Happy New Year!!! Photo Fun at the Beach…

What a great year it has been… 2013! We left Texas at the start of 2013 and made our way east. Along the way we reconnected with our past during a visit to College Station, Texas and then took our time to explore southern Louisiana. We discovered that we really love the southern Louisiana area because of the great food and zydeco music tipping the scale.

Next we made our way through southern Mississippi ,Alabama and drove once again through Atlanta, Georgia even though we had previously promised not to ever do again… it wasn’t so bad this time through! Then it was a brief stay in South Carolina then on to North Carolina where we visited with our daughter. Our next trip took us north where we had a fun stay in Airy, NC where Mayberry RFD was. Next up we visited with our friends in Virginia where I stopped by to surprise them to help bring in their hay crop.

From Virginia we headed into western Pennsylvania where we had an exceptionally fun time in the city of Pittsburgh… what a neat city it turned out to be. We left Pittsburgh as we headed to Niagara Falls, NY where we took a mini-vacation to stay in a hotel in Canada while basic solar power was added to our rig. After making our way to Toronto to visit with some of our RV’ing Canadian friends we chose to spend the summer doing the Great Lakes tour. Some of the highlights were visiting the Henry Ford Museum with Sharon’s cousin and his wife, exploring the shoreline around Traverse City, Mi, visiting Mackinac Island and watching the sailboats in a huge race coming in under the Mackinaw Bridge. Other highlights were exploring the Upper Peninsula, the town of Marquette, the Keweenaw Peninsula, Ashland, Madison and Wausau Wisconsin and we simply loved our stay in Green Bay where we were fortunate to be able to enjoy a Green Bay Packers Tailgate. And oh my, we also tasted cheese curds for the first time… yum yum!!!

As summer wound down we headed back south with a fun visit to the city of Chicago, its waterfront, the amazing architecture, deep dish pizza and its cool Bean. It was then great to visit more RV’ing friends in Illinois who took us to Moonshine, Burl Ives grave and even took us up in my first small airplane ride… what a fun time that was... We were also able to reconnect with some softball friends in Indiana where we also enjoyed Turkey Run State Park. We also traveled through Kentucky to visit Nashville Tennessee once again. Nashville is a city we visited several times before so this time we discovered it lost some of the luster it once held for us.

Finally we spent some time getting to know Alabama better and then made our way along the Forgotten Coast of Florida that we found we simply loved…. We plan to spend more time in that area on our way back west next spring. A trip to the Mayo Clinic for our annual physicals in Jacksonville, a visit to the Tampa Bay area and we ended up in Bonita Springs a place we wintered a few years back. We wondered if we would like it as much as our first winter here and have found that we do… it is such a great wintering spot and one I am sure we will return.

Now we feel ready to bring on the adventures and excitement ahead in 2014!!!