States That Aren't States

Everybody knows how much I like making up words. Apparently, I'm not the only one.

When we were in Pine Mountain, GA we were also very close to Alabama. The local TV stations referred to the area as Ga-Bama (ja-bam-uh).

Tonight we're in northern Indiana, near the Michigan border. Local stations call this Michiana.

Who knows what we'll find as we continue our travels. IliIowa? Minikota?

Visiting With Friends and Family

In the last week we've had a wonderful time catching up with friends and family.

First, we had a wonderful visit with our friends, Tom and Joni, at the Huntington/Fire Fox KOA. We were only able to spend one night, but we caught up over dinner and a short visit the next morning before we headed on our way. It's particularly nice to be able to spend time with other full time RV'ers.

After that we headed to Ohio and spent a week camping at the home of our friends, Kim and Richard. Dooley had a good time pretending he was a farm dog. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there, sunny and clear skies.

Kim and Richard were kind enough to host us while we took care of some family matters for Chris's mother. We also got to see several members of Chris's family. We particularly enjoyed seeing the progress being made on a restaurant that Chris's brother is working to open. I'll have full details here when the doors are finally open.

I even got to have an Ada Fun Friday with my friends Lynne, Pat and Liz, including a trip to Dietsch's for ice cream. I had Buckeye ice cream with peanut butter sauce. MMmmm.

Dooley got to visit his new vet, Dr. Katie (Kim and Richard's daughter). He's all caught up on his shots, got a pedicure and teeth cleaning. It was like a spa day.

Seems like we did more than that, otherwise, why are we so tired?

New Feature

Thank you to loyal reader, Robin, who suggested listing our current location on the blog. It's not very fancy, but if you look to the right, I've taken out the Balloon Fiesta photo and added a spot for Our Current Location.

Thoughts on Pine Mountain

Despite the frustrations with our job, we enjoyed our time in Pine Mountain, GA. It's a cute town and the campground was especially nice. We also did a few things that were fun.

We visited FDR's Little White House.  Sometimes when I go to a museum, it's overwhelming to try to take in everything. That was not the case at The Little White House, it was just the right amount. There's a museum with a short video and artifacts that are interesting. Then we visited the Little White House itself. It was pretty small, especially by today's standards. We also drove a short distance away and visited the pool (now empty) where the polio patients enjoyed the waters and did therapy.

In Columbus, GA we visited The Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning.  This was one of those museums that was overwhelming with all the information and displays, but it was nicely done and well worth visiting. There's an observation area and if we'd been there on a day when troops were graduating from their training, we would have been able to see that too.

While in Columbus, we also visited the National Civil War Naval Museum. We had a very military day with the two museums, but it was interesting because they were both covering different information.

Also during our stay in Pine Mountain, we made two or three visits to The Whistling Pig for BBQ.

We spent Feb and March in Pine Mountain, usually a couple of the worst weather months of the year, but overall, the weather was quite pleasant with lots of sunshine. If we get the chance, Pine Mountain is definitely a place we'd visit again.

Time Off To Wander

In my last post I mentioned that we don’t need to be in ND until May 2...so what will we do until then?

We are on the road and freelancing. At least that’s what I’m calling it. Our first night we spent at Cherokee Casino in Cherokee, NC. We had a good time.

We parked in the casino parking lot and they even have an area set up for RV’s. No water, electric or sewer hook ups, but some picnic tables and trash cans along a nice stream.

Since we’re self-contained, we don’t always have to stay in a campground and I like that. I particularly like staying at casinos because I like to gamble (we leave all our money in the RV and just take the cash we want to gamble/lose with us, which is a good thing), they have security so I feel safe staying in their parking lots and there’s food and drink available twenty four hours a day.

Cherokee is a very attractive casino with walking paths, a stream running throughout and pretty landscaping and outdoor seating areas. The hotel lobby had several cozy seating areas with nice vies of the mountains, a fireplace, and free wifi.

