Tryin to Stay in Touch

What a Bummer Blog Site

I have been trying for several days to update my posts and Blogger.com no longer supports my Blogs - now +Google does. What a pain!
Anyhow - now after setting this all up and getting aggrevated I am not in the mood to post : (

Before I quit - quick story about the photo. Jim Newton a developer who was developing Edison Estates (directly across the street from Thomas Edison's Winter Home in Ft Myers) made the original statue with the greek female nude from the waste up. Mrs Edison got upset and they had to collect marble dust and add it to the statue to cover the breasts. Today that material is wearing off - way to go Jimmy!

Learning the Road

Hello Friends and Family:

We left Charleston on the 20th of March. Pat had found a campsite in Brunswick, GA and we booked for 10 days. However, when we got underway and I asked for the address for the Garmin and found that the campsite was another 200 miles away in White Springs, FL. Result; instead of an 2 and a half hour drive it wound up being a 6 hour drive and we didn't arrive until 8 pm. Quite dark!
Driving up to the campgrounds we saw a brand new privacy fence at least 10-12 feet tall all the way around the park. Interesting we thought. The site we were given was very rustic and not that desirable but what the heck I thought. The park was full of old trailers with green mold on them and a lot of them you could tell were there for the long term since most had attached decks and huge wood piles, lots of plants and "junk" around their sites.
In the morning we ran into a couple from Brooklyn who informed us; "Watch out for a lot of these characters, some are pretty shady." and, "This park is turning into a nudist colony in 11 days!" Most of the male residents had long beards (ZZ Top) and long below the shoulder length hair. Murky looking types.
Pat made the decision to move on as quickly as we could and break our term. Again I didn't care, after the previous day I was ready to relax and take things as they came. But in the spirit of "Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?" I agreed to a move.
We found a site 50 miles west of Gainesville near Old Town, FL. called Yellow Jacket RV Resort. It is miles from anywhere but we really like it. It is on the bank of the Suwannee River which is beautiful.
Yesterday we went to Manatee Springs State Park which we were told the day before the manatees were there but I guess they heard we were coming because they took off. I posted some pictures of the park. Great place to visit if you are in the area.
Today we have reserved a boat to take into the river but it looks like rain off and on so we will postpone for Monday. We are talking about going to Horseshoe Beach on the gulf to expose our dog "Sookie" to the water.
Problems we have encountered so far; terrible cell phone reception (one bar mostly and we loose that if you move the phone from one ear to the other, can't get our directtv satellite to work even though the damn thing is pointed directly at a satellite, clothes bar in the closet fell down and I had to re-engineer the design, Pat broke the filter cover on the AC unit, Bank of America froze our debit card due to out of the ordinary activity (need to inform them we are travelling). Lastly a friend of ours who we were supposed to meet in Jacksonville on April 1st died last Tuesday night. That was a real shocker.
Forgot to mention - if you ever camp in Florida make sure you check out the policy of the campground because some advertise "clothing optional". As Monica from Brooklyn told us after they had an experience staying in a nudist campground by mistake, "Some people just look better in clothes!" Her husband Jerry made her stay the day because they had already paid and he told me he "wanted to take in the sites!"
We love all of you with all the love we can muster and it is strange being away from you like we are, but dammit this could be one hell of a good time full of adventure and memories.
We go from here to Bradenton, FL and will be there for Easter with Pat's family. Not sure yet how long we will stay and in fact I don't really care since for us it's always one moment at a time and it's all good.

Later

Jim and Pat

GETTIN THERE

Hello Friends:

Just trying to understand the world of blogging (grin).

I titled this blog "Turning the Page" because I found a quote from St. Augustine that goes like this;

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
St. Augustine

We are ready to "turn the page" with a little traveling music from Bob Seger.

Many friends have asked that we create a blog so that they can follow us. Most believe that we are actually on the road. I guess in a sense we are. We live at Oak Plantation Campground off Hwy 17 which is near Main Rd. which is technically called Johns Island, SC. You can reach us by phone, e-mail, blog, or snail mail; 3540 Savannah Hwy, Johns Island, SC 29455

This weekend Pat and I are developing a timeline of where we want to be for the next 6 months or so.

We need to be in North Carolina on June 11th for Pat's granddaughters high school graduation. So, we are working around that time frame.

We will first head to Bradenton, FL in the next 30 days to see Pat's dad and I plan on doing some home repairs for him. We will more than likely spend a week there. We also won a free days pass to Busch Gardens so we will take advantage of that while we are in the Tampa area.

We have been looking into doing some volunteer work for the National Parks Service especially an organization called "Passport in Time (PIT)";

Passport in Time (PIT) is a volunteer archaeology and historic preservation program of the USDA Forest Service (FS). PIT volunteers work with professional FS archaeologists and historians on national forests throughout the U.S. on such diverse activities as archaeological survey and excavation, rock art restoration, archival research, historic structure restoration, oral history gathering, and analysis and curation of artifacts.

I am very interested working on two sites;

1. Hudson-Meng Excavation 2012 - Chadron,NE                                                  Research at Hudson-Meng in the 1970s identified a Paleoindian bison kill associated with the Alberta culture, which dates to over 10,000 years before present. Subsequent research in the 1990s recognized that more than one kill event may be responsible for the formation of the bison bonebed, and identified a secondary cultural component positioned over the main assemblage. Continued investigations between 2005 and 2011 positively identified the presence of at least two additional Paleoindian components: the first belonging to the Eden culture, and the second, later occupation, both dating to approximately 9400-9500 radiocarbon years ago. The recognition of two additional Paleoindian levels above the bison bonebed raises a host of new research questions and opens the door to exciting new discoveries about how ancient people lived in the Hudson-Meng valley.
2. Following up on the Cherokee Trail - Laramie, WY
   PIT volunteers and Forest staff have spent the last two seasons surveying and studying the historic Cherokee Trail. The 1850s emigrant trail passed through southern Wyoming, and was made famous by western writer Louis L'Amour. Thousands of emigrants blazed their way to California and Oregon as they crossed the Big Laramie and followed Boswell Creek. The years of constant use created deeply eroded swales in some places, only slight traces of evidence of use in others. However, there is a wealth of information about the people who used the Trail, stored in the artifacts and features they left behind.
   The assemblage recovered during the last two "Finding the Cherokee Trail" projects now needs to be processed, studied, and prepared for storage. Volunteers and Forest staff will clean, identify, and catalogue the cultural assemblage, and ready it for long-term curation. This is a fantastic collection, and it will be a definite journey into the past as we study each artifact.

The Laramie dig is April 16th and the Nebraska dig is in 4 segments from May 21st to June 17th. So it will take some planning if we get accepted to both digs in order to be back in NC by June 11th. We can do any of the 4 segments in Nebraska so we would not be there past the 10th of June.

We will visit my dad who is in a Veteran's Home in Norfolk, NE and the rest of my family who still reside in Nebraska. Probably spend several weeks out there both going to WY and returning.

I am jacked up on coffee today and so excited about hitting the road I am besides myself.

Pat would you like to add anything?

Pat: "I am busy being retired I will post later."

We love you all.