Florida 9-2010

      Can't believe its autumn already, its 90 degrees outside. Are air conditioner have been running non stop for the pasted 5 months. Well here we are 3 weeks into our volunteering position. Seems like we just got here. We are having a great time exploring the area.  St Augustine is a great city with much history as it is our oldest city. One of the greatest tours is Flager College. If you come here and only have time for one tour, do the Flager College tour. Thanks Jim ∧ Linda for telling us about this, as we may have missed it. See http://www.flager.edu/  To much to explain, like the Tiffany chandeliers and stained glass windows in the student dinning room. See the photo's and check out their website.
            We also toured Castillo de San Marcos, http://www.nps.gov.casa/  Next we toured Fort Matanzas www.nps.gov/foma south of town. Both with huge history. We also did a boat tour around the harbor. See http://www.scenic-cruise.com/ See the photo's. In downtown the streets are very narrow. We toured the first mission Nombre de Dios, http://www.missionandshrine.org/ , The O'Reilly house. Super history here, see http://www.oreillyhouse.org/ Their is also the Greek Orthodox National Shrine http://www.stphotios.com/  We are trying to include more web sites so you can find out more about the things we have visited and it will keep our blog a little shorter. We did a lot of walking around town.
     On Wednesday night there is a concert on the beach. Bring your chairs wine & cheese etc. and site back and enjoy.  Speaking of concerts, we are about 300 yards from the St Augustine Amphitheatre, and heard several great concerts. The first was Toby Keith, next was Lady Antebellum, plus a few others. Toby Keith came with several buses(custom Motor Homes), and seven truck loads of stuff. See the photo's.
       We also tried out our new tot, our kayak. We put in at Salt Run, a large bay that's goes into St Augustine harbor. The current and tides are strong so we don't venture to far. We are having fum. That's about it for now. Keep in touch and keep the emails coming. Blazer has nothing to say this week. He's not happy, because he can't be out to much in this heat.
    See photo's below and some may be in the list on the left. This is a new version of blogger and its give me some problems. I like when they tell you we are making it better and easier to use!

RV Parks

North Carlonia

North Carolina Aug 2010

Fort Matanzas

St Augustine 9-2010

Our new toy-kayak

Toby Keith's tour

The Toby Keith American Ride Tour. One of the neat haulers

Anastasia State Park

Windswept trees, taken while out on our kayak.

 The beach at the park. Below taken from the middle of "salt run" is looking toward St Augustine harbor.

The empty beach, there is about 4 miles of beach in the park.

Our friend The Banana Spider

These spiders are all over the park. They have huge webs, mostly high in the trees. The park is called a maritime hammock forest. It also has many old live oak trees.

Anastasia Sttate Park

The first photo is the modren restroon and showers. The next two are typical roads in the park. The last photo we were told is a "beauty bush".

Back to our home town-Bethlehem PA & on to FL.

I know, I know, we said we would update our blog more often. Well its almost 2 months and here we go. It was almost 2 years since we were back in PA. We were anxious to see the kids. We did and enjoyed our visit with them. We also visited with family and friends. Then the doctors. Before you knew it, it was time to leave. We did stay about an extra week. We sadly said good by to family and friends and hit the road. Sept 1st starts our 6 year full timing. We are looking back at all the great adventures we had and looking forward to more adventures.
Our first stop was in Gladys VA, just outside of Lynchburg. See our map on the right and click on our travels to see more about RV parks. Click on the number and name or the marker on the map to read more. We had a couple of rainy days and didn't get a chance to do any touring.
Next we went to Advance NC, 8 miles east of Lexington. Another Thousand Trails park. While at the visitor center in Thomasville NC we met the head of tourism in Davidson County. He told us about a bus tour of some of the farms etc. of the county. They had a few seats left, so we bought 2 tickets for $15. each. What a great deal, a 5 hour tour with snacks and a buffet dinner at the end of the tour. We toured Bonnie Plants, that's supplies all Home Depots, Lowe's, Wall marts etc. Next was Terrace Farms, cattle and poultry farm. Then The Tyro Fire Department, a history of rural volunteer fire services. Davidson Water Inc., learn about the county water system from taking the water from the Yadkin river to you faucet. Then on to Yadkin College-a town by this name, not a college. At one time the first institution of higher learning. A tour of the small community and see some of the traditional crops, mostly tobacco. This is also the site of three ferries that once crossed the Yadkin river. Visit at http://www.visitdavidsoncounty.com/
On the tour we met Mrs Hanes-the owner of Mrs. Hanes Hand Made Moravian Cookies. See at http://www.hanescookies.com/ Her and her husband were sitting in front of us, and when they heard we were from Bethlehem Pa, where the Moravians settled we became their new best friends for the day. They passed out cookies and gave us the left over cookies. Boy were they good. They invited us back to their farm when we are back in the area.
Then we went back to the RV Park and met up with our friends Barry and Donna from GA that we volunteered with in TX. We had a to short visit of a couple of days with them. We had to be on our way to FL for our Volunteer job at Anastasia State Park in St Augustine FL. OH forgot to mention that. I'll get back to that. We were now behind our travel schedule by about a week, with the late start and an AC problem with the truck.
This area Lexinton NC is know as the Barbecue capital of the south. Never knew that, or is that just hype. Well we ate at Lexington Bar B Que. Suppose to be number one in the state. It was very good , but to judge it to be number one we'd have to eat at about 500 other Bar B Ques. We will attempt that at another time.
In Lexington we also visited Lanier Hardware, one of the largest True Value Hardware stores in the southeast. Visit at http://www.lanierhardware.com/ also see http://www.visitlexingtonnc.com/ Thomasville was the home of furniture of the same name, see http://www.thomasvilletourism.com/
We visited a few other places in the area before heading south. We are now at Anastasia State Park for the month of September in St Augustine FL. We are campground host. We arrived on the 1st and got settled in. Then we had orientation on the 2nd. Then we are off for three days. We work on 3 days and off three days. We will work 13 days for the month. That means we have 17 days for the beach and touring. There is about 4 miles of beach here in the park. We are parked about 300 yards from the amphitheater and on Monday Toby Keith will be here. This is a bonus we didn't know about. Not sure who else will be here.
From Blazer: WOW I got to meet up with some of my cousins. What energy. It was non stop excitement. After a couple of days I had enough. I sat in the driveway and refused to go in, but dad had me on a leash and pulled me in. He didn't get the message. The next day I refused to get out of the truck. What is he dense or what? He hooked me up and pulled me in. I thought he was my friend, you know "man's best friend", well I was wrong. I guess I should have gotten a clue when he took me to the vet and had me altered, you know what I Mean. Who would do that to a friend. Well that was about 6 years ago and I thought we had a good thing going since then, until he subject me to my over active cousins. I'm going to have to keep an eye on him. At least I got to meet my friend Dave who always plays with me. Well anyway its on the road again. A good trip, but I have no one to cuddle with in the back seat. I still miss my Lilly. She was a real pal. Maybe some day I'll have another pal, but for now I get all the attention. I love this life and get to meet some nice people like another friend Barry who always plays with me. He just speaks funny, Dad said that's because he's from the south. Gotta go, see you later.
Keep in touch, and we will try to update our blog more frequently.

St Augustine 9-2010

The beach concerts. Two veiws of the narrow streets.