And it saves us the cost of a campground (about $40/night) so if we lost a bit in the casino, I feel like it’s a fair deal.

We are traveling though the mountains of Western North Carolina. It’s a beautiful drive. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it.

On The Road

If you could see me now….I’m typing from the passenger seat as we drive away from Cherokee Casino in Cherokee, NC. I’m typing my posts into Google docs to be copied and pasted into the blog once I get connected to the internet.

Beautiful, but cool, spring day here, though we are heading north to the cold and rain.

Much has happened in the two or three weeks since I last posted. For one, we’re no longer in Pine Mountain, Ga.

In a nutshell, we got fed up w/some things about our jobs with Southern Cross and we quit. That was a sort of dicey move (as opposed to everything else we’ve done in the last 2 years), but we got a new job with a company called Southeast Publications. They provide campground guides and maps to campgrounds and our jobs would be to travel from campground to campground selling ads to local businesses. We checked the company out and we knew some people who knew some people who had worked for them, and felt good about it, though the prospect of a 100% commission job was a little nerve-wracking. We did our training and were just about the make arrangements to visit our first campground. In fact, since it was in Auburn, AL, just an hour from Pine Mountain (and home to Auburn University) we drove over and checked things out. A very nice town, by the way and we found yet another great place for BBQ. But I digress.

We made our scouting trip to Auburn on Sunday, April 3. On Monday, April 4 we got a call from a couple of former co-workers asking if we’d be interested in talking to someone else at the company about working on a project for the summer/fall. We figured we might as well hear all the options available, so we gave the guy a call.

He sounded like a good guy (though we’ve been fooled before) and we liked what he had to offer so we said yes.

What does that mean?

For this project, we need to be in Bismark, ND on May 2 for training. We’ll be there about a week, then we’ll travel to Fergus Falls, MN (you can look it up on a map, it’s the county seat of Beaver Tail County or something like that.) where we’ll be working until the project is complete, probably the end of October. We’re still full time employees of Southern Cross w/all our benefits etc, but after this project, we don't have to rush off to something else. If we want to take the winter off and then go back to the same project (maybe in the Dakotas or Wyoming) next summer, we can.

Assuming all goes well and we finish the project in MN, then we think we’ll give the Southeast Publications job a try during the winter, then in the spring decide what we’d like to do for the summer.

I’ve complained about the constant changing of our plans and how that stresses me out, but this time we had a little control over it and we think it’s for the best. Plus, we’re getting a raise.

Spinning, Spinning, Spinning

Has it been almost 3 weeks since I posted? Apparently so. We haven't had a whole lot of anything interesting to report. Mostly we've been spinning in circles.

We left North Carolina two months ago. In that time, we've had about a dozen actual productive work days. The rest of the time has been spent on training (which was useful) but a fair portion of our time has also been spent in a swirl of changes.

At first the changes happened every couple weeks, then weekly, and most recently, daily. In the last week, our plans have changed three times. Admittedly we are both people who don't want to do the same thing over and over, but this is getting ridiculous.

So, 10 days ago our plan was to stay where we are for another month, then head out west. Eight days ago that changed to going to the office the week of March 21 for training for a project in Virginia, then possibly going to VA right away or soon thereafter, thus delaying (but not canceling) the trip out west.

We made our plans accordingly, had our mail shipped to the campground near the office and paid for another week here.

Yesterday, we got the call that the Virginia project isn't happening, so no training next week and no move to VA. Instead of the 10 days ago plan that said there was enough work for us here for the next month, we're told that there's work for us for another week, but not sure about after that.

In the mean time, we now have to pay for another week here at the weekly rate. If we can't get some sympathy from the office here. that means we'll end up paying more to stay for 2 1/2 weeks than if we'd paid for an entire month. And our mail is en route to a place 80 miles away.

There have been some changes in management at our job so we are optimistic that with time the confusion will be resolved and we'll be working with more regularity and less jump, shift, change.

For now, though, I'm trying to keep my head from exploding.