kissalostsoul

I pretty much just collapsed from my three days of driving, and took yesterday off.  Billy Thibodeaux, the owner of Premiere RV, came inside to measure the two windows to order the MCD shades for me, and we discussed the other maintenance/repair items I had on my list.  Billy recently had quadruple heart bypass surgery, so is slowly returning to work.  It’s hard to keep a good man down I guess.  He and his wife, Helen, were off in their rig to visit friends in Dallas after my shade order was placed.  It generally takes about a week for those custom shades to arrive and be installed, so I knew I’d be here for a number of days. The tires on my rig were manufactured in 2006, so it’s been seven years.  They may not look bad, but I knew it was time to replace them before I had the trauma of blow outs while driving.  Billy gave me the name of a reliable establishment to provide new tires for me, and told me who to ask for and to mention his name.  So ...

I haven’t been posting since I left Okefenokee on Monday, because there just wasn’t much to say.  It was just a matter of driving and driving, and setting up for the night at a couple of not very memorable campgrounds.  I’m not a Walmart boondocker.  My choice is to find a campground (preferably Passport America) in the afternoon, minimally set up, and take Emma for a walk on something other than asphalt.  I stretched it for me at 260 miles on Monday, but at least I passed into the central time zone, so I gained an hour.  That amount of miles fairly wore me out, and I wanted to be off the road before my attention span and reaction speed was slowed down by drowsiness. I spent Monday night in the panhandle of Florida, and last night outside of Biloxi, MS.  Memories flowed through my mind as I passed up the exit for Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR.  This morning, I awoke with renewed vigor to be traveling through the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area in...

Even though it has been raining most of the day, I’ve been busy finishing my pack up chores.  Basically, all I have left to do tomorrow is unhook the water and electric, pull in the slides, raise the levelers, hook up the toad, and head down the road.  My plan is to drive a little more than I like to a campground 259 miles away in the panhandle of Florida.  I hope to arrive in Scott, LA, on Wednesday, and that’s about 670 miles from here. Since I don’t even have a chair to sit on outside under the awning this evening, I decided to look through my 900 saved pictures from my time at Okefenokee and reminisce.  I have so many wonderful memories that it was hard to choose.  I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I did picking them out. From the birds, to the alligators, to the Chesser Homestead, each day provided a new memory or learning experience.  And I certainly couldn’t forget Nurse Ratchet and my hip replacement surgery.  I’ve never had an adventur...

It’s been a very busy several days here at Okefenokee NWR as I finished up my working commitments, and began preparations for pulling out on Monday morning.  I worked Thursday and Friday, and finally decided I needed two days to pack everything up and take care of final details.  No refuge work today meant I could begin all the myriad tasks after being here for close to six months.  While I was out roving on Thursday, I came across a yellow-crowned night heron in one of the little ponds along Phernetton Freeway.  These birds usually sleep during the day, and hunt at night, but it was actively looking for something to eat.                                                     ...

Yesterday, I picked up Pam and Stan, a refuge vehicle, and got some help hitching up a boat behind the truck.  We were off for a 25 mile drive to Kingfisher Landing to do some canoe trail maintenance.        It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we put in about 28 miles on the water accomplishing our chores. Jackie, a local volunteer, was our boat captain, and I must admit that he did most of the work installing the signs we had with us.  We were pretty much just along to enjoy the ride.  And enjoy it we did! There were scattered cypress trees, wet prairies, and Jackie took us to see many of the small lakes located in this area of the swamp.  In the picture above, you can see a peat blowup in the lower center.  That’s not mud, it’s peat.  Some say the buried peat in the swamp is 15-20 feet deep.  Gases form in the decaying matter, and small ‘blowups’ occur.  If there are enough o...

My three days off this week have been more than busy with my sister Pam and her husband Stanley visiting.  I’ve already posted about taking them on a tour of the refuge on Monday.  Then on Tuesday, we took the boat tour of the swamp run by the concessionaires at the east entrance. We were hoping to get the front seats in the tour boat for the best views, but it was not to be.  As we headed out down the Suwannee Canal, the tour guide, Nile, asked for someone to sit on the front of the boat to even out the weight load.  As you might guess, I was all over that!  So there I sat for the whole tour with no heads or bodies or boat trappings in the way for pictures.  Sweet!  We went on this tour so that Pam and Stan could get a taste of what the Okefenokee swamp is all about. Along the way, we passed a red-shouldered hawk nest with recently hatched young.  One of the adults was standing guard a short distance away. This is the fourth time I’ve t...