Up and blogging again!

Happy post Thanksgiving! We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We missed you.  We have had a great couple of days. Wednesday, we rode our bikes around New Bern for most of the day. We don't get moving too early in the mornings. We usually end up leaving camp at 11am to start the day's activities. So, by most of the day, I mean from about noon to 4pm.

 
We saw a lot of historic homes, all of which were beautiful. We talked to some more nice people in town also. We ran into one guy that dives a lot. He dives down in SC and finds megalodon sharks teeth. They dive in about 30ft-60ft of water, with a clay bottom, and dig around in zero visibility to find them. He showed us some of the ones he found not too long ago. They are 1.5 million - 25 million years old. Very cool! It's funny, most of the people that we run into ask us what we are doing, what we did for work and how we are able to travel like we are. I usually tell them that we are just having fun while we can. (With a little love n luck also) I got grilled the other day from an old lady!  I was waiting on Laurie to finish shopping (nothing new) and the lady was sitting on a bench outside. She started asking all kinds of questions about our age, background info, where we were born, where I worked, etc...I left when she took out a needle and asked for a DNA sample. :) But, I'm going to come up with a great story to really knock them off their feet soon. Most people just give me this weird look like, "well, why aren't you out looking for another job?" I am, and I think I found one. Campground Host!  ha!  Rent plus utilities are paid for! Walmarts need campground hosts. Now that would be a good job for a retiree!  Zoom out in an electric wheelchair and greet the overnight campers.  Tell us where the clean restrooms and where the good restaurants are. Where to find the earlybird-special buffet. You know, all that good, interesting stuff.

We decided on Wednesday afternoon that we were going to cook for Thanksgiving. We stopped by the Food Lion and muscled our way through the people to find what we needed...Mac n Cheese, Potatoes, an already smoked turkey that was small enough for 2 and of course, the cranberry sauce (not sure why Laurie likes that one.) The checkout lines weren't bad at all.

After the grocery store, I took Holly for a bike ride (no, she didn't sit on the handlebars, she has her own bike :)) down by the river.  There are 2 nice trails here for biking. One, Laurie can ride on and one is too hilly and bumpy for her.

Thanksgiving was nice too. I went on a bike ride after breakfast and when I came back, Laurie was up and preparing lunch already! It's a challenge to cook in the motorhome kitchen because of the size, but I guess that talent has been passed down from generations, because Laurie did an excellent job. The weather was beautiful again (seems to be a theme) so we sat outside on the picnic table. 

Doin' the potato mash!

We bought Holly some turkey and pumpkin shaped cookie treats the other day at a pet store, so she was able to enjoy Thanksgiving also...

Stop bothering me! I'm trying to get a nap!

We played a few games of Triominos and Rummikube in the afternoon, then we took a bike ride to help digest the food a little, and then I laid down on the couch and took a little nap. It was a late nap at 7:30, but well needed. What Turkey Day would be complete without a nap anyways?!

Today, the weather started off sunny and 70 degrees. I took a bike ride with Holly again and by the time I got finished, the sky had clouded up and I could smell rain in the air. We took a drive over to Oriental, NC today. It's a small town with a few shops, restaurants and old houses right on the Neuse River. They call themselves the sailing capital of North Carolina...You know there are some strange people that live there!  No offense sailors. We ate at a marina and the food was great. I had a grilled flounder sandwich and Laurie had chicken fingers. We drove around a 30 mile loop across from New Bern, that includes Oriental, Pamlico, and some other tiny towns that I can't remember right now.


We drove into New Bern tonight to see the Christmas lights but a lot of people didn't have them up yet. Probably because it's only the day after Thanksgiving. Right now we are sitting out by the campfire. The rain (drizzle fo' shizzle) has stopped and it's starting to cool down. Holly keeps growling at the noises in the woods. By noises, I mean leaves falling, crickets chirping and dogs barking miles away. Wimp!  Tomorrow we're going to ride down to Beaufort (pronounced Bo-Furt) and Morehead City.  There are some Christmas parades and other festivities going on so we think it will be fun. Plus, Beaufort is supposed to be a nice town.
We hope you all have a good weekend!  Blog ya later! (C'mon, that was funny!)

