Christmas

Location: Goliad, Texas

Our trip along the coast through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana was a bit on the wet and chilly side. Lows around freezing and highs in the 40s wasn't conducive to dawdling.

Snow?  No cotton that's just been harvested

We did, however, stop in Pass Christian, Mississippi for a few days where we parked outside a friend's house and plugged in so we could be warm for a while and flatten some pennies on the train tracks.

Beautiful beach at Pass Christian

Vietnamese banh mi!!

Then it was on to New Orleans for a day of beignets, people watching, authentic Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, and some great street music.

Live bronze 'sculpture'

Some awesome music!

  A tour of the Tabasco hot sauce factory at Avery Island 

was followed by a rendezvous with some old sailboat cruising friends for a few days of travel together, 





 sampling various Cajun andouille and boudin sausages,

 and passing through the Frog Capital of the World along the way.

Mark with a mean snapping turtle

Lovely sunset at Fort Anahuack County Park

Century plant Christmas tree in Goliad

After the first couple of days Texas has been much warmer and dryer so we've finally been able to slow down. 

With our 17^th wedding anniversary and Christmas coming up we decided to look for a small town to hang our hats for a few days.

We landed here in Goliad and are staying at a lovely state park for a week. It's just a mile walk along a bike trail into town and we've really been enjoying ourselves here (in shorts and t-shirts, finally!!).

  





On this, the first day of Winter, the shortest day of the year, and Mark's son Jeseph's 37^th birthday, we'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy 2019, wherever you might be.

Thanksgiving and beyond

Location: Parker, Florida, USA

 We left Blacksburg and headed south, visiting friends and family along the way. After a few weeks of socializing, playing with the grandkids building marble rolls and having pillow fights, Thanksgiving was getting closer and we started feeling ourselves in a bit of a time crunch. Time to get moving!

 Our first stop was Savannah, Georgia. We'd crossed the Savanah River many times on our way south on Rachel, but had never visited the city. We took this opportunity to explore it for a day and were not dissappointed. The city is peppered with small parks containing gorgeous, old, moss-covered live oaks. 

On the waterfront we saw streets cobbled with ballast stones discarded from old sailing ships.

 After Savannah we headed down to Newnan, Georgia to leave "No Sails" with friends while we rented a car and drove up to Mark's family's semi-annual Thanksgiving celebration / reunion. 

We stopped in Greensboro, North Carolina to pick up Mark's mum, and drove for two lovely days to get up there. Unfortunately, the further north we went the colder it became. By the time we arrived there was snow on the ground and temperatures were below freezing. Thanksgiving day was forecast to be even colder with a high of 23 degrees F (-5C) and a low of 5 degrees F (-14.5C) with 25 mph winds! Brrr! We are not used to this!

 As usual over the 108 year history of this gathering, the family-cooked dinner was delicious, the bad puns were atrocious, the singing was in multi-part harmony, and the comeraderie was fantastic. With 89 attendees this year, name tags were a necessity! 

 It was so nice seeing everyone again and meeting the "out-laws" newly marriend into the family. The after dinner activities included chamber music, paper aeroplane chaos, contra dancing, and more visiting with relatives between dances and during clean-up. 

We learned that Mark's grandfather, a US Congressman who was killed in a plane crash during his freshman year in Congress on December 20^th, 1928, was a personal friend of Calvin Coolidge.

Another tradition started by Mark's father's generation many years ago is to go bowling the Friday after Thanksgiving. We kept 6 lanes busy. Mark was able to capture a video of "Hambone" picking up a spare after rolling a gutterball. He turned 100 last month and still managed to bowl 3 games! 

 We also learned not to go bowling in the same block as one of only two stores in the Eastern US that sell recreational marijuana. Having opened for the first time only days before Thanksgiving, the several-hour-long lines continued to stretch around the block on bowling day – even in 23 degree F (-5C) weather!!

 And we got to see a wild turkey walking up Mark's cousin's driveway only a few feet from the house!

