Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park

On Tues, July 12^th, we left Winchester, VA and headed towards Florida, New York where we overnighted at Black Bear Campground.  Wed, we took off and drove to the Hanscom AFB Family Campground, in Bedford, MA, near Boston.

Many of the Interstate highways in the East are toll roads. The good news is they all use the E-Z Pass transponder. I purchased an E-Z Pass transponder while we were in Virginia and it was well worth it as we could drive through the toll booths without stopping.  

On Thurs, we arrived at Mt. Desert Narrows Campground near Bar Harbor, Maine for a 3-night stay. We enjoyed our first lob-stah dinner Thurs night at a nearby “lob-stah pound”. You pick out a lob-stah and they cook it for you. We had to go on-line and look at a video while we were waiting for our lob-stah to cook to see how to take it apart to eat it. There was a process.

 

 

Friday we went into Bar Harbor and had lunch. It’s a small coastal town of around 5,000 residents, but the population is much greater in the summer. It has great views of off shore islands and the Atlantic and has many restaurants and gift shops.

 

After lunch we visited Acadia National Park, high on our bucket list. Acadia is celebrating its centennial year this year as it was established as a national park in 1916 by President Teddy Roosevelt. Acadia is the only national park on the East coast and contains the highest point on the East coast, Cadillac Mountain. Although busy, it definitely didn’t have the crowds like Yellowstone. We were surprised to see so many people at Sand Beach in the park, especially since the water temperature was only 54-degrees. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Acadia.           

Today we went back to visit Bar Harbor and to buy my Acadia Centennial tee-shirt. Then we drove west about 40-miles to Bangor for lunch and a visit to Stephan King’s mansion home. His mansion, in the old historic district of Bangor, was architecturally interesting. We especially liked his black wrought-iron fence decorated with spiders, bat-winged creatures, and a three-headed reptile.

 

Tomorrow we head to Freeport, Maine for a 3-night stay.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

BBQ, Music & Bourbon

We left San Antonio on Thursday, June 30^th, and after an overnight stay in College Station, made our way to a RV park in Longview, Texas. We’ve stayed there before and it is close to our favorite Texas BBQ place, Country Tavern, just outside of Kilgore. It has been in business since 1939, and serves the absolute best ribs in Texas. They use pork loin back ribs. They are slow smoked, tender (tooth tender…not fall off the bone) and have the perfect smoky, bark flavor. We enjoyed dinner there on early Friday night.

  

On Saturday we overnighted outside of Little Rock, and then on Sunday drove to one of our favorite campgrounds, Tom Sawyer’s RV Park in West Memphis, Arkansas. It is right on the Mississippi River and we enjoy watching the river barges go by.

Monday morning July 4^th we drove to Nashville and we just got settled into our campsite when it started pouring down rain. We skipped going downtown to see Sheryl Crow in a free concert, followed by a spectacular fireworks show, because severe thunder storms were forecast with an expected crowd of 250,000. We stayed home and watched the concert and fireworks on TV.

 

We decided to go downtown on Tuesday night for dinner and visit a few honky tonk places. We rode a shuttle bus from the campground for $10 roundtrip per person. It was nice not to have to worry about traffic or parking. We decided on Jack’s BBQ on Broadway and it was very good. After dinner we went to Tootsies and then to Legend’s Corner, both famous Nashville honky tonk bars. There is no cover charge and the music was pretty good.

 

Wednesday morning we drove to Frankfort, Kentucky for a 2-night stay at the Elkhorn Campground. On Thursday we stopped by White Castle for lunch (small hamburger sliders). After lunch we toured the Buffalo Trace distillery, a National Historic Landmark in Frankfort.  The Buffalo Trace distillery is the oldest distillery in the country. Many of the buildings were built in the late-1800s. We toured a bonded warehouse where bourbon was aging in oak barrels and then toured another building where they were hand bottling special aged bourbon. Afterwards, the tour guide then took our group to the visitor’s center to taste some of their products.

We stopped overnight in West Virginia on Friday where a thunderstorm knocked out the campground electrical power and we also lost water (electric well pumps). Oh well, we had to use our own generator and on-board water supply to get by. We drove to Winchester, Virginia on Saturday and stayed for 3-days to visit our niece Stephanie, brother-in-law Mike and my sister Marcia.