Lunch is served!

View from the bluff this morning.

This pic doesn't do the tree justice. It is golden!

Camp Griswold

My Hero & Mentor.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is our dinner spread. Impressive, I think.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Still in New Bern

Hola! We are still in New Bern tonight. It was another great day full of...exploring, conquering and finding buried treasure on the beach. I'm sorry, I was daydreaming. I took Holly for a run this morning before Laurie got up. The weather was perfect again. A little breeze was making all of the leaves fall, and they covered the paved path that we were running on.  It was nice to see the leaves falling, but that means that cold weather is approaching. We went down to the river and checked out the glassy water. There are bluffs here at the park which make it easy for a panoramic view of the river. It was dead glass this morning!  Reminded me of the Hillsborough river and waking up for a morning wakeboard session.  We walked down to the water and Holly tried to pull me in, but I pulled back on her leash and was just able to keep her from taking a dip. I didn't want that soggy dog smell in the motorhome first thing in the morning. We drove into New Bern this morning along the two lane road that leads out of the park and it too was covered in leaves. I looked in my rear-view and saw the leaves flying up behind us and thought this would be a great place to film a music video. New Bern is a quaint town full of little shops, restaurants and coffee cafe's. We walked around all day.  We talked to some very nice people that have lived around this area for a while and they recommended a place called Morgan's for lunch.  We ate a 1/2 chicken (barbecued) and a side for $4.99 each.  Each restaurant had a lunch special that was a good deal.  Everyone we met was so nice. I would like to ride our bikes around town tomorrow to look at the historic houses along the water, as well as take a look at the marinas full of boats.

Back at the campground, we took a bike ride and let Holly run for a while.  There are a few off-road paths that I would like to explore on my bike tomorrow also.  It looks like we'll be driving the truck down to Beaufort tomorrow or Friday, and not taking the motorhome.  There are no campgrounds close to Beaufort that look good to stay at. The campground host told me of a Thanksgiving Day buffet down on the beach that he likes to go to. I'm not sure yet if we are cooking or going out to eat, but I guess we need to decide that tomorrow. There is some cold weather that will be arriving in the next couple of days, so I'll be dusting my coat and my heated boxers off soon.

I talked to a guy that does some recording that I could work with to be able to put a few tracks of music down, to be able to send out and try to get some gigs. He traveled with the Booth Bros., Sisters and Mark Lowry. He knew the Weatherfords also. I'm looking forward to getting together with him.

Here's a pic that Laurie took of me today. ha!  Naw, he's too skinny to be me and I don't wear Jesus sandals. Is that a Bm that he's playing? 

I'm headed out to get my shower.  Have a good night!  Maybe I can get Laurie to write on here tomorrow!  She's doing some Christmas shopping online right now, and I DON'T want to bother her while she's doing that. :)  Good night!  Here are some photos taken with my phone today.

Holly is obviously not interested in what Laurie is saying. She's got water on the brain.

Presb church in New Bern.

Birthplace of Pespi.

We are in New Bern, NC

Hello earthlings...ok that didn't fit, but I thought it would be funny. We are parked at a National Park along the Neuse River, about 10 min from downtown New Bern. I have radio margaritaville on the radio and I'm just getting around to updating tonight. I've been playing the guitar a little tonight.  It's the first time I've busted it out this whole trip, but I didn't get to play it long. My audience is not responsive. Holly's not listening because she is trying to sleep and Laurie gives me dirty looks because she is reading a book. I'm trying to come up with a setlist so I can find a little place to play, somewhere along this trip. By little, I mean somewhere I can play for a plate of food just to say I got a gig! Ok, enough with the stalling of what we did today.  We didn't do too much, so that's why I'm trying to use "fill" stories to take up this white space that I am typing in.

