Florida Family Vacation - March/April 2014

Florida Family Vacation – March/April 2014

Winter 2014 – the one that Hell Froze over

We were no sooner back from our pre Christmas November/December thaw out vacation in South Africa than we returned home to the nastiness of the awful ice storm that broke all kinds of records in Ontario. I remember it clearly because I put our front doormat off to one side in a scrunched up heap while I cleared the front step. Well wouldn’t you know it but it got iced into position. It was when we got to the end of Feb and it was still a frozen scrunch that we knew we had to get out of the Winter from Hell.

Our plans for our March break/Spring break vacation to Florida were born out of desperation arising from way too many minus 20 degree nights and worse. A man can only take so much. It was time to hit the road and head south. Mmm - I could virtually smell the salt air and feel the sand between my toes. I was practically twitching with anticipation.

In my enthusiasm - I was clearly feeling a bit light headed - I suggested to Cher that we see if any of the kids/grandkids would like to join us on our road trip. Low and behold, Julia, John (2 yrs) and James (5 mths) offered to keep us company so we wouldn’t be lonely. Yiaaa!! It was going to be a family road trip. Thanks to Chris who sacrificed his wife for a month – sorry you couldn’t join us Chris.

Prepping for the Big Push South

Cher and I are still novices at this RV business. We are the only ones in the RV storage centre that had a beautiful cover protecting our RV from all those harmful UV rays, and preventing snow and ice from infiltrating where not wanted. We decided to get the RV out of winter storage a few weeks early so we could do a few odd jobs and get some servicing done while we drooled and dribbled in anticipation. As it happens, beautiful as our RV cover may be, it turns out we had not given any thought to the imprisoning impact of an ice storm on an RV held in place by a cover encased in ice. My first line of attack was to clear the three feet of accumulated snow around the RV. I decided shovelling was not half so easy as moving it with my snow blower. I’ll spare the details, but suffice to say that my beautiful RV cover was no match for the heat emanating out of the exhaust of the snowblower. Before I noticed it, I had managed to melt a six foot gash in our RV cover. I decided there’s nothing wrong with good old fashioned manual labor while I worked on how I was going to explain to Cher why she needed to start reviving her good old fashioned sewing skills.

Without overworking this story, it took a few shots of hacking at the ice with picks and shovels before we could free up the bottom of the cover which was successfully imprisoning our RV.  So we were free to remove the cover? Nope. I discovered the roof of the RV had about six inches of ice holding down the cover. Fortunately it was movable but only with a lot more of that good old fashioned manual labor and only one or two more relatively minor tears in the roof cover. I’m glad I have a wife who can sew. Finally we were free. Who would have thought heading south was going to be such hard work? It was as if the gods of winter were conspiring to keep us in their evil grip as long as possible. Fortunately we have the God of Spring on our side and at last we were loading the RV with an impossibly long lists of essentials and last minute shopping before we were ready to hit the road.

Hitting the Road

The big unknown was how John and James were going to cope with the six and seven hours of driving that I was planning each day. Rather reluctantly, on the advice of the ladies I agreed to tone my daily dose of driving down to five or six hours a day. I was looking forward to driving my Beautiful Baby south and the more hours a day I did it, the sooner we could begin thawing out. Oh how our lives are filled with disappointment and disillusion. As it turns out we have settled into a comfortable pace of managing about four to five hours of driving (300 miles) spaced out over the course of a whole day. Who said holidays are all about push, push, push?

Our first night was in Sarnia, to have a sleep over with with Leige and Cynthia (Cheryl’s sister in law) Mercier. They greeted our onslaught with grace and good humour although I am sure next time we suggest this idea they will “have something else on”. Cynthia runs a child care in her basement so had a whopping amount of Lego which we let ( two year old) John loose on – he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

Routine, Speed, and Vacation Time

We have discovered that a team of three adults working in finely tuned harmony can move two infants, from sleep to morning tea, diaper changes, feeding/eating, diaper changes again and so on and so on, in no less than two hours. It doesn’t really matter how much one tweaks, and twiddles that process. So that means that an early day hitting the road starts somewhere around 9am on a good morning to 9.30am or so on an average morning.

