Author: karenbpalmer

Fayetteville RV Resort FHU site 41. Former KOA, 2 pools, some long term, would stay again. Free waffles on weekend mornings.

We took the day to visit Fort Bragg, we didn’t realize this was a city within itself bowling alleys, batting cage, museums, paintball, botanical gardens, golf courses, hiking trails, restaurants and more. Amazing place.

JFK Memorial Chapel at Fort Bragg

82nd Airborne museum and memorials.

The museum had an indoor portion and this outdoor area with some planes, helicopters, and other items.

We even had an ice cream truck come thru the park one afternoon.

Camp Lake Jasper, FHU, site 89. Nice campground, would stay here again.

Port Royal SC, The Sands Beach, not much of a beach, 95% oyster shells.

The Sands Beachs’ boardwalk, there is a 3 story tower to climb and lookout.

Huge, hard packed, brown, sand beach and lighthouse on Hunting Island.

I’m still finding some undesirable roads for John to drive on.

Amelia Island, Fernandina Beach, huge beach area, brownish hard packed sand. There have a lot of small parking lots and you can drive/park on the beach, with a 4 wheel drive vehicle, soft and deep sand at the entrance.

View from Hammerhead Beach Bar, it has seen it’s better days but had a nice deck to sit and have a cool beverage on a beautiful day. It would be a good people watching spot in the busy season.

Cumberland Island National Seashore, you have to take a ferry if you want to go. Once there you can rent a bicycle or cart and go explore the almost 10,000 acre island of undeveloped beaches, marshes and watch the wild horses. The ferry has very limited times so plan your day accordingly.

Tara flew down to surprise me for my birthday, we had a great time hanging out. We’re loving our travels but we do miss our friends and families. It was great being able to see so many of them this winter.

Spending the day with Abbie & Tim, fun day at Lover’s Key. Abbie and I enjoyed the beach while John and Tim went kayaking through the estuary.

We picked these guys up on our way to Manasota Key where we found shark teeth and watched a beautiful sunset.

Here we were hiking around Collier-Seminole State Park. We discovered there was an easy access kayak launch.  They also offered a full moon kayak outing, something to look into for next time we’re in the area.

Hanging out at Naples beach. Carl’s a little sunburned so we put him in the shade.

We were happy that Ben and Gwen could visit us, we had so much fun with them.

Ice Cream at the Royal Scoop. Originally we were going to go after watching the sunset but it was so busy, cars were waiting just to get into their parking lot.

We took a day off from the beach to go to the Shell Factory.

Gwen got to try her hand at shuffleboard, bocce ball and tennis but her favorite was pickle ball.

Swimming at sunset, some of us were more excited about it than others.

We also got to spend time with Mary Jo, and Jake. It was great to hang out with them in Florida.

We stopped in at World Bakery and we found out it was much more than a bakery. They roasted a whole pig for the weekend lunch special, it was delicious. 

The last beach sunset in Florida, for this season anyway. It was a great winter!

The Florida Yule Log channel for Christmas. Digging the beach scene versus the fireplace backdrop in the Midwest.

One of the first sunsets at Fort Myers RV Resort. Not as pretty as at the beach but not bad for sitting next to our home.

We decided to add some bling to our house. We were always able to find our way home.

Lovers Key State Park, beautiful beach and great for finding sea shells.

One day, while I was playing Hand and Foot, John went for a bike ride and found one of the locals walking along the bike path.

Kathy, Dale, their daughter Kelli and son in law Richard, taking us to Ragged Ass Saloon, on Pine Island. Fun day.

Out for a chilly ride.

On our ride back Dale found some dolphins to chase.

The hurricane had dumped a lot of sand in the canal by the RV Resort and they are just now clearing it out. The dredger pumps the sand almost 2 miles back down the canal before they dump it on an empty lot to be spread around. The picture was taken at low tide.

 Cheers to a wonderful group.

Jim, Frank, and Dale cooking up some delicious walleye. Thanks for the going away party!

We met a lot of great people, lots of laughs and good times. Lonnie, Barb, Karen and John.

Pat, Lois, Rita, and Julie, euchre players that like our donations. Some nights we had eight tables of players.

We could put our kayaks in 10 mile canal right at the campground. We learned quickly to check the tide schedule before going.

We would paddle to the quarry and find lots of manatee’s to watch. Very relaxing and enjoyable days.

Can you see us back there? Not sure if we could find a tighter spot.

Our first sunset on Fort Myers Beach.

Caloosahatchee Regional Park. We  hiked here a couple times, beautiful by the river.

We went to Bonita Beach instead of shopping on Black Friday. We could get used to winter days like these.

