Key West, FL

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Michigan Traveler

When we started our new life as full-timer RVers and we told people we were going to live in our fifth wheel trailer, many would ask, “What are you going to do in the winter?”  Bob’s standard response was, “February in Key West sounds real good to me.”  We spent not month in Key West, but a month and a half.  Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West operates RV parks on Sigsbee Island and Trumbo Annex in Key West for military personnel and retirees, and it is THE place to stay.  Most of the campgrounds and RV parks in the Keys are very expensive, but Sigsbee and Trumbo Annex are a part of the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) Program for the NAS Key West and priced for military personnel.  NAS Key West is spread out over Boca Chica and Key West.  The main housing area, the Navy Lodge, the Navy Exchange and Commissary are on Sigsbee Island.  Trumbo Annex has another RV park that is all dry camp, at the as well as more base housing.  The chapel, more housing and a beach are at Truman Annex, and the runways and command group are on Boca Chica.  Needless to say, we didn’t go anywhere without our military ID cards!

Sigsbee Island has about 90 full hookup sites and over 300 “overflow” sites  Initially we went into a “overflow dry camp” site.  One of our neighbors was an iguana!  When we arrived at Sigsbee, there were 305 total campsites, mostly dry camp.  The good thing was there were plenty of examples showing how to make your life easier with no hookups to water, electricity, or sewer.  Click on our Boondocking tab for some tips for dry camping.  At Sigsbee Island you rotate into one of the full hookup sites for two weeks and then rotate back out into dry camp.  This gives everyone a chance to enjoy the easy life of full hookups.  One of the daily activities was checking the lists to see how many days are left before you can rotate into a full hookup site.  A typical day started with a good workout in the morning, either running, walking, or biking.  There is also a small fitness center with weight machines and treadmills.  Key West is not big, (only two miles wide and four miles long) but packed with things to do and you can bicycle almost anywhere.  Both of us bicycled all the way around the island as one of our workout routines.  During the last two weeks we were there a weather front came through with winds from 10-18 mph.  It made the rides around the island rather challenging.

Our one and a half months in Key West was our longest stay in any one place yet, giving us time to take it easy and relax.  The length of the stay gave us an opportunity to meet other campers and share experiences and tips on camping.  Some of them are snowbirds who are in Key West for the winter, some just for a few weeks, and some full time RVer’s.

Of course Key West is all about the water, at least in Bob’s opinion, and we went kayaking and snorkeling right off the shore, about 100 yards from our trailer.  Early in our stay Bob did a SCUBA dive on the Vandenberg, an Air Force radar ship sunk as an artificial reef.  Pat came along and snorkeled on the surface while Bob was 100 feet below.  The Vandenberg was sunk in 2009 and is teeming with aquatic life with lots of coral growing on the hull, and fish, squid, octopus as well as other aquatic life making their home inside the Vandenberg.A favorite activity for anyone visiting Key West is watching the sunset at Mallory Square.  There are street performers, musicians, magic acts, and gymnastic acts as well as vendors to entertain you while waiting for the sunset.  Of course wandering Duval Street at night watching the crowd is a “must see” event.   Our first night at Mallory Square we were told about a great restaurant with music that wouldn’t ruin your hearing and we decided to check it out.  The “Smokin’ Tuna” was terrific!  Good food, nice music, and great service and all of it under the stars.  So if you like open air dining, check it out!

One of our favorite places for snorkeling is Truman Annex.  This is right next to Fort Zackary Taylor State Park, but it is part of NAS Key West.  There are some large rock piles near the shore in the state park beach that attract lots of fish.  We saw angelfish, barracuda, and yellow-tail jacks to name a few.  You can also snorkel right off the shore at Sigsbee Island where the favorite snorkeling sport was looking for spiny lobster.  There is always lots of boat traffic in the area so you have to make sure you have your “diver below” flag.

It was easy to meet other folks in the campground.  For one thing the guys were always checking out everyone else’s rig to see what they have done to make it better.  It was interesting to see how many rigs had solar panels to run their systems without having to use a generator.  At least two other families bought a Weber Q-100 gas grill after seeing ours in operation.  Of course it was always interesting to share stories of where we were from, places we had visited, and of course where you were on the rotation list.