We left Carolina Beach at noon today.  It takes us about an hour to pack up our campsite and hopefully by the end of the trip, I'll be able to cut that down to 30 min.  It all depends on how much sewer and grey water there is dump. That process takes the longest because I want to make sure to stay as clean as possible and spill very little...c'mon, everyone spills a little as they are emptying their tanks. I bet I could get a job with a sewer tank pumping company after this trip too!  That's something to look forward to when I get back.  We drove around Wilmington with no stops because we saw it last year around this time.  We took 17 out to Surf City and Topsail Beach. Both towns are very small but we enjoyed the cruise down the coast as well as a nice place that we stopped to eat lunch in the motorhome.  Holly picked up some sandspurs that we had to pluck out of her paws and fur.  Here's a little history on Topsail....

Topsail Island, NC, folklore claims the name, Topsail (pronounced Top'sul), dates back the the 1700s when the area was home to Blackbeard and his marauding gang. Pirates often hid their ships behind this thin ribbon of island to ambush passing merchant ships loaded with goods. Eventually merchants caught on and began watching for the tops of the pirates' sails peeking over the the live oak trees—hence the name, Topsail Island

I like this coastline because of the history that it holds.  From Pirate tales to Civil War battles, you can get lost in the stories.

Waves were nowhere to be found again, so we kept moving, after a quick walk on the beach. Laurie heard New Bern, NC was a nice place to visit, so we decided to make a stop there.  We drove by Camp Lejeune and saw some soldiers doing  exercises in a huge field.  Laurie said, "oh that looks fun!" and I said, "yeah, it looks fun from outside of that fence." She wanted to do the ropes course. :)

The campground that we are staying at is empty.  There are 4 campers here.  We found a huge space next to the showers to setup.  We will probably end up staying here for a couple of days because we drove into town tonight and it looked like a cool place to explore.  We talked to the campground host Ray, and he was telling us that Hatteras Boats is right up the road as well as Jarrett Bay Boats.  They both build very nice, "Dream" boats and I would love to go tour the factories.  The host also told us of a good place for dinner, Tommy's Budget Gourmet Cafe.  I like the name of it!  Hopefully it tastes gourmet! Did you see the moon rise tonight?  It was an awesome, orange ball rising into the dark sky.  I didn't get any pictures today because I was driving.  But, look out for more pics tomorrow.  Those of you who like pictures and not words, sorry!  You probably scrolled down and didn't see any pictures, so you closed the screen anyways. I think I did a good job at filling this white space with not much of any substance.  hahah!  You should listen to radio margaritaville at night. They play some great tunes!  I'm tired. We're off to bed. Good night!  Hasta Manana.




  

Nice, relaxing day at the beach

Today was a very relaxing day. After tying the surfboard (Jason's longboard) in the back of the truck, and loading the lunch in the cooler, we headed down the road to Ft. Fisher to see what there is to do there. We drove past Carolina Beach (the town) and Kure Beach where some shops and putt putt places were closed up for the season. There are a lot of oceanfront homes for sale.  So, if anyone is interested, you can get a nice 4 bed 3.5 bath for a measly $1.5mm.  Let me know, and I can get the realtor's name for you. :)  We drove past the Civil War Museum because it was closed today. There are some nice bike paths to ride next to the road.  We didn't get a chance to do that today, but we made a mental note for the next time we are through here.  We stopped at the visitor center to Ft. Fisher in order to get a day permit for beach driving.  The sand is very loose, so we used 4 wheel drive the whole time we were on the beach. We did see one guy get stuck, but he was eventually able to get out, after letting some air out of his tires.

We parked half way down the beach, where we were mainly by ourselves, so we could let Holly off the leash to go swimming. She was so excited to get back in the water again.  I felt the same joy too!  I threw the ball in for Holly and walked in the water and I almost froze my toes off.  I was expecting a little warmer water, but I guess it is November and we are in NC.  The water was 61 degrees today. There were very small waves, but I decided to put my wetsuit on after getting Laurie setup with a campchair and a book.