Karen testing out our Christmas present to each other. A little windy that day but our kayaks worked nice except for the paddles that came with them were not the best. We ordered new paddles when we got back home.

John hanging out with yet another new friend.

We went to Manatee Park a few times, twice to kayak and once to walk around. There is a power plant that has a channel that goes from it to the Orange River. The water from the power plant is warm so as the temps cool off the manatees come here to hang out.

This is the channel to go from the kayak launch in Manatee Park to the Orange River. Nice leisurely place for kayaking.

Busy day for people watching the manatees. This is the area where the water from the power plant flows into the river so there are usually some manatees.

The Wheel Of Fortune mobile show was in Cape Coral so we went to check it out. Karen got her name drawn to be a contestant.

Eagles Roost, other than a flea market next door, not much to do in the area. We left a day early, watch out Florida here we come.

Tallulah Gorge, two tightrope walkers have successfully made it across this gorge. You can get a permit to hike to the gorge floor, water was just released so a permit was unattainable.

They have this warning before you start your decent down to Hurricane Falls staircase and suspension bridge. You can cross the bridge and go up the stairs on the other side if you want to walk the loop trail.

Picture of the stairs. They did a good of breaking into shorter runs with platforms where you can stop to rest.

Currahee Trail, Band of Brothers 3 miles up, 3 miles down mountain. We took the short cut, one mile up with a 600 foot incline and one mile down with a 600 foot decline.

View from almost the top. Great spot to take a break, enjoy the view, and quiet. Very secluded so lots of graffiti on the rocks and towers.

Proof that we went the whole way. The last 50 feet had the best pathway.

View of the mountain from our campsite.

View of our campsite from the top of the mountain.Minnehaha Falls, one of the prettiest Falls we have seen. Narrow windy road to get there, better to drive from Lakemont. Once you park it is a short .25 mile hike to get to the Falls.

Lake Rabun, there are boathouses here that are bigger than our house.

Bald River Falls, just a little detour off the 100 million dollar Cherohala Skyway highway. It was a beautiful drive with plenty of overlooks.

Beautiful fall colors in the Smokies. The Smokies were pretty awesome to see and just when we thought driving through Yellowstone was bad, this was worse. Busy time of year but talking to the locals, it’s always busy.

Observation tower, Clingmans Dome, it’s a gradual (I say this loosely) incline all the way. Over 6000 feet above sea level and the walk was a 330 foot increase in elevation in 3/4 of a mile, you almost need brakes for the trek down.

In the Gatlinburg area they estimate 1500 black bears living in the near by mountains. As we were driving through this guy decided to race us.

Cave bacon in the Lost Sea Cave. Cave bacon is a formation officially known as layered flower stone.

They tagged a bunch of rainbow trout and released them in the lake. They were hoping they would find a way out and be caught. So far they all seem to be still in the lake. More than 13 acres of water have been mapped and it is over 70’ deep.

Confederate soldiers would come into the cave to get saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to use for making gunpowder. This was plentiful in the cave due to bat guano.

Tsali Notch Winery, cute little winery. Sweet wines but that’s what they drink here AKA “adult Welch’s grape juice.”

View from the winery, if the temperatures would of been ten degrees warmer we would of sat and had a glass while we soaked in the view.

First KFC which had a hotel connected to it. In the dining area they have a museum along with a replica of the original kitchen and what a hotel room would of looked like.

Karen found a nice southern gentleman.

Dog Slaughter Falls, getting there made us feel like we were back in Costa Rica, there was a lot of potholes in the dirt road. It was a beautiful four mile hike, we talked to others and they started from Cumberland Falls, making it an eight mile hike for them.

Looking out from behind the Falls. There was a few places (rocks) to sit to take a break and enjoy the day.

Cumberland Falls, also know as Little Niagra. All paths paved and overlooks fenced off, nice park to walk around.

Double rainbow at Cumberland, this is the same spot where you can see the Moonbow. It is the heavy mist from the falls that creates the rainbows and moonbows with the right wind and light.

Information about the Moonbow that we got to see.

Moonbow using a flash, to the naked eye it is a white arch, pretty amazing.

Yahoo Falls, tallest waterfall at 113′ in Kentucky, you can see the second set of steps on the right hand side (and John) people talk about wading around in the pool, we passed as it was only in the 50’s.

Yahoo Falls natural arch, just a little more than over a mile and half from the Falls. it was unique to see the trees growing on top of it.

We could hear waterfalls so we went to explore, it sounded a lot more impressive than it turned out to be. In doing so we ended up crossing over to another trail extending our hike to over 5 miles. The good part in doing this we didn’t have to use the first stair case going down, the really bad part, we had to take the 157 steps to get back up.