We try and drive for a few uninterrupted hours to get some miles under our belts. During this time there is a frazzle of energy being expended mainly by Julia in keeping James fed and jogged as and when needed and appropriate and John read, sung and storied to. During this time, Cheryl sends her feelers and communication net out far and wide – anything from skyping her Mom in South Africa, to navigating our route, to clearing emails and/or booking our next sleep over stop. I of course am working hard at keeping the RV on the right side of the road and making sure that I overtake at least one truck an hour just to keep my self-esteem intact. I also indulge my favorite hobby of looking for the cheapest gas available – Hot Tip – so far Pilot stations with a Good Sam discount card are consistently the best deal around. I am open to any better ideas – this is every RV driver’s passion.

Our evening routine is about the same. Early supper, followed by baths, burps, teeth brushes, diapers, stories, prayer, Jesus songs and finally the blessed moment when all is quiet and we tiptoe around in grateful relief while we enjoy an hour or two of peace and quiet to play some games, watch some news and/or read our books. Having said that John has amused us daily and nightly, after he has gone to bed or his afternoon nap, with his chorus of singing, recounting the days events to his imaginary friend Mowgli and generally keeping us delightfully entertained with his version of events. We have each been sung happy birthday to on more than one occasion, so life is never dull. Early nights have been the order of the day, as Julia has the vagaries of James’ nights to contend with while we lie in bed wishing we could help, but rather guiltily glad that we can’t, as this is something that only Julia can do – thank you Lord.

 

Another highlight of our trip has been Julia’s creative way of helping John to appreciate and track the days and distance we are covering. Every state visited has an appropriately named gift; Ohio Ostrich, Kentucky Kangaroo, Tenessee Triceratops, North Carolina Noodle, South Carolina Stickers, Georgia Giraffe and Florida Fish are the gifts so far. We await Alabama and West Virginia with bated breath. She is also doing a Trip Caterpillar, which has a picture which gets filled in depicting something memorable for each day of our trip. So far we are at day 19 out of 26. Julia colours in while John critiques and comments. It’s hard to tell how much he is learning but it’s been a fun way to track our trip.

People Along the Way

As always it’s the people who make a trip interesting.

My nephews Jonathan, Michael and Christopher Cornish – they live in the Fort Lauderdale area and  have been developing and running their own import/export business for a number of years now. Their business is growing fast and after a number of years they are beginning to really see some good fruit for all their hard work. Are they hot shot executive types? Not really – just hard working young guys who are earning the respect of their suppliers and customers through integrity and hard work. We stayed with Jonathan and Nola for a couple of nights and Michael and Ashley joined us for most of the time. Chris is looking after business in Cape Town for a few months.  They all gave me a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday on March 22^nd – I had completely forgotten it was my birthday and was literally in my birthday suit about to hop in the shower, so the moment they arrived was quite appropriate – I managed to hop in bed and appear surprised, which I was.

North Beach RV Park, St. Augustines

·         Scottish Couple from Burlington, ON – bumped into them on the first warm day we’d experienced in months. Everyone was out sunning themselves in celebration. He had been CEO of a large pension fund and they have been doing RVing for some time. They had just figured out that Key West (as far south as one can get in the USA) is the best place to find great weather. He described to me his progression from a starter Class C, like ours, to his current state of the art Class A with all the bells and whistles. Like a good Scot and pension plan guy he had bought the RV used (got a good deal) and was able to tell me his average fuel consumption and speed on the I75 (60 mph). He retired at 60 and has been RVing for fourteen years. He didn’t look a day over 60. My conclusion is RVing holds off ageing -that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

·         Nice Guy, Name Unknown – popped by our RV as we were heading in for the bedtime routine. “I noticed you don’t have a vehicle to pick up groceries. I’m on my way to the store. Can I get you anything?” Such a nice gesture – we really appreciated it.