I tried to teach Holly how to surf but she was very apprehensive about the board and waves. She listened well though. I started out in very shallow water, then moved out a little deeper after she stayed on the board for a little bit.  She was scared, so she wanted to jump off every time a wave came over the board, but she managed to stay on for a ride...for about 3 seconds.  

Pete's K-9 surf school didn't last too long until Holly got bored (or fed up with me picking her and putting her on the board) and ran off to find her ball. I stayed out a little longer and was able to catch a few tiny waves by laying on the board. I know some of you (most of you) will think "poor dog, I can't believe they put you through that." But, she wanted to be a mermaid...or a furmaid....

There were a few dolphins that would surface every now and then, and a shrimp boat was the pied piper for the seagulls looking to find their afternoon snack. I've never seen seagulls that are the size of turkeys! 

We hung out on the beach until around 3 today.  Then, we went back to the campground and made a fire.  I planned our route for tomorrow (I guess you would call it planning. I just pointed north on the map and said we are heading that way.). We ate leftovers tonight for dinner and made more s'mores. You have to take advantage of being able to make a fire so you can make s'mores.  Who knows, at our next stop, we may not be able to build a fire, and then there would be no s'mores. Ahhhhhh!!!  

Our TV doesn't want to turn on now.  It's a Polaroid 27'' flatscreen, and all that comes on is the little blue light that tells us when the TV is supposed to be on. Maybe we'll find one at a Black Friday sale or look on Craigslist at our next stop. So, it's a quiet night in the motorhome because Laurie is reading her book, the dog is out like a light and I am typing, listening to Buffett. 

We are heading North past Wilmington and Topsail Beach tomorrow.  Maybe we'll make it to Emerald Isle, near Morehead City and Beaufort. The plan is to make it to Cape Hatteras in the next few days, before they shut things down for the winter time.  Who knows, maybe there is a joint that is open for Thanksgiving.  Just in case there's nothing open, we bought some chicken breasts last night at the grocery store. :)  

Here are some pics from today. If anyone wants to visit, let me know.  We're going to be somewhere on the coast for the next 3 weeks.  Come on up!  I can't promise that there won't be any mishaps though. :)  Good night!  

Show me angry!

Ahhh life is good. Got the ball, board and shell all within reach...almost.

Finished Product

We hope you enjoy!

Mermaid Holly

She enjoyed laying in the sand!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Da beach

We made it to the beach today. It is 70and sunny. Holly and I went surfing while Laurie is bundled up by the truck.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Made it to Carolina Beach

We took a bike ride around Southport before we left today. I didn't want to leave so soon, but we'll definitely be back to visit and hopefully stay a little longer. Then, we loaded the RV and truck on the ferry over to Ft. Fisher and it took 30 min. to get over there. We are staying at a campground in Carolina Beach and tomorrow we'll go exploring down the coast. It is supposed to be 70 tomorrow and I did see some surfers out today. I hope I'll be hanging 5 by noon tomorrow.  I say 5 because most of the time I spend surfing, I'm falling off the board with one foot on and one off. :) There is a lot of civil war history around here so I'm sure we'll be seeing Ft. Fisher as well as some other landmarks. The sunset was bright orange tonight as we looked out over the intracoastal. We made some s'mores tonight after dinner and the pic of the fire has the chocolate sitting by it warming up, getting ready to be delicately placed on the graham cracker. Here are some pics from today.  I'll write tomorrow.  Good night!

Campground bathroom mirror

Wow! You can imagine what kind of campground we r staying at tonight.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Car pic

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Car show

Here are a couple pics of a small car show.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Videos from today

Here are a couple of videos from my phone today.  I'm just getting started with this blog stuff, so bear with me. :)

Today was a good day.