One afternoon the MWR office put on a hot dog and hamburger potluck.  They provided the hot dogs and burgers and everyone brought a dish to pass.  With 300 or so families, you can imagine there was quite a crowd.  But, wouldn’t you know it, as we were standing in line we found out the couple next to us in line was from Grand Ledge, MI!

One Saturday morning we rode our bikes to Mallory Square and around town.  While some of the bars were already open, there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic before 10:00 am.  It was nice to be able to do that and not have a huge crowd on the streets.  We treated ourselves to breakfast at one of the local restaurants at the wharf.

During our last two weeks we moved onto a site with full hookups and it was nice to have electricity all the time and not have to haul water and waste every week.  Nicer yet was the view from our campsite, we could sit in our lawn chairs and look out into the Gulf of Mexico.  One of our daily activities was gathering with a bunch of our friends to watch the sunset just before dinner.

We drove up to Bahia Honda State Park for a snorkeling tour to the Looe Reef Marine Sanctuary, but when we arrived we were told that it had been cancelled due to high winds and rough sea conditions.  We made the best of it and kayaked and did a little snorkeling on the Atlantic side.  By the time we left it was obvious why they had cancelled the trip as the waves were pretty high.  While we were at the Bahia Honda marina a manatee swam in and took a drink from a fresh water faucet on the dock.

About a week later we had a break in the weather and Bob did two SCUBA dives while Pat snorkeled on Looe Reef with an outfit called Strike Zone Diving.  It was a great trip with abundant fish that were used to humans swimming among them.

Bob took some time to visit the “Little White House” which was Harry Truman’s favorite getaway location while he was President.  It’s a great place to visit to get a little insight into Harry Truman and discounted tickets are available through the ITT office at Sigsbee. 

He also toured the Coast Guard Cutter Ingham.  This cutter served in WWII (Europe and the Pacific), Korea and Vietnam and earned two Presidential Citations.  When it was decommissioned they knew it would be a museum ship so they left almost everything on board.  It gives you a unique look at shipboard life.

Towards the end of our stay it was pretty clear that the snowbirds were heading home, everyday there were fewer dry camp sites occupied.  The day before we left we were told that by the end of the month everyone left should be in full hook ups and no one in dry camp.  After a great visit, we headed up the Keys on March 18th for our next stop, Everglades National Park.

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Disney World and MacDill Air Force Base

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Michigan Traveler

The hit of our time in Florida was seeing our oldest son, Scott, who was home on leave from Afghanistan.  His family was staying at a relative’s vacation home in Orlando so he could enjoy his leave in a festive setting.  We stayed at Fort Wilderness at Disney World and spend time with Scott and his family touring the various parks of Disney World.  The icing on the cake was having our other children, Dave and Elisabeth, join us.  It was the first time in over a year we had all of our family together and Bob and Pat loved it!  We will spare you the details and let the pictures tell our story.  We all had a great time!

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From Orlando we moved to MacDill AFB near Tampa for the last few days.  Raccoon Creek Campground is the RV park run by the Morale,Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) Branch, and it was packed.  MacDill has approximately 340 sites with full hookups that you can stay on for up to 180 days.  However they have an almost unlimited number of “dry camp” sites which are essentially a piece of ground to camp on.  We went into “dry camp,” where you get electricity from your own portable generator, load up your fresh water tank and live off of that.  This was our first dry camping experience (sometimes called “boondocking”) and we learned a lot.

While at MacDill we invited our niece, Robin, and her kids to join us.  Pat’s sister, MaryLee, had flown down from Wisconsin to visit Robin, so we had quite a crowd.  We had everyone over to our campsite for dinner a couple of nights.   We all went to the beach at the RV park where we swam, paddled kayaks, made sand castles and buried kids in the sand.  It was a good time to spend with and talk with Scott, and a good time for him to decompress before he returned to Afghanistan.

However, as with all good things, it had to end.  We took Scott back to Orlando to catch his flight back to Afghanistan and took Dave and Elisabeth to the airport in Tampa to fly back to their respective homes.  Bob and Pat stayed on for a few more days to spend time with Robin, MaryLee and the kids, Destiny and Jeremiah.

