York, PA and Bethany Beach, DE

We left Somerset, PA Sunday afternoon and had decided to change our route to York, PA instead of Harrisburg since the Wal Mart in York had better access to eating joints and such, which is imperative when spending the night in a parking lot.

The camera was charged up, so I took some pictures of the campground as we left:

And once again, we were on the road back to Somerset to get back on the interstate, so this is some of what we saw:

The cemetery above was just so pretty.  There were flower bouquets on every grave and there were hundreds of little American flags.  The picture doesn't give it justice, but it was the best I could do at the time.

Then we were travelling thru Somerset once again and I didn't miss the opportunity to record what I could of this beautiful little town. 

One of my favorite things is beautiful old courthouses and Somerset certainly has one.

We spotted this character outside a Dairy Queen:

And I don't have a clue what this was about, but impressive none the less:

And when I saw this sign, it reminded me that you never really get that far from home.  Nothing like a Texas burger way off in Pennsylvania, right?

Then it was time to get back on the interstate....

Once again on the road, I was able to get this shot of the courthouse from a distance....

Okay, we're making tracks now, cruising down the road, and witnessing some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen.  And we passed through four tunnels along the way.  I'll shut up and just let the pictures do the talking, but first, I want to know what this thing is in the first picture.  We've been seeing them for a couple of days and I'm assuming they are some kind of silo, but don't have a clue really.  Looks like a huge boob to me, lol.  Anybody want to enlighten me?

We travelled mile after mile with this beauty outside our windshield, the windows down, and this brilliant blue sky above:

Ya can't beat that, now can ya?

We arrived at Walmart in York, settled in for the night and were up and outta there around nine yesterday morning.  We wound our way through two lane roads at 45 miles an hour for quite a while, passing Amish shops and businesses along the way.  And more of those houses that just look so neat and welcoming.

We passed by beautiful farm land and in a couple of those fields, stood horses hooked to farm implements.  I loved it!  And all of a sudden, we were in Delaware....wooohooo!!  Makin tracks, I tell ya!

At this point, we were around a hundred miles of our final destination.  The trees started to become shorter and the land gradually flattened as we went.  This was a permanent fixture in my lap at this time:

We were heading toward Dover and the GPS was tracking, but sweet "Maybelle" wasn't saying a word.  I dunno....maybe we argued with her one too many times or told her to shut up one too many times.  Or maybe she had PMS or something.  Napping maybe?  Who knows, but by this time, the route was elementary....just follow route 1 to our destination.  We stopped in Dover and I grabbed a burger while DeWayne took his "after lunch" walk in a big parking lot.  Back on the road, I kept the camera handy as we got closer and closer to Bethany.  We passed through Rehoboth and it wasn't hard to figure out that this is a beach town.

We were both shocked to see something we haven't seen in years and didn't think existed anymore:

Yes, that's a real, honest to Pete, GULF station.  Proof they are still around....just not back home.

For those of you that don't know already, I've been communicating with Snookie Quinn, whose blog I began reading a couple of months ago.  She and Bob have been full-timing for three and a half years and have been to many wonderful places.  The Quinn's Awesome Journey

She has been very helpful and is just the nicest person!  Anyway, she and Bob are workamping at an RV park about 4 miles from Bethany Beach, so I took a picture of where they were as we crossed the bridge and passed them on the road:

Now, that's literally a sea of RV's down there!  Just on down the road, we watched for the landmark that would alert us to our destination:  a helicopter suspended in mid-air.  We found it with no problem and I took a picture, but it was just a blur, so I'll have to get another one later on. 

And we were FINALLY here....BETHANY BEACH TRAINING CENTER!

DeWayne entered the gate code and we were now officially "home" for the next three weeks.  And what a beautiful place.  Everything is neat and clean and oh so quiet!  There is only one other RV here and being in a secure facility, we're looking forward to peace and quiet for quite a while!  There is a walking track right in front of the RV and the beach is about a hundred yards away.

I called Snookie as we were pulling into our space and she promised to come over later.  So we got everything set up and I managed to get the floors vacuumed after a week of dirt, dead grass and pebbles from all the places we've been.  The table had to be repaired which wasn't hard and a water hose came apart, which was also an easy fix.  We just had everything in order when I heard a diesel truck outside and knew I was finally about to meet my friend Snookie!  And she was everything I knew she would be....friendly and smiling, full of helpful information and a warm welcome to us newbies.  We walked out on the dock and got some pictures.  Here she is...Snookie herself!

Snookie and Me:

Snookie and DeWayne:

We hung around on the dock for a while, then at the picnic table for a while, then since the temperature was dropping, we moved in to the RV for a while, all the time visiting with Snookie, getting information about the area, and making plans for a tour of Rehoboth, day trips to various places and sampling the local fare.  She has already told us about the sub shop just around the corner.  They apparently have one that has freshly smoked turkey, dressing and cranberry sauce that I'm dying to try!  Yummm! 