 After a wonderful Thanksgiving, we dropped Mark's mum off back in Greensboro and returned to Newnan to get "No Sails" ready to roll again. We had winterized the water systems knowing it would be experiencing freezing temperatures while we were gone. After "de-winterizing" we said goodbye to our friends and continued south.

 Our first stop was Williams Country Store, a small gas station, convenience store, and restaurant in Haralson, GA. Had it not been recommended to us by our friends in Newnan, we would have likely passed it by. That would have been our loss, as it turns out that they make arguably the best homemade sausage in the entire civilized world. After sampling sausage biscuits, we decided to buy two pounds to take to Parker, Florida to share with our friends. As we placed our order at the counter, we were told they sell over 600 lbs of sausage a week, ship a lot of it out of state, and used to deliver it regularly to the Jimmy Carter White House. What a treat!

Our second stop was Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia (we're so glad to be back in "cruising" mode rather than in "making tracks" mode!). We were looking forward to this stop, as we had just been to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's summer home, Campobello Island, on our way back from Nova Scotia last summer. We knew nothing about the little white house when we arrived, and, if our friends hadn't mentioned it, we would have likely missed it.

 The museum is wonderful and the staff was very helpful. We learned about the hand controls FDR designed so he could drive around the countryside. We saw a miniature replica of the Mayflower built using an actual piece of wood from the Mayflower obtained from the Society of Friends up in Massachussetts, complete with onion skin sails and rigging made from a lady's hair. We learned that the house was built while Roosevelt was governor of New York and was so named because it was called the "little, white house" as it was being built, not because it became "The Little White House" after he was elected president. We learned that he didn't like arms on his wheelchairs so he could slide himself in and out, maintaining as much independence as possible. We learned that his car had an 8-cylinder engine that was faster than his secret service detail's 6-cylinder cars, allowing him to speed ahead and pull off and hide in a corn field to ditch them. He'd wait for them pass by, then go cruise around for a while on his own. We learned that this is where he died of a massive stroke during his third term when he was 63 years old. We learned a lot about Roosevelt that wasn't covered at Campabello and are very glad we decided to visit.

 Then it was on to River Bend Park, Georgia for a couple of days in the rain while we waited for the weather to clear.

From there we headed on to Parker, Florida, where the eye of hurricane Michael made landfall.

 Once we crossed into Florida we started to see the effects of the hurricane. Trees fallen on houses, more and more blue tarps on roofs, missing road signs. Entire billboards snapped off at the base.

 Huge old live oaks just tipped over with their roots pulled out of the ground. Acres of pine trees snapped off halfway up. As we approached Parker, the destruction became more widespread. Downed telephone wires and power lines piled up on the side of the streets, cut loose so new ones could be raised. It's been nearly 2 months since the storm, and there are still huge piles of wire, roofing, wood, brush, personal belongings, abandoned vehicles, demolished buildings, etc. everywhere. Many houses are nothing but rubble. It looks like a bomb went off here!

 Except that there are houses interspersed that have NO apparent damage. How weird! And how those people must feel to look out from their 'saved' home and see the devastation around them every day! Unfortunately,this is the "new normal" for all the people here for quite some time to come.

We arrived at our friends', parked "No Sails", counted our blessings, and got together for happy hour, a wonderful dinner, and as good a visit as we could muster, given the circumstances.

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and we are immensely grateful for all of you.

Cold

Location: Blacksburg, Virginia

Mark had to scrape ice off the windscreen this morning....time to head south!

Last night we went out to celebrate Julie's birthday at the Black Hen restaurant here in Blacksburg. Great food, great service and scrumptious dessert!

Friday is Julie's and our granddaughter Emma's birthday. Big plans, including going to see the new Nutcracker movie.

We leave to start heading south on Saturday, November 3 and will keep you posted.

