Christmas in the Panhandle

This is Chipley Park which surrounds Lake Defuniak in DeFuniak Springs, for the Reflections Celebration they decorate the park with over 4 1/2 million lights. It was a one mile walk around the lake but since it was 70 degrees we really didn't mind it that much. These are just a few of the displays and the pictures really can't do it justice.

Click on a picture to enlarge

The Garden of Ghost	This is the Poinsettia Garden
Santa’s Work Shop	Reflection from across the lake
Palm trees and Pink Flamingos	One of the homes around the lake
Cat sleeping in front of the fireplace	Another flower garden
Leaping fish	View from across the lake

Down the Coast

Guess I’m getting lazy, since our last entry we traveled to the Outer Banks area, Morehead City, Beaufort and Emerald Isle. Cathy finally got a good fish dinner at one of the restaurants down on the wharf in Morehead City. We set aside one day to visit the N. Carolina Aquarium; we could have set aside 20 minutes. They just reopened it after a two year, 25 million dollar make over, they have a lot of nice exhibits but they got rid of a lot more nice ones then they put in. As usual there were about 20 school busses there with a ton of kids just running around.

The next day was much better we when to Fort Macon, a quick History:
Construction of the fort began in 1826, it is a five-sided structure of brick and stone with twenty-six vaulted casements (rooms) with outer walls that are 4.5 feet thick, it was part of the chain of coastal fortifications for national defense. Its purpose was to guard Beaufort Harbor, North Carolina's only deepwater ocean port. It was named after state senator Nathaniel Macon, who procured the funds to build the facility. During its history it has seen Robert E Lee as an Army engineer, seized by the N. Carolina militia, retaken by Union forces to be used as a coal fueling station for the navy, a federal prison, closed in 1903, sold to the state of North Carolina to be used as a state park, restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps and then leased back to the military to be used during World War II.

This is one of the best preserved Civil War Forts we’ve been to thanks to the CCC, it was a very hot sunny day and the most comfortable spot was on top of the citadel walls, from where you can look out and watch the ocean waves breaking into the inlet.

When we left here to head south we drove past Camp Lejeune, for about four miles the road was lined with huge home made signs welcoming home the different soldiers and units, was really kind of neat.
We stayed in Myrtle Beach for a week and did a drive north along the coast to Southport, while we were in the area we followed a few signs and found the Ghost of Brunswick Town, located on the banks of the Cape Fear River it was a British colony started in 1726. It was a major shipping port for the British until the colonist rebelled against the Crowns authority of tax stamps; this was eight years before they did it in Boston with the Boston Tea Party. In 1776 the British raided the town and burnt it to the ground. All that is left now are the foundations of about 50 different homes and buildings and the walls of the St. Phillips Anglican Church. Some of the town in on Army property (Sunny Point Army Base) and not assessable.
This is also the site of Fort Anderson built by the C.S.A. 1861 to defend the city of Wilmington; the fort was a large sand fortification with ten cannons. Today only the outer mounds of the fort remain.

This year we decided to by pass Charleston and spend a week in Savannah, we found a campground that was only ten minutes drive from downtown Savannah by the back roads. While we were there we did a few roads trips out to Beaufort, Port Royal and Bluffton doing the tourist type things.

We did spend a day at Wormsloe Plantation; this was built by Noble Jones who came over from England with Oglethorpe in 1733. The main entrance leads you down mile long lane that’s completely covered with Live Oaks, there were a few living history actors there and showed us around the plantation.

Descendants of the original family still reside at this site and are actively involved in heritage preservation at Wormsloe. There is a ton of history here but way too much to go into.

Onward to St Mary’s Georgia right on the Florida boarder were we had a ton of things planned to do, that is until I twisted my back, so this week ended up being Chiropractors, pain pills and rest.

Andersonville

Right now we are in Unadilla, south-central Georgia, this is our home park and we get to stay here free for a week.

Veterans Day evening we went over to Andersonville NHP, this is the home of the National Museum for POW’s and MIA’s, Andersonville was the location of the Confederate Civil War prison where in a 14 month period more then 13000 prisoners died either from disease or treatment from the guards.

