Dan & Amy

Temporarily Downsizing

I’m writing this blog the day after we put our RV in storage. The time we have been talking about and dreaming about for years is upon us. We will begin our Appalachian Trail thru hike attempt in a few short days. If you have subscribed to this blog to receive notifications when a new post is made, you may want to go over to our sister blog and do the same there. You can get to it via the top menu of this blog under Backpacking or just click here. This will be the last RVing blog post until we are done hiking.

Since our last post just after New Years, we’ve been working our way east and north in preparation for this moment. Our first stop after San Antonio was in Conroe, TX, a place we’ve visited a couple times before. We chose to go through Conroe in order to avoid going through Houston. One of our favorite places to visit when in Conroe is B52 Brewing. They have a wonderful location with lots of outdoor seating in a wooded beer garden. This was actually the first time we were able to enjoy the outdoor seating because it had been too cold during our previous visits.

From Conroe, we drove to another favorite location of ours, Tickfaw State Park in Louisiana. One of the reasons we liked this state park so much was the many trails through the swampland. Unfortunately, hurricane Ida did a number on the park and all but a few hundred yards of trail are still closed. We anticipated wearing our backpacks and hiking the trails for training but that wasn’t going to happen. The good news for our week in Tickfaw is that our good friends, Jim and Corinne, were joining us for the majority of it. We shared some meals, got caught up, and Jim and Dan even got the chance to enjoy a local brewery. It was these fine folks that helped hook us up with awesome storage for our RV.

From Tickfaw, we moved into Alabama and stayed at a couple COE campgrounds. The first, Foscue Creek COE, was a new location for us. It was a very nice small park on the western side of the state. It rained most of the time we were there but would not mind returning again to enjoy the area in better weather. From there we moved 80 miles up Route 80 to Gunter Hill Campground just outside of Montgomery. While we were there, we had dinner with new friends we met at the New Years Hangout, Joyce and Mark.

Next up was a few days in Americus, GA to visit Amy’s folks. They live in Andersonville, GA, about 30 minutes from the KOA in Americus. We had stayed in the town RV park in Andersonville in the past. That park was a very short walk from Amy’s folks house but the conditions of the park the last time we tried to stay there were questionable. We did walk over to the park to check it out and things have improved. We’ll have to make a decision for our next visit as to where to stay.

From here we ventured to Mistletoe State Park north of Augusta, GA. It was here that we were able to do a short shakedown hike. You can read about that over on our other blog if you haven’t seen that already. This, too, was a nice small state park but access to the sites were tricky and many were not level. We had a gorgeous pull through site on a dead end road with a turn around too small for our size. We ended up backing our way out of the road and that was not too difficult. We would love to return and even occupy the same site. If the weather had been warmer, we would have spent a lot of time enjoying the location outdoors.

Ebenezer Park is a lovely county park in South Carolina just shy of the North Carolina border and the city of Charlotte. We stayed here for 8 days before moving north of Charlotte to the I-77 KOA near Statesville, NC. It was at Ebenezer Park where we first met up with Gary and Cheryl, our first trail angels (trail angels are people who help you out on the Appalachian Trail). They live outside of Charlotte and have graciously agreed to take us to the trailhead. We will fly into Charlotte on Monday, February 28 and they will drive us to Amicalola Falls the next morning. On top of all that, they bought us dinner as they helped us celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary. We can’t thank them enough.

We monitored weather from the KOA off I-77 and determined that we could get the rig into storage (located south of Cleveland) on Monday, February 21. We left to KOA on Saturday and spent two nights in West Virginia at Blue Heron Landing, a relatively new campground near the Ohio River, before heading to storage. Getting the RV into its garage was a challenge due to the 90 degree back in with reduced access caused by snow banks. After a few adjustments backing in, we got the angles right and positioned the RV as close to center as we could hope. After a couple hours of final prepping for storage, we hit the road and landed at our daughter’s house for a few days visiting the grandkids.

Saying goodby to the comfort of our RV

From here we will go to Maine to leave the truck with Dan’s sister, Becky, and brother-in-law, Joe. Joe will take us to the airport in Portland on Monday. They will look after the truck and drive it occasionally so that it will be ready for us when we finish in Maine sometime in August (hopefully). Like Gary and Cheryl, they are early trail angels as well.

New Years in San Antonio

The majority of our friends that spent Christmas with us joined us for a week long New Years hangout in San Antonio. This was another Escapees sponsored hangout hosted by our good friends, Rob and Laura. We reconnected with friends we had met in the past and made some new friends in the process. Escapees is all about community and the hangout program is one of the best ways to build your community on the road.

