Pacific Ocean

Hi All,
When I last left you, we were in Quartzsite, Arizona. Here are a couple of pictures from our campsite.

Below is the route we took, which took us through the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree National Park. Pay no attention to the numbered pins, we made the trip in two days and thankfully avoiding Los Angeles.

A picture from the Mojave Desert...

And a few from Joshua Tree National Park. I didn't know what a Joshua Tree looked like. Now I do.

A little color from Moro Bay...

We're at a campground in Moro Bay. Here is Moro Rock, which is in the middle of Moro Bay.

Moro Bay...

Duncan had his first exposure to the Pacific Ocean and a beach. Here's Susan and Duncan as he starts to check things out.

It didn't take long and Duncan had a new friend. He was wore out when they were through.

Another view of Moro Rock from down the beach.

And a beautiful sunset to end the day. Good night Soli...

Brian

On the road again!

Hi All,
In keeping with my promise to write more often and include pictures more often (always), here's what's been going on over the last five days or so.

Sunday, Mother's Day, we left Gun Barrel City and drove to Junction, where we spent a good portion of the winter. I've signed on to do IT work for them so we stayed in Junction for a couple of days while I dealt with some ransom ware that got on one of the campground's computers. Thanks to Dana for her help.

From Junction we drove I-10 to Las Cruces, New Mexico on Tuesday. It was VERY windy and Very dusty for most of that drive. Wednesday we drove to Quartzsite, Arizona, nearly to California. Here is our route, just over 1300 miles in this leg which makes the total from our start in Virginia of 2,800 miles.

A picture of the mountains off in the distance from just west of Las Cruces.

An Arizona rest stop...

Seems strange to write something this short. But that's it for now.

Brian

Back in Texas

Hi All,
With Good Morning Vietnam snug as a bug in a rug in Deltaville, Virginia, we headed back to Texas. Gun Barrel City to be exact. We didn't take the most direct route but didn't dilly dally much. Here is a look at our route.

The reason I show this map is because I consider it the start of the very long road trip we have planned for the summer. This piece was 1,495 miles. We've stayed in Texas for a couple of weeks catching up with family and friends. An interesting aside, as we crossed back into Texas from Arkansas, we turned 30,000 miles on the truck we bought 8 months ago. Both Susan and I like road trips but I never thought we'd do that many miles so quickly. And there is more to come. Much more.

In the next few days we'll leave Texas again, this time heading West. From here we will make our way to Northern California to visit some friends and family before turning North and driving to Alaska. Yes, we're driving to Alaska. Talk about a road trip! We'll likely put 7,000 or 8,000 more miles on the truck before we get back to Texas. The short story on our trip is to drive the AlCan highway through Canada to Alaska, visit Fairbanks, Denali Homer and the Kenai Peninsula. The route back will be on the ferry, visiting Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan (spending a couple of days at each stop) and then getting off the ferry in Prince Rupert and making our way to Jasper and Banff before heading back to the US. Once back in the US we'll visit Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons before meeting up with friends in Montana for the total solar eclipse on August 21.

Here's a look at a portion of our route through Canada and Alaska.

That's it for now. I'm going to try and post more often and include lots of pictures as we get underway.

Take care.
Brian

Virginia

Hi All,
Well, we made the trip to Virginia without issue. That's not to say it was boring.

In my last post I said we were going to splash the boat on Saturday. Friday morning that changed to doing it right then. Fortunately we were pretty much ready so when George came by at 8:30 and said we couldn't do it Saturday, we were ready to go and got her in the water in about an hour. Here's a picture of Good Morning Vietnam in the travel lift on the way into the water.

It took Faith, our delivery captain, and I four days to get to Deltaville, Virginia. The boat was in the water on Friday but we didn't leave until Monday morning at 7:00 AM. That blew our "up and out by 11" streak.  We had issues getting the halyards (lines that pull the sails up) rigged before we left so we had to motor the entire way though we did have a couple of stretches where we could have sailed had we had sails.

On the second day, still in North Carolina we saw a bald eagle (the bird kind) flying around. A bit later we had four F-15 Eagles (the airplane kind) doing some sort of maneuver over us. They put on quite a show for about 15 minutes before moving out over the ocean.

On the third day we passed through Norfolk Naval Yard. Now that was some interesting scenery and we were boarded by the US Coast Guard. We passed the inspection. There weren't a lot of ships in the naval yard but we did pass the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington as she was getting some work done.

We stayed the night at a marina in Hampton, Virginia before our last day on the water, heading up Chesapeake Bay. As we headed out of Norfolk we were passed by the destroyer USS James Williams as she was headed out to sea.

Once we were in the Chesapeake we heard the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower radioing that they were on there way into Norfolk from sea. From several miles away she was pretty impressive, I wish we'd been a bit later or she had been a bit earlier so we would have gotten a better look at her. We made it to Deltavilla about 30 minutes after Susan and Duncan who had driven up from Beaufort, North Carolina that morning. Just in time to have Good Morning Vietnam hauled out of the water again.  Deja vu all over again.

We spent the next couple of the days cleaning, cleaning and cleaning the boat. The broker that is going to list her came by and let us know they had someone that wanted to see the boat on Monday so we worked hard Friday, Saturday and Sunday to have her in good shape. She looked good! Maybe good enough as the wife really liked her on Monday so this weekend her and her husband are going to look at her. It's too much to ask that we could actually sell her the first week she's in Deltaville. But we're still hopeful.

