At 7:30 this morning I was sitting outside, drinking my second cup of coffee, listening to the birds and watching the sun come up and hit Lake Seminole. The temperature was 67 degrees. If I were still living in our stick house in Centennial, the temperature would have been 33. No wonder we are living here on the road.Monday morning we left Alabama and drove to Florida, to the East Bank Campground on the shore of Lake Seminole, a Corps of Engineers lake in Georgia and Florida. We have never spent the night in our RV in Florida, so we were looking forward to adding that state to our map of places where we have been. Unfortunately, shortly before we drove into the campground, we encountered a sign that said we were going into Georgia! We will have to wait till Sunday to add Florida, I guess.Monday night there was a beautiful sunset over the lake.
Yesterday morning I was delighted to see this Great Blue Heron feeding along the water's edge.
Sunday, on our last day in Alabama, we drove to Dauphin Island. That is one of the major areas being impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. From the shore we could see several drilling rigs that are still in operation.
The beaches have beautiful white sand.
People were out enjoying the sun and sand.
At the same time, boats and other equipment was assembled, waiting for deployment to clean the sand if the oil slick arrived.
As we drove onto the island, we saw these booms floating in the surf, hopefully able to keep any oil away from the beach.
And then we saw this stuff at the edge of the water. It looked like a kitchen scrubby, but is really a special kind of boom meant to catch any incoming tar balls, like had been found the day before.
While we were on Dauphin Island, we toured Fort Gaines, built in 1821 to protect Mobile Bay. It was the center of an 1862 Civil War battle, when Admiral Farragut of the US Navy was reported to have said, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead."
As we crossed Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, we have driven over miles and miles of bridges. We thought it was expensive to build interstate highways in the mountains of Colorado. Building them across the swamps, bayous, rivers and bays of the southern river deltas must cost even more. This is the bridge from mainland Alabama to Dauphin Island.
...about 600 miles makes. Last Tuesday we left Arizona, where we had been for six months, and drove from Willcox to Las Cruces, NM. When we drove into Las Cruces we noticed a park and path along the Rio Grande River, not far from our RV park. So after getting set up, we drove back there and walked for two miles. It felt good to get the exercise. The Rio Grande begins in the Colorado mountainswhere it is a rushing river. We have stayed by the river near Albuquerque, NM, and at Big Bend National Park. At neither place have we seen much of a stream flow. But at this time of year in Las Cruces it was deep and wide.
We had seen poppies along the highway as we drove to Las Cruces.
Because high winds were predicted for Wednesday along I-10, we spent a second night at the KOA in Las Cruces. We usually avoid KOAs because they are often the most expensive park in town. In Las Cruces they were closer to the bottom of the cost curve there. Although the sites were narrow, everything about the park was immaculate and the staff was just great. It was a good stop.Thursday we began our 600-mile journey out of the desert we have lived in for six months by driving east on I-10 to Ft. Stockton, TX. The locations of RV parks in West Texas are very widely spaced--miles and miles apart. We have stayed in Ft. Stockton before. This time we chose a Passport America park where we paid $12 for the night, including the extra $2 for 50-amp electric. The park left a lot to be desired in ambiance, but the electric was strong, the rest rooms very clean and the laundry inexpensive and good. That is all we needed. This is the view from our RV site.
Friday we arrived at a Corps of Engineers park in Central Texas. The 600 miles we drove in the two days since leaving Las Cruces brought us from the desert to forests of green trees, green grass, and Bluebonnets! Aren't they beautiful?
This is a view of our trailer with the lake in the background. We have a huge, private site.
This industrious squirrel found a piece of string on a tree just outside our front window. He was trying to remove it--to add to his nest? We don't know.
There is a herd of 16 or more White Tailed Deer that hang out in our part of the park. These are two that we saw yesterday afternoon. They were just outside our trailer again when we opened our shades this morning.