·         Couple of ladies – we stopped to ask them directions to somewhere. They couldn’t speak English and we asked them which country they were from – Spain, Italy, France?? Non – Quebec. They were in Florida for the winter. It seems we truly do live in two solitudes in Canada – enough said. Anyway I suppose my French isn’t much better than her English, so I shouldn’t complain I suppose.

Along  The Way

This has been a different type of a trip – mainly about enjoying our grandchildren and Julia’s company, so our sightseeing component has been limited - like the time we spent two years in UK when our kids were 4 – 6. We visited very few churches and sights of historical significance, but we didn’t miss a single playground. We loved our time in UK.

 

Nevertheless we have enjoyed some special places and sights. Our drive south has been through gorgeous countryside and progressing from no snow, to green grass and leaves on trees was like a man staggering out of the Sahara into a fully serviced oasis. Our best camping deal so far has been Savannah Visitors Welcome Centre, which lets one camp in their parking lot, which is right downtown, for $8. We really enjoyed being able to walk through Savannah without having to hassle about parking the RV.

We have loved the lushness of Florida at this time of year. We enjoyed Talahassee, the State Capital, which had their annual Spring Festival on but they score lower than 1/10 for availability of RV parking. As it turns out we finally found two metered parking spots in a side street and hoped for the best. As it turns out we didn’t even need to pay as it was a Saturday. This of course was only discovered after about an hour and a half of driving around in deadlocked traffic and some modest interpersonal stress within the cabin of the RV, to put it mildly. We loved the downtown Baptist church which opened their building up to the public to use their washrooms and chill out with a complimentary coffee or tea and a cookie. What a wonderful illustration of the church at work in practical ways that really count.

Our best camping find has been Topsail State Park in the Florida Panhandle, where we currently are gathering our strength before beginning the long journey north. For half the price we were paying in Southern Florida we are getting the best campsite yet – lots of shade, room, safe playing area for the kids, swimming pool and gorgeous beach. They even have a shuttle to take us to the beach daily. It is wonderful and we hope to visit again.

Concluding

It has been a wonderful holiday - exhausting in many ways, with us having to fit into the kid’s routines. However what a treat it has been to be with them 24/7 and get to know them so well. John’s sing along routine afternoon and evening has been a marvel to behold. James has gone from being a blob who had just conquered rolling over to being almost at the point of crawling. Today he did a full body push up, but just couldn’t figure out what to do next. He’s such a cool dude.

And so it’s back home in a few days to face the music of real life again. We have a full year ahead. Thank you Lord for a life that is so full of variety and blessing on so many fronts.

Rob and Cheryl Cornish

April 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob and Cheryl’s 2013 Ramblings

It is Christmas morning 2013. We are waiting to go over to Elaine and Alex’s for a family meal and sleepover. We are on the tail end of the worst ice storm in this area for decades. The temperature outside is -15 degrees Celsius and everything is covered in immovable ice. There’s certainly no reason I can think of to be outside. The full 3 hour Messiah is playing on CBC radio and we are getting very close to the Halleluiah chorus, so my day is about to peak.

It is Christmas, the Christ child is safely delivered, the world is at peace and our souls may find rest if we seek it. Praise God from whom all blessings flow for the Inestimable Gift of Jesus that we celebrate at this time of year.

Settling Down

 
 
 
 
This has been the year we have settled into our new home in the town of Port Perry as opposed to living on the lake. Our new home is about the same size as our previous one, but it is newer and the garden is much smaller. For a guy who is practically challenged this counts as a huge advantage. Some of the highlights of our new existence:

·        Lawn care – we had two men come by offering us the Holy Grail of lawn care - to mow our lawn and keep it weed free.  No brainer – done.

·        Someone offering to help us cover our home ownership costs – lo and behold we have a fully functional apartment in our basement which we don’t need to use, so we have had Tony and his three kids staying down there and being model tenants – phew, thank you Lord. So much so, in fact Tony will occasionally send his sons out to clear the snow on the driveway. Once again a no brainer – done.

