Sioux City

After our overnight at the Cozy C in Bowling Green, we headed on toward Des Moines. We stopped for lunch with and old friend at Mount Pleasant and had a good visit with her.

Then we traveled on to overnight at the Walmart in Pella, IA. The next morning we drove on to Des Moines and had the oil and transmission fluid changed on the motor home. Later that day we finally arrived at Volunteer Village at Saylorville Lake, our home for the next 2 months.

 I volunteered in natural resources again this year, with much of the time spent on the zero turn mowers. We enjoyed our time there visiting our kids and grandkids there along with a new grandson and volunteer friends.

We drove the Jeep up to Cherokee one weekend and had a celebration of my oldest sister Kathleen's life. We had a lot of good visits with family and enjoyed the weekend. 

My remaining sister and me.

 The time at Saylorville Lake went by much too fast and we were off to Sioux City where another new grandson and his family awaited our arrival.

It is good to spend time here with family and old friends. There are always projects there to keep us busy. One of the big ones this year was new carpet for the motor home. /We weren't sure what we were doing, but we tackled it anyway. We are happy with the way it turned out.

Time passes quickly and we have a little over a week left here before we head out to Michigan to visit our son and his family there.

Bowling Green, MO

We have stopped for the night at the Cozy C Rv Park. We have stayed here many times before. The previous owners had been trying to sell it for a few years and now it’s has new owners. They seem very nice. The husband’s name is Santos. They gave us some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies when we checked in! Yum!

It was very windy on the drive today.

Sikeston, MO

We stopped at Lambert’s RV park in Sikeston, MO yesterday and went to tne 5:00 Mass. we are going to spend an extra night here to have a relaxing Sunday.

Yesterday we stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant on highway 412 near Bells, TN. It was really good food and since I haven’t posted any food pictures for awhile, here is our lunch.

Filled us up with leftovers for later.

We went over to Lambert’s Cafe for supper. They are famous for “throwed rolls”. You order your entree and they they bring around fresh baked rolls that they toss for you to catch. They also bring around apple butter and sorghum to put on the rolls and fried potatoes with onions, macaroni with tomatoes, fried okra.

Carrollton, GA

I started this post almost 2 weeks ago so the first 2 paragraphs were written then in Carrollton, GA

We were originally going to leave Ordway at the end of March, but we decided to stay through Easter Sunday. After weeks of working out details, a man from the Virgin Islands purchased our old Jeep. We stayed a few more days after Easter waiting for his shipping company to make arrangements to pick up the Jeep for shipping to the Virgin Islands. Friday morning we got a phone call that he was on his way. 

We left Ordway after lunch and drove to Tifton, GA. and overnighted at the Wal Mart there. Towing the new Jeep went well, but we found out that our fresh water pump on the motor home had quit. That meant that we had no water for the sinks or toilet while traveling. Picked up some extra bottled water at Wal Mart and we were fine. Saturday, we drove the rest of the way to Little Tallapoosa Part where we stay at Carrollton. We have one of our favorite sites here and will be until a week from this Thursday. We have a new water pump ordered so hopefully we can have water again when we leave.

It is now Friday April 28 and we are overnighting at a Walmart in Corinth, MS. We drove from Carrollton to a Walmart in Gadsden, AL yesterday and from there to here today. We stopped at a little country restaurant on the road for lunch near Cullman, AL called Graves General Store and it was good. Mom liked the chicken and dumplings a lot, so the lady gave here a container of it to tale with her.

Ordway-Swisher

We had some rain and a little wind in Albany and then we headed on to Ordway-Swisher.  The Jeep transmission continued to act up and gradually got worse so we had it towed to a shop in Palatka. Pete, one of the volunteers who lives near here loaned us their spare pickup to drive while ours was in the shop. After a complete transmission overhaul we got it back and it worked for a few days and then started acting up again so we took it back and they fixed it again. It has required so many repairs in the last few years we decided it was time to replace it. We found this 2018 four door and we liked it so it went home with us. We are still trying to sell the old one. 

We are still trying to get used to all of the electronics in it, but so far we like it.

Work here at the station has been mostly the same as last year, Mowing the roads with the tractor, fence removal and repair, moving logs with the grapple tractor, and raking pines. The other Bob got here after New Year's so we are a team again now.  Andy, the station manager who has worked here since the first time we came is leaving for a new job, so we had a combination good bye and Christmas party. The man in the background is Sinjin who is our supervisor this year.

Bob and I has an interesting day last Thursday. We had to deliver the tour trailer over to the Austin Carey unit of the University and we had some extra time there to have lunch and tour the exhibits. Most of the exhibits are telling the story of the history of tapping pines for turpentine and distilling it. Of course they needed barrels for shipping the final products (turpentine and rosin). So barrels were made near the processing plants.

A press to compress the staves together to put the hoops on.

Some of the tools used to make barrels.

Some of the tools used to tap the pine trees.

One of the wagons used to haul the sap from the trees.

A reproduction of a turpentine still.

Tools and containers for collecting sap for turpentine.

Some of the pots and containers for collecting sap. The clay pots in the top row are called Herty Pots

We spent this past weekend with our friends and fellow volunteer Bob and Pam Taylor at their home in Titusville, FL. We had a great time sight seeing and playing games with them. We hope to go back again for an air boat ride while we are here.

 

An alligator and a turtle sunning themselves on a rock together.

Albany, GA

We had to leave the campground at Carrollton yesterday because of their two week limit. We had planned to overnight at Tifton, GA and the drive to Ordway-Swisher today but since Florida is having high winds and heavy rain from hurricane Nicole, we stopped last night at the Albany RV park in Albany, GA. We will stay here until Saturday. We have overnighted here before. Today is windy and rainy here from the edge of the hurricane. Nice to not be trying to drive in it.

Gadsden and Carrollton

We overnighted at a Walmart in Gadsden Saturday night and then moved to Noccalula Falls on Sunday.

We parked in a parking lot there and then went to Mass before checking in at 1:00. 

The falls were just a trickle compared to other times when we were there.

We enjoyed a few days there with Janice’s sister and her husband and then moved on to Little Tallapoosa park near Carrollton on Wednesday. The weather here has been beautiful and the trees are colorful. 

The Jeep has started to have some problems shifting into the highest gear intermittently but we hope to get by until we get to Florida next week.

My oldest sister, Kathleen passed away on Monday so I am trying to accept the fact that she is gone. She was a great cook and we always looked forward to visiting her when we were in North Dakota.