Tag: NC

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RV trip, TX and beyond…

This post will hardly capture everything that’s happened over the last few crazy weeks, but it’ll have to do.

At the beginning of March, we revisited a campground in Medina Lake TX. This was the place with all the tame deer. I remember thinking it was cool the way they’d walk right up to you, but this year I thought I’d try to restore a healthy fear of human predators:

The whole reason we even went back to this area was for the local dentist, Dr. Martin in Lakehills TX. It is surprisingly hard to find a dentist who is willing to simply clean a family’s teeth, but Dr. Martin took care of us again (she filled a cavity for Carrie last year.)

We finally made it to downtown Austin on Wednesday the 6th. The campground had messed up our reservation and didn’t have a camping spot available until the next day (they comped us a free bookdocking spot right outside the office for the night.)

While in Austin, it was Emily’s turn to take her hard-saved money to the Apple store to pick up a new iPod:

It was great to be back in Austin for my 3rd SXSW.

It was a week of crazy days:

…and crazy nights. I rode Amy’s bike into the evening fray one night just to gawk; I was so grateful to be able to go “home” after a long day and avoid the nightlife.

We discovered (and fell in love with) a real Austin treat: breakfast tacos!

After a week in Austin, we headed to Dallas. Carrie got to visit an old (boy)friend from her elementary school days, and Emily got to do some plane-spotting at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport:

On our way to Mississippi, we stopped in Arkansas to visit Amy’s Aunt Dorotha and Uncle Clennis.

We arrived in Tupelo MS last week and camped at an RV park within walking distance from Amy’s grandmother.

Amy was really glad to be able to spend so much time with her grandmother who we don’t get to see enough. Here are my girls, Amy, Amy’s grandmother, and Amy’s aunt Genia:

While in Tupelo, I made a pilgrimage to Tombigbee State Park. My sister and I went to a summer camp there a couple times when we were kids. I was amazed at how little it had changed since 1987.

We stopped for a night in Atlanta Georgia to catch up with our old friends Kevin and Julie, formerly from Indianapolis.

These are just a few of the states we’ve driven through recently. There might have been others.

We’re now camped again in my sister’s driveway in Greensboro NC (we spent about 5 weeks here in the Fall). It’s starting feel like a 2nd home here.

We’ll be here for the rest of the week, then it’s off to Williamsburg VA…the start of some serious US history. 🙂

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RV trip: North Carolina, week 2

While making our way to the Outer Banks in NC, we noticed what looked like litter on the sides of the roads everywhere. Turns out it was just cotton. Everywhere.

We rolled in late on Monday night to discover that our targeted campground was closed for the season. The owner let us boondock on an empty patch of grass for the night (we found an open and much nicer campground down the road the next day).

The Outer Banks has some of the best mobile internet of the trip. Wicked fast (for me, anyway):

Amy and the girls were eager to see an ocean for the first time since being in San Diego:

A big side trip for us was seeing the Wright Brother’s museum at Kitty Hawk. This was an important stop because of Emily’s interest in airplanes, but also because the girls have been studying and reading historical fiction about the Wright Brothers.

A park ranger gave us an informative presentation in front of a Wright Flyer replica. Emily correctly answered all of his questions.

The site of the Wright’s successful flight (and Emily’s unsuccessful flight):

On Thursday, Amy and the girls took a field trip to Corolla to see the wild horses. Their tour guide April drove them down the sandy roads to find the horses. The Scion would have never made it over the dunes and down the beach!

There are over 100 Spanish mustangs that live in this area, roaming freely in the marshes and on the dunes.

The horses prefer to travel along the cleared roadways created by the 4-wheel drive vehicles.

This is the Bodie Island lighthouse on the Outer Banks. Just south of here, the road continues to be passable only to 4-wheel-drives after it was washed out by Hurricane Sandy. We are back to wanting a jeep.

It’s a Christmas wonderland in the RV. Carrie strung up lights, and Amy, Em and Nat made paper snowflakes and garland:

Amy had to have some fresh-out-of-water-still-flopping-around sea food, so we had a rare and enjoyable dinner out on Friday night:

Amy and I discovered that the little hill in the middle of our campground is actually a creepy-cool old cemetery, so that’s a first.

Our last couple of days in the Outer Banks were pretty foggy. Everything is very damp, all of the time:

On Saturday, we hit the road and headed south. Along the way we stopped at the site of the “lost colony” of Roanoke Island. It’s clearly the off season…the park ranger visibly reacted with delight to us walking into the otherwise empty visitor center.