·        Hammock time – this pretty much leaves me with some of the more challenging aspects of owning a hammock ie should I face into the sun or away? Should I swing it or just rest steady? Should I read or just rest? You get the picture.

Bottom line we are very happily ensconced in our new home and enjoying the freedom of less household responsibilities – a bit akin to being an Empty Nester for the first time, or when the ageing cat finally dies. Now if I can just find someone to chip off a couple of inches of solid ice off my driveway, life will be truly Sweet.

Seeking Adventure

This was the year of the RV. We had bought our Beautiful Baby back in November of 2012 and had pretty much had to park it for the winter. So it was with great fanfare that we launched out in April on our first inaugural trip of discovery. Our first major discovery was figuring out the plumbing system. This may sound rather basic, but believe me, one wants to get it right. For more of a blow by blow record of our trip to Myrtle Beach and back see my previous blogs. Suffice to say that we have seen the future and it is good… all good. Now if we can just figure out somewhere to buy gas at about a tenth of the price, we might be able to afford it.

 

 

 

Since then, we have taken Sammy and Esther, our two eldest grandchildren, for a weekend. It rained and they both had bad colds, but much fun was had all the same.

 Then we had a week at a Christian resort in the summer with the whole family, which was hot but good. We are looking forward to building those family memories and the Bucket List still has the Big Road Trip to Grand Canyon somewhere near the top, so we’ll have to see how that goes.

Our wrap up to the season was a too brief stay in the Fall at Algonquin Park to see the Colours. We had the most gorgeous campsite, directly on the Lake with moonlight glistening over it and the colours were glorious during the days. The Lord describes himself so majestically through His Creation. We are so thankful for these glimpses of Him and what lies ahead.

We are looking forward to a good year of RVing in 2014, but we are constantly challenged by some of the other pesky time consuming things in our lives, like work, ministry commitments and yes, even grandchildren. Hard to believe a Grandfather could say such a thing isn’t it? I mean I love them but….oops I’d better stop while I’m ahead.

Seeing the End in Sight

Since I had some major problems with my eyes a couple of years ago I have reached the conclusion that I would rather spend my remaining healthy days doing something more significant than just turning up at work every day. And if it wasn’t my eyes that got me to this point – I was shocked in May this year to find that I am now married to a 60 year old. I didn’t think things would ever get to this. Fortunately my 60 year old is still a hottie, only looks around 39 or so and hardly ever acts her age.

I have been on a journey over the last year of exploring how to turn my Wealth Management Practice into a Pension. It turns out that what should be a straightforward thing is actually fraught with a variety of practical difficulties which don’t necessarily resolve all that easily. My brother Alan and I are partners and we are both working together on this. With the Lord’s help we are hopefully nearing a solution. We have found another team of brothers who are looking to grow their own practice and are keen to buy ours. We need one or two more approvals from our employer and we hope by this time next year to be formally in the Ranks of the Retired. Roll on those Senior’s Discounts. Yiahhh!!

Ministry Matters

It sure does. Cher and I prayed for a few years some time back for an opportunity to be involved in a significant ministry. God used a Jewish man in my office to point us in the right direction about six years ago and we are now actively involved in reaching out to a segment of the population that needs to know the personal love and saving grace of the Lord Jesus. Typical of much ministry, our lives are filled with committees, meetings and not enough face time with our target group. Progress is slow, but we are trying to follow where God is going with this and so we are happy to work at His pace and besides we have other things in life which we also value like our kids and their kids…

Family Matters

They certainly do. It has been an eventful year – not all of it good.

