Texas - The Lonestar State

We got into Texas on Tuesday and spent a couple of days in Livingston. We are life time members in an organization called "Escapees", which are people like us traveling part-time and full-time in the USA. Their headquarters are in Livingston and we introduced ourselves and checked out their services, which includes a care unit for people that are to old to travel, but want to leave in their rigs. It was a good experience.

Afterwards we continued on to Austin to visit with Doug's dad and his new family. It has been a really good visit, we met a lot of new relatives, since Vee (Doug's Dad's wife) has a big family. At this point we are still in Austin and most likely will continue on to New Braunfels on Wednesday to check out a "Wurstfest". Check out the website http://www.newbraunfels.com, it will be an interesting visit. We will continue on to Southern California by beginning of next week...

Old Man River - The Mighty Mississippi

After Asheville we headed further southwest, taking a three day break about 20 miles south of Memphis. Should we go see Graceland??. We decided not to since neither one of us really likes Elvis Presley. But, since we wanted to see some sites in Memphis we chose a 90 minute riverboat tour on the Mississippi. It surely is a BIG river.






After the boat ride we took the trolley to Beale Street; two blocks of street blocked off to traffic. It is hard to describe. Both sides of the street are lined with jazz bars and souvenir stores. The music starts about 5 pm and supposedly goes 'till 3 am. What a party street!! We could not stay to late, since we had to leave again the next morning to drive towards Texas.

Biltmore Estates

So we arrived in Asheville on Tuesday evening and were able to find a campground for two days. Wednesday morning we went on to see Biltmore Estates. I was a little bit skeptical, but went along with the plan. If you are ever in in the Asheville area, you have to go see this house. It is huge. It took us three hours to tour the four floors of the house with a self guided audio tour. This house is so beautifully and tastefully decorated, I was very much impressed. I admit that I am sometimes a little prejudges to American taste, but this estate is incredible. Here is a picture of the estate.



After a hardy lunch, we continued on to the gardens. This estate is so humongous it is hard to describe. George Vanderbilt actually hired a landscape artist to plant all the trees and shrubs on all the hillsides of the property as well as the gardens.



It was well worth the time to see this magnificent estate. We spent one more night in Asheville and continued on southward towards Texas the next day.

On the road again

It is Saturday and we have driven through four states by now again. It is a little hard to keep the blog current, but here we go. We left Charleston on Monday morning to go back to Charleston. Our TV died about 1 1/2 weeks ago and our dealer had made arrangements to have a new one delivered to Charlotte by Monday. So we left Charleston on Monday and stopped in Columbia, since the TV had not arrived yet in Charlotte. We went to the "South Carolina State Fair", which was pretty nice and we filled up on plenty of junk food. Tuesday morning we went on to Charlotte, got to the dealer and exchanged the TV ourselves. It works beautiful now. Cheryl, our cousin, was kind enough to accept our mail again and met us in a mall to give us the mail. I still have some problems to figure out where we will be every two weeks to be able to receive our mail. Doug felt that we really should see Biltmore Estates, which is the biggest "house" in the US and Cheryl agreed. So we continued on to Asheville, NC, which means first going back into SC to get back to NC. That's at least what the highway did.

Boone Hall Plantation

I have seen my first plantation.The driveway with these huge, majestic oak trees covered by Spanish moss was just incredible. We learned about plantation and slave history, which was also very interesting.




Then we decided to tour the plantation house. Inside I began to wonder how old the furniture really was until somebody actually asked and our tour guide said "Oh, the original house was destroyed by a fire, the second house by a flood, the third house by a hurricane and this is actually the fourth time this house was built." There went my romantic notion from standing in a part of history. The last time the house was rebuilt was 1935 by the Canadian owner. Oh well, there will be other plantations. I was so disappointed that I did not even take a picture of the house. I just wonder if there is any that are actually the original building. We did have a good time in Charleston and on Monday went on to other adventures.

Charleston - Welcome to the South

As we are driving south on Route 17 I noticed the landscape changing and got to see my first sign "Boone Plantation". I always have had a very romantic notion about the south. I imagined these big mansions with tall pillars in the front doorway, long driveways lined by very old trees and magnificent lawns, just like "Gone with the Wind". We went to downtown Charleston today and even though there are of course no plantations in the town, we got to see these beautiful mansions at the tip of Charleston. They were just like I had in visioned them. Tomorrow, we will go and see a real Charleston plantation. I am so looking forward to the experience.

Go Fly A Kite

We left Charlotte on Monday to go to Myrtle Beach. I have never been there, Doug has and had some places he wanted to see again. It was hot (91 degrees) and humid. Actually to hot to go to the beach the first two days, so we went to town to check things out. Apperantly Myrtle Beach has changed a lot since Doug has been there last about 20 years ago, but we still managed to have fun exploring. Finally it cooled down enough to go to the beach in the afternoon and we tried to fly Doug's kite. It took about two minutes and thanks to the strong winds the 30 lbs line on his kite broke. At least we did not loose the kite. So, back to town we went the next morning and bought some 80 lbs line. That afternoon we had a blast flying both mine and Doug's kite. Thursday morning we packed up again and went on to Charleston.

Spending Time with Family

It has been a fantastic week. We have spent a lot of time with Doug's Aunt Barbara and Uncle Art. They have shown us Charlotte, took us out for dinner with cousin Andy, and chauffeured us to Doug's other two cousins Cheryl and Ginger and their families. It was sooooo good to catch up with all of them, since we had not seen them since Ginger and Tom's wedding in Baltimore some nine years ago. Saturday was a special day. Cheryl and Steve's son Brett has autism and we came down to participate in the "Autism Speaks" walk at the Lowe's Motor Speedway. It was incredible to see how many people turned out to walk for such a good cause.



I have enclosed a link to the website that Cheryl is actively involved with, since this cause is very close to our hearts. autismspeaks Tomorrow we will head over to Myrtle Beach and spend a couple of days at the beach

Here We Go

We are sitting in a campground in Charlotte, NC and have started our new adventure. The house has been sold and a new part of our life has started.

First, we left New Jersey on September 21st to go to the balloon festival in Glens Falls, NY. Brother-in-law, sister-in-law and their grandson Willie joined us and we had a great time. This year the weather was pretty much perfect and they actually started three balloons right in front of our RV's.

The RV on the left is ours, the one on the right Dave and Michele's (brother and sister-in-law). On Sunday afternoon we packed up our stuff and headed to Cooperstown, NY.

After a beautiful drive through upstate NY we ended up in a campground in the middle of nowhere. No phone reception, no stores, very small little town. It was an interesting experience, but we did have fun in Coopertown and enjoyed the Baseball Hall of Fame, the reason for our trip there.



After Cooperstown we went on to Gettysburg and spend a few days brushing up on American history and that is the beginning of our adventure.