Yogi On The Lake

                                                                  Yogi On The Lake

 Cindy and I are in Pelahatchie, Mississippi, working at a Yogi Bear campground. We have never been to this state so we thought we would give it a try. We are located about 30 minutes east of Jackson, MS and about 3 hours north of New Orleans. We arrived here around the 14th of September and were greeted with very warm days and cool nights. The campground has been pretty empty except on the weekends when the kids are out of school. All of you know that we like it when there are not a lot of people camping on top of each other, so we chose a site in the back of the park which is  pretty much isolated from the busy part of the campground.

 This past week we took a couple of days and made a trip to New Orleans. One of my “bucket list” items was to take an air-boat ride back into the swamps. Well I get to mark that one off of the list. We spent about 2 hours riding around in the swamps taking in all the beauty it has to offer. I have thought all along that the swamps would smell, there would be bugs everywhere, and not much to see. If you look at the pictures (which do not show the real beauty) it actually was a very beautiful place. The opportunity to see alligators up close, some less than a few feet from our face, a variety of flowers, the Spanish moss draping from the trees made this a most enjoyable trip.





While in New Orleans we stayed just about 2 blocks from the French Quarters. We enjoyed taking in the sights and sounds of musicians playing in the streets, the vendors selling their merchandise, the crazy people out at night on Bourbon Street, the Cajun and Creole food. We got to see the Superdome, the cemeteries with all the graves being above ground due to the city being only 10 ft above sea level. 

 On our way home we took the long way and headed east from New Orleans toward Alabama. We stopped and visited a peanut farm.The people that own it actually let us just wonder around on our own and watch how they harvested the peanuts. They even allowed us to go into a couple of buildings that were not open to the public and look at the rooms full of antique toys, miniature frying pans( almost 2000 of them) old cast iron replicas of wood stoves, furniture and about everything else you could think of.

We've had a little change of plans since the last blog. We came home and spent a few days visiting family and were able to go see David for a few days. He's busy as a beaver with his job ( a new promotion) school, and a life in general. We're currently in Wisconsin at the same campground we worked at last summer. We came up here the first of June and stayed at Prairie Island for 3 weeks so we could help Aaron and Laura on their house. The first three weeks we pretty much spent 10-12 hour days helping them on the house (Aaron wanted to know if this was the worst workamping job we’ve done) not the worst but the longest hours we have ever done, but we were happy to be of assistance to them. They still have a lot of little things to do but for the most part all the major things are done, a little painting trim, electrical and water and they should be moving into it in a couple of weeks. Hopefully they will have some “finished pictures” to post when it is all done. I admire all that they have accomplished in the past 4 months. It was definitely a task that I would not have wanted to tackle, but then again they are young, but I know they are ready to get settled in and have some relaxing evenings with nothing to do. Cindy and I will be here for a little longer then we will probably head back to Indiana for a short stay and then on to our winter job ( which we haven’t lined up yet). We’re not really sure where we want to end up so anywhere is open for us.

North Carolina

We are currently in the mountains of North Carolina, east of a town named Spruce Pine. We are located about 1 mile off of the Blue Ridge Parkway, elevation around 3000 feet. The campground is located in the middle of 400 acres with approximately 125 sites, cabins, and camping cabins (a glorified tent) 4 walls and a roof, and beds, you bring the bedding. Below is a video of the drive from the Parkway up to our camper. We have not had the best internet so posting pictures and writing on the blog depends on the weather up here. Speaking of weather, we are about 10 degrees cooler at this elevation then the people 20 mile away. We have been keeping busy with work, we do 4 days on and 2 days off, then it's time to go exploring the area and hiking some trails. We went up to Grandfathers Mountain a couple of days ago and have a very enjoyable day. If you see the pictures I have attached, you will see that the swinging bridge was quite a nice walk above the ground and the view was spectacular on the other side, and yes we Both hiked out to the edge of the rocks. One thing for sure is this definatley outdoor camping in the mountains. There are no light up here other than what the campers have on at night. The roads twist and turn and go up and go down, one night I was out making the rounds at around 10 o'clock with a very heavy fog and it was all you could do to see the road ahead. There was a point when I thought Cindy was going to have a heart attack because she thought I was driving over the edge of the road into a bottomless pit, ( oh the fun you can have at night up here).

Visit with the family !

It’s the first week of February and I realized that I have not posted the pictures of Aaron, Laura, Gavin, and David’s’ visit. David flew down on the 7th of January and Aaron and family came on the 8th after they both ran in the Disney marathon. Aaron ran the half on Saturday and Laura ran the full on Sunday. We had a great visit with everyone and enjoyed the bountiful sunshine and warm weather together.

Grandpa and Grandma got the joy of keeping Gavin with us during the night while they were here. We sure enjoyed all of them together here and had a wonderful time together. This was the first time in a little of a year and half that both of the boys and us were together.

There wasn’t a whole lot of activity planned other than going to the beach, laying around the pool and taking it easy. We could not believe how much Gavin had changed from when we were with him in September and now. The little tyke is crawling all over the place ( and in our rv ) that isn’t much, but he sure knew how to keep us on our toes. The only issue we had with the stay was it went way too fast and Wednesday, the 11th, everyone headed back to their homes. Aaron and Laura drove back to Orlando to catch their flight and we took David back to Tampa airport ( a short 20 minute drive). All in all it was a memorable time we had to spend with all of them.