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Our first breakdown

Well, it was bound to happen. Not knowing my own strength, I twisted the lock on my door right out of its little Rover pin. Luckily, I travel with my mechanic😊. He rigged it to make it work, sort of.

We contacted Trevor at Rovah Farm outside Little Rock who was more than happy to help us get the parts we needed. The hard part was mailing them to us somewhere along the way, no easy feat when you don’t actually know where you are going.

Finally, we were able to find a future destination, Lake of the Ozarks State Park in MO. Trevor got the parts in the mail, even figured out the cheapest shipping rate. We let the park know they were coming (the staff was super about it, keeping the parts locked in the office until we got there), Trevor put tracking on them so we would know when they arrived and voila, 3 weeks later my mechanic picked them up and we have new door locks!

The new door lock!

Thanks Trevor! I’m sure we will be in touch again soon!

Oh, and my mechanic fixed the leak over my door….with Gorilla Tape!

Gorilla Tape rain gutter🙄

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On vacation

After our brush with military intelligence, we decided we needed a vacation! We stumbled across Huzzah Valley Resort in Steelville, MO.

What a find!

It is basically a family rafting campground on one side of the road and a ‘young’ persons rafting/party place (they call it the “zoo”) on the other side of the road, something for everyone.

We took the weekend off and read, slept, swam in the crystal cold river, and genuinely relaxed. We have been pushing the miles lately to get north of the heat (this northern girl has been a puddle of goo) and decided we needed a break. We camped right next to the river, a football field away from the bathrooms (my only complaint, Darrin’s complaint might be the distance we had to walk to the store to get an afternoon ice cream ).

The first few nights we basically had the place to ourselves, except for the rafters coming down the lazy river. Over the weekend, a few more people arrived, but the place is well set-up to tuck people away into small areas, the staff is super nice, and the security team was constantly making rounds (one night when we were the only ones there, the security guard drove his round in record time – we decided he was trying to do it during the commercial of his favorite show).

We highly recommend the place to all travelers, but be warned, they are already fully booked for the summer season!

No one camping over there!
And no one camping over there! Those are the bathrooms waaaaayyyyy over there across the sunny, hot, open field.

 

 

The nice cool brook over ther! A nice place to take a few days off and stay cool in the 90 degree heat.

 

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This may be our last post

On one of our favorite mountain biking routes back home there is a sign that says “If your GPS tells you this is a road, it is wrong. Turn around!”. We always laugh when we get to it, partially because it is at the top of a very long climb and we are punchy, and partially because it is obviously not a road.

Today, our GPS led us astray. What we thought was a thru road to our campground turned out to be the training fields for an army base, I kid you not. We drove straight into maneuvers on Fort Campbell, training grounds for the 101st Airborne Division. The first tan Humvee we saw made us think we were near an army base, the second, third and finally field tents gave us pause. The locked gate that should have let us pass back into town, after driving 15 miles or so, finally made it clear we weren’t where we belonged. We backtracked and slowly made our way off the base.

We did receive quite a few odd looks, the Rover must have made them wonder if a special British force was joining them for maneuvers. The funny thing is no one even paused to wonder if we belonged there. They all just waved and went about what they were doing.

Now we are waiting for the black helicopters to come and take us away for debriefing! “Honestly Master Sergeant we didn’t see anything!”

Sorry, no pictures😎

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Hydro-holy crappolla

First of all. Hi to Dennis our new flying buddy! Found the pictures of you, the Miati and the teardrop travelling.  Very cool! Hope you enjoyed the Oreos 😊

We are now in TN.  Much cooler (temp wise) and a whole lot more mountainous than AL.  Although we did hit 1 road as we were coming out of AL that was quite fun, Route 33.  Look it up on the map.  All of those switchbacks are straught up. A very old cool road. Just the kind we like.

We are now sitting in a state park that is on one of the former rivers turned lake by a humongous dam.  I had always heard about the TN dams and all the controversies around relocating people, but wow it is huge.

Old river, now a lake, side of the dam.
The other side of the dam where the spillway is. I am standing on the dam. Fishing boats everywhere. (Sorry about the fingers)🤔

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our campsite is on the lake side of the dam. We are perched on a wooden platform above the lake. Because it used to be a river it is very steep down to the water. It is a bit like camping on a pier, but we are over the bank and the lake is in front of us. Nice breeze and a good view through the trees. We even found, ok someone told us, how to get down to the water to swim. It is nice cool water similar to swimming in a lake at home in August.  This girl needs to be in the water, I get grumpy when I dry out.

Our nest in the trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the rig. We are looking a bit like the Beverly Hill Billies with our awnings and laundry. The water is behind me.

New England version of the Beverly Hill Billies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hugs to everyone at home, especially Bill and Erika who had a momentous day! Onward to the future and a winter without drafts and frozen pipes!