Today, July 12^th, we left Winchester and drove through 5 states (Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York). We’re overnighting at Black Bear Campground near the village of Florida, NY. Tomorrow we head to Bedford, MA (near Boston) and on Thursday to Bar Harbor, Maine to finish the last portion of our planned trip to New England.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

On the Road Again

It was 6 weeks ago, on Tuesday, May 17^th, that we suffered a major hail storm that severely damaged our “house”, our motorhome. It sustained nearly $38,000 in damage to the roof (over 65 holes and cracks), solar panel, air-conditioners, all three slide-out awnings, driver’s side mirror, taillight, and dented several cargo doors.  

Our Ford F-150 pickup also sustained substantial damage to the tune of $13,500. Hail broke our sun roofs, side mirrors, and dented most of the truck body. The insurance adjuster said the roof, hood, driver’s side front-fender, both driver and passenger doors and the side of the box will need to be replaced. The adjuster wrote us a check on- the-spot for the damages. I’ve had the side views replaced in McAllen and the two sun roofs replaced in San Antonio. I’m going to wait for the major body repairs until we get to Las Vegas in October and spend a month there. The aluminum body repair work takes special training and special tools. I’ve decided to have a Ford dealer there do the work.

We moved out of our motorhome and went to Donna, Texas to visit Cindy and Terry for a couple of weeks. Then we drove back to San Antonio and stayed 3 ½ weeks at a Residence Inn. We got to know the staff really well and ate breakfast there every morning.

 

The Residence Inn was about 20 miles from the RV repair and body shop in Pipe Creek, Texas near Bandera. We ate lunch several times at the Old Spanish Trail restaurant in Bandera, where they are famous for their home style cooking.

 

We spent the three weeks in San Antonio hanging out, visiting Julie’s mom across town at Blue Skies of Texas, going to several movies, went to Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels one day, and eating out. One night a local food truck came to the Residence Inn and we sampled their fare.

 

 

We overnighted at the RV repair shop this past Wednesday night and finally hit the road around noon yesterday, heading east.             

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Hail storm = Homeless

We left Topsail on Wednesday, May11th, and drove to Biloxi, Mississippi where we overnighted. On the way to Biloxi, we stopped in Mobile, AL and picked up Julie’s nephew to give him a ride back to Texas.

We enjoyed dinner with old friends Paul and Darlene in Biloxi. Paul works for NASA at the Stennis Space Center and we learned that NASA has focused on deep space exploration. 

We arrived in Castroville, Texas at Alsatian RV Resort on Friday. Saturday morning we went to Blue Skies of Texas (formerly Air Force Village) to work on Julie’s mom Bobbie’s new assisted living apartment. Julie’s sister Cindy arrived from south Texas and all four of us worked on getting the remaining furnishings for the apartment.

Bobbie saw the apartment on Sunday and loved her new place. We then moved her in on Monday. 

 

On Tuesday, May 17^th, we had a severe thunderstorm, with large hail, hit the RV resort and surrounding Castroville area around 10:45PM. We were following the storm on radar and saw that it was coming from the west but we thought it would pass just north of us. The storm cell shifted south and hit us head-on.

It was the worse hail storm that Julie and I had ever experienced. The hail lasted about 15 long minutes and we really thought hail was going to come through the roof of our motorhome. Rain water was pouring out our air conditioning vents and ceiling light fixtures. The sound of large hail hitting our roof was deafening. After the storm subsided, we went outside and I picked up hailstones that were 3-inches in diameter.

The next morning we saw that all our neighbors in the RV resort had truck and car windshields, rear windows, and RV windows broken out and every vehicle and RV had suffered heavy hail damage. I used duct tape and quickly covered cracks and baseball size holes in our motorhome roof, because more rain was predicted for Wednesday. We also lost our roof solar panel, all three slide-out awnings, side mirror, and got hail dents on several cargo doors.

 

Our Ford F-150 pickup also sustained substantial damage. The windshield was okay because I backed into our space, rather than pull into the space the day before. However, hail broke our moon roofs, side mirrors, and dented most of the truck body.