The first night was an overview of the week’s activities and an opportunity for initial introductions. We sat with two other couples, Joyce and Mark from Alabama and Brad and Carolyn from Minnesota. The first activity on day one was to be a scavenger hunt in and around the Alamo district and river walk of San Antonio. Teams needed to be formed for the activity, so we teamed up with our table mates to form what would be the winning team. This is our second hangout with a scavenger hunt and our second time winning the event. What made this one a bit more interesting is that it also happened to be the day of the Alamo Bowl featuring Oklahoma State and Oregon. Our hosts didn’t realize this at the time of scheduling the activities but it added some extra fun even if it did cause the River Walk to be even more crowded than usual.

Day two started with a visit to the Japanese Tea Gardens and lunch out. The gardens were small and we were definitely not in peak flower season but it was still a nice time out. That evening, we received a private after hours tour of the Alamo. This really turned into a history lesson as depicted by our tour guide. If you ever wonder what one does with a degree in history, one answer is to become a tour guide at the Alamo. Our guide did an excellent job and one tidbit that we found interesting is when the area belonged to Mexico, they had a lucrative offer for land in order to get the territory settled. The problem was more people from the United States signed up and Mexico found themselves in a situation with too many immigrants from the United States.

On New Years Eve, we started the day with a bike ride along the River Walk to tour four missions; Mission Concepcion, Mission San Jose, San Juan Capistrano Mission, and Mission Espada. The bike ride was a lot of fun and visiting the missions was educational. A large number of people at the hangout took part in the bike ride and all but 3 were using e-bikes of one form or another. We were about to complain that we had to pedal and power ourselves up the few hills that existed on the trail until we passed Bill walking his single speed vintage bike up one of the hills. We decided it wouldn’t look good if we complained after that. After the bike ride, we all met up at Kuntsler Brewery for lunch and some refreshing beverages. We were all there and enjoying each others company when Bill walked in and we all cheered his accomplishment.

We finished the day with a catered dinner and celebration in the event hall at the campground. We played trivia with each table being a team followed by music and dancing while we waited for the new year to arrive. We celebrated the ball dropping in Times Square and waited another hour for central time to reach midnight. As midnight approached, the neighborhood adjacent to the campground started shooting fireworks and put on quite a show for us as we all stood outside in the warm night and toasted the new year.

A late brunch and a short walk in a nearby park made for light activities on New Years Day. This was welcome by all who stayed up way past their normal bedtimes to ring in 2022. That evening, we gathered for general RV talk where we all gave pointers and discussed various things related to RVing. The only topic that was specifically off limits was “how do I get good internet service while on the road?”, a topic that can consume a lot of time and result in no good answers.

The weather changed on the 2nd and we all went from shorts and t-shirts to long pants and multiple layers. The day began with miniature golf at Cool Crest Miniature Golf, one of the oldest miniature golf courses in the country. After playing 18 holes of challenging and fun miniature golf with Brad and Carolyn as our playing partners, we all headed to Weathered Souls Brewing. We can thank our daughter, Kristina, for this second brewery visit of the week. For the second year in a row, Kristina gave us a gift certificate to a brewery local to our travels. Dan informed Rob (hangout host) that he needed to visit this brewery in order to spend his gift certificate. It’s surprisingly easy to convince Rob to add a brewery to the itinerary ;-). The brewery was vey happy to see the influx of 30+ thirsty customers and treated us all very well.

That evening we all went to the final night of Lightscape at the Botanical Gardens. The colder weather had us all bundled up with multiple layers but we all agreed that it made it feel much more like the holiday season. The lights were varied and made for a very enjoyable walk through the gardens in the cool evening air.

On our last full day of the hangout we visited Natural Bridge Caverns. The weather continued to be colder, with highs in the low 50’s so we dressed warmly. On the way to the caverns we discovered that, unlike other caves we’ve visited where the cave temperatures remain 55 degrees year round, this cave is 78 degrees and 99% humidity as it is a living cave with lots of moisture. The majority of us that were unaware of this fact found ourselves quite warm in the cave.

The final evening was a potluck dinner where we provided smoked mac and cheese, rapidly becoming our goto for such gatherings. After dinner we played some Jack Box games and had a fun time with everyone. The week had finally come to an end and Tuesday morning, the 4th of January, had us leaving our friends, both new and old, and heading back east to prepare for our big adventure of 2022. The trail is calling…

The Holidays on the Road

After leaving the Fort Davis, we ventured north east to Lake Colorado City State Park where we would spend a few days before heading to one of our favorite Texas State Parks. Lake Colorado City State Park is fairly large but was very sparsely populated, with only a few other rigs present while we were there. We suspect the main reason for the low attendance was the closure of the lake due to an algae problem. No fishing or boating so that kept the weekend warriors down.