I always thought the Thanksgiving pilgrims were the first English folks to try to make a go of the “new world.” Not so.  The Virginia Colony was an English settlement on Roanoke Island in 1584. They ran into hard times, sent their leader back to England for provisions. By the time he got back 3 YEARS LATER, everyone was gone. No one knows what fate befell them, hence the name “lost colony.” These mounds are one of the few things that indicate anyone was ever here. Sad story.

I’m loving these gas prices. $3.15/gallon with my spiffy Flying J card. Yesterday we saw a couple places with $3.03 gas. When one gets only 8 miles per gallon and one’s tank is 65 gallons, this is a significant cost savings.

We slummed out in the Lumberton, NC Walmart parking lot on Saturday night:

We spent most of Sunday morning traveling before arriving at James Island County Campground in Charleston, SC. It’s so warm here. It smells like summer.

It was nice to see my kids back to playing outside in the dirt.

There is a major Christmas light display going on at the park we’re staying at, so we spent some time last night walking around checking it all out.

The lights were really cool, but it was a strange sensation strolling through a “winter wonderland” of christmas lights while wearing shorts.

This campground is a little nicer than what we’re used to, and at $40/night it’s a little pricier than what we’re used to. But we’ll enjoy our time here before continuing southward this weekend.

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RV trip: North Carolina

Before leaving Greensboro at the end of last week, we were visited a couple times by Greensboro News & Record columnist Jeri Rowe. He did a story on our trip which ran in yesterday’s Sunday paper.

Amy with her Greensboro running buddies after their last run together. Amy really enjoyed getting connected with such a fun group of fellow early-morning runners.

Just like getting into my sister’s driveway, getting out was a little tricky. Amy backed up the RV while my brother-in-law Chris and I rode up top to manage the low-hanging branches:

Once out in the street, we were able to finish packing, hook up the car and get pointed in the right direction:

Our sad goodbyes:

Emily left a dozen or so strategically-placed mementos around the house:

It was dark by the time we got to my former-college-roommate Justin and his wife Tina’s house/farm on Thursday evening (here’s the view the next morning:)

Justin and Tina were at work and their 4 kids were at school all day Friday, so we made ourselves at home and enjoyed their very spacious house:

That evening, we suited up for some coon hunting. Yes, I said coon hunting.

Not pictured above is Stanley, Justin’s Treeing Walker Coonhound who is sort of the star of the show. It works like this: you take Stanley into the woods, release him from his leash, and after a little while Stanley’s mournful howls reverberate through the woods indicating he has found the scent of a raccoon. When Stanley locates and trees said raccoon, he does what he has been bred to do: totally flip out. We didn’t get a ‘coon this night, and a subsequent effort the following evening came up ‘coon-less, but I at least got to see Stanley do his thing, and it was very impressive. Here’s the sound of Stanley barking up the tree of where a raccoon had recently been: Stanley-treeing-walker-hound (mp3)

My girls enjoyed being around the animals:

On Saturday morning, this calf got it’s head stuck in the rungs of a fence, and it took lubricating her neck with soap to get her free.

…Natalie got to help wash off the soap:

Justin took the time to give Natalie a few pointers on how to show farm animals in front of judges:

We all took a turn walking the calf:

Of course, we made time for some shootin’:

Emily about to snipe a pumpkin:

The only thing more awesome than Amy is Amy with a 12-gauge shotgun:

Emily can now say she shot a 20-gauge shotgun:

The effects of administering some shotgun justice from ~4 feet away:

Just hanging out that evening:

Justin has 7 pregnant cows in his field, so we were hoping to witness the birth of a calf. The earliest birth from this group, however, won’t likely happen until next week. Justin promised to send us some video.

[UPDATE 12/6/2012: Justin called to let us know that this calf was born this morning. He named it Natalie.]

We camped one more night in Justin and Tina’s driveway last night and did work and school today at their house. Now we’re heading to the Outer Banks of NC for the rest of the week.

We’re looking forward to seeing the ocean again!

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RV trip, Summer/Fall recap

It’s been quite a while, and it’s time to dust off the ol’ blog with an update. Here’s what we’ve been up to for the last few months…

Shortly after arriving back in Indy after our roughly-year-long RV trip, we headed off to the Arnold family reunion in Thornville, Ohio:

Our camping spot was perfect: a vacant lot in my Uncle Mark’s neighborhood.