Near MacDill is the Weedon Island State Wildlife Preserve with canoe/kayak trails that lead you through a series of islands and channels through mangrove trees.  Tampa Bay is off the Gulf of Mexico and is a tidal basin.  With the tides coming in and going out the water level is constantly changing and, as a result, the kayak trail can get pretty tight during low tide.  We teamed up with another MacDill camper and spent a morning paddling in the bay, it was great fun!

One of the best kept secrets in the Tampa Bay area is the Armed Forces Military Museum.  This is a small operation, but they have done it up right.  Bob said he had never seen such a well-maintained collection of military equipment, all displayed in a diorama form that brought the display to life.  It is well worth the admission fee, but military personnel and veterans can get in free with their military ID card.

Our stay in Disney World and MacDill AFB was a great opportunity to spend time with family. Oddly enough, this gathering would have been more difficult if we were still back in Michigan.  Our RV lifestyle is certainly giving opportunities for adventure in more ways than one.

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Homosassa Springs, FL

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Michigan Traveler

Isn’t it amazing that the farther south you travel the warmer the temperatures get?  We had planned this part of our journey for quite awhile.  Several years ago we had tent camped in the area in March and had gone snorkeling with the manatees in King’s Bay in Crystal River and thought it would be better in January.  Manatees are warm blooded mammals and migrate to the warm, spring-fed rivers on Florida’s west coast.  The last time we were here the manatees had largely headed back out into the Gulf of Mexico, this time they were abundant throughout the area.

While you can take manatee snorkeling tours, we knew enough that we just did our own thing.  We paddled from a shop called Crystal River Kayak along a canal to a place called Three Sisters Spring.  Only swimmers and paddlers can get back into the Three Sister and the water is as clear as tap water.  We paddled in our kayaks, then put on our snorkeling gear and went over the side to swim with the manatees.  Most of them were just resting on the bottom and bobbing up for air every 10 – 15 minutes, but some came right up to us so we could pet them.  Manatees are not small animals.  They can grow to 15 feet and weigh 2-3,000 pounds.  However they are not aggressive at all and are plant eaters.  Manatees are often injured by power boat propellers and reserves have been established in which you can’t boat or swim.We visited the Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park and saw all kinds of animals.  This park does not import any animals but “rescues” animals that have been injured or abandoned.  For example they have two black bears that are native to the area, but were abandoned by the mother when they were cubs and would not have survived in the wild on their own.  In many areas of the park the animals are free and the people are in the cage.

The park borders on the Homosassa River and the next day we paddled up the river into the springs by the park and swam with the manatees in that area.  While we saw fewer manatees, there were far fewer people in the river, making it a much better experience.

Bob decided to upgrade his SCUBA diving skills and took an Advanced Open Water Diver course at a local dive shop, American Pro Diving Center.  He spent several nights studying the student workbook and did five SCUBA dives over two days, practicing skills in buoyancy control, underwater navigating, deep diving , night diving, and underwater photography.  His most exciting dive was at a site called the Blue Grotto.  This is a fresh water spring that had created a cavern and the roof had collapsed creating an access pond.  The water temperature is a constant 70-72 degrees and perfectly clear.  They had underwater lights to increase the visibility at the bottom, and a cable to follow as you swam behind the debris pile into the cavern.  There was a soft shelled turtle that was so used to divers that it would come right up to you and play with you.

Our niece Robin and her kids, Destiny and Jeremiah came up from the Tampa area to visit us and we took them kayaking to Three Sisters Springs.  Destiny and Pat paddled solo in our kayaks and Bob took Robin and Jeremiah in one we had rented.  It was Destiny’s first time kayaking, but it wasn’t long before she was paddling like she had been doing it for years.

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Back Home for Christmas and on to Alabama

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Michigan Traveler

We decided to fly home for Christmas rather than drive, a decision we may do differently in the future.  It was a bad Christmas for snow in Michigan, but we did get some snow the day after Christmas.  Regardless we had a great time seeing family and friends.Once we returned to Mississippi we had dinner with Sandra and the grandkids and headed for Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, AL.

Once we were back at Gulf State Park, we discovered that there was a “Polar Bear” swim the next afternoon on New Year’s Day.  Bob figured this was MUCH easier than doing one in Michigan (where they cut holes in the ice to do it) and decided to go for it.  The water was plenty cold, but you didn’t have to push the ice out of the way to be a Polar Bear in Alabama.

