Big Changes

 

I started this post about two weeks ago while we were up in our lot in Georgia. I’ve been trying to get it finished ever since. 

 

It’s hard to know where to begin. I haven’t written a blog for so long. Until recently, there was nothing to write about.  Some things haven’t changed.  We are still helping to care for my mom.  She is still in her own home with caregivers 7 hours a day, paid for by her LTC insurance policy.  My brother, Al and I are staying with her the rest of the time.

We are trying to find a live in caregiver that will care for her about 15-20 hours a week in exchange for free room and board.   Our friend Cindi who was going to do it, has had some major health issues so that didn’t work out. If we can find the right person, it will allow us to be able to leave town on a more regular basis.

We managed to get away from the stifling heat of Tampa and spend 2 weeks up in the north Georgia mountains on our lot at Rivers Edge.

 

We didn’t have the time for much fun, but Al did manage to get in some fishing and tubing.  You’ll understand why we didn’t have much time to play, when I tell you what else we have been doing. 

Our Florida friends, Heidi and Suzanne (in the above picture) visited Blairsville last fall with the intention of buying some property and a cabin. We found them a RV lot  to rent at Rivers Edge where we own our lot.  They fell in love with the area, the rv park, and in the 2 weeks they were there,  bought a lot on the river and made plans to upgrade the lot with a lovely cabin (She-Shed) concrete drive, and deck.   As it turned out, their She-Shed came in very handy for us.  

 

We took some golf cart rides and some scenic drives.  You notice Al with a dog on his lap?  That is Cindy.  She is a rescue that was brought to the animal hospital nearly dead,  by owners who couldn’t be bothered to care for her.  After weeks of intensive veterinary care, she improved enough to be released.  Heidi decided she needed a good home and she has certainly won the doggie lottery with Suzanne and Heidi.     Oh, and guess who got poison ivy?  

 

 

 

Our plan for going to Blairsville was to purchase a Fifth Wheel that we could leave on our lot.  We had done some looking in person and on line and we had decided what we wanted.

We decided that when we get to travel we will be happier in something smaller than a big class A motorhome.  Since we have  RV lots in the Keys and in the mountains, and we love both places, we know we will spend a lot of time on our lots.  Our plans for the future are evolving, but we now think we will put something permanent on both lots and travel in something smaller.  We’ve looked at a few Class B motorhomes.  Heidi and Suzanne just purchased a new Road Trek Popular Class B, which they love. It’s surprisingly roomy, but I think we need a little more room.  We think we would be happy in a B+ with a couple of slides.  We couldn’t live in something so small, but I think we could travel extensively in one and the B+ with slides have quite a bit of space.  A class B would be for the future when we are free to travel.

When we headed up to Blairsville, we left the motorhome here in Florida with the  intention to stay a few nights in a hotel and a few nights in our cabin.  The cabin on our RV lot is pretty comfortable, but has no bathroom facilities.  We figured, we would use the campground bathrooms. Luckily, Heidi and Suzanne were nice enough to offer the use of their She-Shed while we searched for a Fifth Wheel.   

We had done some Fifth Wheel shopping on line and in person, and found what we were looking for.

It was delivered and set up just a few days before we had to head back to Tampa.  

It’s a 35 foot Carriage Cameo.

 

 

 

 

We got to spend two nights in our new home, but then had to leave and get back to Florida.

So, now that we’re back in Florida, we are working on ways to get back up to the mountains, hopefully for September and October. 

Stay tuned……

50 Amp Power Problem

 

Blairsville, Ga (high 82, low 60)

We’re keeping busy around here, but haven’t been on any hikes yet.  Al has been having problems with both of his knees.  One is bad enough that the doctor is ready to do a knee replacement.  Al wants to see how it does this summer and if he is able to do any mountain hiking. He hasn’t been able to find out because his “good” knee is giving him more problems than the bad one.  It’s been very hot up here this year, so we haven’t been very interested in hiking anyway.  This is the third summer we’ve been here and it’s by far the warmest we’ve seen.  We’re hoping this unusual heat wave will end soon.

We took a drive over to Highlands, North Carolina.  It’s supposed to have some really high end RV resorts and expensive houses.  They must be hidden because the only thing we found was a little touristy town with shops and a lot of people.

This building appeared to be some kind of apartment building.  I loved the beautiful flower boxes.