So we had a wonderful evening visiting with Snookie who promised to bring Bob along the next time.  We listened to music and played on the computers for a while after she left and was determined to catch up on the blog before I went to bed, but all of a sudden, I couldn't keep my eyes open another minute.  We both went to bed and slept like logs all night.  So I'm doing my "catching up" this morning as we sit here with sun shining, the windows open and a great ocean breeze wafting through.  Time to get my shower so we can get out and about.  We need groceries and I need to do some laundry too, so I'll shut up for now.  I'll be taking more pictures of our surroundings today and will post later.

Here is a picture of "Junior", the sweetest Schnauzer in the world.  I miss you, Junior!

Whew!  That's enough for now.  I'll post again soon, so until then.....HAPPY TRAILS!!!!

Columbus, OH and Somerset, PA

This is gonna be a long one, folks. So get you a cup of coffee, a pepsi, or whatever your beverage of choice and settle in for quite a read.



Friday, June 4th:  We took our time yesterday morning at Crawfordsville and didn’t have any set time to get out of bed and it felt really good to just keep rolling over and falling back to sleep for a while. The travel goal was 179 miles for the day. We had our breakfast, took our showers, put things away, dumped the trash, washed the dishes, secured all the moveable objects, pulled in the slides, unhooked all the hoses and wires, hooked up to the truck and began another happy day of travel……well, so we thought.



Leaving the RV park, we decided we should plug our new destination into the TomTom, but to no avail. The road leaving the RV park was ending and DeWayne had to know if he should turn left or right. Well…..it came down to an educated guess on his part that turned out okay. By this time, we were heading through Crawfordsville toward the interstate and I was still trying to get a signal on the GPS. After a few minutes, the thing finally registered a satellite, but I STILL couldn’t get the new destination entered. The keypad on the screen had disappeared and in the bottom left corner it said “safety lock enabled”. We passed the wretched thing back and forth between us trying to get it to a point that we could plug in a new address. Well…..NOTHING was working and sweet “Maybelle” kept instructing us to “turn around”. This went on for a while…..til we gave up. Then one or the other of us would grab the thing and try again.



Before I knew it, we were going through Indianapolis and the roads were TERRIBLE! Not to mention all the construction going on. DeWayne finally got the GPS to a screen that would let us put in the town, so he handed it to me and told me to find Springfield, Ohio so we could plug in the address to the Wal Mart we originally planned to stay at tonight. There were several (understatement) selections for Springfield but each had a suburb (I’m assuming) name after it and we had no clue which to pick. I finally just selected one and when I was supposed to select a street, the street we needed wasn’t listed. And since the keypad function wasn’t working, it was a process of scrolling through hundreds of street names in alphabetical order down to the T’s for Tuttle, only to find it wasn’t on the list. Okay……I’m frustrated at this point.



So DeWayne wanted me to call this Wal Mart to see if they could help us with all those strange names. Now before I go on, let me describe the conditions inside the truck during this time:  When I need to look something up on the net, I have the laptop in my lap, of course. And since I despise the little touchpad thingy, I always have a mouse plugged into the computer and my mouse pad to use. This has to ride on top of the keyboard since there is no other place to put it and under normal circumstances, it works out fairly well. Sometimes if we hit a bump, the mouse will fall into the pocket of the passenger side door and I have to retrieve the silly thing. But when we are on a bad stretch of road, it’s difficult to even keep the computer in my lap, let alone keep the mouse from flying all over the place. What’s more, if I need to actually type something, I have to move the mouse and pad to do so, which leads to holding the mouse pad in my teeth at times while I unsuccessfully try to park the mouse out of the way, which is even more unruly when the mouse pad is gone.


And on a rough road, anyone that’s pulled a fifth wheel knows about the trailer bouncing behind you and causing (what I call) the “slow whiplash action” where the truck doesn’t just bounce up and down, but rocks from front to back.



Here is a picture of computer, pad and mouse, along with the Verizon gizmo that I have for internet access and the GPS system.

The GPS rides comfortably over by DeWayne in the console and the Verizon gizmo will ride in the cubby hole in the dash but sometimes doesn’t get a good signal that way, so I have a habit of tucking one end of it under my leg in the seat, which normally works okay.