We had a great day today. We walked around the town in the morning. The weather was beautiful again.  It was a high of 60, sunny and a little breezy. I took Holly out for a bike ride and  let her swim at a beach on the ICW. We'll see if I can figure out how to post the video I took on my phone. I also went for a run after I took Holly back to the motorhome.  There was a wine tasting tonight in town, so I enjoyed some good Chardonnay and talked to some of the residents here.We are planning on going over to Ft. Fisher tomorrow and heading up towards Wilmington (slowly).  You can drive on the beach at Carolina Beach, so I am looking forward to that. Hopefully I'll be able to find some waves to surf on out there. I hope everyone is doing well.  And thanks to Alex and Momma J for being followers of our blog!  haha!

Granny Pics

Here are some pics of Mr. Humes, Granny, Laurie and I.

Great first impression on two residents of Southport...

Well...yet again, another story to tell...this time it was as soon as we got moving from the Walmart this morning. We stayed at the Walmart because we got in too late to pull into the campground that we are going to be staying at while we are here. The campground is almost right across the street from the Walmart.  I pulled out onto the main road with Laurie following me in the truck. I got in the middle turn lane to turn into the campground and I misjudged the entrance because there were two entrances and I didn't know which one would take me to the office. (Turns out both of them would.) I started the turn but I had to back up to make the turn and a person thought that the rear end of the motorhome was going to stick out into her lane (I made sure that the rear was not going to go into her lane as I was backing up!) so she hit the breaks and a crown vic behind her slammed into the back of her car. Oh no! I heard the sound of a crash and I though that someone ran into Laurie and the bikes on the rack behind her. I was relieved to see that it was someone else that got rear-ended, but I also felt bad for the people in the accident. I parked the motorhome and got out and saw that the people were turning into the parking lot across the street from us. I walked over to Laurie to see if she saw what happened and I turned back to the people that were in the accident, and they were leaving.  I guess there was no damage to the vehicles, so they took off.  We had made another grand entrance and made a great first impression on two people of Southport.


After we parked the motorhome, we made a trip to Lowes, Walmart and the auto parts store for some standard road trip items.We walked around a little bit of Southport today.  It was gorgeous outside so Holly and I were enjoying hanging out while Laurie walked into the shops. She wanted me to take this picture of her while she was chillin out with her hat backwards. Crazy dog! 

We had a great dinner at the Live Oak Cafe and are going to continue walking around and riding bikes tomorrow. We found out that we can load the truck on the ferry and take it over to Ft. Fisher (Straight shot over to a place south of Wilmington, without going through Wilmington) for $5.  We will probably end up doing that on Saturday. We had a wild start to the day, but it ended up very nicely.  Enjoy the pics!

Made it to Southport, NC

We left Granny's today and made it to Southport, NC at about 8:00 tonight. The motorhome ran great with no hiccups today. I don't have any pics uploaded yet, but I'll get them posted tomorrow.  We are staying in another Walmart parking lot until the morning where we will pull into a campground for a couple of days and see what there is to do around here. Good night.

Tuesday Nov 16th. Had a nice visit with Granny and Mr. Humes.

Nov 16^th.

Hello everyone! It’s Tuesday night and we just got finished playing games with Granny. We had a pretty exciting day yesterday…

We left the Anderson, SC Walmart parking lot and headed towards Clemson.  We drove through downtown Anderson. It’s a little bigger than Plant City and has many older buildings, but there is not much to see or do there.  The town is pretty, but most of the store fronts were empty.  We made it to Clemson and drove around the school campus because we heard it was pretty.  They have a nice little main street to drive down with some taverns, bookstores and restaurants.  Not much shopping, so Laurie was dissapointed.  We finished driving around and stopped in an Ace parking lot to make a sandwich and Mo’s mom called Laurie back and said that she was 5 minutes away. She came over and got a grand tour of our abode and then we hopped in her car to go to lunch.  After a visit at the Healy’s house, we ate at the Esso Club. Apparently it’s a historic bar and grill to eat at.  The food was very good as well as the company!  Mrs. Healy drove us on a guided tour around the town and campus. We even got a tour of the Clemson Univ. cemetary.  (Note to self…next time in Clemson, give Mo’s mom a lesson in backing up.)  We almost drove off of a hill and ran over a grave in the cemetary when we had to back up! We had a great visit though.  I would like to go back for a football game sometime.  We hit the road for Granny’s place at 4pm.