This year was their First Annual Memorial Illumination Drive; the plan was to have 13000 candles spread across the old prison grounds to represent the soldiers that died there, well that were the plan. It was to start at 6:30pm and we went over about an hour and a half early, on the way there it started to rain a little. When we got there I talked to one of the rangers and asked here if we could wait in the parking lot until it started, she asked if we were volunteers and I said no. Well you are now she told me, the rain had put out most of the candles, she handed me half a dozen BBQ lighters and said get out there and start lighting candles. Cathy and I drove around to the site and started running around lighting as many candles as we could. About 10 minutes before it was to start, along with a ton of other volunteers we had managed to re-light approximately 80% of the candles. All of our lighters had run out of fluid and we were walking back to the car when the second wave of rain came along, I had my camera in my pocket and using a monument for a tripod I managed to get one time exposed picture before the rain hit really hard. Within two minutes all the candles were out again, by the time we walked back to the car the rain had stopped and was gone for the night. We only got to see it from the top of the hill for about 2 minutes but it was something neither one of us will ever forget. I talked with the ranger after and she said that they spent two years planning this and because of the time and money it took and because of the results that they will probably not attempt it again. If this is true then we are two of just a handful of people that will ever experience this sight.Click picture to enlarge

Almost Forgot W.Virginia

Just a little bit out of order here, it seems as if I forgot all about West Virginia, we spent a week in a resort right across the street from Pipestem state Park. This is in the mountains and pretty much in the middle of nowhere but a very beautiful nowhere.We came across a lot of neat thing just wandering any road that we could find; the first was Pinnacle Rock St Park. This is a natural formation and is where the rocks when rising to form the mountains this section turn 90 degrees and shot up.Its probable about three hundred feet high and yes we did climb it, it took awhile and we had to make a lot of stops on the way up but we made it, did I mention that there are stairs on the other side. It's still a helluva climb but the view from up top is worth it, no picture you have to climb it yourself.

Another road took us to a little roadside park, which is right over top of the Big Bend Railroad Tunnel. This tunnel was started in 1870 and took three years to complete the entire mile, about half way through construction; the new steam drill was invented and brought to this sight. Everyone was amazed at the speed except for one man who challenged the drill and operator with his sledgehammer and chisel. The contest started and by the time it was over the man had beat the machine, he then walked a few feet away and dropped dead, giving us the legend and ballad of “John Henry the Steel Driving Man”. I’m not kidding we really found this place.

While following a little road along side the Greenbrier River we found the Graham Cabin, built by Col.Graham in the 1770’s it was the site of a Shawnee Indian Attack in 1777 where is daughter was taken captive. The Col spent eight years following tips until he located and bought back his daughter.

Our last day in the resort we figured that we should drive across the street and see what was at the State Park and we’re glad we did, there are two lodges there one on the top of the mountain and the other in the bottom of the gorge. We decided to visit the one at the bottom of the gorge, a grueling three hours hike down the trail dug into the side of the mountain or a five-minute ride on the tram.

The lodge is right on the Blue River and has a nice dining room and miles of trails if you’re up to it, we were just going to do lunch but of course the dining room is closed on Tuesdays. It was right about then that Cathy noticed the sign that said the tram shuts down at 1pm on Tuesdays, good thing cause we never would have made the six-hour hike out.

The nice thing that the lodge does is the Tram ride is FREE, on the way down, when you're ready to leave and you go back to the tram to get on their is a ticket booth, Four dollars a head to avoid the walk back up. Pretty tricky, but if you eat at the lodge the ride up is free.

Battlefields, Museums & the Zoo

etroit Tigers
are going to the World Series



The Battle of Guilford Court House was fought on March 15, 1781, 1900 British troops under then command of Lord Cornwallis faced 4400 American militia and Continentals under the command of General Nathanael Greene. It is considered to be one of the most decisive Battles of the Revolutionary War. Greene set up three lines of defense against the advancing British, the battle started at 12:30 and ended after 2 1/2 hours of intense and brutal fighting with Cornwallis forcing Greene to withdraw from the battlefield and retreat. Although the British claimed victory by holding the battlefield at the end of the day, it was a costly victory. Cornwallis had lost over 25% of his troops, when the British Parliament learned of the battle, Charles James Fox exclaimed, "Another such victory would destroy the British Army.

The first thing we did was go to the visitor’s center and watch the Battle Map Program, a lighted map show with narration that explains the movement of the troops and the timeline of the battle and a 20 minute film they have on the battle. There was another couple there at the same time, they started asking one of the volunteers a few questions and once she started talking about the battle there was just no stopping her, she went on for about an hour telling us a bunch of little things would never find out about if not for her.

We did the auto tour of the park which is in the middle of Greensboro (named after Nathanael Greene) but it seems like you’re out in the middle of the country. With all the stops and monuments in the park in turned out to be about an hour tour. We also found a monument marking the graves of two signers of the Declaration of Independence that buried here in the park.

We decided to take a “Jump into History” which is how they describe it when you enter the Airborne & Special Operations Museum at Fayetteville N.C. It’s a good thing we had a large breakfast this morning because we ended up spending close to four hours here and missed lunch.The museum starts with the original concept of airborne troops in 1940, it explains the training of the first airborne troops and then follows them into WWII and the first airborne assault in North Africa, then Sicily, Italy, Jedburgh, Normandy, D-Day and then onto the Pacific theater. It covers every battle and assault that an airborne troops was ever involved in.