Now, back to the fiasco. I now had all this equipment in my lap, plus my cell phone so that I could try and contact wally world. When I opened the phone, I noticed I had missed a call from my Dr’s office, so I was concerned about getting a chance to call them back. I had called them a WEEK AGO to get a new hormone pill called in for me and they hadn’t done it yet and I’m out of what works for me. When it concerns hormones, one doesn’t mess around. Know what I mean, ladies? Anyway, after a useless phone call to wally world, I tried to find information on the Wal Mart store locator on the internet. The truck was bouncing and rocking so hard that the mouse was flying all over the place, the cell phone and the Verizon gizmo flew under the seat and out of my reach, I was trying to type in a city and town on the website, but I couldn’t keep the mouse still enough to even click on the right blank to fill in and when I managed to get it done, I would have to move the mouse and pad, which were flying everywhere, in order to type in the blank. But then the mouse would do it’s own thing as it banged around and dangled precariously, so that the curser would no longer be in the blank when I tried to type. So I would go through the process of retrieving all this stuff to get back in the appropriate location on the screen just to have it happen again. During this time, DeWayne thought he had the GPS halfway back on track and handed it to me to, once again, plug in the address which was (once again) futile. And did I mention I was referring to both the road atlas and our printed yahoo travel directions during this time, as well? Needless to say, the camera didn't come out of it's case.  How do you spell CHAOS????

We finally abandoned the GPS as hopeless and I started trying to find something on the internet (between bumps) to explain the problems we were having with it. Turns out that the “safety lock enabled” means that you can’t change anything on it while you are moving down the highway and it decides to go into this mode all by itself whenever it feels like it. Apparently, from what I read, this is a common problem with these particular models and the fix is to stop completely and enter the information while sitting still.


So we did……and guess what?......it worked.



I need a hormone pill just thinking about it again. But oddly, what kept going through my mind was what my friend LaSonya could do with the situation in one of her wonderful cartoons.  Whadaya say, Sonya?  Are you up to the challenge? 

Most folks that know me will say I'm not the most patient person in the world and being attention deficit doesn't help when I'm in a stressful situation, so after things calmed somewhat, I still had smoke coming out my ears and scowling in my corner of the cab, but I slowly began to mellow out.   We found a Wal Mart parking lot to pull into somewhere along the road so DeWayne could do his 45 minute walk (and escape that crazy woman in his truck), then proceeded down the road, once again in peace.  :)  We abandoned the Springfield idea and decided to drive on to Columbus for the night. 

The GPS was set, the cell phone and internet gizmo retrieved from under the seat, the computer abandoned, and I finally reached for the camera about the time we passed into Ohio.

Woohooo!  Another state to experience!  It wasn't long before traffic virtually stopped and crawled for miles.  Jason, this was the picture I took when we were on the phone with you:

We finally crawled past two cars in the median with a patol car alongside with lights flashing and that was it, we thought.  But then this:

Sure enough, there was a wreck on up the road.

We saw one person injured and hope that was all.  The traffic picked up and we were once again rolling down the road at a decent speed toward Columbus.  Not only did we some great scenery, but also some beautiful thunderheads.  I've always been fascinated with clouds and I had to get pictures.

The last picture of the clouds is my favorite.  This cloud hovered around us all the way to Columbus, where we finally pulled into our "home" for the night, had our supper and crashed.

Saturday, June 5th:  We got up fairly early, had our breakfast, etc., and hit the road again this morning at 9:00, ready to tackle another day....a better day!  I managed to get a shot of the Columbus skyline.

We were witnessing some great scenery, but the clouds just kept getting darker, so I managed a couple more good pictures before the the skies opened up.

We crossed the Ohio River and then into West Virginia, but it's hard to read through the rain on the windshield.

Then before we knew it, we were in Pennsylvania

and the rain finally let up to reveal some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen.

About this time, I noticed that the battery was dying on the camera, so I had to give it a rest so that I could get a picture of the RV park when we arrived.  We turned north in Somerset, PA toward the park and I sounded like a kid in a candy store!  What a beautiful town and countryside that we passed through.  I'm in love with Somerset, PA!  Five miles later, we arrived at our destination for the night:

What a pretty place to spend the night.  I have the camera charging to that I can get some pictures of Somerset and the surrounding area tomorrow on our way back to the interstate.  I'd hate to leave this area without recording the scenery.  The homes are all so neat with perfect lawns and I felt like I was passing through a Thomas Kincaid painting. 

We are set up, fed, and settled in for the night with Floyd Cramer playing "Last Date" on the stereo.  We get to take our time tomorrow in leaving since we're only travelling 148 miles and will be utilizing another wal mart parking lot in Harrisburg, PA which will be our last night before we arrive at Bethany Beach, Delaware.  Whew!  I'm ready to stay put for a while and can't think of a better place than the beach, can you?  At least we don't have to be concerned about tar balls like those on the gulf coast.  What a disaster!

Okay, this post has gone on long enough and you're probably as tired of as I am, so I'll shut up for now and get this posted.

