6/6/2023 The grass was starting to grow under our feet. Time to move out.

 We left home Tuesday June 6 with plans to arrive in Portland Oregon June 18.  It has been a while since I made an entry into the blog.  It’s time to catch everybody up on our travels

Day 1:  We arrived in Elkhart Indiana and stayed overnight at the RV/Motorhome Museum

Day 2:  We made it safely through Chicago and stayed overnight in a Travel America after spending $300 for fuel.  

Day 3 & 4:  We stayed overnight in a campground in Lincoln Nebraska.  During our stay we took a drive to the Corporate HQ of Berkshire Hathaway 3555 Farnham St, Omaha, Nebraska.  (I think Sandy was hoping to run into one of her idols CEO Warren Buffet).  To our surprise  Corporate HQ is a non-descript building.  It has no reference to Berkshire Hathaway (no sign, no fancy fountain in the front, just a painted black building).  If it wasn’t for the address on the front of the building we wouldn’t have known it was Corporate HQ.  

After finding the incognito Corporate HQ we took a drive through the neighborhood where Warren Buffet lives.  The houses are nice, modest, fairly large,  older, built in maybe early 1900s, and approximately 5 miles from Corporate.  Of course we didn’t go looking the the exact house.  

Corporate and the neighborhood support Warren Buffet stance that he does not flaunt his wealth.  He lives as he did growing up.

Day 5:  We stayed overnight in what turned out to be the very first Cabela’s store in Sidney Nebraska.  Corporate HQ is behind the store.  Cabela’s is named after its founders, the Cabela family.  All Cabela’s stores have opened up their parking lots to traveling RV’ers such as us.  They offer a large, well lit, safe place that we can stay overnight.  In turn we spend money there while overnighting.  I even joined the “Cabela’s Club” :-).  Many of the Cabela’s stores are located within walking distance of other shopping and local restaurants which is convenient for us to explore in the evening.

Day 6 - 8  We stopped at a campground in Cheyenne Wyoming.  To our surprise the campground had a Restaurant served up BBQ daily.  Yumm!!

Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming and truly an old Cowboy town built in the 1800s.  To us it is best known for its annual Frontier Days the 3rd week of July.  We have attended in the past.  There is a Cowboy Parade downtown with horses, horse drawn wagons, rodeo Queens on horses, bronc/bull riders, and everything Cowboy/Cowgirl.  As the parade wraps up they serve a Western Pancake breakfast on a  street corner where the chefs toss the Pancakes in the air and you have to catch them on your plate then sit on hay bails to enjoy the food. Many of the downtown street corners have brass statues and large sculpted Cowboy boots.

From Cheyenne we drove our tow car 3 hours through rain, snow (snow can you believe it in JUNE??), and sleet to Breckenridge Colorado to catch up with our daughter, her boy friend, and their dog.  They acted as our tour guides for two fun days.  I wasn’t sure how Sandy and I would handle being at 10,000 ft of elevation for two days but we did fine.  We had a great time 4WDing, touring Leadville, Buena Vista, Frisco, playing with the dog, and eating out.  It was fun catching up with them.  I couldn’t believe the temps were in 30s and 40s the entire time we were there.  BRRR!  Andrea, Michael, and their dog are all training for adventures later this year.  Andrea and the dog will be backpacking the 486 mile Colorado trail.  Michael will be attempting to beat the United States running record of the “Mini” Triple Crown which is 210 miles of The John Muir Trail, 486 miles of the Colorado Trail, and 273 miles of the Appalachian Trail.  All to be completed in 1 month!!

Day 10:  As I write this blog we are overnight parked in a Love’s Parking lot after buying another couple hundred dollars of fuel.  Some Love’s Fuel Stops offers Rv‘ers overnight parking away from the mundane drone of diesel truck engines.

PS. I woke up at 6:00 AM to notice that a fellow RVer decided to shoe horn his RV between the COW and another RV.  He had barely 4” between the side of his RV and the COW.  No way was he going to be able to pull out without scratching the COW.  So Sandy and I moved the COW to the other side of the parking lot before he made the attempt to leave.  SOME PEOPLE??  

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4/24/2023. Heading Back to Ohio

Well we enjoyed Naples Fl.  We caught up with a bunch of family members on both my and Sandy’s side.  Saw the sites.  Enjoyed the beautiful 80 and 90 degree weather the entire winter.  Pleasantly surprised by how nice the RV resort was that we booked only from information on the internet.