A couple days after that, we dropped Carrie and Natalie off at a week-long farm camp in the Amish country of northeast Ohio. It was Carrie’s second time and Natalie’s first time at “Camp Manure” (not really its name; that’s just what we call it.)

Back in Indy, my mom’s neighbor unfortunately took issue with us living in the RV behind their house, so we ended up relocating the RV and moving in with my mom. One thing we can all agree on, however, is the awesomeness of my parking job:

Having access to my dad’s woodworking tools allowed me to do an upgrade I’d been itching to do all year: replace the circa 2002, 700 lb. bubble TV with a lightweight, energy efficient LED HDTV:

Emily got in three flights courtesy of the Young Eagles program we learned about while in Osh Kosh, WI. Here she is manning the controls during a flight in August:

While at home, Amy and the girls did a study of our Amish family ancestry and culture, which included a trip to Northern Indiana. While there, they were invited to visit my mom’s cousin and their dairy farm.

Amy and the girls enjoyed this special field trip with my mom and getting to meet new cousins.

Remember how scratched and dented the front of our poor Scion got? Well, after being back in Indy for just a couple days, someone rear-ended it while it was parked and scraped up the back. But then a miracle happened one early August morn: a tree limb fell on the hood and busted it all up:

The homeowner who owned the tree reimbursed us for the repairs to the front, and the body shop accidentally damaged the back. So we got a free new front:

…and a free new back! 🙂

After staying with my mom in Indy for about a month, we moved on to Amy’s parents’ house in Ohio. An early highlight was spending a day at a water park that Uncle Clint manages:

Amy’s mom had recently acquired several chickens, so we enjoyed many farm-fresh eggs. Emily helped name the chickens and really enjoyed taking care of them.

We lived in Amy’s parents’ house instead of the RV while we were there, so that gave me the opportunity to do my most daunting RV project to date: installing an inverter. This inverter takes DC power from our bank of batteries and supplies the outlets with AC power when we are disconnected from an electrical source. It was hard work — I had to rewire much of the electrical system of the RV and install a new breaker panel — but having the internet, TV and any other AC-powered device operable while rolling down the road is simply magical.

One of our side trips while in Ohio was touring the Fleetwood factory in Decatur, IN (our RV is a Fleetwood).

I love seeing how stuff is made, and learning all about how our RV was assembled was particularly interesting.

Carrie turned 13 in October!

We ended up staying 6 wonderful weeks in Ohio with Amy’s parents. The last few days were unfortunately pretty crazy — I had to go back to Indy for a conference, leaving Amy to drive to our next stop in North Carolina by herself. Amy is a very capable RV driver, but it would have been a long and potentially stressful drive. I’m eternally grateful to Amy’s dad for riding along with her. (Thanks John!)

Our first stop in NC was a weekend-long hippy music festival in Asheville called LEAF. For years my sister Shelley has been telling me about how much fun it is (she and her family go twice a year).

Most people tent-camp at this event, but there was a small section for fellow RVers:

The music was good…

…but it was mainly just about being outside and hanging out with friends. Shelley was right — we all had a great time.

After LEAF, we drove to Greensboro and set up camp at the end of my sister’s driveway:

It was fun spending Halloween in Greensboro. Here are my girls with their cousins Caitlin, Cole and Matthew:

Amy, me, my brother-in-law Chris and my sister Shelley ran the Greensboro Zombie Run. It was so much fun!

Amy hit the big 4-0 in August, then it was my turn this month:

A former Woolworth’s store in Greensboro is the site of a notable sit-in during the Civil Rights movement. It’s now a museum that we were eager to check out:

Emily turned 11!

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. It was a full house:

We had a wonderful time with my sister and her family, along with the Stracks from up the street. (This is the same family that we met up with while in Yellowstone several months ago.)

On Friday we took a trip to Hanging Rock for a short hike with all the kids:

It felt so good to be outside, climb up on something high and see a spectacular view again.

This is our last week in Greensboro. As much as I’m eager to get back on the road and start this second chapter of our RV trip, it will be very sad to leave my sister and her family. We’ve really enjoyed our time here.

We head out Thursday to visit my old college roommate who lives in Warrenton, NC, and that will mark the official return to fulltime RV living — and weekly blogging.