April 9th, the Alpha & Omega

Seven years! This is how long Cindy and I were "On The Road Again". We officially called it quits this past winter. We ended up buying a condo in Springfield, Ohio, close to a reservoir for fishing and one hour away from our youngest son and his family and only 2-3 hours from the rest of our family ( with the exception of Randy and Aaron, who live way out in Gods country) We took our "home on wheels" to Florida in November and set it up on a site, told the manager to anchor it down permanently, took the big Dodge truck and traded it for a Dodge minivan. Yes I try and buy what I built.

The past seven years has  been nothing short of fantastic. We have been so blessed to be able to do the things we have done and to meet the wonderful people we have met. We have seen so much of this beautiful country we live in and there is still so much to see but we are content with the accomplishments we have made. So much has changed in our lives since we left on April 9th, 2009. We sold a house we were in for 31 years of our life together. We left in 2009 with  no grandchildren from our two sons only to end this journey with 5 new ones as of April 9th, 2016.

 As I reflect back on the past seven years there are so many people I want to thank for making it a most enjoyable trip. From our sons who thought we might be a little crazy to live life in a space less than 300 sq ft, to Cindy's father who gave us his blessing when we ask him about leaving and living on the road, ( although he had no idea it would have been 7 years ), to all of our family ( who I know thought we were crazy ) but still kept us in their thoughts and prayers, to the good Lord above that kept us safe during our over 20,000 miles of driving around in his beautiful country, to last but not least my wife, best friend, fishing buddy, co-pilot Cindy. How many women out there would agree to leave their home, family, friends to live in a RV for 7 years, without her none of this would have possible.

So where does life take us now, who knows. We now have the time to visit family more as we are not committed to working anywhere, more time for fishing, seeing parts of this country we have not seen yet, or maybe just sitting around and doing absolutely nothing but enjoying a cold one. Because now once again I have officially RETIRED!

 The last time I entered anything into the blog was a long time ago, actually we were in Mississippi ( Oct 2012 ) working at a campground. We finished the job and headed to Vero Beach Florida to do a short term retail job in a mall. This was something we have never tried before so it was a whole new experience for us. We ran a kiosk in the mall selling sport related items for the Christmas season. The job lasted about 7 weeks then it was time to move on. We ended up working the rest of the winter months at a very small county park just south of Tallahassee, Florida. Spring arrived and it was time to head north to visit family and friends.

Our son Aaron and his wife Laura, who lives up in Minnesota were expecting their second child (April 2013), so grandpa and grandma headed to visit them and wait for the arrival of the new one. Unfortunately the baby was late for his arrival and we had to head back to Indiana to start our summer job in the Shipshewana area. Guess what, a week after we left the little guy decided it was time to make his entrance into this world. We were not there for his birth but they did make a trip down to visit us in May and our other son David and his girlfriend came from Ohio so we all were able to be together for a few days.

Let me back up just a little to fill you in on our decision to come to Indiana and work. After spend 4 years on the road I just felt a need to come back to Indiana and maybe be a little closer to our family. I wasn’t sure why but sometimes you get this feeling in your gut and for whatever reason you go with it. This is what led us to come back to Indiana. Like I said at this point we had been on the road for 4 years and up to this point everything had worked out great for us, we had been able to see our family and friends between jobs and all went well. 

We started working at our new job in April, 2013 and in June Cindy’s father ended up in the hospital and my son was involved in an industrial accident where he works, he got his right hand into a machine press and ended up crushing and breaking some bones, thankfully he did not lose it. We were only a little over 2 hours away from both of them (they both happened close together) so we were able to drive back and forth to Indianapolis to the hospital to visit with them. I guess there was a reason I felt the urge to come back to Indiana to work, we could have been a whole lot farther away than the 2 hours that we were so all worked out well. Cindy’s father recovered and Jims hand is still in the process of healing.

While working in Indiana, our house, which had been on the market for over a year+, sold and it was time to empty out what was left and decide where our journey would lead us next. I had been living there for 40 years and 32 with Cindy, and we raised 4 boys there, so needless to say it was a very emotional part of our lives, leaving a place that had been our whole life, so many memories both good and bad. I guess it was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, saying goodbye to the place, but also knowing something better would be out there for us. 

We decided after finishing our job that we were going to take a break and not work for the winter, we wanted to be able to visit some southern states and think about trying to find a place we would like to call home. It makes it so hard when our kids are located in Ohio, Indiana, Colorado and Minnesota to be able to locate in a central place so we can visit them. (consider yourself blessed if your children are close by) So for the winter of 2013/2014 we became “official snowbirds” and ended up spending time in Texas, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee. We are currently taking this summer and visiting family and friends. We are also keeping our eyes open to any possibilities of finding a place to call home (at least for the summer months). Our son and his wife in Minnesota are expecting a new arrival in June ( #3) and our son in Columbus, Ohio and his fiancee Shawna  are getting married in August, so as you can see we have a very busy summer laid out for us. After all of this we will be heading back to Florida where we will work at an rv park for the winter.

This is the end of July and we need to add some updates. Aaron and Laura have their 3^rd child now, we were blessed with a little girl, Savannah, born on June 7^th . On a much somber note Cindy’s father passed away on June 28^th. This past year has been a year of ups and downs, happy & sad but we have survived it all. The passing away of Cindys father was a unexpected sad time for us but it was also a happy time in that I got to see all 4 of the boys together at the same time, something I did not ever expect to happen since the great amount of distance between them. As I finish this up we are getting ready for a wedding next weekend, an opportunity to see all of the kids together except Randy and his family, then it will be time to enjoy what is left of the summer and start planning our trip back to Florida.

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.

December 2011

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is only 10 days away, no snowy, cold, wet miserable weather upon us. I will have to say it sure is different hanging lights on palm trees instead of pine trees. The people in the park have all of their lights and displays set up, so we have decided to enjoy theirs instead of decorating the rv. We have a very limited number of decorations ( zero) stored away so why not look at the ones around us.

We have been enjoying the time here and the sightseeing we have done. We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Aaron, Laura , and Gavin In January. We get to see him sometimes when we talk with them through the video camera, so it’s nice that way, but not like holding him. They will get to spend a few days with us then back to Wisconsin they go.

We are in the process of looking for our next job for the upcoming summer. We’re thinking of staying here in the south somewhere around North or South Carolina, but nothing is set just yet. We have 2 places we are talking with that want us to work for them, we just haven’t committed yet. A lot of things can change between now and April but we still like to have our summer job lined up before the first of the year. Cindy and I have been doing a little "beach combing" before the crowds get here. You'll see some of our finds, sand dollar, star fish, something that looks like a baby squid or octopus attached to a shell, some very rough water due to a cold front that blew through, beautiful sunsets, and numerous other things.There is nothing more relaxing than walking on the beach (when no one is there) and just listening to the sounds of the gulf.

We want to send our love to each and everyone of you and wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Remember to double click the slideshow for a full view of the pictures!!