Lebanon, TN & the East Coast Rally

Made it. We arrived at Countryside Resort about noon Sunday. There were several HitchHikers here already. While I was cooling down inside the air conditioning who should pound on our door.....no not Santa Clause....better yet it was Ron. I haven't seen Ron and Lois since the HHAI rally last fall in IL. Cool. Several of us sat around sweating in the heat & humidity, just like being in the swimming pool but not really. Monday we went to breakfast with Gary & Suzanne and Lyle & his wife. Ya know, you just can't trust a GPS. We had the address of Shoneys and followed the Garmin GPS instructions.....many miles out into the country on a two lane road....and a house in the middle of nowhere. After finding Shoneys and then returning to the CG several of us visited some more before we all (the are 16 HHs here) gathered at the pavilion for happy hour & introductions. About 8 or 9pm we all headed to our cozy little homes. Nite nite. OH....the three ladies who like cake, thats my Judy, Lois Osterhouse & Judye Teetz.

Still heading north

We pulled out this morning before nine and traveled 240 miles to Elkmont, AL. It was an uneventful drive, the way we like 'em. The CG is 7 or 8 miles off I65 and really in the boonies. No lights so it will be dark. It's a nice quiet place with 25 or so sites in a field surrounded by woods. It was about 1/2 mile back a gravel drive to the CG, you really have to have faith sometimes pulling your home down some of these roads that there is a CG there and no low bridges or trees if you have to turn around. We arrived at 1pm and set up, we found out the 50a outlet was dead so we used 30a. We didn't want to move to another site because there are billions of what we thought were big bees bugging us. Once inside they kept flying into the RV and we could easily hear the buggers going thunk, thunk, thunk. We later found out there are just Japanese Beetles.

Looking at today's & yesterdays pictures of our CGs reinforces how nice green is to me.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had supper last night with Jody and helped her put more stuff away before we had parting hugs & went home. We have near her for 7 weeks, wonder if she's tired of us?

This morning we left Southern Comfort at 9:30 after sleeping in. We had a 190 mile drive to Greenville, AL and set up home sweet home at a very nice county park called Sherling Lake Park. We saw the truck informing us several times it was 100 degrees outside as we headed north. We arrived at 12:45 and were inside cooling off by 1:15. We sure are happy we have 50 amps so we can run both A/Cs together. We'll remember this CG when we are in the area looking for a place to stay. At 3:30 we decided to backtrack 5 miles to town for diesel and food. Judy spotted a busy place called Bates House of Turkey on the way so we ended up there and both had a nice turkey & all the dressings meal. Perhaps if it cools down we can take a little walk around the park.

Since last posting we have watched a rather short military vehicle parade, there were a few old jeeps and a truck. We viewed the Independence Day fireworks along the beach in the evening, puttered around Jody's house and cooked a few meals there, checked out a couple local restaurants. It took 4 tries to find one we wanted on Monday, the first three were closed, Jody thought we were going to starve. Judy had a root canal and I had a cyst or something removed from my shoulder. Yesterday we had a nice lunch at the Blow Fly Inn then ran around doing some odds & ends. We stopped to check out the worlds largest rocking chair and it was big. We thought we'd be able to climb into it for a picture, we were wrong. Tomorrow is "D" day....Departure!

Doctor Jody Bahnmiller

The doc had her official hospital picture taken today. She'll be working at a clinic in Long Beach, MS with another lady doc and they are affiliated with Garden Park Hospital in Gulfport, MS. She's on hold now until her Mississippi medical license is processed so she's expecting to start in August.

Tar balls from BP in Biloxi

We stopped for Mexican tonight and after the all day rain it's a cool 78 tonight so we stopped at the beach across the road from the campground. Yep, the tar balls are here in Biloxi. There are quite a few of them but we didn't see any cleanup crews, there were a couple buses a mile down the road so perhaps they just arrived, night time, when it's cool, is good for the crews and makes it easier to pick them up. I did get some pictures of a clean up crew the next day a mile or two down the beach.

SeaBee Museum & Hurricane Alex

Not too much going on this past week. WE have been doing some tinkering at Jody's house and the best news is that Judy thinks she's determined what has been giving her so many headaches & sending her to the doctors while we were in AL. She had a root canal yesterday due to an infected tooth. The bad news is really good.

We did go to the Naval SeaBee base and went through their one room museum. Not much there but I think there's enough SeaBee history for a bigger & better museum. I would have liked to get a picture of the large SeaBee logo on the water tower but pictures are not allowed on the base, Homeland Security I imagine. Do I look like a terrorist?

Hurricane Alex is far far away but we are still feeling it here in Biloxi. It's been much cloudier than normal and two days ago the rains started. Sometime it just comes down in sheets. The oil has arrived at the Biloxi beaches, it has been reported on the local TV news and we have seen large crews combing the beach for the last couple days.