One couple we did see in the park had Maine license plates on their vehicles. Whenever we see this and the owners are outside, we tend to strike up a conversation. It turns out the wife of the couple grew up in Rumford, where Dan was born and grew up in that area. She graduated from Rumford HS in the mid/late 70’s and knew some of Dan’s distant cousins (probably better than Dan did). It was fun to talk with someone in Texas that new the minute details of the small towns in Maine that we were familiar with. She couldn’t believe they are building a hotel at the bottom of Falls Hill either!

On Monday of Thanksgiving week, we moved into San Angelo State Park for the third time and for our second Thanksgiving. We stayed here in mid-December our first year on the road and spent our second Thanksgiving on the road here. We like this park for its location and bike trails that can be fun to ride. The park is just a few miles outside of the city of San Angelo and but is still very secluded. The city has a very nice River Walk that we enjoy and Amy had her heart set on seeing the Christmas lights this year. We planned our downtown trip accordingly so we could be there after dark only to learn the lights don’t get turned on until December 1st.

*Christmas lights in downtown Georgetown*

While riding our bikes along the trails on Wednesday morning, we heard a lot of car horns being activated and wondered what was going on. Our first thought was some kind of parade. When we got back onto the park roads from the trails, a park ranger happened by and informed us that they were about to have a feeding of the park’s longhorn herd and bison herd. The horns we heard were the rangers calling the animals to the feeding. We rode our bikes to the designated area and enjoyed the unique sight of bison and longhorn cattle in side-by-side pastures, separated by barbed wire. Evidently this is a twice-a-week occurrence but this was the first time we’ve heard about it in all our stays.

We left San Angelo on the Monday after Thanksgiving to spend two weeks near Georgetown, TX in Jim Hogg Campground with Rob & Laura. They are new grandparents and their three week old grandson lives in the area. We enjoyed meals together, visiting breweries and checking out the holiday lights in downtown Georgetown. We smoked a brisket to bring to their daughter’s house and meet the family. It was a great two weeks and we would reconnect again soon.

*One of the many armadillos in South Llano River State Park*

We then spent five days in South Llano River State Park near Junction, Texas. This turned out to be a very nice park to visit, it had decent hiking and biking trails as well as several bird blinds to sit and watch or photograph the birds. It also had a large population of armadillos. We saw many of them and they would occasionally walk through our camp site while we were sitting outside enjoying the weather.

We left the state park and drove a little over an hour to spend a few nights in Fredericksburg, TX. This a very popular destination and sports a very touristy downtown area with lots of shops catering to the tourist types. It also is home to the Altstadt Brewery, a traditional German brewery housed in a castle like architecture. The beer was pretty good but the atmosphere was top notch. This was by far the plushiest tasting room we’ve ever been in.

*Sunset in Potters Creek with Venus visible*

We left Fredericksburg on the 21st and headed to Potters Creek Park, a COE park on Canyon Lake. We met up with 3 other couples and a 4th would join us in a couple days. Rob and Laura were already in the park when the rest of us arrived and they insisted on hosting us all for dinner, despite the fact that it was Laura’s birthday. It was a great way to get our time together kicked off on the right foot.

Most of us started each day with a group walk of over three miles around the campground. We continued to share evening meals together, including a visit to a local brewery. It all culminated on Christmas day with a pot luck dinner featuring a smoked brisket and some smoked mac and cheese that we provided (see featured photo). Others brought a variety of dishes to pass and lots of desserts. It was a great way to spend the holiday on the road, with friends we’ve met who have become our road family. We hope each of you had an equally nice Christmas day.

Now on to San Antonio for a New Years bash with some of the same friends and a whole bunch more friends we haven’t met yet.

Big Bend National Park

After leaving our friends in Lubbock, TX, we headed south to visit Big Bend National Park. This would be our first visit to Big Bend and we were looking forward to doing some hiking and seeing the sights. We did not get a campsite within the park, so we stayed at a small, but well reviewed, RV park in Terlingua, just outside the northwest border of the park.

Community on the Road

Six couples, including us, made plans to hang out in Lubbock, TX following the Habitat for Humanity hangout in Hobbs, NM. These gatherings of several RVers, that are generally active in the Escapees hangout program, have become known as “not-a-hangout hangouts”. We’ve spent a lot of time with Rob & Laura and some time with Mike & Terri. Along with those four, Mark & Sandy and Peter & TJ were with us in Chiefland, FL for most of last winter. Chris and Jenny were at our very first hangout in Tucson, AZ and we got to know them a lot better during the hangout in Hobbs and will spend Christmas with them in a few weeks. We were looking forward to a week of great company and much needed R&R (especially for Rob & Laura – hosts of the Hobbs hangout).