Bits and Bobs from Canada

Location: Blacksburg, Virginia

This is embarrassing. We haven't posted anything since July! Sigh. Guess we just got too busy traveling and having fun with friends and family. So now we'll have to play catchup (again?!?!) with a few highlights and a lot of pictures. We had such a wonderful time in Canada! Here are a few of the highlights.

We visited the Fortress of Louisbourg. Primarily constructed between 1720 and 1740, Loiusbourg became one of the most extensive (and expensive) European fortifications constructed in North America. Taken by British colonists in 1745, it was returned to France in 1748, then captured again by the British in 1758. After long years of neglect, about 1/4 of it has been rebuilt as a living history museum with costumed docents and great re-enactments. We really enjoyed our visit.

 We stopped at the St. Peters canal and lock (the southern entrance into the Bras D'or Lakes) which allows a protected shortcut for boats wishing to travel to and from Newfoundland. We met 2 boats, both double-enders similar to our old Rachel. The first, "Grace", was from Matlock, England 20 miles from where Julie grew up. While we were chatting with them, the second boat, complete with our dinghy Belle's little sister on the bow – couldn't have looked more like "Rachel" - pulled into the lock. They turned out to be from Wendell, Massachusetts and knew Mark's cousin Molly. Talk about serendipitous!

 After dealing with some refrigerator issues, it was time to continue our trip. Cape Breton Highlands was another stunningly beautiful and magical place. It's a national park and contains the famous Cabot Trail – one of the world's premier scenic drives.

 We spent 10 days there slowly working our way around the cape. 

Lots of precipitous overlooks, lovely trails, wildflowers, wildlife, and spectacular views. Julie even got to see another moose, this one a bit more close than the last one a few years ago!

We ended our trip on the Cabot Trail at Baddeck, where we visited with other cruising friends. Alexander Graham Bell lived here and we visited the Bell museum. We never realised he had invented so many things!

One quick aside about Baddeck. There is a bronzed statue of Alexander and Mabel Bell sitting on a waterfront bench overlooking the harbour. Apparently in heavy rain, sometimes umbrellas appear over them. And we hear that, during periods of really high water, they have been spotted wearing life jackets!

We went sailing with our friends on the Bras D'or Lake, and went hiking and exploring for waterfalls. Great time with great friends.

Back in the spring we had made plans to meet other boating friends in New Brunswick in August, so it was time to start heading south. We wished we'd had more time to explore Nova Scotia, especially Cape Breton, but that'll just have to wait until another time.

The friends we were meeting had already done all the research and made reservations, so we just tagged along. It turned out to be a great time.

We met them at Deer Island where the "Old Sow", the world's largest tidal whirlpool lives. We got to see the huge gyre created by the currents, but since it wasn't a moon high tide, the whirlpool didn't form. But watching the flotsam swirl around and the seals and cormorants hunting in the currents kept us well entertained.

Then it was on to the ferry to Grand Manan Island for some cliff top camping at the Hole in the Wall Campground. Seriously – "cliff top". No kidding. With the RV perched on top of a 200' high cliff, we heard the whales breathing in the night and watched whales, porpoises, and other sea life pass right near the rocks below. Amazing. Unfortunately, after 30 years of operation, the cliff top sites are all being closed down at the end of this season. We're lucky we got a chance to stay there.

Saying goodbye to our friends, we made a quick return to the US, then back into Canada to visit Campabello Island, summer home to Franklin D. And Eleanor Roosevelt and their family. 

We had a great time visiting the houses, attended "Tea with Eleanor", and got in some more wonderful whale watching. Apparently this has been the best summer for whale watching in many years, and we definitely made the most of it.

By then Mark's mum was visiting family in Maine so we headed back into the US and stopped to visit more friends and family as we passed through on our way south.

We finally arrived back in Blacksburg after nearly 3 months and over 6,600 miles. We're still very happy with our 'No Sails' (we've been living "aboard" full time for almost 7 months now) and are planning an extended trip out west this winter. Until then, we're spending our time catching up with family and friends and doing maintenance on the RV and at our house.

We'll be back on the road again in November. See you then!