Gulf State Park is a great place to camp.  From November through March there is no limit on the number of days you can stay, so this is a favored place for snowbirds and full-timers.  The park is adjacent to a series of 11 miles of biking/running/walking trails established and maintained through a partnership between the City of Orange Beach and Gulf State Park.  There is kayaking and bird watching on Middle and Shelby Lakes.  And this is only in the campground area.  Gulf State Park maintains 3.5 miles of beach along the Gulf of Mexico with pavilions and piers.  For those for whom camping is not the priority there are also cabins and a golf course.

With our friends, Roger and Darcy, we visited the USS Alabama Memorial.  This is not only an educational experience, but an inspiring one.  You can tour the USS Alabama, a WW II battleship, go on board the USS Drum, a WW II fleet submarine, and see aircraft and military vehicles of all kinds, including a B-52 bomber.  One of the things that Bob found interesting is that they have set aside some of the rooms in the USS Alabama to recognize other warships that were not preserved, such as the cruiser, USS Mobile.Tuesday, 1/10/12, was not forecast to be a pleasant day so we decided to drive over to Pensacola to visit the National Naval Aviation Museum at the Naval Air Station and do grocery shopping at the commissary.

For anyone who is into aviation history, the museum is a “must do” event.  It chronicles aviation from pre-WWI to the present.  They have built a replica of a WWII carrier flight deck, have the actual seaplane that made the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, and flight simulators so you can “fly” a plane or helicopter.  The restoration work they have done on these aircraft is amazing.   For example they restored a Korean War Banshee that had been a playground attraction, filled with concrete, to an appearance that looked like it had just rolled off the assembly line!  The Navy’s Blue Angels are based at Pensacola and you can watch them practice their stunts from the museum.  While they were not practicing on this trip, we were able to watch them on a previous visit and it is a sight to see!

There is so much to see in the area.  Thursday Bob drove out to Fort Morgan on the entrance to Mobile Bay.  Fort Morgan was in operation from 1834 until 1946.  It was during the Civil War during the Battle of Mobile Bay while trying to get past the Confederate held Fort Morgan, that Federal Admiral David Farragut reportedly said, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”  Fort Morgan is not close to any built up area and there is plenty of wildlife in the facility.  Most people focus on the birds in the area, Bob spotted a pair of red fox while walking on the parapet of the fort.

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A Vagabond’s Thanksgiving and Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Michigan Traveler

Thanksgiving found us in southern Alabama.  Darcy Toth and her husband Roger spend the winter in Orange Beach, AL and invited us to join them for Thanksgiving.  We stayed at the Gulf State Park.  This is a great park with plenty of hiking and biking trails.  There was a small lake right across from our site that offered a nice place to go kayaking.  Bob considered doing some snorkeling, but the signs that warned campers not to feed the alligators made him think twice about that.

It was interesting to find so many “snowbirds” in one spot.  We met people from Michigan, other northern states and Canada, who spend the winter in this campground every year.  There are snowbird clubs that have formed in this area and have events together.

We kayaked, and biked most days.  While the nights were often cool, the days were warm and Bob was able to enjoy swimming in the waves of the Gulf of Mexico on the day after Thanksgiving.  He thought they were “almost” as good as the waves on Lake Michigan!

Before we headed back to Mississippi, the four of us took a trip to Mobile to visit the Bellingrath Gardens.  Many of the plants were past their best times, but the place was decorated with lights for Christmas, and it was fantastic!  We have never seen such a wonderful festival of lights.

Back in Mississippi, we started getting into the Christmas spirit by putting up our Christmas decorations.  When we left Michigan we packed decorations for the various holidays, but didn’t have a plan on what we would do with them.  We took some tent poles and fashioned them into a tripod and hung our outdoor lights on it to make an outdoor tree.  When Katrina, Clarissa and Sierra came out to the campsite, they helped us decorate the inside.  It was a lot of fun for all of us!

We had a great time with Sandra and the girls as they participated in Christmas celebrations.  Katrina and the twins were in the Christmas program at the Baptist Church where they are involved in the youth program.  Katrina was also in the program at the Methodist Church they attend and Sandra sang in the choir for their Christmas Cantata.