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Today we drove through  more of the Alabama country side.  We are currently camped in an overflow area at a county park near the TN border and it is slightly raining, a huge improvement from the earlier storm.  During said storm, we found a few new leaks in the Rover we hadn’t noticed before (it was pouring). The leaks were the top of my door and into my clothes locker. See a theme here?  Darrin has some work to do before the next storm😉.

Where we are set-up is a very busy boat ramp/fishing area and we are quite the novelty.  It is fun to watch the guys in trunks crane their necks to get a better view of our rig.  None of them stop, they just drive slightly off the road to look.  Quite entertaining.

Our rig tonight. You can see a bit of the lake in the background. What you can’t see are the guys down by the dock staring up at us or the trucks going by slowly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few of observations from our time on the road so far:

1.  The old corner store at every crossroad is long gone.  The buildings are slowly falling in or being reclaimed by the vegetation. We went through quite a few rural areas where the store that was probably the busy hub of every road crossing has long been deserted. The derelict buildings reminded me of the book Fried Green Tomatoes.  These were probably replaced by the new main street which are newly deserted for the Walmart like stores, which are now being challenged by Amazon like stores.  What’s next?

2.   Every state is clear cut happy.  In Florida, they were clearing to build everywhere and in Georgia and Alabama they seem to be clear cutting for no visible reason.  Whole hillsides have been cut down to nothing.  Very depressing.

3. Alabama has beautiful license plates.

4. There are still people who will go out of their way to help you. Tonight a guy from the RV next store went driving around the park to find the guy in charge so we could get a spot and get set-up inbetween rain storms.

Tomorrow we hope to be in TN and sit for a few days…so I can dry my clothes out.  😊

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We aren’t in…

Large farms, red soil, no palm trees….we aren’t in Florida any more!

Hello Georgia!

Still freak’n hot! This northern gal is a puddle of goo.😓

Passed huge farms growing, I don’t know what since everything was just being planted or was barely up, all with beautiful red soil, huge cattle farms and some very fenced in, very well protected properties with very large intimidating metal driveway gates (not sure what was going on behind them, we kept waiting for the blind girl from The Village to come climbing over). Oh and a few big farms that still call themselves plantations.

Huge farms with red soil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight we are camping in an Alabama state park, on a lake in which us northerners were the only ones swimming (it was too chilly for the southerners. It was 88 degrees out!).  A very nice place. The best part is our 1962 Land Rover found a contemporary.  They had a nice chat about the good ole days😂.

Our camp hosts and the Land Rover’s new friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy trails😁

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Sturgeons on the Suwannee

Still catchung up.

We spent a very nice week visiting family in Florida.  We played golf (yes, we know how to play golf, but we aren’t very good🤣), swam,  got to watch some baseball and just spent time with loved ones. Thank you to all, we had a wonderful time.

We then spent a very hot night on the Suwannee River in northern Florida near Convict Springs. We asked about the name and apparently there was a remote prison camp here in the early 1900s for the work crews, called chain gangs, to use when they were working too far from the prison to get back.  We went for a dip in our clothes thus cooling down and doing our laundry at the same time.

Our rig set-up above the Suwannee River. The bug room was a necessity!
Convict Springs
I don’t know if you can see the 2014 and 2009 signs on the tree, but those are flood/hurricane years. I took this picture out a window and the signs are even with me.
Suwannee River
The sturgeon were  jumping like hot cakes. We didn’t catch one in mid air, but we heard them slapping back into the water and it sounded like a tree falling.

 

 

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles (kinda)

A very quick drive through the Pennsylvania coal country with miles and miles of slag piles,  and more hills than I knew PA had, and a round about route into Lorton, VA to avoid the DC madness, we boarded the Amtrack Auto Train for the 17 hour ride to FL.  We splurged and got a double bunk room, a very smart decision, but if we did it again we would get the slightly larger room so Darrin doesn’t have to sleep on the top bunk😎.

For 17 hours we read, slept, and stared out the window.  We even had a wonderful dinner with a very nice couple from Delaware  (I hope I’m remembering the state right).  It was a nice change from the marathon drive to get to the train station. 🚇

The people working the Amtrack Auto Train were amazing, from the nice guy who checked us in and reassured us that the Rover wasn’t too tall (88 inch limit), the 2 other guys who measured it again just to make sure, and the head guy who reached his hand up and bet the younger coworker $500 that it would fit just fine, to the steward who kept us hydrated with lots of water, relaxed with his good sense of humor and his great service to make us feel pampered.

We highly recommend taking the train if you want to get to FL quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

The really nice guys loading the Rover onto the train  cars (the round horse trailer looking things in the background).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is she going to fit?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She made it with inches to spare.  The solar panels didn’t even scratch the top.

Sorry, no planes.  I just liked the title😊.

In fact, we are trying to do this trip without any planes.  🛫

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We are finally off!

Well, we did it!  We are off on our adventure.

After a frantic few weeks of final preparations on the Rover and last minute loading we finally said goodbye to friends and our housesitter and drove out of the driveway

With mixed emotions and a few tears we left our home state and headed south.