Day 4, Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, White Springs, FL

This morning, I got Mama up around 6 a.m. and we went for a walk just the two of us. We walked around the campground and watched the squirrels.  It was nice. After we got home, Scout decided she wanted to go, so she got to go on a private walk with Mama.

On our non-travel days, Mama fixes us a big breakfast.  Today, we had fried eggs, bacon and hot sausage links.  Well, we didn't have all of that.  Scout had an egg and I had a little bit of bacon.  I don't eat eggs.  Mama needed to fix all the meat because she was scared it would go bad.  I guess enough of that boring talk.  You probably don't care what we eat for breakfast.

We all went for a walk after breakfast.  The squirrels are crazy here!  They hop from fences to trees.  It's fascinating!

This is our spot.

You can see our motor home in the background in the picture below.

Here we are with Dad under a palm tree.

This is an empty camping site.  We like it better than ours due to the palm trees. Maybe next time we will get that one.  The sites here are huge, like our adventure.

This is the back of our site. It's pretty.

After our walk, the folks left to do some sightseeing.  They visited the Stephen Foster Museum which is in the state park.

They also visited the bell tower. It plays his music.  He wrote such songs as Way Down Upon The Suwannee River and Old Suzanna.

There is a little village here where crafters demonstrate their work.  Mama met a lady who collects the stones and rocks she uses in her jewelry.  She travels all over the U.S. in the winter doing that.  She climbs mountains for some of the rocks.  She says you have to do it in the winter to avoid snakes.  She carries a gun in case she meets a poisonous snake. She was probably in her 60's.

We met a lady this morning who is traveling around with just her dog.  She has an Airstream travel trailer.  Mama was quite impressed that she was doing it on her own.  She said she tried traveling with another retiree once and it just didn't work out.  She said she does not play nice with others. I guess at least she knows that.

The people here are very talkative.  It's old to get away from them.  They are all retirees, so they have plenty of time.  Mama said she hopes when she retires that she can have this type of lifestyle.  I think I'm living the retiree lifestyle.  What do you think?

We had more pictures to show you, but the setting on the camera was changed and it is taking forever to upload them, so we will have to pass today.

Joey,
The Greyhound Thinks That The Florida Lifestyle Suits Him

Day 3 - We Are In Florida!

We are in Florida, but first I have to tell the rest of what happened on Day 2.  

Day 2 - Continued

Mama and Daddy left us yesterday afternoon to visit the Wildlife Center in the park.  They take care of birds that have been injured or orphaned.  Mama said it reminds her of the center in Virginia that took care of the eaglets last year when their Mom was killed.  There was a flight cage at this place that is probably like the one in Virginia.  The one here housed hawks.

They had small birds in the main building.  They are monitored very carefully.  Daddy said it seems like a lot of work taking care of them.  Mama said it was so hot inside the building.  It was like a visitors center and had offices, but they must keep it hot for the birds.

The outside of the building had a lot of bird feeders and a butterfly garden.  I was told it was really nice.  Mama saw a lizard, but Daddy said it was nothing like the ones he saw in St. Thomas.

They ate at a restaurant that is a chain around here.  It's called Zaxby's.  They serve chicken wings, buffalo wings and sandwiches.  Mama had the "wimpy buffalo wings" and Daddy had the regular buffalo wings. They also had breaded mushrooms.  They said it was good, but they should have ordered bigger portions.  If you haven't noticed they like trying restaurants that we don't have at home.  Actually, they have an app on their tablet that they are excited about using.  It lists the restaurants that Food Network has visited along with the menus.  They want to try as many restaurants as possible.  We haven't stayed anywhere yet near those restaurants, but we are getting close.

If any of you are worried about Scout, let me assure you that she is fine.  She was pretty wild last night throwing a toy around.

She doesn't even do that at home.

We went for a nice walk around the campground last night.  Here are some more photos.

 Purple Martins' Houses

 I'm watching a squirrel.

 Scout and I were so tired last night.  We really like our beds.

We left this morning around 8 a.m. for Florida.We decided to stay in White Springs, FL for two nights and then we will go to Sarasota.  We arrived around 5 p.m.  However, we lost an hour due to the time change and we stopped twice as much as on Sunday and we had to drive through a lot of city traffic instead of straight highway.  That is why it took us so long.  By the way, the map on our blog does not show the actual route we took.  We did not go into Georgia.  It makes our trip look faster than it is.

We are staying at Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park.  It is beautiful!  We haven't really done anything, but walk through the campground meeting the neighbors, but the drive through the park to our campsite was so pretty.  Mama is excited because they have a craft shop and demonstrators right in the park. It is unlike any state park we have visited.  How would we rate it?  We are not sure yet.  It gets a 5 for beauty, but we don't have TV here so that has to knock off some points.  Mama is sad that she will miss Survivor tomorrow night.  There are too many huge trees for our satellite to work.  Scout and I will be left in the motor home for a while tomorrow while the folks do some exploring. That is okay with us.  We are tired.  This traveling stuff is exhausting, but fun.  I am having the time of my life!  I'll post pictures tomorrow of this place.