Let me see if I can remember which puppy pictures I haven't posted yet.......aha!  Here ya go:

That's all folks!  Tune in again tomorrow (or the next day...or the next) for another episode in our travelling adventures.  In the meantime, HAPPY TRAILS!

Crawfordsvville, Indiana

Okay, let me see if I can get my 50 something brain to reconstruct from the last post.  I grabbed my cup and headed outside yesterday morning to have my coffee at our picnic table surrounded by nature and fresh morning air, and of course, I took the camera with me. 

I watched the squirrels play and listened to the birds for a few minutes before it was time to get busy with the laundry so we could get back on the road.  We left Cuba around noon and traveled to Effingham, Illinois for our first stay in a Wal Mart parking lot for the night.  We made good time, had a leisurely trip and arrived at our Wal Mart of choice around 5 p.m.  There wasn't much to do since we didn't plan to unhook from the truck or set up, so the steps were unfolded, the slides extended and.........well, that's it.  Since I hadn't slept well at all the previous night and had resorted to taking the dreaded allergy medicine that makes a zombie out of me, I was tired with a capitol T when we arrived.

DeWayne set up the cooling gizmo that he bought for times that we have no A/C for me in the bedroom, put me to bed and made the trip across the parking lot to get provisions.  I had enough of a power nap by the time he returned that I was able (with the help of half a bottle of eye drops) to rally enough to trot off to Cracker Barrel for a good meal with my hubby.  Now, I can count on one hand how many times I've actually eaten anything at Cracker Barrel besides breakfast, cuz in my mind, that's what Cracker Barrel is for  - breakfast - any time of day.  I'm not much on pancakes and never have been, but I'd almost fight a bear for one of their pancakes with maple syrup.  Yummy!  Okay, I'm chasing rabbits here, I know.  Back to the subject, after looking at their newly designed menu with the enticing pictures, I abandoned the breakfast idea and chose their shrimp and grilled catfish.  We (or I, rather) waddled back to the RV, full as a tick.  DeWayne, however, walks three times a day, so the treck back to wally world was a "walk in the park" for him.  And he's always in "power walk" mode, so I get a good workout just trying to keep up. 

He deposited me safely back to the RV so I could take the laptop to the truck and do my farming, facebooking and emailing while he did his 45 minute walk around the parking lot.  By the time we were ready to turn in for the night, we were virtually surrounded by trucks and RV's, all with the same idea.  I had been concerned that I would feel a tad "exposed" in a parking lot, but I didn't have that feeling at all, especially with all the "company" we had around us.  It did occur to me when I stepped out of the shower that I was actually naked in a wal mart parking lot, which would have been very disconcerting if I hadn't been safely behind closed doors.  lol

After breakfast this morning, we were off and running again and heading east toward Indiana.  We passed through St. Louis and I tried to get some pictures of the arch as DeWayne maneuvered thru the traffic.

And then we were crossing the mighty Mississippi:

And before we knew it, we were in Indiana.  I kept looking for the "Welcome to Indiana" sign and had given up when all of a sudden.....there it was!  I grabbed the camera, pointed, shot and this is what I got:

I didn't have time to account for the delay of the the camera after I push the button, so I got the trees BEHIND the sign.  But take my word for it, folks.....we saw that sign, I promise.

The countryside was just beautiful and the further east we drove, the better it got. 

And we saw mile after mile of young corn crops

We turned north toward Crawfordsville and passed thru Greencastle and I fell in love.  We ooo'd and awww'd over house after house with the neatly mowed lawns and landscaping galore.  I gotta hand it to the folks here in Indiana.  They seem to take great pride in the beauty and upkeep of their homes and community.  I felt like we were passing through Mayberry.

Please pardon the reflection of the "dashboard junk" in the windsheild.

We stopped at Wal Mart in Crawfordsville for more groceries then drove the remaining three miles to our destination for the night.

Sugar Creek Campground.  I was impressed with the neatness of the grounds around this sign and was hoping the RV park would prove to be as pretty.  I wasn't disappointed!  It's a beautiful place.

The park and playground area:

And this gorgeous pond:

Our place for the night:

I had yet another wonderful nap after we got set up and settled in, then cooked butterfly pork chops, and opened a can of Bush's grillin beans for our supper.

So here we sit with full bellies, "Afternoon Delight" is playing on the stereo, me with my puter, DeWayne on the exer-cycle reading his book and the world is good.  I'm loving our new lifestyle and can't wait to see what's in store for us tomorrow.  So stay tuned as we "breeze" on down the road and I'll leave you a picture of "Prissy" who I miss so much:

She was my "baby girl" and spoiled rotten.  She and Buster made such beautiful puppies!

That's all folks!  So until tomorrow......

HAPPY TRAILS!!!