Florida 2012

Hello All,
We're on our first real "Journey" since our "adventures in health, chapter 1, Getting Old".
We're on a one month trip to Florida, focusing on the Panhandle.We started our trip with a wonderful visit to the Sherwoods, where we had a great trip to the wildlife preserve on Cumberland Island. What  a great time...wild horses, beautiful beaches and a perfect day

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We then moved on to Bradenton, FL and visited lots of friends and family...Eight days of visiting, eating, visiting, drinking, visiting, drinking, eating...well you get the picture. We saw about a dozen people and enjoyed every minute.

Location:Carrabelle,United States

Whale Watch

BlueAngels and Bird

FW: 19 pictures for you

These are from a trip with Gary and
Dale to Waynesville, NC. We had a great time and saw two beautiful
waterfalls.

Waynesville

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Jonathan Creek Rd,Waynesville,United States

Ending our New England Trip

We’re ending our journey with a visit to our daughter and son-in-law in the Chapel Hill area.


We are keeping our rig at a great campground, Spring Hill RV, in Chapel Hill.


Our daughter has been dealing with our bills and mail and has done a great job making sure that we aren’t evicted, have water and electric etc, when we get home (they get funny when you don’t pay the bills)


8/31/2010


We’re now back home and our trip has lasted nearly 80 days.


One of our followers asked us to “post the stats” of our trip…some of you may find this of interest


Trip Stats


We stayed in 11 states


We drove through 13 states


We put 3193 miles on the coach


And 2848 miles on the “toad”


For a total of 6041 miles


We stayed in 18 campgrounds


We took 8544 pictures (yes we were snap happy..aren’t you glad we didn’t post them all)


The Trip


During the trip we were fortunate enough to have visited many friends and family and had a wonderful time.


We visited many places and have been asked what was our favorite….


We have not been able to come up with a single city or place…but here are some of our favorites:


Ride in a glider/sailplane…was the first time and a superb experience.


Ride in an open cockpit Bi-Plane; always wanted to do it, and finally had a chance


The “basin” a natural series of pools in crystal clear waters of Mt. Washington, NH


Luray Caverns; as beautiful as we remembered them from 40 years ago


Bar Harbor, Acadia “loop road”; every turn in the road produced a great vista


Blue Ridge Parkway;without question on of the most beautiful roads we’ve driven on….just spectacular.


Mt. Battie, near Camden, ME; a 360 degree view of the beautiful Maine coast


Delaware Valley Gap; Surprisingly beautiful area near some major urban areas in NY and NJ


Kennebunkport, the Porpoise Point, Ramp Bar; an unexpected stop at a bar and restaurant with a great view, great food and we met a fantastic couple


Ft. Ticonderoga, NY; a great fort, made even better by a surprise, hundreds of people reenactment


But most of all we enjoyed the people we met and the family and friends we got to spend time with .




Who would have believed that this couple from 1969 would be semi-responsible citizens, driving around in a bus….wait a minute in 1969 everyone wanted to be driving a VW bus painted with Psychedelic colors…we just have a bigger bus and more subdued colors.


 


Thanks to all of you who have followed our trip and for the kind comments you have made.


Next trip….out West……


Paul and Maryellen

New York and PA

We visited Mohonk house in upstate NY…what an amazing place that looks just like it must have looked at the turn of the century. The estate is massive and from the gate to the hotel is more than a mile.


We didn’t get a chance to hike, but we understand the hiking there is great.

We then went to Bucks County, PA to visit our friends Randy and Debbie. We parked the “beast” in their driveway and stayed in their newly remodeled guest room that was like a 5 star hotel….they are lucky that we didn’t stay longer.

They are terrific hosts and took us to a bar and restaurant that they knew we would love…and they were right. Next day they took us on a tour of the area which is rural and beautiful. We saw 7 covered bridges, lots of farm animals and pretty countryside. We also saw the amazing Mercer Museum and Moravian Tile works. This building is made up entirely of cement!

 A great trip!
(More pix in the latest pictures area)

We're in Fancy Gap VA, on the Blue Ridge Parkway...but the weather is not cooperating...rain and fog. So we're heading to Chapel Hill, NC tomorrow to visit our daughter and son-in-law and then head home next week.

We've been gone approaching 3 months and Maryellen says she's out of underwear so we have to go home.

Paul and Maryellen

Taking the sloooow Trek back home

We've not posted in a while as we've been spending time with friends and family in the town where we grew up in Massachusetts.
It was great catching up and spending time with everyone.

We've started going south, and will stop along the way in PA to visit some friends, then a few more stops along the way, to the Raleigh area, then on home in a couple of weeks.