It’s a picturesque little town, but the crowded streets reminded me a little bit of Key West, without all the fun and interesting people.  There were no bars, so that might explain the lack of interesting people.  :)

The kids seemed to enjoy this fountain.

The ride to Highlands was very scenic and we stopped often to stretch our legs and take some photos.

We came upon this place that appeared to be like a dry waterslide.  The people you see on the right of the picture were standing on some sort of escalator thing that gave them a ride back up to the top of the hill.

Once on the top, they got in an inner tube and rode down to the bottom.  It looked like fun.

We made a stop in Dillard Georgia to pick up some fresh produce at Osage Farms.  Everything is fresh picked, delicious, and reasonably priced.

 

We’ve been going for our morning and evening golf cart rides looking for bears, but have only seen turkey and deer so far. 

Al is always on the look-out for rocks, so if he sees any along the road, he stops to grab a few. He’s using them as borders for our trees and planters.  The recent grading of the road brought up quite a few nice rocks for his collection. 

Most of you know, we have another Rv site just down the street, that we rent out.  On Sunday, our new renters came in in a big Tiffin bus with 4 slides and a tag axle.  It was the largest RV we’ve had in the site, and I was happy to see that they fit just fine.

The problem started a few hours after they arrived.  The 50 amp circuit breaker shut down.  We assumed they had overloaded the circuit because they have 3 ac units on the rig and it was pretty warm outside.   It happened again a few times so we decided we might need to replace the breaker. 

Al doesn’t like to mess with electricity.  Fortunately, one of our friends here is a retired electrician and he agreed to change the breaker.   He thought we might need to pull the meter in order to change the breaker, but as it turned out that wasn’t necessary.  It turned out there was a crack in the breaker, which I’m sure explained the problem.   for my records:   we used a 50 amp double pole General Electric breaker that we found at Home Depot.   

Changing the breaker would have been easy, except for the fact there was a big motorhome that was close to the pedestal and not much room to work.   Our friend Pete had to crawl down under the slide and get on his knees to open the box to be able to get to the breaker.  He has bad knees, so it was pretty hard on his body. Poor guy.  He wouldn’t take any compensation for his work….but we’re going to figure out a way.   Thanks Pete!  (Pete is a long time reader of my blog, which is how we met him in the first place)

 

The other day, we took a drive to one of our favorite shops in nearby Hiawassee.  Al found a cute bear wall decoration that he couldn’t resist.

 

 

We also found a smaller one just like to go with it.

I love the 3 dimensional look.

There are a lot of artists here that do some amazing work.  It’s always fun to visit the shops and see all the art.  

Yesterday, we finally took the time to sit outside and read. 

I found another good book about hiking the Appalachian Trail. This one is called Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman.  He made the hike after losing his wife to cancer.  I am really enjoying it, especially when he talks about places nearby.

I’ve read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which by the way has been made into a movie to be released after Labor Day.  It stars Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.   If the movie is half as good as the book, it should be a great and funny movie.

I also read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, but it’s about a thru hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. 

If anyone has any other thru hiking books they recommend, let me know.  I’ll be needing a new book soon.

Snow in the Mountains

 

 

Blairsville, Ga, (high 50, low 27)

I can’t remember the last time we’ve been anywhere where the weather was cold as it was yesterday.  The high temperature was only 37 degrees.   The wind was whipping all day long, with the occasional strong gusts that shook the motor home.  The sun never came out, so that made it even worse. 

It was too cold for the heat pumps, but fortunately our two little quartz heaters kept us nice and toasty all day without having to run the furnace.  Our furnace is our least favorite option for heat.  It’s noisy, and the dry air bothers our sinuses.   We turned the furnace on a few times, just to make sure it still worked and to heat up the basement.  We also kept the bay heaters turned on all day.

Today should be a better day.  The sun is already coming out, so we’ll soon be getting some nice free solar power!

We went up to the local favorite Jim’s Smokin’ Que yesterday for some bbq and Brunswick stew.  Afterwards, we decided to take a drive to check out the snow at higher elevations.

Brasstown Bald mountain is the highest peak in Georgia, so we headed that direction.

Despite the wind and cold, there was still some pretty color.

The higher the elevation, the more snow we saw.

It looks so cold up there.

It was a pretty ride.

