RV There Yet?

Yep, that’s what’s on the sign. Honest! It seemed packed (always a good sign) so we thought we’d give it a shot for lunch while we were waiting for the oil change on Lizzie to be accomplished. We walked in to a pretty ordinary looking place - tables on our left full of men wearing shirts with their names embroidered on the pocket and company logos on the back, and a buffet island on our left. We looked at the guy at the cash register – and he said – “go ahead, get what you want to eat, find a table and one of the girls will get you a drink.” Oooookay…We grabbed a plate and helped ourselves to braised chicken, fried chicken, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, greens w/ham, macaroni & cheese, a small salad bar, corn muffins and peach cobbler. Ok, so we didn’t help ourselves to everything on that list – but those were our choices. Monster glasses of ice water were served at the table. We ate our fill – and everything was delicious. The check came and only said – 2 buffets. I gave Gary a $20 and figured that was pretty safe. Much to our amazement, he returned with $13.75 in change!
This now ranks as the best deal of the trip! Buffet Lunch for two for under $7.00.
Maybe we’ll go back for breakfast!

We awakened to a clear and sunny day - and the itch to go see more of GA. We did a couple of chores and then headed southeast to Thomasville - home of the BIG OAK(the largest live oak east of the Mississippi and the Lapham-Peterson House (among many other things). We took a long walk around the town and then headed off to our next destination. A scenic drive to Valdosta was a disappointment since the fabric store we were headed for had closed a couple of years ago. Guess we’ll learn to call ahead, huh! However, we passed beautiful pecan groves and fields white with cotton, expansive estates and small shanties, towns that consisted of a traffic light and towns that were filled with history. It was a good day.
Tomorrow maybe we’ll stick closer to home. Hey, maybe we’ll even wash the house!

The Riverquarium was very interesting - here are the guys pondering……well, they look like they’re pondering something!

Yep, it’s a big one!

Here are some classic zoo pictures - needless to say, there were plenty of alligators at the zoo - but they all looked pretty bored!

And this bear was being pretty friendly, but we did notice it was having a bad hair day!

On to the festivals -
While we were at the Chili Festival in Warwick, Warwick is more famous for the Grits festival. We didn’t get pictures, but in attendance at the festival was Miss Grits, Little Miss Grits, and Miss Teeny Grits. There was lots of chili to sample (we did) , an electric bull to try your hand at (we didn’t), lots of local food to buy (we did) and moon bounces to try (we didn’t). It was a fun festival - and these were the odd pictures we took while there -


We think it’s called Tin Shed because it is made of tin - not because it sells tin!

Since our good friends Joe & Janet were going to be in Albany, GA visiting mutual friends, Drew & Frances, we decided to do a marathon (well, for us) drive from Indianapolis to Albany in order to surprise Joe & Janet. We left Indy around 10AM on Thursday AM, and wisked through the rest of Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and most of Georgia, arriving around 8AM on Friday morning. Since we only have one driver (I know, it’s about time I got behind the wheel), I thought we did pretty good covering that much ground that quickly.
Here are some photos and thoughts about the trip.
The Indiana sky…beautiful sunsets are everywhere!

Kentucky is WAY TOO beautiful (and with too many interesting spots) to just drive through. THis is a definate return trip!

NEVER NEVER NEVER attempt to drive through Nashville, TN at 5PM - (and you can’t even see Nashville yet!)

Mostly I learned that there are interesting things to discover along the way - especially from the front seat of an RV!

We decided to take advantage of a “free” weekend at a Thousand Trails Campground - it’s a private campground system that you buy into and then can camp for free at their facilities. In exchange for the “free” weekend, we listened to the sales pitch and had an extensive tour of the campgrounds. Toby, Tammy and Ellie joined us for the camping experience - and it was very delightful. The weather was picture perfect - enabling us to have a great time outdoors along with us being able to be outside while Ellie napped. We did a little swimming, a little boating and a lot of visiting! It’s been a while since we’ve had a nice long visit with the kids! Ellie is getting so big, and is so smart and is so cute….am I a Gramma or what! Baby number two arrives in November - it will be a big change for all. It will be a big blessing too! The sales pitch wasn’t too painful, we said our polite “no”, and went on our way. The camping was good practice for our big family camping event scheduled for early February 2005.
We also accomplished a couple of chores, visited with friend Jen, and just plain had a grand time all around.
Check out the Family Picture page for some photos of our time together….