We got to walk through the fuselage of a C-47 transport, while overhead there is a full C-47 with troops parachuting out. They have it set up like a

Bombed out French village that you walk through. They had displays of the WACO CG-4A Glider used to transport troops and equipment, UH-1 & AH-6 Helicopters, a Sheridan tank and other weapons to many to mention.

Other areas explained their involvement in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Desert Storm and more, if an airborne troop was there it’s covered in the museum.

The museum also covers the start of the OSS and tells of the many secret missions that they were responsible for.

There is a Hall of Hero’s honoring airborne troops that were awarded the Medal of Honor. At the theater they show “Descending from the Clouds” which is shown on a four story high screen, kind of like a Mini IMAX and the “Pitch, Roll & Yaw Vista Dome Motion Simulator, I gave this a try while Cathy waited outside.

Since we were in the area and it was going to be a freebee we decided to go to the N. Carolina State Zoo in Asheboro. The zoo has nearly doubled in size since the last time we were here ten years ago. They made it so big they have two parking lots about a mile and a half apart so now you can just enter one end walk through the zoo and come out at the other were a shuttle bus is waiting to take you back to your car. Saves you from walking back thought the zoo to get to your car. They were still doing a lot of construction but just about all the exhibits were open.
It’s amazing that I can still recall things that we saw 10 years ago that really stood out, but as I sit here now thinking I can’t come up with one outstanding thing we saw this time. I guess new and improved isn’t always better. If you have never been here before it would probably be a very enjoyable experience but if you were here before they redid it I would give it a pass.



Right now we are at Morehead City on the Outer Banks enjoying the ocean.

Good News - Bad News

First the Bad News, Nick and Rachel had to go back to school so Cathy and I don’t have anybody to play with.
The Good News, we’re back on the road heading south for the winter, but we’re heading there very slowly.

Our first stop was in Wapakoneta, Ohio. A nice Coast to Coast resort with an indoor pool, hot tub and sauna, this helped heal a lot of sore muscle from the summer activities with the kids.

While cruising the back roads of the area we came across the little town of Zanesfield, this was the hometown of Dr. Sloan, you may have seen bottles of his elixir. It started out as a horse medicine but it work so well he took it on the road (the late 1800’s) advertising it for humans and became a millionaire selling his snake oil.

Another road took us to the site of the War of 1812 fort, Fort Amanda. This fort was built after the fall of Detroit to the British and served as the main supply depot for the American forces during the war. There is a nice monument and historical marker there as well as the fort’s cemetery where 75 soldiers from the fort are buried.

We cut across Ohio to the southeast corner and made camp there for a week. We got there just in time for the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, W Virginia. If you remember the movie from a few years ago the Mothman is a giant Moth/man with big red glowing eyes that flies around chasing people. This is the area were it was sighted many times, they have a three day festival with people coming from all over the world, many people who have sighted or came into contact with the Mothman attend and give talks and sign autographs. Thank goodness we got here a few days early and were able to explore the town without the crowd.

Our first stop was at Tu-Endie-Wie State Park (Wyandotte for “the point between two waters”); it’s located right at the confluence of the Kanawha & Ohio Rivers.
The historical importance of this location is this is where the Battle of Point Pleasant took place on October 10, 1774, considered by many to be the first battle of the American Revolution; it pitted the Virginia militia led by Colonel Andrew Lewis against the British allied Indians, Shawnee, led by Chief Cornstalk. By the end of the day the Virginia militia was victorious but there were close to three hundred dead and hundreds more wounded.

This is a small park but it houses a 90 foot Obelisk honoring the militiamen who died in the battle, monuments to Chief Cornstalk and “Mad” Anne Bailey Taylor (more of her later) and the Mansion House (1796) which is now a museum housing many artifacts from the area including a hand written, signed letter from Danl Boone.

Anne Bailey, after her husband was killed in the battle, took to dressing in men’s clothing and became a great scout for the military. She would deliver messages and supplies through enemy Indian lines where no man would dare venture; she lived to be over 100 and is buried at this site.

There is another marker there that gives the history of Colonel Andrew Lewis, who led the militia to victory, it notes that his 5^th Great Grandson, Major Edward White of Gemini 4, was the first American to walk in Outer Space. It made me think that here you are the First American to walk in Outer Space and you’re still not the most famous person in your family.

From the park we crossed the street and went to the Point Pleasant River Boat Museum. They have exhibits on the history of riverboats and river life in the area, including an old steamboat pilothouse. Upstairs they have a video on the “Silver Bridge Collapse” this was a bridge that crossed the Ohio River at 6^th street which during rush hour traffic one day in December 1976 suddenly collapsed into the river killing over 50 people.