Today we visited historic Jamestown on our "day off". Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, was established in 1607. It's worth a visit if you're in the area, pretty neat. Tomorrow we go back to the boat to do the last couple of maintenance tasks before leaving her.

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Mother Nature

Hi All,
Since the last post we have moved locations from Junction, Texas to Beaufort, North Carolina. We've been working on getting the boat ready to move it. Oh, and guess what, there's been a change in those plans too. Originally we listed the boat with a friend of ours who is a broker in St Petersburg, Florida. We were going to move the boat to Florida to have it closer to her and in a better market. Unfortunately we weren't able to find a reasonably priced marina on the east coast of Florida and we didn't want to take the time required to move the boat all the way to St Petersburg. So lets go the completely opposite direction! We've found a place and a broker in Deltaville, Virginia on Chesapeake Bay. So now the plan is to move the boat up there. We've hired a delivery captain to go with me (Brian) up the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to Deltaville. Susan and Duncan will drive up to get us and return us to Beaufort. Confused yet? So am I.

We got back to the boat this past Saturday and planned to put it back in the water on Monday. The weather forecast made that not an attractive option so we changed the splash date to tomorrow, Friday the 7th and start our journey north the next day. But Mother Nature still isn't cooperating. We've had several days this week with some pretty good thunderstorms. That's an oxymoron. When we didn't have thunderstorms the wind has been blowing gale force. Today we moved out the splash date to Saturday, hoping the wind will finally have subsided by then. Sunday we'll start up the ICW. It should take us four or five days to get to Deltaville. It'll only take Susan six hours.

Struggling to find some pictures to include with the post, since some of followers only look at the pictures, I've included a shot of Good Morning Vietnam as she sits waiting to get wet again and a screenshot from my phone showing the wind forecast for today and tomorrow. We're really getting tired of this wind.

That's all for now. Take care.

Susan and Brian

Last work day in Junction

Hi All,
Tomorrow, Sunday the 26th, is our last work day at the RV campground in Junction. It's been great, especially the weather and the people, but we're ready to move on. Here's a little bit of a catch up for what's been going on since our last post.

First of all, I made two more rattlesnake hunting trips. Two days, back to back, and we caught 56 each day. Below is a picture of an old farmhouse that we pulled 33 snakes out from under the floor. It took us most of the day. They really didn't want to come out of there.

 Here's the largest snake we got, stretched out on the tailgate of the truck. He was close to 4 foot long.

That's all for snake stories.

Last week we were eating lunch in Kerrville and for some reason got to talking about dogs. I made the mistake of looking to see if there was an animal shelter in Kerrville. Of course there was. So, meet Duncan.

He'll be two at the end of the month. According to his papers he's part rottweiler and part border collie. He's 100% sweetheart. He loves people, kids and other dogs. We had him for a week before we heard him bark the first time. He rides in the car (on the console between the front seats, until he gets tired and lays down in the back seat). Really a neat dog. We're really happy with him and looking forward to taking him with us everywhere.

That's it for now. I'll try to get another post out in the next couple of days with our plans for when we leave Junction.

Take care.
Brian

Junction, Texas

Hi All!
It's hard to believe it's been almost two months since we last posted.  The day after Christmas we drove to Junction, Texas where we are now official work campers. We work here at the RV park for a free place to stay. In this case we get our campsite, water, electricity, sewer, wifi, laundry and propane for working a combined 24 hours a week.We've enjoyed our stay here, especially the relatively warm weather. We have had a few days when it's been cold but 60's, 70's and occasionally 80's are the norm.

There hasn't been much exciting to report.  That's my excuse for not posting. This past Thursday excitement was ratcheted up a bit when I (Brian) went rattlesnake hunting. It's been over 20 years since I was last rattlesnake hunting with Doris Grote. Thursday it was with her son, grandson and his wife, and an old Grote family friend. We hunted at three different sites, two of which were productive. We started out in an old underground root cellar. I can't tell you how scary it is to look up between the railroad tie rafters and see the bellies of snakes up there. Yikes! After three trips to the cellar throughout the day we ended up with five snakes from there. We know there are at least three still in there.

The most interesting place was Teacup Mountain about half way between Junction and Mason. Teacup Mountain rates a Texas roadside historical marker.

To be honest, it doesn't look all that much like a teacup to me. Maybe from a different angle.

The five of us hiked up very close to the top where there is a rattlesnake den. Two years ago they caught thirteen rattlesnakes there. On this trip, over a couple of hours, we caught nineteen. I won't go into the details of the process for catching them as it would probably bore you or give you a severe case of the willies. We know there is at least one more in that den as Koy Grote, who was the proverbial point man, could hear him but he wouldn't come out.

Here is the view from our perch near the top of teacup.

After we had caught all we could catch, Koy and I climbed up to the top of teacup for a look around. Here's the view from the top, only another 20 feet or so from where we had been.

And here's a picture of me at the top just to prove I got my height-fearing self to the top. You can't see it in this picture but my toes are curled inside my boots.

Once we were back at the truck Koy moved the snakes from the trash can we were using to hold them to the box they'll be in for a while.

Our day resulted in a total of twenty four rattlesnakes captured. What happens to them now?

1) They aren't around to bite adults, children or livestock. The lady that owns the land teacup sits on, came face to face with one at her outside water spigot one evening.
2) Their venom will be milked from them, it's used in the making of anti-venom.
3) Ever had fried rattlesnake? It tastes like chicken.  :-)

That's it for now. Details on our next adventure coming soon.

Brian