We had Sandra and the girls for a Christmas dinner at the trailer and exchanged gifts.  That night Bob, Pat, and Katrina posed as a Wise Man, Shepherd, and Angel in a living Nativity scene. The next day we went Christmas Caroling.  The caroling was fun, but Bob said it didn’t feel right singing carols without snow!

Of course, life intruded on Sunday morning when we found that we had lost electrical power in the trailer and were now working off the 12 volt battery system.  We called around and found a Cameo dealer in Hattiesburg, MS that could work on it that day, so we spent Monday hanging around Hattiesburg while they found what had shorted out and replaced the failed component.  Getting it fixed quickly was important as we had plans to fly back to Michigan to spend the Christmas holidays with our family and friends.  We were happy to get back and set up so we could make our flight to Michigan.

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More on Grandkids and a Trip Back Home

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Michigan Traveler

Veterans’ Day this year was a unique experience.  Pat and I spend the afternoon taking our granddaughter, Katrina, shopping for her birthday present.  While we were in a department store and I was waiting outside the fitting room while Katrina was trying on clothes, I heard an announcement that veterans could get an additional discount on any purchase – what a deal!  Then we had dinner at Applebee’s for their Veterans’ Day special.  What a great time to be recognized for your service to your country and spend special time with family.

I had a special treat the next day when I took Katrina out for her first kayaking experience on the pond at the campground.  She took to it like a duck to water!  She is just like her dad; she had to find out how fast she could go!SkillPath Seminars contacted me to teach a project management class to the Accident Fund in Lansing on November 15th.  I thought this was a great opportunity and Pat and I started making plans to take full advantage of it.  We flew into Detroit on Sunday, drove to Lansing to spend some time with David.  He is doing fine and still working at Granger’s while looking for full time work.  We had a nice dinner with our friends, Susan and Gary Aten, before going to Stan and Betsy Pash’s house.  It’s great to have friends who invite you to stay in their home when you announce you are going to be in the area. Thank you Betsy and Stan!

Monday we took care of doctor visits and other “stuff” that is still based in Lansing.  Pat met with her “lunch bunch” friends and I had lunch with a friend from the National Guard.  Later Pat, Dave and I met my sister, Susan and her husband, Gerry.  We had a good time sharing stories of our travels and their trip to Europe.

While I was teaching at the Accident Fund, Pat went to Saginaw to do some early Christmas shopping with her sisters.  While the training went well, the hit of the evening was having Dave fix dinner for me at his apartment.  I can testify that he has picked up some of his mom’s cooking skills.

After a leisurely trip back to Mississippi, we were able to spend some more time with Sandra and the girls before we headed to Orange Beach, AL to spend Thanksgiving with our friends, Darcy Toth and her husband, Roger.

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Visiting the Grandkids

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Michigan Traveler

We’ve been in Mississippi for a little over a week now and we’re enjoying the warm weather. To us, it seems more like early September than November.  We spent the first week at the Ross Barnett Reservoir campground where we stayed last spring.  It’s a beautiful locale but about 35 minutes drive from Sandra and the girls so we’ve moved to Wendy Oaks RV resort a little south of Florence (which is south of Jackson).

Clarissa

Sierra

We attended the church Halloween party with Katrina, Clarissa, and Sierra on Halloween night and watched them play all of the games and win candy prizes.  All three of them also won a cake at the cake walk!  They were pretty excited about that.  Bob had to leave for Pittsburgh on Tuesday (returning on Thursday night) but Pat got to see Katrina’s last football game.  She was her team’s best player and Sierra and

Katrina

Clarissa were great cheerleaders!

Cheerleaders in Action

We had Sandra and the girls over for dinner last Friday night and then the girls stayed overnight with us.  We visited all of their favorite places at the Reservoir—the boat launch to pick up shells and feed the ducks, and the playground, both for the swings etc. and to dig in the sand.  We also hiked along the Pearl River below the dam, an interesting view of the dam with lots of white sand. Katrina returned home Friday evening but the twins spent Saturday night with us and then we took them to church on Sunday morning.  They’re attending Marvin United Methodist Church so we felt right at home!

After we settled into our new campsite yesterday we again had Sandra and the girls over for dinner.  Katrina had requested cheesy potatoes and apple pies in the pie irons (we had chicken and vegetables as well).  It was warm enough that we could eat outside at the picnic table and then sit around the campfire for dessert.  It was a wonderful evening!