This is also the area of Morgan’s Raid during the Civil War and there are markers everywhere related to that event. We missed the five day re-enactment of the raid by two days, the next one is scheduled for 2013; we’ll try to make that one.

Some of the Revolutionary War Heros Buried at Mound Cemetery in Marietta, Ohio and a typical Ohio River Town.

Baseball, Swamps & Dogs

We finished up our month in Lapeer, but before we left we made another trip or two down to the kids. One was to celebrate Nick’s 10^th birthday, since he now likes ribs we did 3 racks of BBQ ribs for dinner that night and none were left on the platter. Off subject has everybody noticed how our DETROIT TIGERS are doing this year? The second trip we went to Toledo to take in a Toledo Mudhens game, they have a new stadium (3 yrs old) that’s right downtown and is dug out so that’s it’s below street level, we won there too.

The campground in Lapeer is a city park and is located just a few blocks from their downtown district, but you would think that we were back in Florida. There is a wet lands with a boardwalk right next to the park, after the first turn on the trail it’s like you’re in the middle of no where.

Now that we’re in Charlotte, Cathy’s going to get to do a ton of genealogy research at the state library and maybe we can get in a few do nothing days.

This is a picture of Arthur and his buddy Cooper, Cooper comes by about 3 or 4 times a week just to mess around with Arthur. Arthur will chase Cooper around for a few laps then the reverse and Cooper chases Arthur around for a few more laps, after twenty minutes of this Arthur will sleep for the rest of the day trying to recover.

The Kids of Summer

We started our summer in Monroe Michigan, which is about a 50-minute drive from the kids, the end of June we grabbed the grandkids and took them down to Bowling Green Ohio to camp at Fire Lake for a week. One day we drove over to the Earths Crack, that’s what they call it, the Seneca Caverns, and took a tour of the caverns. There are very few manmade steps in the caves most of the time you are climbing up or down the rocks, which the kids loved, we ended up going down about 8 levels to about 135 feet below the surface to an underground river that the kids got to stick there hands in. It was a really nice tour and we had a great guide which helped, after crawling through one of the smaller openings the kids decided to call it “The Fat Mans Squeeze” the guide liked that and said that she was going to start calling it that.

After lunch Nick decided that he wanted to see Lake Eire, so we drove over to Marblehead Lighthouse near Sandusky. The Lighthouse is now controlled by the state of Ohio and is open everyday to the public. After about a hundred steps the kids and I were at the top and enjoying a wonderful breeze to go with the view, Cathy said that she had to stay down below to take the pictures. We also found a Confederate Cemetery, yep in Ohio, on a small island in Lake Erie.Another day was spent at the Toledo Zoo, but it was a hot, hot, hot day and it was also some type of Freebee day so it was very crowded, meaning that we only stayed they for about two hours, to kill some time we went to Perrysburg and stopped at the 577 Foundation. This is an estate that was left by a lady to preserve the land and prevent a bunch of condo’s from spring up on the river, it has a lot of artsy type things here from painters, sculptures and such, but it also has a garage that has been converted into a used book store where you just make a donation, a 150 year old log cabin, a fossil pit for

the kids to dig in and take home what ever they find. A large garden with special areas for the kids, a green house with a fishpond, a river walk, trails and much more. We ended up spending about 2 ½ hours there and kids liked it better then the zoo.


Another day we took them over to the historic river canal town of Grand Rapids, we walked a trail along the canal, saw the old locks and then took an ice cream break, it seems like what ever we do with the kids ends up with Ice cream. After a fun week in Ohio we took the kids home so they could rest for a day before heading to Oscoda for the Fourth of July family outing. We parked the motor home in their drive and watched the pets for the week, this also gave Cathy time to work on the garden and me time to rip all the carpet out of the motor home and replace it with a Prego type of tile, also on a very personal note I installed a new toilet, a state of the art full size porcelain one.

After a week in of hiding in West Branch we moved down to Lapeer where we will been for a month, of course the first week the kids were here, we did a day trip picnic to Port Huron to do some swimming and watching the big boats go by.Back in SE Michigan we took the kids to the Henry Ford Museum for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s touring show, I think Nick could have spent another 5 hours there trying to read and see everything they had on display.


Other then that we’ve just been lying around doing nothing.

Schools out for summer

No we didn't forget about the BLOG. We're camped in Monroe Michigan for a month and are spending it messing around with the grandkids, we're going to take them to Ohio for a week at the end of the month and then park in their driveway for a week while we pet sit all the animals while they go to Oscoda for the 4th of July.
There are a few things in this area that we're going to try a see if we get the time, a lot of General George Custer stuff in the area and the River Rasin Massacre, other then that it's just grandkid time.