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

He's Home!

Daddy finally made it home last night. He didn't get home until around 11 p.m. It seemed like the day stretched on forever. Mama along with Grandpa and Grandma left our house at 7:30 p.m. to pick him up. The airport is about an hour away. They stopped at Wendy's on the way home since he was hungry. I guess it didn't matter to them that we were waiting for him.

Mama took a video of us. The color is not great since the lighting was bad, but you can see us. I was excited, but this is how I act when I'm excited. I run from room to room and I eat my food. I always do that when Dad comes home from work. After I calmed down, I got hugs from Daddy. I had to check on Daddy a few times last night to be sure he was still in bed. I can't believe he is finally home. 

Did you notice my fancy foot work?  See, my leg is doing good even with my fun run this week.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Is Happy To Have His Family All Together Again

A Plane Crashed By Our House

Yesterday, Mama was on the phone and she said "Joey, there is a plane flying low in the field across from our house."  After she got off the phone, she said she was going to see if he landed in the field.  Just as she was getting her camera, we heard a boom and our power went out.  She looked out the window and said "Oh, no!  The plane has crashed in the road!"  She went out to the front porch and took a few photos.  She didn't want to get closer.  There were people gathered around quickly and they had cell phones, so she knew the police had been called.

He clipped the power lines and then it fell to the ground. The pilot was able to walk home which is amazing.  Apparently, he lives by the goats and horses that we visit.  They towed the plane to his yard.  It was his first flight with the plane. We heard one report that he built the plane himself.  He said he was just trying to get home, but couldn't get enough height.  He really didn't make it very far.  He must have flown over our backyard since the neighbor said he flew over her house.

Two news channels wanted Mama to go on camera, but she refused.  She said she didn't see it happen and since the pilot survived, it was pretty much a non-story.  One of the photographers thought I was a cool dog and he rubbed my ears.  Mama almost told him the story of my life, but she decided against it.  She can be pretty chatty at times. 

It definitely made our last day without Daddy rather exciting. Oh and I almost forgot to tell you about the bee.  A bee got in our house and I tried to catch it. Mama said "NO, JOEY, DON'T!"   She killed it, but it took her quite a while.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Had A Very Strange Day