Elaine and Alex - We were all shaken to the core in June of this year, when Elaine’s husband Alex suffered a seizure in a shopping mall parking lot. It turns out to be a brain tumor. Alex is now on to his second round of chemo after an initial six weeks of chemo and radiation. We are thankful that the tumor shows no signs of additional growth and Alex has been given approval to return to work and re-apply for his driver’s licence. This has been hugely challenging to put it mildly and we value your ongoing prayers. We have been very grateful for the army of family, friends and work colleagues who have supported Elaine and Alex in so many ways. Alex has borne this challenge with dignity and grace. Elaine has struggled with the wider challenge of the situation, but once again God has helped her. We have been privileged to have spent more time than usual with Sammy (4) and Esther (2) a result of Alex’ treatment regime. Sammy started school this Fall and Esther is enjoying being her own person with Mom and Dad to herself at times. We love them to bits.

Julia and Chris –

They are doing well. Julia blessed us this year by falling pregnant and then producing a beautiful baby boy, James Douglas, in mid-November. He is doing well but we are reminded afresh of how much work new babies are and amazed at the way Julia and Chris stay sane amidst all the challenges. Their eldest, John (2), has the most wonderful smile and sweet nature and he charms all who fall under his spell. Chris continues to work hard at his tech support job whilst also taking on a variety of private side jobs to keep the household running and the budget balanced.

 
 
 
 Cheryl – is Super Nanna. She is the first line of call when Elaine or Julia need help and she pours herself into this. So much so, that her weeks can be a whirl of moving between three households. Cher’s gift is to Help and she has a remarkable capacity to do just that. I know Elaine and Julia value her involvement and Cher of course thrives on it.

My role - is to be the cheerleader of all of this activity with the occasional chauffeuring role and a bit of story-telling. I also seize the opportunity to wrestle with my grandson’s while victory is still reasonably assured. It turns out all of my grandchildren like to sing and a recent highlight for me was belting out Christmas carols with little two year old Esther while we wrestled over a challenging puzzle together. Precious memories.  

South Africa Re-visited.

We recently spent almost a month in SA  visiting with family and friends. We loved being back in the Old Country. SA, as always, continues to delight and dismay. We were delighted to see so many signs of a country moving towards integration – many more middle class families of all colours visiting the beaches, malls and movies. We spent quite a bit of time with my brother Neville and his wife and spent some time with his kids and their kids. It was really special re-connecting with old friends in the Johannesburg area and also in Hilton in Kwa Zulu Natal. We travelled to the Wild Coast and despite too much rain and cold (it was summer) we had a good time. We then connected with Cher’s Mom and her sister at Morgan’s Bay near East London and spent about ten days with them in that area.

In our final week Madiba passed on and the country went crazy – in a nice way. It was so good to re-live the wonderful life of this man who served his country so well. He has earned his place in history. Rest in Peace Madiba.

I put on about ten pounds whilst away – I blame the bad weather. What else is there to do on vacation if the weather’s too bad to go to the beach?

Last Word

When I’m feeling foolish or brave I will occasionally publish my New Year’s resolutions. I think I will keep it simple this year. My life is so much better on so many levels when I try to live each day in a way that pleases God and makes Him smile. I’m not very good at it, but nevertheless, I resolve to try in 2014 to make God smile every day. Anyone want to join me?

Cher and I wish you and yours all of God’s richest blessings in 2014. May you know Him in sweet and wonderful ways in the 12 months ahead.

God Bless,  

Rob & Cheryl Cornish

 

Last Lap - Long Faces

My Eureka Moment - at last

We left Myrtle Beach on Wednesday April 17th, heading north west for a little town called Martinsville in Virginia - a convenient stop off point about an hour short of the Blue Ridge Parkway which was our target.

We travelled through beautiful countryside but noticed the further in we got that the leaves on the trees were less developed and less lush than MB had been. We were struck by a feeling of foreboding. It's like the feeling I used to get when I was returning back to boarding school after a few weeks of the freedom of being at home. We were heading north and back to face the music of real life.
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We were a few miles short of Martinsville, when I had my Eureka moment..... I noticed a little dumpy gas station coming up and there it was ... the cheapest gas in North America. Eureka -  $3.15 a gallon. I had already heard that South Carolina has the cheapest gas in the USA, but here we were in Virginia and in all our driving I hadn't seen it cheaper than this.  I couldn't resist. Foot on the brake - screeching traffic behind me, while I lumbered in to claim my prize. I have bookmarked that stop for all future travels - it felt so good filling up with all of that cheap gas. My day was made, or so I thought....

