Reflections on our 2017 Winter Travels


We are traveling in part, to be honest, because we can’t agree where we want to live! As we celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary (4/11/1975), we can say we don’t do anything without praying over it and both of us agreeing to it. Of course, it may seem obvious, why not settle in Fredericksburg near our daughter and family? We certainly do want to be near them, but we lived in Fredericksburg for 10 years. When we moved there, it was a sleepy rural county. We loved it! But by the time we left, it was becoming a boom town. And now, it has outgrown its roads. It is just one big traffic jam! We recently heard a sermon titled, “Never say never!” But Bill does tend to say, we’ll never live there….time will tell.

So what do we really want? We love mountains for challenging hikes and clean mountain air – but we could never handle the winters there. And really, driving winding and steep roads isn’t comfortable for us. We also love the beach. But what great beach area doesn’t have a busy season? And remember, we don’t like traffic. This winter we experienced EVERYTHING we love about our full-time lifestyle. Continue Reading

US Army Corps of Engineer (COE) Parks, Gunter Hill (Winter 2017 Part 9 A)


Our trip from Davis Bayou (click to read), Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to our next destination was just over 200 miles. It was an easy trip and we arrived around 12:30 pm.  We knew we might be a little early, but we learned that COE park check out times are 3:00 pm! Little did we know….

Our first experience in a COE was last summer. We stayed in the Land Between The Lakes (LBL) COE “Canal Campground,” click here to read about our fabulous time there. It took three posts to write it up since there was so much to do and we hope to return there one day. As I am writing this, we now have stayed in three, back to back stays, this winter. I had hoped to write about all three in this one post, but we did so much in the Montgomery, Alabama area, it needs its own post. Continue Reading

Canal Campground, Grand Rivers, Kentucky (Part 1)


It was so easy to find, just put 1010 Canal Campground Rd., Grand Rivers, KY in your GPS.

It was so easy to find, just put 1010 Canal Campground Rd., Grand Rivers, KY in your GPS.

We’ve spent a wonderful eight days in this US Army Corps of Engineers campground (COE) from June 20-28, 2016. We never would have found this campground had we not met a couple, Betty and Bob, from Paducah, Kentucky at the last campground, Columbus-Belmont  State Park (CBSP). They were a wealth of information and helped us learn more about Kentucky. We hit it off and planned to meet up again, and we did yesterday afternoon. So not only did they tell us about Discovery Park of America in Union City, Tennessee, but also the Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site, both discussed in this post hyper-linked in case you missed it. Continue Reading