made a wrong turn somewhere. But, actually, Scotland is the name of the small town in Connecticut that we are near. The trip from New York was only about 170 miles and we made it in about four hours. That is pretty good time for this part of the country.

We are at Salt Rock State Campground just southeast of Hartford. It is a beautiful park with lots of campsites, a huge recreation field in the center, and two swimming pools. We plan to explore this part of the state for about a week.

Florida, New York

2008-08-14T21:22:00.003-05:00

We have been in New York for almost two weeks now. We had some hardware/software problems with our satellite and have spent most of these two weeks trying to work out those problems. Things seem to be fixed now so we are back online - at least until we move back to the trees.

We did have time to do a tour of New York City and drive along the Hudson River. The weather has been beautiful even though there have been several days of heavy rain.

Now that we have a connection, I have updated the web site with logs and photos.

Pennsylvania

2008-07-29T23:27:00.005-05:00

We have been in Pennsylvania for about three weeks and have really enjoyed our stay. As you can see from the satellite photo, we have been in the middle of farming country. We have been busy going to the shops, farmer's markets, and bakeries in the area. In fact, we didn't always have to go to the farmer's markets because the area farms send a wagon to the campground on certain days with fresh vegetables, baked goods, jams, and pickles.

In addition to all the shopping and eating, we have taken a tour to Philadelphia and driven to Hershey and Atlantic City, New Jersey. The weather has been really nice with rain a few times and temperatures mostly in the 80's during the day.

I finally caught up with my pictures and have updated the web site.

We plan to leave at the end of the week and drive to New York.

New Photos

2008-07-08T15:13:00.001-05:00

Finally found a wifi with a good connection.
New pictures on the web site.
Also fixed a glitch in the Shenandoah album.
Travel logs should also be updated.

July 4 Fireworks

2008-07-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

This is the crowd on the National Mall.
This was about three hours before the fireworks started.
The crowd almost doubled from this.
The fireworks were awesome.
Local wifi is down so I will update web site when I can.

No Connection

2008-06-24T16:41:00.003-05:00

We have been in tall trees for several days and have also had no cell signal. So much for my plans to have good connections in the east. I have updated the travel logs of our activities on the web site and have also uploaded a couple of new photo albums.We have a signal right now but no electricity. Maybe we'll connect better from our next stop.

Fancy Gap

2008-06-17T19:42:00.003-05:00

We have moved from Knoxville, TN, to Fancy Gap, VA. The drive was mostly on interstate highways, which is not Roy's favorite way to drive but we made the trip fine. We are staying for a couple of nights at the Fancy Gap KOA. This is a very nice KOA and we have really enjoyed it here.

We drove in our jeep for a few miles into North Carolina along the Blue Ridge Parkway just to get a feel for the road and the views. It was a beautiful, peaceful drive and I took the photo above along one of the many split rail fences that we saw along the way. Our plan is to drive north along the parkway and stay at one or two of the NPS campgrounds along the way.

Knoxville

2008-06-14T19:34:00.005-05:00

I have posted a new photo album on the web site of some pictures from around Knoxville. These are ones that didn't really fit into any other category. Some are of wildflowers and some are of the town.

Catching Up

2008-06-12T18:10:00.004-05:00

Photo Albums posted to web site. I've still got a few more pictures of the area to catch up on before we leave for Virginia next week.

On Top of Ol' Smoky

2008-06-07T14:22:00.000-05:00

Almost at the top!

While we've sung this song since we were kids, I had never thought of it as actually being a "PLACE." We drove across the smoky mountains last week and actually saw the "top." We also continued into Cherokee, North Carolina, where we did a couple of hikes to some more waterfalls and were impressed with both the town and the facilities at the sites that were on the Cherokee reservation. The North Carolina side of the park also seems to have much better roads. We saw the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway which we plan to use to drive thru Virginia. However, the southern end has some pretty low clearances on some bridges and we are going to go up I-81 for a ways to avoid them and a portion that is closed around Asheville, NC, because of a rock slide. Thank goodness for the internet so we can check this out before we actually drive there.

