Bellingrath Gardens

We’ve driven by here several times and never visited the gardens.  For quite a few Google Earth Seminars we used this location as an example by using Google Earth to view photos of the gardens, and street view of the parking area to see if we could park the RV there.  We had a lot of fun showing how to visit the place with Google Earth, so we felt like we had been there and didn’t need to really go in person and pay the entrance fee!  I swear, every time we did this seminar several people in the audience chastised us – they said they visited Bellingrath Gardens and loved it … we had to go!  Another incident along our cosmic path this year is that I found an old letter from my Grandmother to my Mother … she was writing about the cross-country trip she and my grandfather made in a VW Bus in 1978.  This letter told of the wonderful time they had at ….

you guessed it!  Bellingrath Gardens!

So, this time across I-10 we HAD to stop!  Bellingrath Gardens is just a little ways off of I-10 on the west side of Mobile.

 

Apparently we missed the spectacular display of Azaleas that peaks sometime in March, but the roses were out in full force!

 

Roses at Bellingrath Gardens

Roses at Bellingrath Gardens

 

The flowers at Bellingrath Gardens.

 

The trees rivaled the flowers for most stunning

 

Smile!

Jim gets a unique perspective on the gardens

Bellingrath Gardens

 

We took advantage of their boat tour of the estuary.

Bellingrath Gardens boat tour of the estuary

Bellingrath Gardens - boat tour of the estuary

 

Bellingrath Gardens

 

We had a delicious lunch at the cafe , decided we would live without any purchases from the gift shop, and got back on the road.

The first time we’ve crossed over west of the Mississippi in quite a while.  This is the crossing at Baton Rouge, Louisianna.

Baton Rouge - crossing the Mississippi

 

The Atchafalaya stretch of I-10 is definitely one of the most interesting highways in the country.  It’s two bridges, one in each direction, that carry you over beautiful swamp, or is this called Bayou?

Atchafalaya

 

Crossing the Atchafalaya river

Floods?  Or normal high water?

Atchafalaya

 

After about 250 miles, it’s time to stop.  We found a Passport America park called Frog City – how can we resist?  Nice gravel pull-thru sites.  Good Wi-Fi and cable.  Next to a casino where we’ll go to breakfast, and right off the highway … Passport rate = $20.  Cookies included!

Today the plan is to get into Texas and stay at the Escapees home park at Livingston.

Laissez le Bons Temps Roulez!

Florida Caverns State Park

We also recorded an episode of our audio “Gabbing with the Geeks.”  To listen to it, go to Gabbing with the Geeks from Florida Caverns State Park and click the play icon on the audio file. 

When we looked at our Streets and Trips map with State Parks pushpin set showing, Florida Caverns popped out at us as a likely place to stay our second night.  We’d heard about this place long ago from our friends Diane and Andy and we’re delighted to get to visit at last.

The stretch of I-10 which goes by Talahassee is always pretty because of the lush, thick forest all around.  But in springtime it’s even more beautiful because of the flowers.

We pulled into the park about 3pm and told the lady at the gate that we planned to take the cave tour the next day.  She said, well y’know you could easily make the 4:30 tour today.  We do have 200 schoolchildren scheduled on the tours tomorrow.  Hey!  4:30 sounds good!

Even though we only had 10 people on our tour, there was a family of 5 that included twin 2-year olds that didn’t stop running and talking.  We may have been better off with the school group!  Anyway – it was still an amazing sight.

We’ve been to Carlsbad, Mammoth, and Luray caverns.  Although this one is on the small side, it rivaled them all for the beautiful formations. 

Here’s our site in the beautiful forest with singing birds.

Happiness is being able to open the window shade on the rear bedroom window!

After a quiet night, we took advantage of the nature trail in the morning.

Next, we’ll be off to another ‘Must See’ that we’ve passed by many times … Belingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama.

