Internet Woes at Thousand Trails Natchez Trace

It is beautiful here in this huge park.  800,000 acres! 

But, there’s one mighty big problem for us … Lousy Internet.

We certainly didn’t expect Wi-Fi at the sites here, but I did check the Verizon coverage map before we came and it showed full digital Verizon coverage throughout the park.  Our site is where X marks the spot – and the dark pink color is supposed to mean there is full digital coverage.  There are plenty of places, even nearby, where you can see big white spots representing holes in the digital coverage – so it seems like an honest map.

Well, it does work – slowly – at 3am!  But, I couldn’t keep a connection with either voice or data at any other time of day. 

So, I brought my laptop up the hill to the Rec Center where there is Wi-Fi.  Even with nobody in the center but me – it was too slow to be useable.  Luckily the Verizon signal is better up the hill though – so I tethered my Droid cellphone to the computer and that’s how I’m able to make this post.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

And, surprise,surprise, I can find other things to do besides working on the Internet!  We went for a paddle this afternoon.  This is called the Natchez Trace Wilderness Preserve … and it lives up to it’s name!

Gabbing with the Geeks

My good friend, Melinda, has a special word tattooed on her ankle … ‘Kaizen.’  It means roughly ‘constant improvement.’  She’s a teacher – so am I.  We’re both constantly finding new things to learn and teach as well as new ways to teach it.  For her that meant going from teaching at risk kids in High School, to using horses for ‘Equine Assisted Teaching.’ 

For me it means constantly learning new Web-based technologies.  I’ve been learning a lot about Wordpress, and I think it is the best platform (now) for building dynamic websites.  I don’t want to mess with my current website (www.geeksontour.com) for fear of having dead time in between, so we’re starting a whole new website so we can use the Wordpress platform and Wishlist Member for our membership site management.  This should make it quicker and easier to add and organize our content.  With over 190 tutorial videos and the same or greater number of written articles, I’m getting  a bit overloaded just managing what’s there, let alone adding new stuff.

We especially want to add more features for our members to interact with us and each other.  So, for starters, we made a little video we’re calling ‘Gabbing with the Geeks.’  It’s posted on the new wordpress site (www.GeeksOnTour.TV) and you can leave a comment if you go there to watch it. 

 

There’s not much else on that site yet.  All our tutorial videos are still on GeeksOnTour.COM.  We’re working on it!

The main thing that prompted us to record a little video was the remote appearance we made at the Massachusetts Good Sam Club’s ‘Samboree.’  Bob Brown is the main organizer for their get-together, and he is also a happy member of Geeks on Tour.  He really wanted us to share our information with his group, but there was no way we could be in Massachusetts in May.  As geeky as we are, we did not come up with the solution (a case of cobbler’s children having no shoes?)  It took Bob to suggest that we use Skype and he would project our video-teleconference on the screen at their rally.  Brilliant!

So that’s what we did.  We were on a campground Wi-Fi Internet connection and they were on a Verizon data card.  The result was a little choppy.  It sure was a great idea though, and one we will continue to pursue and perfect – this was our first try.  We also sent them a club copy of our DVD full of tutorial videos so they were able to play a few of those as part of our ‘seminar.’

Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park

Nice Spot – Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park.  We stayed 2 nights.  Good Verizon signal for tethering our Droids to do our computer work.

Had a nice walk on the nature trail, and a wonderful site right on the water.

I love the summer sunlight!  I was able to put in a full 8 hour workday and still had plenty of time to enjoy the surroundings.  From 6-8am I answered emails and posted to blogs.  From 10-4 I wrote the first draft of our monthly newsletter.  Jim helped me write the article on ‘Have you Been Hacked?’, I wrote about Picasa’s new addition ‘Picnik.com’ and a MS Streets and Trips tip on navigating full screen.  You can get a preview at Geeks on Tour May Newsletter.  Or you can wait for the email which I should be sending out today to all Newsletter Subscribers.
With plenty of sunlight left, we put the kayaks in the water and had a delightful tour of Blackshear Lake and the Cypress Tress in the water.  Here's a video, including the kayak paddle we took thru the Cypress trees. Please be patient for the video to start ... if this high-quality video doesn’t work for you, here it is on Youtube  You can view this video in a larger format by clicking the icon at the lower right (just hover your mouse over the bottom and you'll see the icons)
 

Safari Class C Collection

Our motorhome is a Safari Class C – they didn’t make very many of them.  We think it’s very special.  Every once in a while we see another.  But, this one in Georgia Veteran’s State Park really took us aback because it even has the same paint job.  It is only 24 foot, meaning they sleep in the cab over and have a large bathroom in the back – where we have a full bedroom in the back and Mom is sleeping in the cab over right now.

 

hmmm – their’s is also a lot cleaner than ours :-(  It’s the same year – 1997-8 but it only has 63,000 miles on it where we have 125,000.

Here’s our spot:

Other times I posted about fellow Safari Class C’s:

• October 2009, Virginia
• August 2006
• April 2005, Nevada
• March 2006, Nevada

From Home to Home

Being fulltime RVers and not having a house anywhere, we sometimes refer to ourselves as ‘Homeless.’  The truth is that we have *many* homes.  Paradise Island, where we stayed most all winter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is one home.  We left there yesterday and traveled about 200 miles to Orlando where we like to stay at the Thousand Trails preserve.  We also feel like we’re home when we come to a Thousand Trails Preserve.  The Orlando Preserve is where we joined Thousand Trails 5 years ago and we’ve come here several times since.

Here’s our site.  We’ll stay here 2 nights, then move on.

And here’s Mom toasting the evening on our walk down to the Lake.  What you can’t see in this picture is the horseflies!  I don’t remember them being a problem here before – must be the time of year – but they were vicious!