Pigeon Forge

2008-06-01T21:10:00.003-05:00

Food, Shopping, and Fun

We drove down to the Pigeon Forge area a couple of times last week. In addition to lots of music shows and kids gaming areas, there are tons of shops and food, food, food. The Christmas Place was one of the largest and most amazing stores of its kind that we have seen anywhere, and they probably have more pancake houses per mile than any place else. We also went to see a country music variety show and it was lots of fun.

After another hike to a waterfall, we decided to rest a couple of days. We have only seen a tiny part of the national park so far, but it is beautiful. I did put some pictures of our trip to Cades Cove and hike to Abrams Falls on the web site.

Smoky Mountains

2008-05-27T09:13:00.003-05:00

Abrams Falls

On Memorial Day we drove to the Cades Cove area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although we passed lots of people leaving the park, there were still pretty good crowds in the park. We stopped on the loop around Cades Cove and hiked to Abrams Falls. It was about a 5 mile round trip hike and we were surprised at how many people made the hike and were enjoying swimming in the pool at the base of the falls. I'll put more pictures on our web site as soon as I recover from the hike.

Trace Photos

2008-05-26T07:56:00.006-05:00

I put some of our pictures from the trip up the Natchez Trace Parkway on the web site. There are lots of "down the road" pictures to help remind Roy of what it looked like driving down the highway.
We plan to drive down to the western part of the Smoky Mountains National Park today. Hopefully most of the Memorial Day "vacationers" will be on their way home and it won't be too crowded.

An Unplanned Stop

2008-05-24T22:29:00.002-05:00

Our slow and leisurely trip up the Natchez Trace Parkway was a stark contrast to our trip across Tennessee. First, we went from 50 MPH and NO traffic to Interstate 65 - what a change! Then just as we thought we had adjusted to our faster pace, the engine belt on our motor home broke. We were able to find a place to pull over and called our emergency road service. They sent a tow truck and found a place in Nashville that could do our repairs. Luckily, the whole "experience" only took about 8 hours.

After we were repaired, Roy didn't want to stop driving until we got to Knoxville. Of course, this made us arriving very late - as in after dark and one of our main rules when we are traveling is "Park Before Dark." Along I-40 between Nashville and Knoxville, we saw an accident, a house on fire, and construction that had traffic backed up for at least 10 miles. We were longing for the Natchez Trace again at this point.

Eventually, we arrived in Knoxville, TN, which is in the Eastern Time Zone and made us an hour even later to arrive, and found our park and even found a space to park in the dark of night. We plan to stay for a few weeks around here and explore the eastern part of Tennesse and southern part of Kentucky.

Trace Day 2

2008-05-21T15:41:00.001-05:00

We stopped at a campground about 80 miles south of Nashville. It is about 76 degrees. We drove another 200 miles with no stop signs or lights although we did have two short detours. The only thing that could make this drive better would to make our motor home a convertible so we could open up the top.

Natchez Trace

2008-05-20T19:15:00.004-05:00

We had read about this drive but had no idea how beautiful it is. We drove almost 200 miles on it today and never saw a stop sign or stop light! It is also closed to commercial traffic so Roy thought he was in heaven with no trucks passing him all the time. It was almost like driving down the fairway of a golf course. Not only were the edges of the road mowed but we saw park workers edging around the trees! The grass is so high in places that they bale it into big round bales. It is only a two lane road with a 50 MPH speed limit but we saw very little traffic today and it was almost perfect driving. The only place the road was busy was around Jackson, MS, where we think the local people probably use it for a loop around town.
We stopped for the night at Jeff Busby campground which is a free campground along the Trace. This has been a wonderful day but I took too many pictures. It will take a few days to process all of them and get them ready to post in an album. But I finished my Texas/Louisiana pictures and posted them tonight from a free hot spot at the little store at the bottom of Little Mountain - which at 603 feet is one of the highest spots on the trace.