Our insurance company adjuster found one of their blue ribbon RV repair and body shop facilities near Bandera, about 50-miles away, that could fix everything for us and could start right away. The downside is that we have to move out of our motorhome for 2 to 4 weeks or more while it’s in the shop being repaired and we’ll be homeless.

We’ve decided to go to Donna, Texas to visit Cindy and Terry for a couple of weeks. We’ve rented a small cottage at the RV resort they live at. We’ve also made reservations for 2-weeks at a Residence Inn in north San Antonio, a short distance from the RV repair and body shop.         

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Tupelo Honey

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Low-Key Hideaway Motel and RV Resort in Cedar Key, especially their tiki bar and amazing views of the sunsets from their pier.

 

We left last Friday and drove about 240-miles north along the gulf coast to Tyndall Air Force Base. We stayed at the Family Campground and had a nice, shady campsite.  

On Saturday, we drove about 25-miles east to the town of Wewahitchka, Florida to visit the L.L. Lanie & Sons Tupelo Honey family business, established in 1898. We were curious about Tupelo Honey and wanted to learn more about it.  

Here is some interesting information from the L.L. Lanie & Sons Tupelo Honey web site:

“Tupelo honey is produced from the tupelo gum tree which grows profusely along the Chipola and Apalachicola rivers of northwest Florida. Here in the river swamps, this honey is produced in a unique fashion. Bees are placed on elevated platforms along the river's edge, and they fan out through the surrounding Tupelo-blossom-laden swamps during April and May and return with their precious treasure. This river valley is the only place in the world where Tupelo Honey is produced commercially.”

“Real Tupelo honey is a light golden amber color with a greenish cast. The flavor is delicious, delicate and distinctive; a choice table grade honey. Good white tupelo, unmixed with other honeys, will not granulate.”

 “The Lanier family has been harvesting Tupelo honey from hives in the Apalachicola River swamps for three generations, with L.L. Lanier, Sr. beginning the tradition more than 110 years ago. L.L. Lanier, Jr. apprenticed with his father, and assumed the leadership role in the family business in the 1940's.”

We tried some tupelo honey this morning on some hot, out of the oven, bisquits and it was very, very good. The flavor was distinctive and as Van Morrison would say..."as sweet as Tupelo honey".

We left Tyndall AFB and Panama City on Sunday and drove 55-miles to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park in Santa Rosa Beach to spend three nights. We’ve stayed at Topsail before, back in 2010.

We enjoyed our three days at Topsail, but leave Florida tomorrow, heading towards San Antonio. We’ve been living in Florida now for four months, since early January. We’ll be back…but not until fall 2017.   

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Back to Reality

We left Key West last Thursday, April 28^th and drove to Naples. As we were driving through Key Largo, Julie saw the sign “Leaving The Florida Keys – Key Largo – Back to Reality”. We knew then we were no longer on “island time” and would miss the keys until we return in the Fall of 2017.  

 

We enjoyed two nights in Naples and even made a trip to Costco and Walmart (none in the Florida Keys).

 

Last Saturday we headed up I-75 towards Seffner and the Lazydays RV Park. We enjoyed dinner on Saturday night with an old friend Bill we hadn’t seen in 15 years and his wife.

We went to Safety Harbor on Sunday and took Julie’s Aunt Jo out for lunch and a nice visit. We did a little shopping and then went to my sister Cathy’s house in Palm Harbor. We had a nice visit with her, my nephew Ben and niece Brittany before we left for dinner. We went to Kobe Steakhouse in Clearwater to celebrate my nephew Tyler’s 20^th birthday. The food was very good and we enjoyed seeing my nieces and nephews.

 

On Monday morning we met our friends Carol and Mike and they took us out on their pontoon boat. We launched the boat from Fort Desoto and traveled to Egmont Key to see the lighthouse and walk on the beach. We also visited several bays near St. Petersburg beach where we spotted dolphins.

 

We departed Seffner yesterday and returned to Low-Key Hideaway Motel and RV Resort in Cedar Key, about 150-miles north of Tampa. We’re here for three nights and are enjoying the sunsets, as well as their little tiki bar.

 

Steve & Julie Cornelius