Monday, May 11, 2015

Another Day in the LBL

We did some more back country driving in the LBL today.  Here are a few pictures or the roads that we traveled.  We crossed a lot of creeks today.






We stopped at a few more cemeteries with a lot of old markers.  This one was an 18 year old wife. 


We had been reading about some old furnaces here on the property that processed iron ore into iron before and during the early years of the civil war, and finally spotted one today.


We plan on hitting the road again tomorrow morning and will probably be in Missouri tomorrow night.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area

Yesterday we explored part of the Land Between the Lakes, or LBL as it is called here.  The area is about 60 miles long and 10 to 12 miles wide and bounded by two lakes.  There are some paved roads, but since we had the Jeep, we explored several of the back roads and fire roads like the pictures below.





We had packed a lunch, so we enjoyed it in a secluded spot on the lake shore.




There were several old cemeteries scattered throughout the area and we stopped at several of them. The old homemade headstones were very interesting, such as this one that says "murdered". Makes you want to know the rest of the story.



We stopped at this little spring for a bit.





All in all we put a lot of offroad miles on the Jeep and it needed a bath.



Today is Mother's Day, so we are resting at the campground. Janice got a flower and a prayer book at Mass this morning and we had lunch at a barbeque place here in town.


They are predicting thunderstorms for tonight and tomorrow, so we have extended our stay here until Tuesday.


Thursday, May 7, 2015

Catching Up on Pictures

We arrived in Aurora, KY today. We plan to be here until Monday. We are next to the Land Between the Lakes region where we hope to do a little sight seeing during the next few days. I have a little time this afternoon to catch up on posting some pictures. The first one is a picture of the work truck that I drove most days at Ordway.  It was an old military surplus Dodge 4wd that worked well. Behind it is the new maintenance building that was just being completed when we left.


This is the old maintenance building that we started out at most days.



On the property was a old family cemetary that is being maintained by Ordway.




One of the other volunteers there became a good friend of ours. She was a very interesting lady with a big heart. The first two things that you would find out about her was that she was from Cuba and loved plants. We miss her smile and hope to run into her again.


Her two dogs, Molly and Phoebe would always run to greet us and would come over occasionally and come in for a treat.


The road from Florida to Georgia was surrounded with beautiful yellow and purple flowers for miles.


The campground in Albany, GA had an interesting bush with blooms that looked like a brush.




There were a few feathered friends across the road from our camp site.


As soon as Janice started feeding them, the crowd increased!



This one had quite a fancy top knot!



I can't remember if I have posted a picture of the Jeep after we got the rack mounted on it or not, but here it is.


As usual, when we got to Georgia, Mom's yard was beautiful!














 And the creek was peaceful.



Phil and Tristan found a snake in the back yard.


Rosie was determined to bite Mom's ear!


It was good to visit with all of the family again.










As usual, our time seemed too short there, but it was time to move on. The first night on the road we were in Gadsden, AL at the Noccalula Falls campground.  The falls are still beautiful.


And downstream is peaceful.


We suspected that we had a mouse in the motorhome and so we put down some sticky traps. Someone forgot about them and stepped in one this morning. This of course caused much laughter and almost no sympathy from my bride and she had to take pictures and make sure that it was included in the blog.