The trip to Granny’s and Mr. Humes’ house was uneventful until the last 30 miles. Just after dark, I noticed that there was someone trying to get my attention as they were passing us (as most people seem to do because we drive slow.  Sometimes they wave their hand with one finger in the air).  I pulled over and saw that about 5 feet of sewer hose was dragging behind us. Whoops! Fortunately there was no liquid (or solids) flowing out of it.  The cap that is supposed to hold it in fell off. I fixed it with a tie wrap (no, not duck tape) and we were good to go again.  Christmas tunes were playing on Sirius and Laurie and I were cruising down the road, just singing along. We were 2 miles from Granny’s and pulled up to a stop sign and the engine died. That was the end of us jammin’ to the Christmas songs. I tried to get it started again, and it wouldn’t crank up. Good thing there were not a lot of cars around that area.  Good thing we were pulling the truck too, because that truck ended up pushing us to Granny’s.  It was a long 2 miles to Granny’s because we had to travel so slow with Laurie driving the truck (she was basically driving blind because she couldn’t see anything except the back of the motorhome.).  The Ford did great pushing the big beast!  Mr. Humes and Granny were standing out by the road, because it was very dark when we arrived.  We started the turn into their driveway and just as I was straightening up the steering wheel, we came to a sudden, scraping halt. Hmmm…what was that?  I jumped out to look and the hitch, on the rear of the motorhome, was dragging the road and had gotten us stuck. Now we were stuck out in the middle of the road, on a curve, in the dark.  Someone was watching over us because there was only one car that passed us while we were working on trying to get the motorhome into the driveway.  There are usually more cars that pass their house, and they pass very fast.  I unhooked the truck after jacking the rear end of the motorhome up with the rv jacks and my handy floorjack that I brought from home.  The truck was stuck on the hitch so I had to pry it off with a hammer.  (Disclaimer. No damage was done to either vehicle during the process.)  I drove the truck around to the front of the motorhome and put it in 4 low.  I hooked a chain to the front of the motorhome and had Laurie drive the truck while I steered the motorhome.  I put the leveling jack s up on the motorhome but left my floorjack on the road, still under the rear of the motorhome, holding the hitch off of the road. Laurie started pulling with the truck and pulled us right up the driveway.  The old Ford (222,000 miles on it) did great!  We got everything off of the road and put the parking break on.  We called it a night after visiting with Mr. Humes and Granny for a while that night.  We were all exhausted after the wild night we had.  Mr. Humes was glad we made our grand entrance because they don’t see too much excitement around where they live.  J   We thanked God that we were so close when we broke down.  And, that we were on a backroad with no traffic.

Today, we woke up to more rain, had biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and Mr. Humes and I started working on the motorhome while Granny and Laurie played games inside.  It rained all day and it is still raining at 11:00 tonight.  We finally got the engine running at 5:00 tonight, after a few phone calls to Joe and Paul. It was either: the ignition module, the rotor, the cap or the coil because we decided to change all of them.  That way we wouldn’t have to go back to the autoparts store after the 2^nd visit today. J  We drove through downtown Union, SC and saw a cool looking courthouse that was built long ago.  They have some shops in town, so I guess we’ll be driving through there tomorrow so Laurie can do some looking around. (Notice I said looking).  We had a great dinner (steak and potatoes) and played some games tonight.  It ended up being a good day to work on something inside because of the rain.  It’s 50 degrees outide, so it’s not cold.  We had a great time with Granny and Mr. Humes and we are very appreciative for their hospitality.  We are looking forward to possibly making it to the coast tomorrow…we’ll see…ha!