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Visiting Elisabeth in Raleigh

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Michigan Traveler

While family and friends are bundled up at Spartan Stadium at MSU for the MSU-Wisconsin game, I was standing barefoot in the sand grilling burgers, only a few hundred feet from the beach at Kitty Hawk, NC – what a life!

Pat and I arrived in the Raleigh area on October 9th and set up camp at the Falls River Recreational Area.  This is a great campground with nice, deep sites and plenty of space between camp sites.  Elisabeth met us at the campground for dinner and a campfire.  It was great to see her again and to be able to spend time together.

Tuesday I went to Pittsburgh for my Corps of Engineers Leadership Development Program.  Pat and Elisabeth hung out together while I was gone and Elisabeth and I went kayaking on Falls Lake after I returned on Friday.

A few years ago we discovered a winery between Raleigh and Wilmington that had some great Muscatine wine, so Saturday was spent traveling to and touring the Duplin Winery.

Duplin Winery

I can’t remember the last time I went to a Michigan State Fair, but now we have gone to two state fairs this year!  The North Carolina State Fair was great, with all kinds of good food that is not good for you, but fun to eat.  We checked out the garden displays, historical and craft displays.  When we walked by the North Carolina Army National Guard recruiting booth I saw they had a climbing wall and, of course, this old Army Ranger couldn’t pass that up.  While the age limit was 45, they let me climb it anyway and I DID make it to the top!

Later in the week I took the opportunity to do some handyman work around Elisabeth’s house.  It was fun and after three tries I finally got the exhaust fan in her guest bathroom fixed!  I guess I should give up my dreams of home repairs as a career.  The rest of the week was taken up with checking out some to the area around the campground, more kayaking and handyman work.  We had a great time visiting with Elisabeth.

On Saturday, Oct 22nd, we headed to the Outer Banks to stay at the Kitty Hawk RV Park.  At first I wasn’t very impressed as it looked like your typical trailer park.  However, it all changed when we realized we were right across the road from the ocean – a one minute walk from the trailer, and we had an ocean view from our living room.  Later in the day we went to the Wright Brothers Memorial.  The memorial was built on Kill Devil Hill which is a sand dune; consequently it is always moving.  In fact it is over 450 feet from its location in 1903 when the Wright Brothers made their first powered flight.  In preparing the memorial the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stabilized the dune with a variety of grasses.  After that we went to Jockey Ridge State Park, which is known for outstanding kite flying and hang gliding.  We flew kites until after sunset.

Sunday we checked out the Currituck Lighthouse.  Elisabeth thought this would be good because I had already visited the other four of the five lighthouses on the Outer Banks.  It is also the only unpainted brick lighthouse on this part of the coast.  That afternoon we headed to Roanoke Island to tour the ‘Lost Colony.”  Three expeditions landed at Roanoke.  The first two returned to England, but the third group was supposed to be permanent.  The Governor returned to England to get more support, but was unable to return for three years.  When he finally returned the colony was gone without any sign of where they had gone or why they had left; hence the “Lost Colony.”Monday we went back to the Wright Brothers Memorial.  They had a display of WWII gliders and I was able to meet a glider pilot who had flown in Operations Market-Garden and Varsity.  Boy, did he have some stories to tell!

This next morning we were up early to watch the sunrise and then headed back to Raleigh. Back at the Falls River Recreation Area, I couldn’t help but notice we were one of three campers in our area of the campground; it was like having your own forest!  There are some benefits of camping late in the season.  After some housekeeping and trailer washing, we headed out on Thursday for Mississippi.

Remember, you can click on each picture to see it in its full size.

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Gettysburg, PA and Fredericksburg, VA

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Michigan Traveler

Gettysburg is known as the Turning Point in the Civil War, the time when the Army of the Potomac came to the realization that Robert E. Lee could be defeated.  What an opportunity to walk the ground and stand in the battle positions of the units that stumbled into one of the most significant battles of the Civil War.  The three days of battle took place from July 1-3, 1893, when Robert E. Lee moved the Army of Northern Virginia north to threaten the Union Capital. We arrived at the Artillery Ridge Campground around 2:00 on Wednesday and immediately took a Ranger-led presentation of the third day of the battle.

