Category Archives: Travel

Learning to Be Retired

I have now officially been retired for two years. Kenn retired a few months after I did so he has been retired for about a year and a half. I can honestly say that the decision to retire was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. When I told Kenn about my plans to retire he looked at me and said in all seriousness, “I don’t think you’re going to be very good at being retired.” Really? My response was “I am going to be awesome at being retired.” I am pleased to announce that I was correct. I have indeed been awesome at being retired.

I wore this “retiree” costume for my last Halloween in the office pre-retirement

Awesomeness aside, retirement does come with some adjustments. We were used to getting paid every two weeks. We now get paid once a month so that took some adjusting, but it wasn’t as hard as I expected it to be. Full-time retirement was a bit too much for Kenn so he got a part-time job with the local branch of the US Department of Agriculture. It’s pretty much the perfect retirement job. He works two or three days a week and gets to drive tractors and other heavy equipment. (Insert Tim Allen Home Improvement noises here.) The best thing about his job is that it’s flexible. If we want to hit the road for a few weeks with our travel trailer, we can.

This past weekend, I had an epiphany. Our normal method of travel has been to get in the car/truck and get where we need to go with little to no dawdling/side trips. When we were working this was a necessity; we needed to reach our destination to make the most of the time that we had. However, now that we’re retired, we still travel the same way. What’s up with that? We talk about side trips but don’t take them. Why not? We just haven’t changed that long ingrained mindset yet. Last weekend, we had a short visit with our grandson and then hit the road on Monday to take him back home to South Carolina. The trip followed our “normal” routine; the only stops were brief ones for snacks or restroom breaks. (Honestly, being able to help out with our grandson is one of the main reasons I wanted to retire. I was a happy Grammie to be able to make this trip and make things easier for our kids.) We stayed in SC overnight and returned home on Tuesday.

We got up Tuesday morning, checked out of the hotel, had a leisurely breakfast, and headed home. Instead of our usual stop at a convenience store or truck stop, Kenn pulled in at a small nursery and we spent a pleasant 30-45 minutes looking at plants and visiting with the cat and the elderly man relaxing in rocking chairs on the porch. When we got back in the truck (with several new plants) I was absolutely blown away at how relaxing that simple stop was. We made another stop in one of the small towns we always say we’re going to visit. None of the antique-y stores were open since they are only open on weekends but we did a little sightseeing and agreed to make a return visit sometime soon. Hats off to Kenn for breaking us out of our routine and helping us start what I hope will become our “new normal’. I’m looking forward to seeing what this new way of thinking about travel brings.

Until next time, happy trails!

Here We Go A Fossiling

Given a choice between the mountains and the beach I’ll choose the mountains every time. There’s just something about the mountains that makes my heart happy and fills my soul with peace. I love the scenery, the wildlife and, even during the hottest times of the year, the mountains usually bring at least a slight relief from the heat. (Summer in the South is frequently like living in a sauna.) However, the beach is Kenn’s happy place. He and his family spent a week at the beach every summer and the memories of those times still hold a special place in his heart. Over the years we’ve each learned to appreciate the other’s favorite.

I’ll admit, it took me a while to learn how to enjoy the beach. The two biggest hurdles for me were 1) I can’t swim and 2) I’m a redhead; I practically burst into flames in the sun. (We won’t get into my irrational fear of sharks.) For years, most of our trips to the beach consisted of me coating myself in sunscreen and sitting in the shade watching Kenn and our boys cavort in the surf while I silently counted the days and hours until we could leave. Eventually, I learned that even a non-swimmer can have fun wave-surfing on a boogie board. (Aside from one trip to the ER when a rogue wave slammed my foot into the ground. Fortunately, my toe wasn’t broken; I just had a lovely purple toe/foot for a few days.)

But, the thing that truly taught me to appreciate the beach are fossils. I love getting out and scouring the shoreline for shark’s teeth and other fossils. Over the years I’ve found hundreds of shark’s teeth and met another fossil hunter who helped me identity other items as fossilized sting ray barbs and puffer fish mouth plates. When the time comes for me to shuffle off this mortal coil my boys will have to decide what to do with all of the baggies filled with my beach finds. (I hope they’ll do more than just toss them in the trash.) Fossil hunting in the Peace River in Florida is on my bucket list.

The fossil finds from our latest beach trip

Now I just need to figure out how to spend more than three days at the beach without being ready to lose my mind from boredom. (Not even fossil hunting has been enough to change that.)

Until next time, happy trails!

