A nice visit to an incredible place

Dallas Mobile Home & RV Park
Dallas, PA

 The colors here in Northeast PA are starting to peak.

Yesterday we went grocery shopping at Walmart,

and this is the view from the parking lot..

This is the view from our drive from our RV site into Wilkes Barre..

Yesterday I got a call from the gentleman who bought 

the company I worked for.

We've kept in touch through the years.

He recently sold part of the business,

and bought a horse farm not too far from where we're staying.

There's a Mohegan Sun casino and harness track about 

a half hour from here. It was in dire need

of new paddocks and training track.

It's in a beautiful setting on 78 acres.

Ken and his partner have built a beautiful

64 stall horse training facility that

sat idle for over 20 years.

Ken is even putting some elbow grease into it!

We're very impressed at how lovely this place is,

and state of the art stables for the horses

have made this a showplace.

Meanwhile George is out getting an oil change this morning.

I'm doing laundry and cleaning.

We have some more visiting to do while we're here as well!

Busy week!

Dallas Mobile Home & RV Park
Dallas, PA

What a lovely day it was yesterday!

We can't believe how nice the weather has been here.

Yesterday we took a ride to Harvey's Lake,

just a short 15 minutes away.

We went to a great place for an early dinner

called Damien's on the Lake

George and I celebrated our 6th anniversary!

I had a great steak, and George had a chopped steak.

They were both fantastic!

 We've been spending time with family.

Friday we went with Heather and John to their favorite place

called Breaker Brewing Company.

Of course we had to order a couple flights of their

best craft beers..

My favorite was Banana Hazelnut Ale, yum!

They had some very interesting ones including

Sour Pear, Potbelly Pumpkin, and even Bloody Mary Gose.

Saturday we also went to see George's oldest granddaughter

in a cheering competition.

She's not afraid of heights!

 Their squad did a couple great routines!

Proud Poppy George!

We still have two more weeks here,

lots to do and people to see!

More family time..

Dallas Mobile Home & RV Park
Dallas, PA

Another reason we took the trip across country

was to see these beautiful girls.

George's granddaughters Jillian, Jaelyn,

and his newest Carly!

Isn't she a cutie pie?

We got there just as the girls were getting their homework done..

Carly took right to his 'Poppy George'..

We're going to watch Jillian in a cheering competition on Saturday.

George and I have also been working on

some things at Heather & John's house,

including changing out a ceiling fan.

Their kitchen is coming along!

We're heading down to where I used to live today,

Hazleton, PA.

They're going to look at countertops,

while I go out to lunch with my friend Karen.

Looking forward to it!

Fall is in the air

Dallas Mobile Home & RV Park
Dallas, PA

The weather here in PA has been turning a bit cooler.

We've seen a lot of rain, first time for awhile!

Today is only supposed to be in the high 50's!

The colors are starting to pop.

We took a ride around Harvey's Lake,

and also Frances Slocum,

where we'd taken the Sea Eagle once upon a time..

It's nice to see some color, and feel the fall weather.

We've spent some time with Heather & John as well.

They're redoing their kitchen,

and George helped with a few things.

We met their two cute border collies,

Abby and Ace..

They love to play!

I sat and played with them in the yard to keep 

them occupied.

George had blood work this morning,

his check up is on Friday.

Today we're going to see the grand daughters!

Back in Pennyslvania

Dallas Mobile Home & RV Park
Dallas, PA

After we left Alabama (a new state on our map!),

we headed north stopping overnight 

at Cave Country RV Park in Kentucky.

We definitely want to come back here someday.

The owner even asked us if we wanted to workamp!

Next on our trip was Cardinal Center Campground in Marengo, OH.

Interesting campground as there is a shooting range attached.

They do skeet, clay, and trap shooting.

There were only two sites left,

I forgot it was Columbus weekend!

We finally are seeing pops of color..

We needed one more overnight, but I was having problems

finding places that weren't full for the weekend,

or it was after season.

Green Acres Lake Park Resort in Lake Milton, OH

fit the bill for our last night.

It turns out the park is closed,

but they let us stay anyway.

She gave us the gate code,

and told us which site to pull in to.

They hadn't turned off the services yet.