We are now in Chattanooga TN checking it out for a possible retirement home.  Tennessee is a no income tax state.  After spending a week here looking at new developments we have decided it’s a “No” as to hilly and to cold :-).  We did enjoy our stay.  We even went to a local drag strip that turned out to be 1 mile from our campground and ran around downtown Chattanooga where they have a beautiful refurbished arts district which is worth seeing.   The search continues.

Here are some pictures of our adventures.

2/25/2023. Naples Florida

Wow it has been a while since I have posted anything to our blog so this will be an all encompassing catch up on the last couple of months.

We though we would check out the Naples Florida area this winter.  We booked our reservations here over a year ago sight unseen.  Happily, to our surprise Crystal Lake RV Resort is beautiful.

We left Ohio 2nd week of November with an early snow storm on our heels and Hurricane Nicole moving North from Florida.  The first day we drove 6 hours south and spent the night in a WV rest-stop as winter nighttime comes so early in the hills. The second day we made it to Charlotte NC and grabbed a campground for two nights to weather out the rain and winds spinning off from Hurricane Nicole.  The great thing about the Charlotte stop is it allowed Sandy and I time to visit my sister Peggy and her husband William who live in Charlotte.  We toured their new lake house and had a very enjoyable visit.  It took us almost a week to get into Naples.  We took our time. Florida is one long state :-)

After enjoying the weather in Naples for a month, we took the tow car and drove back to Ohio for the holidays and some minor surgery for Sandy.  We were rewarded by -10 degree weather, and 12” of snow, but did have a white Christmas.  I may need to rethink my thought process of why I thought driving back north in the winter was a good idea :-).  

Driving the tow car North allowed us more flexibility to visit friends on the return trip South that the COW (although possible) would have required many more logistics to accomplish.  We stopped and visited Sandy’s sister Barb and husband Jim south of Washington DC, (good time was had by all especially the two sisters that I think never did come to bed :-)).  We visited my college Engineering Lab partner, Mark and Cindy in their new beautiful home in NC.  By the time we left their home my voice was raw from all the laughing, catching up, and talking we did over two days.  So much fun.  (Mark and I spent hours and hours together redoing, analyzing, writing up lab reports from 1978 - 1986 while attending Electrical Engineering night school.  Needless to say our wives Sandy and Cindy supported us immensely during this time and it still is very much appreciated).

We continued South stopping to explore the oldest city in the U.S. Saint Augustine, FL. From there we stopped to tour the 2023 Tampa RV show before finally getting back to Naples

Sandy and I both have family and friends in the Ft Myers/Naples area that we are catching up with here.  The weather has been unusually warm in the mid-80s so far.  At first glance Naples seems to be very upscale with many many Golf/Country Clubs.  We are enjoying our stay and slowly digging into the real Naples finding some of the local treasures.  Unfortunately the way winter RV Resorts book up across the country we have already had to book our 2024 reservations before getting a real feel for what Naples and the balance of Southern Florida offers us.  We will be in Mesa AZ for Winter 2024

Some other highlights:

• Covid finally caught up to me.  My turn in the barrel :-).  And I beat it
• Sandy’s Apple Series 6 watch flagged an AFIB problem.  Thanks to the Apple Watch we were able to identify the problem and get it corrected.  If you don’t have an Apple Watch—Get One.
• The Awning on the COW bit the dust (from Sandy:  not up to Bill’s standards), but thankfully Carefree of Colorado with a little cajoling from me shipped a new one for free and it is now installed.  Very Nice.  (From Sandy:  Bill put his expediting skills to use on this)
• We updated our tow car to a Buick Envision.  So Much Nicer than the 2012 Equinox we were towing
• Sandy has us booked thru April 15 2024 so stay tuned, as the COW is still on the move :-)
• We are hopping on the Canadian Rocky Mountaineer train in July for a 10 day trip through the Canadian Rockies (Vancouver to Calgary, including Jasper and Banff national parks and Lake Louise) for our belated 40 year Anniversary trip.  Boy she is a saint putting up with me for over 46 years now.

Note:  This has been co-authored, spell-checked, corrected, modified, rephrased, reworded, and grammar checked by my beautiful wife Sandy so I know absolutely without a doubt that everything is perfect :-)