Review: Fall Creek Falls State Park

Fall Creek Falls State Park is located in Spencer, Tennessee. Kenn and I visited the park in October, which, thanks to the changing leaves is a beautiful time of year to be in the mountains. Fall Creek Falls features 222 campsites in five different areas. (The areas are called, appropriately enough, A, B, C, D, and E.) Picking a campsite based on not-to-scale park maps and thumbnail site photos can be a crap shoot. Most of the time everything works out fine; this trip was one of the few times it did not.

Our reservation was for a site in Campground C. As the saying goes, first impressions are important. When we pulled into Campground C my first impression was “Nope, nope, nope. I want to go home.” That’s not the feeling you want to have at the end of an 8-9 hour drive. Nothing about Campground C appealed to me: there were few trees and the sites were on top of each other. Our site was at the end of a tiny strip of land wedged in between two roads. Getting our travel trailer backed in was more stressful than usual since we had several people standing around watching. (This is also where I learned that I’m not supposed to use “left” and “right” when giving Kenn directions on backing in; I’m supposed to use “driver’s side” and “passenger’s side”.) Most campsites have room for the tow vehicle somewhere near the camper; this one did not. Once we got the travel trailer wedged in, there was another site to one side and a picnic table on the other. We had to park the truck on the other side of the picnic table and pray that it didn’t get hit since it was perilously close to sticking out into the road. Keep in mind, at the time of this visit we were using both a smaller travel trailer (RPOD 180) and a smaller tow vehicle (Toyota Tacoma) than we are using now. Neither one of us was happy. After discussing what we were going to do, Kenn talked to one of the park rangers who gave us a list of sites that would be available the next day. We drove around and viewed all of the sites before choosing the one we thought would best suit us and reported back to the park ranger.

Fall Creek Falls State Park

We spent the next day exploring the park without ever wandering too far from the campgrounds since we had to keep driving back to see if the site we were moving to had been vacated. (Checkout time was at 1pm; the site was finally vacated somewhere between 2pm and 3pm.) The new site was a HUGE improvement over the first one and even had a sewage hookup. Once we got moved and set back up we continued our explorations and got to enjoy a beautiful sunset.

Fall Creek Falls State Park

Now that we had a great site, we were looking forward to the rest of our stay. Alas, it was not meant to be. Shortly before we settled in for the night I got blindsided by a stomach virus. It was a long, miserable night most of which I spent on the couch so my fever-induced tossing and turning wouldn’t bother Kenn. The next morning we decided just to pack it in and head home; I didn’t feel like doing anything and we were afraid that if we stayed, Kenn might come down with it about the time we were scheduled to leave. (Fortunately, he never did.)

All in all, Fall Creek Falls State Park is definitely worth a visit – as long as you avoid Campground C, LOL.

Until next time, happy trails!

Google Maps vs. Waze

I am directionally challenged. Knowing which direction is which does not come naturally to me like it does to my husband, Kenn. I can work out directions if I know the time and can see the sun but that method isn’t particularly helpful in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. In spite of my directionally challangedness my primary function during our travels over the years has been that of navigator. (Many of our biggest traveling arguments have revolved around navigation. Translation: my hubby refusing to follow the directions given.) Map apps were a life changer for people like me.

Over the years, Google Maps has been our go-to map app. Prior to our road trip in 2019 Kenn decided that we should give Waze a try. It took me a bit to get the hang of Waze, but once I did, I really liked it. There are a wide variety of voices to chose from; my favorite was Kate with her proper British accent. (I thought Cookie Monster would be cute. I was wrong. Adding “om nom nom” after everything drove me nuts so the Cookie Monster voice was in use for less than a minute.) Waze has a game-like vibe that allows you to unlock achievements by collecting “candy” for various actions. Waze showing our speed in comparison to the current speed limit was helpful even though it wasn’t enough to keep us from getting a speeding ticket in the mail from Sioux City, Iowa a couple of weeks after we got home. (insert facepalm here) I also like the capability for users to mark and unmark things such as accidents, debris in the road, etc. in real-time. In my opinion, Waze also does a much better job with pronunciations; Google Maps garbles the simplest of names much less complicated ones. The biggest problem we had with Waze was that it relied on the availability of a cell signal instead of GPS. There are a lot of places in this big, beautiful country where there is no cell service; since we were traveling through a lot of those areas, we eventually had to revert back to Google Maps in order to have reliable information.

