Monday, November 30, 2009

Well, the RV has been off the road sitting for 18 days and hopefully we'll get back on the road today. We arrived here in Atlanta, actually Decatur, on the 12th and then flew back to Des Moines last Tuesday.

We celebrated Thanksgiving and an early Christmas with all of our children at Andy's home. The picture is of our seven grandchildren in Andy's back yard. They were asked to do a silly pose.The play equipment takes up all of the back yard and the grandchildren love it.

We left Des Moines yesterday and flew back to Atlanta. I had dropped the RV off at a dealer last week for some warranty issues and just called this morning to see if it's done. I was told that they would call me right back and let me know. That was over three hours ago and I'm thinking it will not be good news.

We apologize for not posting anything new over the past couple of weeks. As we get on the move again we'll start posting again.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It rained all day today, it rained as we were driving to Carl Sandburg’s home, it rained while we were there, and it rained the rest of the day. Sandburg’s home is part on the National Park Service. We took a tour of the house and watched a couple of films about the Sandburg’s. It’s interesting that his wife was famous also. She raised grand champion goats. One time she had a customer that came from Europe to buy some goats. After the sale was made she was asked what her husband did. (He already had won a Pulitzer Prize.) There are still goats on the farm.

The photos are of Sandburg’s home and his office where he did most of his writing.

If it stops raining, I will write more later.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Today, we went to America’s largest home, Biltmore, in Asheville, NC. The house has 250 rooms, 90 bedrooms, 65 bathrooms, 175,000 sq. ft. (4 acres). The home sits on 8,000 acres with beautiful views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The home took six years and 1,000 workers to build. It was completed for George Vanderbilt to have Christmas at Biltmore in 1895. The home is still owned by the Vanderbilt family. No one has slept in the home for years. Every day there are thousands of people that visit the home. We estimated that today there were 3,000 people on the grounds. Of course, you can’t photo anything inside, but I can tell you every room that we toured (52) were beautifully decorated or demonstrated how the home was operated; kitchens, laundry, floral room, a kitchen just to cook meat (rotisserie kitchen). The home also had a bowling alley, swimming pool, and gymnasium.

Now to catch you up on a couple of things since last week. We drove to Greenville, SC, on Thursday and stayed at Paris Mountain SP. The park was built in the 30’s by the CCC. We just took it easy on Friday. On Saturday we visited Dean and Sue Loomis, our friends that we meet at Victoria Palms, Donna, TX. They are the couple in the picture with Connie in front of Biltmore.

On Sunday, we went to Christ Episcopal Church in Greenville with Dean and Sue. The church is one of the oldest churches in town. It’s huge, the campus takes up one square block near downtown Greenville. It was as close to “High Church” as Connie and I have seen. They used part of the 1928 prayer in the service. They had two services at 11:15; one contemporary and one Rite II. Great service.

Sunday afternoon we drove to Asheville and are staying at Mama Gurtie’s RV Park.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

First, the photo of the two young ladies in yesterday's blog is of Eleanor and Olivia Winston, Paul and Mirtica Winston’s children. We were first introduced to the Winston’s at St. Luke’s. Paul works for Deere & Company and was transferred/promoted to Waterloo from Coffeeville KS. He was later transferred to Moline, then Raleigh NC. On December 1st they will be leaving for China for one year. What an experience that will be for the whole family. I really got to know Paul when he came out to our shop several times to make furniture for the girls. The Winston’s are great people and we hope that maybe they will be transferred back to Cedar Falls/Waterloo after the China tour.

The weather was great today. We went to Camden, SC and the Revolutionary War site of two battles. The house pictured is called the Kershaw House. Cornwallis used the house as his headquarters in 1780-1781. The British won both battles that were fought here. We’re told that there were more Revolutionary War battles fought in SC than any other state.

Congaree Swamp National Park is 24,000 acres of oldgrowth bottomland hardwood forest. It’s the largest in the US. The trees average over 150 feet tall and there are many trees over 200 years old. The trees are loblolly pines and cypress. The photo is of a cypress tree and their ‘knees’ pushing up out of the ground. We think that the knees help to anchor the trees in the muddy ground.

More later.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Sunday morning we left James River SP, VA and drove to Pittsboro, NC and stayed until Tuesday A.M. The top photo was taken Saturday at the State Park. We decided to do nothing on Saturday. We had been running for several days and it was rainy besides. The two girls on the front porch are the daughters of the friends we stayed with in Pittsboro. Do you know who they are? I will give you more information later.

Roy Underhill has a woodworking show on PBS called the Woodwright Shop. He relocated from Williamsburg VA to Pittsboro and also opened a school in downtown Pittsboro. He does all of his work with old tools, no power tools. But he wasn’t open and all we could do was look through the window.

When we were walking down Main Street, I noticed a barber shop and decided to get my hair cut and let the ladies do some shopping. Well, it turns out that the barber, Lloyd is a national celebrity. One of the national networks came to Pittsboro before the elections of ’08 to find out what ‘Mainstreet’ was thinking. They interviewed Lloyd and he told them exactly what he thought. He said he was a Republican and that he would vote for McCain. Then he said that he thought Bush had made a mistake going to war in Iraq. After I sat down in the chair it took me 5 minutes before I could tell him how I wanted my hair cut. He just jabbered and jabbered. He was actually almost comical. Maybe you just had to be there.

Tonight we are at Mark and Vicki Lewis’ in Lexington, SC. Mark and Vicki are our son Eric’s in laws. We’re about to sit down to a steak dinner. Will write later.