Martinsville - Worth Missing

We dutifully followed that annoying lady in the GPS (we call her Susy) into Martinsville to an RV Park. The surroundings got dumpier and dumpier and then we arrived at it - the dump I mean. It also happened to be the RV Park.
It turns out that the owner is an old car collector and right in alongside the RV Park was his collection of rusted out old wrecks that he can't bear to part with. He clearly has a customer base that enjoy picking up spare parts for their vintage vehicles or he relies on unsuspecting types like us to roll in. So much for buying over the internet.

We were done for the day and decided to live with our choice. We were the only visitors it seems. The only other folks looked like permanents. We were starting to hear that Deliverance theme music again.

Once we were set up we decided to go for a walk and check out the area. Maybe we were being unfair. We passed a couple of young guys sitting outside a cabin on our way out. They were slugging back beers and greeted us enthusiastically. We reciprocated on the greeting and carried on. As we were walking away from them we noticed a groundhog, or something like it, scittering up the bank ahead of us - something else for our growing list of wildlife sightings.

The tour of the area was just plain depressing. We headed for home when we got to a dilapidated mobile home location - compared to that, we were staying in the Ritz. On our way back in, we noticed one of our young guys sporting a hunting bow, busy retrieving arrows from the bank we had seen the groundog on. We decided not to do the walk back that way and found a back route in to our RV. We'd had enough of the highlights of Martinsville and retired for the night.

Up Up and Away

The Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive has been highly recommended to us and for that reason we had researched it down to a T. It covers almost 500 miles of mountain top driving, reaching from Georgia in the south to Virginia in the north. Cher knew virtually every twitch and bend in the road.... and that's without having visited it. What we missed in our research was that most of the facilities and campsites along the way only open on Memorial Day weekend (it seems the same weekend as Canadian Victoria Day weekend). Once we discovered that we canned the idea, but we had now revised it and decided to come down off the parkway to find RV parks at the bottom of the mountains where facilities are currently open.

For one of the USA's premier touring highlights the Blue Ridge Parkway is not well promoted. In fact we struggled in figuring out how to get onto it, it was so faintly signposted. Once on it, it was great - very little traffic, but miles and miles of beautiful mountain top scenery. The speed limit is 45 mph which I was grateful for, but with lots of Outlook stops where one can let impatient people pass by. I was also thankful for my 2nd gear which saved me burning out my brakes on the downhill portions.
We entered the Blue Ridge Parkway at Roanoke in South Carolina and did about 40 miles and then came down the mountain near Natural Bridge, Virginia.

We were in good time to have a nice long walk around this natural phenomenon. It was massive and very interesting. A couple of points of interest; at one point George Washington climbed up a rock face and carved his initials on the rock. We verified that. The walk in total was about 1.5 miles and ended with a waterfall. We finally gave up on reaching the waterfall as it seemed to be the longest 1.5 miles we had ever walked. We turned around and bumped into a Mom and her whining son. The Mom said cheerfully " how much further is the waterfall?". Not wanting to be a discouragement we replied "not too far - just around the corner and up the hill a bit more". You need to understand that this kind of direction giving we learnt in Africa where one doesn't want to discourage people needlessly. Nevertheless we did go on our way rather quickly, not looking back. I have this picture in my mind of a young boy laboring onwards and upwards for another hour or two, cursing that apparently friendly couple.