Image courtesy of http://www.depositphotos.com

One of the biggest problems with map apps in general becomes apparent when we are towing our travel trailer. When towing we avoid interstates and big cities as much as possible. However, map apps interpret “avoid highways” as “please take me down every crappy side road possible”. We’ve had Maps try to route us down roads that specifically forbid travel trailers, fire service roads, and a road leading under a railroad track with insufficient clearance for our travel trailer – this in spite of the fact that within sight distance, less than a block away, was a road that went over the railroad tracks. So far, we’ve been able to avoid these potential fiascoes. I’m waiting for the day we make the local news in some town because we’ve brought traffic to a complete halt due to following the directions of our map app. In my opinion, what we really need is either a separate app for those of us towing or a towing option in the current apps that is smart enough to allow us to avoid interstates and those roads that aren’t travel trailer friendly. App developers, are you listening?

Have you had any harrowing experiences due to map apps?

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post I have discovered an app called CoPilot RV that I will be testing out during our trips over the next few months. I’ll let you know what I think.

Review: Stephen C. Foster State Park

If you love the great outdoors and are looking to get away from it all, you can’t do much better than Stephen C. Foster State Park. Stephen C. Foster State Park is located in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southern Georgia and is one of the primary entrances to the Okefenokee Swamp. In my last post I told you that Amicalola Falls State Park is my favorite Georgia state park; Stephen C. Foster state park holds the honor of being my second favorite. The two parks couldn’t be more different.

American alligator at the park entrance

The park is home to many forms of wildlife not the least of which is the American alligator. The park offers guided boat tours of the swamp in addition to kayak and canoe rentals. We took a sunset boat tour during our first stay at the park in 2016 and it was wonderful – except for the yellow flies. (I had thirty bites on one foot/ankle and forty on the other. When they started itching, a week later, I thought I was going to lose my mind.) Unlike many of the other parks we have visited during the pandemic, Stephen C. Foster is continuing to offer both guided boat tours and canoe/kayak rentals; COVID restrictions have reduced the number of people allowed on each of the guided boat tours and all tours were booked during our recent stay.

During our 2016 visit we rented individual kayaks for a two-hour self-guided float in the swamp. This trip, we rented a tandem kayak which worked out well; the arthritis/rotator cuff issues in my shoulders would have prevented me from being able to paddle long on my own. Once again we enjoyed a two-hour self-guided float of a different section of the swamp. We saw several small and medium-sized gators sunning themselves on the banks and heard what we think was a wild hog. I love both the peace and quiet of the swamp and the desolate beauty.

Kayaking with my sweetie

When planning a stay at Stephen C. Foster, you’ll need to go prepared. The park is roughly twenty miles from the nearest town of Fargo, Georgia. Fargo is a tiny town; I think there is one restaurant in the town. In addition to being prepared to fix your own meals rather than eat out, you’ll also need to be prepared to have little to no cell signal. (Our satellite dish couldn’t pick up a signal due to all of the trees.) Stephen C. Foster is also an international dark sky park making it perfect for those who enjoy night photography.

While we were in the area we took a drive to check out Suwannee River State Park in Florida. Suwannee River is a beautiful small park that we have added to our list of places to visit. In addition to finding a new park to visit, this trip also gave me an idea for the perfect gift to give my hubby. Stay tune for details!

Oh, I almost forgot! I drove for an hour on the trip home. I’m slowly becoming less intimidated by this whole driving while towing gig. (Don’t expect me to be driving while towing through bit town/cities anytime soon though. There is still a limit to my bravery.)

Until next time, happy trails!

Achievement Unlocked: Towing

A couple of weeks ago I introduced you to Ruby, our new-to-us Toyota Tundra. We took Ruby on her first camping expedition last weekend; I’ll post about that next week. Even though we have owned a travel trailer since 2014, I have never driven while towing. Even though I know this puts a heavy burden on my husband, just the idea of driving while towing has always freaked me out and sent my anxiety level through the roof.

When we purchased my husband’s Toyota Tacoma in 2015 I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to driving it; it felt so much bigger than my Highlander. So, of course, I expected driving the Tundra (which is huge) be be an even bigger adjustment. However, much to my surprise, I actually love driving Ruby. I was apparently born to drive a big honkin’ truck. Who knew? So, on our trip home I decided I’d give towing a try and… I did it! I know that may seem like nothing to many of you but since traffic/driving is one of the biggest triggers for my anxieties, for me it’s a Really Big Deal and I’m proud of myself. I didn’t drive for long, only about twenty miles on a two-lane road between two small towns but now that I have done it once, I know I can do it again and for a longer stretch.

There’s no stopping me now, y’all!

Vintage style camper trailer and camping scene