May the Fourth be with You

“Star Wars Day” seemed an auspicious start to our summer travels!  Clouds in the sky and bugs on the windshield. We're on the road!
Lots of changes this time.  Mostly good. We have new tires on the RV and we're towing a new car.
We made a decision to leave our kayaks in Fort Lauderdale. We didn't have a chance till try the roof rack, and we never use them that much anyway.  Lastly, we may fly home sometime during the summer and then the kayaks would be there for scuba diving.

First night on the road at 3 Flags in Wildwood, fl. Tomorrow night is Florida caverns state park.
On our way to Colorado springs for the rvsef conference.  See RvSafety.com

 

Sad Stuff: It was a pretty quiet drive because, if I tried to talk, all I could do was sob. It feels so sad to not have Odie with us. After all, we were Odie’s Roadies … now we’re just roadies. It was also very hard for me to leave Mom. She so enjoys having me visit. At her level of Alzheimers she doesn’t really know where I am, but she still recognizes me and is happy in the moment when I’m with her.  I didn’t say I’m going away for the summer – I just said, “See you later.”

Gotta love Florida

Do you know how delightful it has been in South Florida these last two weeks?

We've been hearing from facebook friends all over the country of temperatures in the 100's. And other days we've read of friends experiencing snow where they are.

The UN-Bloggable Life

For the last few weeks we’ve been doing those mundane things that need to get done and are not very exciting.  We usually try to do something Blog-worthy at least once a week, but even that hasn’t happened this time. 

We’re ready to hit the road tomorrow, so here’s a recap of the past couple weeks.  On the way home, we had a flat tire on the RV and decided we needed 6 new tires – that was Jim’s job.  See our Geeks on Tour Newsletter for a little more detail on that!

Mom had several dentist/doctor appointments – that kept me busy several days.  Then Jim and I had our own dentist/doctor appointments to attend to.

We got a new car and gave the old one to Devon.  I think this is going to work out well.  We got another Honda CRV, since the old one worked so well.  We bought a 2007 from CarMax – same place we bought the last one.

New car color matches the RV much better!

 

We really enjoy attending our Toastmasters group when we’re in town. 

Jim and Chris at Earlybird Toastmasters in Fort Lauderdale

I took my camera to one meeting and ended up making this little movie using Picasa and Movie Maker:

I was hoping to get a lot of progress on updating our PicasaTutorials.com website since I had hired a web development firm the month before to take it over, put it on their servers and update it to a new design with all sorts of bells and whistles. 

Then I was going to start ringing those bells and blowing the whistles.  Instead I had to spend most of my time putting out fires because, in the process of transferring and updating, it was left vulnerable to hackers.  Instead of our readers being impressed with an updated system (for which I spent a lot of money) they were greeted with a Google warning that the site was filled with Malware.  What a nightmare!  To their credit, the developers and webhosts did do all the work to clean it up, but I spent all my time doing damage control and keeping tabs on it.  It is now all clean (I hope) and it’s working faster than ever.  But, I don’t have much heart anymore for ringing those bells and blowing the whistles! 

I spent as much time with Mom as possible.  Here’s a sweet picture of her getting her hair cut.

mom-haircut

Oh yeah, we spent some time with the grandkids too.  Here we were babysitting them at the pool.

Grandkids at the swimming pool

IMG_5509.JPG

And, here they are in the motorhome with their favorite babysitters … our tablet computers!  We don’t have to show them a thing … they really do know how to use them just intuitively.  In fact, I keep a close watch so I can learn something!

At home with the babysitters!

We were supposed to get on the road a few days ago, but we had to wait for an awning part to arrive.  The arm that holds the awning out just snapped and broke in a little bit of weather the other day.  That part arrived today and Jim took care of putting it all back together again.  He also worked with a repairman to fix our rear air conditioner unit while I did some laundry.

We’re both looking forward to hitting the road so we can relax a bit!

We’re headed to Colorado Springs, for the RVSEF conference.  After that, it will be Rapid City, SD and then Gillette, WY for lots more rallies.  See our calendar for all the details.