Joey,

The Greyhound Who Likes Florida

Day 2 - Exploring Oak Mountain State Park

We are staying at Oak Mountain State Park.  It is located in Pelham, AL which is outside of Birmingham.  It's a nice park.  There are a lot of trails, a petting farm, beaches, golf, fishing and a rehab center for animals.  We walked on the trail that led to the birds that are being rehabbed.  Scout didn't want to go.  She was upset when the Jeep stopped and we got out.  The whole time we were on the trail, she wanted to turn around and go back to the Jeep.  Daddy tricked her though and we went on a boardwalk that went in a circle.  She was quite confused that we ended up where we started.  She even did steps to get off the trail.  Daddy said she will just have to stay in the motor home if she doesn't want to participate on our walks.  It's only Day 2 and she is already not wanting to participate.  Mama says she is just tired because she didn't sleep at all on the ten hour drive.  I didn't either, but I like doing things more than Scout does.  She is fine.  She just likes her bed better than exercise. 

Scout not wanting to participate on our walk this morning.

Albino Turkey Vulture in the rehab area of the park.  There were also owls and hawks.

 

A view from the top of the mountain.

One of the lakes.

 

Just the view as we drove through the park.

We ate lunch at Whataburger.  We don't have those in our area, so Mama wanted to try it.  She said it was good.  Daddy said it was better than the $14 hamburger he had at the airport.  They both said they would eat it again. We didn't have any of the burgers, but we did try a couple of the fries.  We had no complaints.

Here we are waiting for our food at Whataburger.

Mama plans on rating the campgrounds that we stay in.  Last night, she gave this campground a 2 out of 5, but decided that might be too harsh.  We have only stayed at Missouri State parks and a few privately owned campgrounds. This is our first state park outside of Missouri, so maybe we need to see a few more to properly rate it.  Daddy said we should give it a 3 out of 5.  The sites are small.  They have full hook-ups which are water, sewer and electric next to sites that have no hook-ups.  That seems strange to us. Our site is a pull thru.  However, it is a very strange pull thru.  We could pull thru if we didn't need to hook up to electric, water and sewer.  We had to pull in and then back up to reach those.  The Jeep is actually in the pull thru.  It may be hard to tell in the photo, but it is a strange site.

There is grass and a picnic table behind the motor home.  The pull thrus we are used to allow you to actually pull thru and not have to back in to reach utilities.

There are a lot of bird houses around the campsite and that's nice.  There is a bluebird house on our site with birds living in it.   There is also poison ivy or maybe it's poison oak on the ground.  We have to be careful where we walk.  The sites are gravel and the roads are gravel.  It's not a bad place, but not as nice as our state parks. 

Mama and Daddy are going to leave us later today to do things that do not allow dogs.  That doesn't seem fair.  I guess I will have to update you tomorrow on what they did.

We leave tomorrow for Florida. We are still figuring out where we are going to stop.  We thought it might be Sarasota, but it maybe a longer drive than we want to do in one day.  

That's all for now.  It's nap time!

Joey

The Greyhound Who Likes Alabama

Our HUGE Adventure Has Begun!

Day 1

We left the house at 6:45 a.m.

We were pretty excited at first.  However, it really wasn't much fun until we stopped at our first rest area.  We got to sniff around a lot. We were too busy sniffing to really get photos.

 We went through a few states on our way here.

 
We drove by my old work place, Southland Greyhound Park.  Mama didn't get a good picture of it though because she didn't know we were passing it until it was almost too late.  You have to look past Daddy to see it.

Then we passed through a few more states.

Mama said I did really good traveling.  I stopped whining after about a half hour.  However, both Scout and I got in trouble for pulling at our second stop.  Mama was not happy with us at all.  She said it looked like we had never been on leashes before.  She was very disappointed in us since she had been working so hard on getting us to walk without pulling her.  We were so excited that we forgot all our training.

Daddy put a divider in our bed and we each have our own area.  Scout doesn't like to be touched, so it keeps the peace. Our bed already looks a mess, doesn't it?

Hopefully, tomorrow we will be a little more fun to read about.  We are very tired and are going to turn in early tonight.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Is Living The Dream

One More Day!

It's just one more day until our big HUGE adventure begins!  There is so much to do, so I can't talk long.

Yesterday, the folks were gone most of the day.  Scout and were not happy about that.  They had a lot of errands to run. They came home for about two hours and left again.  They had a good-bye dinner with the family.  After they got home, Daddy worked on getting our portable satellite system going.  He had trouble finding a clear spot for it since we have a lot of trees.  It took him about three hours, but we now we have TV again. Our cable service ended yesterday. We are using our hotspot for Internet service. Mama says this is our new life, so we have to get used to it.  Mama is sad that she won't be able to watch the Blues play tonight because we don't have the channel they play on.

We are leaving early in the AM tomorrow morning. We will be driving about ten hours. We will put a map on the blog so you can follow our travels.  We hope you come along on our adventure!

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Is Ready For The Huge Adventure To Begin