 

We got up to Brasstown, we discovered the road leading to the visitor center was closed because of all the snow on the road.

It’s a pretty steep road with sheer drop offs, so I guess that was a good idea.  I’ll bet it was pretty from the top of the mountain.

A lot of other people had the same idea, I guess.

Someone made a snowman!

It was a small snowman. Can you see it?

This guy was going hiking.   Burrrrrr

These people were having a snowball fight. Notice the snowball I caught in midair?

We didn’t stay too long, because we turned the heaters off while we were gone and the little darlins were probably freezing.  :)   Just because they have fur, doesn’t mean they don’t get cold too.

This is a view of our campground.  You can see the trees are getting pretty bare.

There is still some nice color around the campground though.

Right across the street from our lot.

 

Our lot.

Since it was so bitter cold yesterday, we got nothing done in our preparations to head south.  We we won’t be leaving tomorrow.   Al still needs to drain the waterheater and washing machine in the cabin.  The hot tub also needs draining, cleaning and winterizing.  Hopefully the weather today will be more conducive to working outside.

We love our little home in the mountains, but I think it’s time to head south.

What do you think?

A Sad Event and a Happy Ending for Two Brothers

 

Blairsville, Ga (high 78, low 61)

 

Another cold front made it’s way south this week.   We had to turn the heat on when it got down to 48 degrees one night.  Being Floridians, we can’t get over how it could be this cool in July….but we love it.   It’s warming back up today but if it stays cloudy, I don’t think we’ll see any 80’s.

 

We’ve been busy working around here on the rv sites.  Our friends Terry and Ralph had rented our other site for the month of July, but they have gone back to the Tampa area.   Now that the lot is vacant, and we can work without disturbing anyone,  we’ve been trying to do a little maintenance there.

We’ve been meeting more of our neighbors,  and many more in Rivers Edge II, which is our sister rv park. It turned out that it was a good thing because one of those ladies came to our rescue.

Anybody that has been reading our blog, knows that we are both serious animal lovers.  We can’t stand to see a homeless of mistreated animal. 

When we were here last year, we met a couple that always took their two cats riding on their golf carts.  The cats were were much loved pampered indoor cats.

This is a family picture from last year.  Notice the two “brothers” on the back of the cart.

 

This year, we only saw him once and noticed the cats were left to wander around outside.

We started wondering if one of them was ill or something, and then became concerned that the cats were being fed.

We finally asked around and found out that she (and I can’t remember her name) was killed in a car accident a few months ago.  He has since found a new girlfriend who is allergic to cats.   Apparently he stays with the girlfriend and the cats were left pretty much unattended at the Rv.  We tried not to get involved, because we certainly couldn’t take them in, but I lost sleep a  few nights worrying about them, so we started feeding them.

It turned out that he had left food for them inside the Rv and one of the bay doors was left open with access to the inside of the 5th wheel.  We didn’t know this at the time.

In the meantime, I happened to mention the situation to Angie ( a nice lady in the neighboring Rv park).  She was also upset at the situation the cats were in, and she started feeding them as well.

Angie is my hero because she got busy and contacted everyone she knew and after only a few days, she found a nice home for both of the cats.  They will be indoor cats again and will not be separated.   Yea Angie!

Duane (the man who lost his wife)  agreed to surrender his beloved cats but was upset about losing them. I think he should have found a new girlfriend and kept the cats, but he was not used to living without a wife and was not able to do much for himself.     I told Al that if I should die, I would want him to find someone else (hopefully not in three months) but that she  better LOVE cats!  If he neglected the cats, I would come back and haunt him!

Now that the cats are safe, Al and I can quit worrying.

 

We met another lady that paints rocks.   When we first met her, she had a big rock that kind of looked like the face of a bear. 

She painted the face and Al really liked it, so we bought it from her.  It’s a big rock.

Here is is under our flag pole.

and a close up

The next photo is our beautiful hydrangea.  It will start to turn pink soon.

We’ve been planting flowers.

This is a hibiscus that is hardy in this zone, but looks more like it belongs in the Keys.

 

and some coneflower also known as Echinacea

 

 

rudbeckia

 

We have managed to find some time to do a little reading. 

Notice the blanket I have covering my feet.

Some of our neighbors in the soybean field.

 

Well, it looks like the sun is coming out, so I guess I’d better get busy.