We pretty much had the place to ourselves!

We also noticed a familiar site..

the dreaded stinkbug!

We saw a few at Phyllis & Len's house,

but the farther east we go,

the more we see.

They are terrible, and so hard to get rid of!

Now we're in Pennsylvania, staying at Dallas Mobile Home and RV Park.

We found this place two years ago when visiting.

There are only a few RV parks within

a drive of George's family here,

and most of them are seasonal.

This park is a typical mobile home park,

but when PA started fracking a few years ago,

they put a handful of RV sites here too.

We were surprised how full it is now,

we were lucky to get a site!

They charge $600/month which includes everything.

Our neighbor (close!) is a lineman supervisor for PP&L,

and has been here a year already.

Last night Heather & John (George's daughter and SIL)

came by for dinner.

It was so nice to see them again,

it's been two years!!

Heather and I had some wine,

talking about our 'guys'

as they were very interested in our conversation :-)

We have lots of plans in the month we're here.

Heather has a 'daddy-do' list for their house,

and George has granddaughters to see!

5 year recap

Cardinal Center RV Park
Marengo, OH

Our 5th anniversary slipped by as we've been busy!

October 1, 2012 we set sail from Pennsylvania

to see what we could see.

As we enter our 6th year on the road,

we wanted to recap some of the facts and figures.

Total miles towing this year:  2,644

Total miles driven this year:  6,331

This year we traveled in 6 states!

We workamped for the following:

Yanks RV Resort in Greenfield, CA

For the past fiscal year we spent:

Fuel $1526

Campground Fees $7161.25*

*Most of this was because we were not
workamping in CA initially.
Mom paid our site rent until we got a job there.

Repairs to truck/RV $2,766.21*

*mostly a new surge protector,
new battery for truck, water softener,
and other things for new RV,
and repairs to old RV

Cell phones/internet/TV $4,151.91

Groceries/Entertainment/Dining Out $9,083.15

Insurance -

Truck/RV $2084.35

Health $3,133.08

Medical Bills *

*One of the best years ever! Besides prescriptions and
minor things, we didn't go broke here!

We have other expenditures, but these are the major ones.

Fuel dropped substantially from last year,

both due to the price of diesel coming down,

and less miles driven.

Campground fees doubled (see above).
Our time spent in CA contributed to that,
but like I said above, my Mom helped out.
Our trip from CA to PA increased campsite fees too.

I was happy to see that our food spending decreased :-)

We've done really well keeping our costs down,
but we did buy a new RV in April.
That has put us in debt longer.

We continue to need to find paying jobs during the year,

and have had no problems getting paid for our time.
One more year and I can collect Social Security,
which will really help us out.

George and I still love this lifestyle,

and we'll do what we can to continue!

Here's to the 6th year!!

Sweet home Alabama

Len & Phyllis East's House
Cullman, AL

We've had a lovely time the past two days,

'moochdocking' in the East's yard.

George and I met Len & Phyllis when

they were camping in Pennsylvania about 

3 hours south of where we lived in July 2011.

We've kept track of each other, both on Facebook

and our blogs.

They've recently decided to go off the road and

 bought a cute house on 4 acres of land,

put in a couple RV sites,

and invite whoever wants to come and stay.

Since we were only 110 miles away, 

we decided to take them up on their offer!

We had great directions,

and Len helped guide George in to our spot.

We spent the afternoon catching up,

and Phyllis had a great lasagna dinner for us.

Today we took a ride into Cullman to the local Oktoberfest.

There was a farmer's market with lots of

relishes, jams, jellies, and the like.

The tomatoes were gorgeous!

Len then drove us to a local historical covered bridge.

The Clarkson Covered Bridge was built in 1904

and was once used by farmers and travelers to cross 

the Crooked Creek.

In 1921 the bridge was torn in two by a huge storm.

In 1975 the bridge was rebuilt

and it was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

 There is a nice picnic area where the tables and benches are

made from river rock.

After our bit of exploring, we took Phyllis and Len

to Ruby Tuesday for lunch.

They also grilled some steaks for dinner,

and we enjoyed our last night here with stories 

of our lives.

I'm sure we'll be back again someday!

Tomorrow we start our trek north to Pennsylvania!