We have a new camera to replace the pocket sized one we had that was ruined when someone went swimming with it in his swimsuit pocket. The new camera has built in GPS, which captures where we are and links to Google earth. It also has a panorama feature that we are going to try out soon.

The first pictures I took were from a plane at 35000 feet flying over the West (I had a short trip to LA last week) The pictures are good, considering the distance and atmospheric distortion, but not fantastic. However, if you click on them, it will bring you to another page which shows a Google map of where it was taken....cool stuff.

More postings to follow...

Best
Paul and Maryellen

Ending our Maine Trip

We’ve been a little slack in our posting as we’ve had marginal internet and we’ve been busy sightseeing and going around from early to late.


In Camden we went to the top of Mount Battie, which has a 360 degree view of Camden, Camden Harbor and views all the way to Cadillac mountain in Bar Harbor, which is many miles away


On Sunday we found this neat little restaurant, right on the water with excellent food. We sat outside in some Adirondack chairs, right on the dock, and met a nice couple from Ipswich Mass. Spent the afternoon in the sun, sipping some adult beverages and then having seafood for dinner.
Today we spent time in Ogunquit walking along the "Marginal Way"....it's a 1.5 walk right along the water with cliffs and crashing waves.


 
We posted some additional pictures in the “Latest Pictures” album.


We're heading out tomorrow morning after a great trip to quite a few places in Maine. We have spent the last 4 days in the Kennebunkport/Ogunquit area and we had nearly perfect weather and saw even more beautiful Maine scenery. It is such a beautiful state.

We're heading to Massachusetts to visit family and friends and then resuming our trip south sometime toward the latter part of August

Kennebunkport

Location:Pier Rd,Kennebunkport,United States

Leaving Bar Harbor

Today we left the Bar Harbor area after 8 fantastic days.

The last couple of days we roamed around Acadia on the “loop road” and the scenery was amazing on nearly the entire route. It reminds us of the Blue Ridge Parkway in some ways as it winds its way through small mountains…but with the addition of ocean vistas, with rocky beaches and cliffs.

Yesterday we went on a lobster boat tour, in a 44’ lobster boat, saw some seals, dolphin and more amazing scenery. It was a fun time. After the trip we met a nice couple from Canada and we spent the night being with them. An added bonus was that Woody played guitar quite well and entertained us.


We have arrived at another nice area, Searsport Maine, and we’re very happy with the campsite we have, very near to the water with bay views.

This might surprise you....we have been seeing so many things, we've taken more than 2500 pictures....we need a bigger disk.

Paul and Maryellen

Searsport, ME

Campground in Searsport, ME

Location:Banks Terrace,Searsport,United States

Bar Harbor Fun

We've been really enjoying ourselves in Bar Harbor. It is truly a beautiful place with lots to do.

Our RV site is right on the water and we have a great view of a bay, other islands and lots of wildlife.

Maryellen's brother Kevin, visited us for a day and overnight, and we had a fun time going to Bar Harbor and all of the small towns the area. Kevin worked in Bar Harbor for 7 years so he was a great tour guide.We went to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is beautiful.

While riding around, we saw two beaver building a dam...they let us get very close and seemed not to be bothered by us being there.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) there is a brewery about a mile away from where we're staying and we had to sample what they had. We also brought some back with us to sample further, but for some reason there are none left. We had fun.

Yesterday, we decided to go for a scenic plane ride around Bar Harbor and ended up going up in a glider and soaring around BH!

It was unbelievably cool! We were towed up one mile and then the tethering rope was disengaged and we were off gliding like a bird.

It was a clear day and we could see 100’s of islands. We enjoyed it so much that 3 hours later we went up in a biplane! The biplane was great but the glider was awesome!

This is the towplane just getting ready to release us....

 

The Bi-plane..we sat in the front...open cockpit.

View from the Bi-plane

Lastly, I made some changes to the blog and have a new section called "Latest Pictures" so you don't have to scroll through too many to see the newest additions.

We're here in Bar Harbor until Tuesday, but we're not sure where we're going next...yet.

Best,

Paul and Maryellen

Heaven in Maine

We just arrived in Bar Harbor after a FANTASTIC weekend with our good friends John and Mardy, who invited us to spend time with them at their lake camp in Maine. We had a great time on the water, swimming, kayaking, boating and  meeting their grandchildren. This is one of the nicest families you could hope to spend time with. They have done a great job bringing up their kids, who in turn have done a great job bringing up their children.
They live in an idyllic area with hills and mountains and many lakes...just beautiful.
We also enjoyed catching up on each others' lives since we were last together in Maine about 18 months ago.
What a great trip!