We finished our day tripping and came to the RV Park a few miles away where we had booked. The receptionist there will rank as one of the least helpful we have dealt with. We finally found a beautiful site, but discovered too late that our site's Wi-Fi signal didn't work too well. Our friendly lady had sadly neglected to mention that detail in a largely empty campsite. The weather report had predicted a lot of rain on Friday so we had decided to hunker down at our campsite and sit it out. It did rain hard, so we were glad to be snugged up in our cosy HAFH and managed to watch the Boston Reality Drama in full minute by minute detail - we are very thankful to see the two brothers brought to justice, but of course sad to hear of such needless loss of life which they caused.

Lured by Luray

Somewhere in our travels, someone had mentioned the Luray Caverns as a must see. We decided to do a half day of the Skyline Drive and then come down the mountain again and do Luray for a couple of days. The Skyline Drive was at least as nice as the Blue Ridge, and maybe more so because we had a spectacular day weatherwise.

We got into our KOA campsite around 4pm and were very impressed. It is perched atop a hill in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley with mountains on either side and more or less a 360 degree view all around. We were backed onto a site overlooking a small farm complete with sheep, lambs and a brand new llama, the other campers tell us. We have been endlessly amused by the bleating of the lambs and the antics of the farmer as he has tried to bring them into the shed for the night. It gives the phrase " we all like sheep have gone astray" a whole new meaning. A couple of ladies came by and told us that they have stayed in RV parks all across North America and this is the most beautiful one. It is beautiful, but oh my the wind cuts right through one at the top of the hill.

This morning we decided to take our chances with a "contemporary service" at a Southern Baptist church in town. We duly arrived and were warmly welcomed to the downstairs hall where the meeting was happening. Coffee, cake and choruses were the order of the day. It was a simple but nice service. I was a bit distracted by the little girl next to me who kept going back for extra doses of purple cake. Judging by the size of the mother, the little one is destined to be not too far behind her if she keeps that up.




The highlight of the day for us was our visit to the Luray Caverns. It was discovered in apprx 1878, or thereabouts, and oh my goodness have they done a beautiful job of dressing it up with excellent lighting, imaginative names for the various formations and an excellently produced script by our young tour guide. We walked 1.25 miles underground without retracing our steps and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

 

Snippets from Along the Way 

A couple of people we have enjoyed meeting in the last few days:

Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia - there we were parked off at an Overlook viewpoint. There was a cyclist stopping to catch his breath when out of the woods appeared a tall man carrying a large back pack. We all got chatting. The back packer was doing a big chunk of the Appalachian Trail He had left home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania the day after Easter and had been walking the trail ever since. He was shooting to be in Georgia by the end of the summer where the Trail ends. I pointed out that I had noticed his wife wasn't with him. He smiled and said "she doesnt' do bugs and dirt". As we all split up I asked the cyclist where he was from. He replied in  perfect English "Quebec". I asked him if he is French or English and his reply as he waved goodbye was "French of course, what else?".

KOA Campground, Luray, Virginia

We were sitting out at our site in the late afternoon and another couple came by carrying matching coffee travel mugs - and we had thought we were the perfect couple. We got chatting. My goodness what an interesting couple. Robert and Stacey Meacham. They are travelling around, living actually, in their 46 foot Class A (the big bus) motorhome. We asked where home was and their reply is "site 49". They have lived for five years on a 34 foot trawler in the southern tip of Alaska and now count home as their motorhome. We popped by this evening to have a snack with them. Robert is a retired aircraft engineer and Stacey does consulting and training on certain types of software which does some amazing stuff.. We sat in their gorgeous Class A motorhome with a 180 degree window view of the mountain backdrop and we yacked non stop. Robert demonstrated how to make a pop up bird feeder, which they set up when they stop for awhile. That got my wife's juices going. Robert and Stacey "dated" for fifteen years and have been married for 10. Robert said he moved from being a confirmed bachelor to marriage and cannot imagine now why he had waited so long. Nice.


And now sadly, our vacation is ending. From here on we are mainly intent on heading home. Nevertheless it has been good time and our objective of getting to know our RV and how it all hangs together is largely achieved. Having said that we keep discovering new things, so life is an adventure.

Until the next time,

Rob and Cher, reporting from our Big Baby :0).