Artillery Battery position on Cemetery Ridge

This was the day General Longstreet led a final attack, now known as “Pickett’s Charge,” that almost broke the Union line.  From that day on, Lee was forced to fight a defensive battle, until he surrendered at Appomattox.  The next day we started at the Visitor Center watching a brief film and the Cyclodrama, a 3600painting of the battle.  From there we went to Little Round Top for another Ranger-led program on what is one of the best known (and my favorite) story of Gettysburg, the action of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine on the second day of the battle.

16th Michigan Regiment Monument at Little Round Top

Friday we headed further South and camped at the RV park of Fort A.P. Hill, near Fredericksburg.  By this time Pat’s battlefield tour “fun meter” was about maxed out so Saturday saw Bob touring the battlefield at Fredericksburg by himself. 

Fredericksburg was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.  General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac attacked across a mile and a half of open fields against Lee’s Confederates who were protected by a sunken road.

The Sunken Road

It has been said that war brings out the best and the worse of men.  At Fredericksburg it brought out the best of men in Sergeant Richard Kirkland, known as the “Angel of the Marye’s Heights.”  Hearing the Union wounded moaning as they suffered in the field, Sergeant Kirkland gathered a bunch of canteens, jumped over the stone wall of the sunken road.  Risking his life, he moved among the wounded, propping them on the knapsacks and giving them water.  Union sharpshooters first thought he was stealing from the wounded and tried to kill him, but once they realized what he was about, withheld their fire.  Sergeant Kirkland survived Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, and was promoted to Lieutenant, but was killed at Chickamauga.

The Angel of Marye’s Heights

Later, back at the campground, Bob did some maintenance on the trailer and we head for Raleigh, NC on Sunday morning.

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Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Michigan Traveler

Our stay in Acadia National Park has been great!  The hiking is like nothing I have done back in Michigan.  Pat and I hiked around South Bubble Mountain, and along the coast near Sand Beach as we described in earlier posts. I hiked with a Ranger-led hike on Beech Mountain (in the rain) and Pat and I also hiked to the top of Cadillac Mountain and over Pemetic Mountain.  It is certainly not like hiking at Rose Lake State Recreation Area!

We got our kayaks in the water in Thomas Bay, just north of our campground.  We launched as the tide was going out and it was interesting to see more and more of the coastline appear as the water receded.  The weather that morning was terrific and we had a picnic lunch on a small island.  The water was as clear as tap water and we saw a couple of crabs scooting along the bottom of the bay.  There were cranes, seagulls, and cormorants all around the shore of the bay.The best morning we had was the day we saw the sun rise from Cadillac Mountain at 6:25 am.  Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on the eastern seaboard and when the sun rises, you are seeing the first sunrise in the continental United States – what a sight!

Not everyone realizes this, but Acadia National Park is on Mount Desert (the last part of a meal, not an arid, sandy place) Island.  However, there is another part of the park across Frenchman’s bay on the Schoodic Peninsula.  Much of the park there is the Schoodic Education and Research Center, one of 20 National Park research learning centers across the country.  While there are hiking trails there, the best part is going out to the point. The beach is slabs of volcanic granite with seams of volcanic lava called diabase dikes between the pink granite ledges.  Even on a relatively calm day the crashing of the surf against the ledges is a sight to see!

On the days when the weather wasn’t the greatest we rode the Island Explorer, a fleet of busses that offer a free rider service throughout the entire island.  It’s a great way to see the sights and not have to worry about being distracted from your driving.

Bar Harbor is named after a sandbar that connects the island mainland to Bar Island.  At low tide you can even drive across to Bar Island.  We took a short hike across to Bar Island on a rather rainy, foggy day.  There were cruise ships in the harbor that looked like ghost ships as we watched them through the fog.  Bar Harbor is your typical tourist town, but in a quaint, attractive way.  We wandered through town on a couple of occasions, as well as having dinner in town a couple of times.

It has been a great time and I wouldn’t mind coming back here again sometime, possibly as a volunteer so I could lead hikes instead of just going on one.

Monday we pull out and will spend about a week traveling to Raleigh, NC to spend some time with Elisabeth.  We plan to pick up a set of Honda generators so we can “boondock” where we don’t have electrical hookups, and visit the battlefields at Gettysburg and Manassas on our way to Raleigh.

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