High Point, NC

We left Stone Mountain a day early to travel to High Point in an attempt to miss the rain while traveling.  We were mostly successful and had a good overnight at Gaffney KOA (South Carolina) along the way.  We're here to visit Donna, Craig & the rest of the gang here in High Point.  

So far we've gotten in a trip to Camping World, overloaded on cheese at Southern Roots, visited the farmer's market, ate Hershey's Ice Cream (Chocolate Moose Tracks), and got in a walk on a new (to us) section of the Greenway trail to burn off the ice cream.  Also had dinner with Craig & Donna this evening.  Everyone seems to be fine.  I know the two Donnas are looking forward to their Saturday shopping this weekend!

Looks like we got a day of thunderstorms tomorrow, so we'll probably hang out and do laundry.  Weather guys are predicting freezing temps during the weekend, so we'll have to put up with that.  If all goes well, we'll start our trip down to Charleston, SC on Monday.  At least that's the plan.  See ya! David

Stone Mountain Park, GA

We're back at Stone Mountain State Park visiting Donna's brother Doug and her sister-in-law Louise.  Special treat this time is that Donna's niece Elizabeth is also here this week.  So it's almost a Stark family reunion.  They all seem to be doing fine, and we've enjoyed two family dinners so far.  All the dogs and the cat came down with Elizabeth, so we're getting in our animal fix.  Donna's even gotten in some yard work.  While she did enjoy that, let me assure you we don't miss it!

We had great weather moving over, but rain has set in again.  Looks like it'll be some rain each day until we leave.  Since we're not in as much mud over here, maybe the truck will stay a little cleaner - yeah, probably not.  But one can always hope!

The plan is to be here until Wednesday, then take two days to move north to High Point, NC to visit more friends before turning south to Charleston, SC.  Early weather reports are that we may get a couple of rain free days to move next week.  We'll see.

Until next week, David

Pelham, AL

We took advantage of the nice Sunday weather and moved north a few days early to avoid traveling in the rain.  We're here for a week to visit Dad & Anna.  They're doing well.  We're all eatin' pretty good, too.  Thankfully, we can drive over & back to Dad & Anna without driving by a Golden Rule BBQ.  Hard to pass that place up!

We're also in all the rain that seems to be hanging out here in the southeast this week.  It's suppose to break this weekend.  After all the activity that we got in while in Gulf Shores, it's been a little hard to get walks in this week.  Hopefully, that'll change this weekend.

We did get a walk in while at Anna's place.  We're normally escorted by the area dogs through various parts of our walk.  Most are nice and are glad to see us, but this time we were escorted by a new dog - one that looked a lot like a little Jack Russel Terrier.  We've seen it before, and we always look forward to seeing it.  It's always glad to see us and takes advantage of our presence to taunt its neighbors' dogs who are fenced in and come out to "greet" us as we walk by.  Normally it just hangs out in the area around the house it comes from and until this week, it's never followed us.

This time it decided to walk with us for most of our route.  It was a clean dog when we started, but after it got to play in the water in the ditches, run up & down muddy banks, taunt its neighbors' dogs, and get into arguments with other dogs, it looked fairly scuffed up & dirty.  I can only imagine what its owners thought when they saw it after it got back.  And I'll bet it went home thinking it'd had a great adventure: "I swam the fastest rivers, I climbed the steepest mountains, I invaded the 'evil' black lab-mixed's territory and prevailed..."  We had a great time just enjoying its company and look forward to seeing it, again.

Well, as for next week we plan to move Tuesday to Stone Mountain to visit Doug and Louise.  As always, that's the plan.  And just like this week, sometimes it changes.  Later, David

Last Week at Gulf State Park

Barring any major mechanical failures that keeps us from traveling, this is our "sunset" week for this season at Gulf State Park in Alabama.  We've had a great three months and kinda sad to leave, but it's time to harass family & friends and start visiting people, again.  We're on a slow trip to Charleston, SC via Birmingham & Atlanta.  Then on to Two Harbors, MN via Virginia and Indiana.  After that it's a month and a half in various spots in Michigan.  Then the slow trip back down to the gulf coast for another winter season.  That's sort of the plan, anyway.

In other news we got to spend a Saturday with Steven & Susan over in Florida.  Had a great time and ate too much.  Next time we'll have to spend a night and help out around the house.  Bill & Judy have come down to visit.  Bill & Judy set up the first Hitchhiker East Coast Rally that we attended & it was great to see them.  We've made several friends at that rally, so memories go way back - and we have Bill & Judy to thank for that.

For more excitement, after another late lunch/early dinner at DeSoto's with 10 other people today, we returned to a trailer full of acidic, burned wiring smell this evening.  To make a long story short, we've finally wore out our electrical fireplace.  We spent an hour checking all the exterior connection boxes & trying to find out what was causing the smell before our electrical fireplace finally fessed up & threw a circuit breaker.  We're still gonna open & check the exterior electrical boxes in the morning, but for now the smell is gone and everything else seems to be fine.  We think there's a short inside the fireplace that let it come on or more likely "short" while we were gone since we always leave it off while we're away from the trailer.  We've unplugged the fireplace and left that circuit breaker off for now.  Maybe our next electrical fireplace will be an LED version like Mike & Terry's where the bulbs never burn out!

So that's our excitement.  Hope your's is a little more "fun" than ours was this evening.  Until next week, David