River View

2008-05-18T20:23:00.004-05:00

We have stopped at a park in Vidalia, LA, called River View RV Park. Most parks with a name like river view are miles from a river, but this one is right on the banks of the Mississippi. In fact, we can see the river and the barge traffic moving up and down the river right through our front windows. The river is very full and running hard.
I put a picture album on the web site today with some pictures of the beginning of our trip while getting started in Texas. I'm going to have to practice a little with outdoor camera settings to get things right, but this is a start at least.

East Bound

2008-05-16T14:08:00.002-05:00

We left San Angelo about 10:00 AM on our way east. We are going to hit US 84 at Goldthwaite and take it all the way to Natchez, MS. At least that is the current plan. This area of Texas got some pretty good rains this week, but in Eden we saw evidence of what was probably some pretty large hail. Lots of the trees were stripped of most of their leaves. And the streets of Brady were filled with broken limbs. We are really hoping to avoid storms but they have been happening on a regular basis lately on our planned route.

We are trying to travel slower on this trip to try to improve our MPG since the price of gas has now more than doubled since we started traveling in our motor home. With the cruise control set on SLOW, it will take us longer to get places but that is not really a problem since we are in NO hurry.

West Texas Sunset

2008-05-13T11:12:00.001-05:00

One last West Texas Sunset - like no where else!

We had a beautiful sunset on our last night at Comstock. We have seen some beautiful sunsets and sunrises across the country, but no where do they occur with such regularity or vivid color as in good old West Texas. We are in San Angelo for a few days right now, and after visiting with family and friends, will start our journey to the east.

Air Show Pics

2008-05-11T21:45:00.002-05:00

I have put our first photo album on the web. It has some pictures of the planes at the air show from yesterday. You can see it by using the photo link at the bottom of the page.

We plan to leave tomorrow morning! Hopefully we will have sunny skies and winds from the south to help "push" us on our way.

Del Rio Air Show

2008-05-10T11:46:00.004-05:00

We went to the "Thunder Over the Amistad" air show at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas, today. They had some awesome planes on display including some CAF planes and a C-17. We are waiting to see a B-2 flyover right now.

This seemed like a good chance to try out posting to the blog from my iPhone. We'll see how it works.

Links to Web Site

2008-05-09T13:50:00.003-05:00

There is a list of links at the bottom of this blog that will take you to our complete travels web site.

The complete web site has a link to show you where we are currently parked via the Datastorm Users page. It also has all (or almost all) of these blog posts plus the travel log entries that I make when connected through our satellite.

It also contains the photo albums of the pictures we take as we travel.

Something New

2008-05-09T10:41:00.005-05:00

I have decided to try something new as we travel this year. In addition to my website where I post logs, pictures, and our location, I am going to try posting to a blog - at least sometimes.

I really like the way I put information on the website because I can archive that and have the logs of our travels as well as the pictures for the future. However, this blog will allow me to do a few things that I can't otherwise - at least not easily. For one thing, this blog will allow me to email posts. Many times while we are traveling, I think of things I would like to post in the log but by the time we stop I have forgotten all about it - a sign of my age I'm sure. With my iPhone, I will be able to send an email to the blog as we go down the road. Then I plan to copy the blogs over to my full website from time to time so I will have a complete log of our trips. So if you are reading this AND my website and think you are seeing double - you probably are - at least if I keep up with my plan.

This blog will also allow readers to comment on our travels and subscribe to an RSS feed for the information. Click the link at the bottom of this page to subscribe. When you bookmark this link, it should update each time there is a new post to the blog. This way I can post a blog entry that tells when I have put a new picture album on the website and you will be notified automatically. Hopefully, this will also allow me to post information when I have a problem between my Hughes satellite and my .Mac website. Sometimes the two don't communicate quite right and it takes me a while to post either logs or pictures.

I think I can also email pictures to the blog from my phone - although I haven't tested that yet. I'm going to experiment some for the next few days. Right now our plan is to leave for the year's travels on Monday, May 12th.