June 26, 2012 ~~~ Today was "housekeeping" day.  Cleaned house, got all our laundry done, got the Toyoter washed, did a little grocery shopping and took a nap.  Temp over 100 again... but actually cooled off a little this evening and Darrell was outside grilling us some steaks at 9:00 pm!

I gave up and cut my own hair today... which I'm sure Jackie Thomas, my hair dresser will be appalled at, but I couldn't stand it another day!  I think it looks pretty good... but then I'm comparing it to what it looked like BEFORE I cut it.  :-)

We're SO glad to hear that the "pipe" that broke in our house was the little plastic tube that goes to the ice maker in the refrigerator!  Larry T says the "repair" took about 10 minutes!  BUT, he and Randy then tore down our monstrosity bed... a king size, dual foam mattresses, with electronics, all sitting on top of our double set of drawers that used to be under our water bed... and then removed all the carpet in our bedroom, cleaned the mess of water and yuck up, and put it all back together again.  THAT was an all day job, plus I'm sure, part of another day.  Not to mention pulling all the hallway carpet up, AND the carpet in our computer room.  THEN moved the washer and drier out and cleaned up under them in the laundry room!

Oh my... I'm not sure there IS any way to repay these guys for all they've done! 

Talked to Ter on the phone tonight.... she says Wyatt "helped" Katie's tadpoles to a better life by dumping them out of the fish tank and into the rain barrell. He thought they needed "more room to grow". Katie did not share that feeling ... and probably would like to wish him into a cornfield. As she has told her mom more than once.... she didn't WANT a baby brother in the first place.  I'm sure Wy's heart was in the right place.... but he caused his sister to have a melt down.  Again. 

June 25, 2012 ~~~  It was 86 degrees at 8:30 this morning.... my my.  Sure wish we had a swimming pool at THIS RV Park!!  I would just spend the day in the pool.

We still haven't heard back from Darrell's cousins and think they may be out of town, or out of state.  We hate to miss them since we may not ever make to this part of the country again!  Hope we hear from them tomorrow... if not, we will leave here Wednesday morning and head north.

We took off this morning to entertain ourselves and try to find the property that Darrell's Great-grandfather owned.  Explored Neosho, Monett, Pineville, and Southwest City today.  Darrell turned up some new tidbits at the courthouse in Pineville, and we located the land we were looking for, and visited a cemetery and found a few more relatives who were born in the 1800s.

Southwest City is on the statelines of Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma.... so we were in all three states for a few minutes.

Was a nice day to spend in our air conditioned vehicle ... since it was 100 or more all day!
Now safely back in our air conditioned camp trailer!

June 24, 2012 ~~~  Good Morning!  We heard the cicadas last night for the first time on this trip... easy to understand how they drive some people bonkers.  NOISY little suckers!  They drove me inside ... too noisy!
We'll be off this morning to the SW corner of Missouri to Monett and Neosho area where Darrell has a little more family research to do, and to visit his cousins who still live there.  Supposed to be 100-degrees the next few days, then thunder and lightning by the weekend.  We'll see.  By the end of the week we will be heading in the Nebraska and South Dakoto direction.

We are traveling through the Ozarks... I expected something more "spectacular", but then I'm comparing the Ozarks to the Appalachians... no comparison!  The Ozarks are lots and lots of big rolling hills, and the road we're on is curvy, but nicely paved, not much for shoulders, and has a LOT of roller coaster hills.  The Appalachians have twisty, turny, narrow roads, sometimes the pavement is not so good, and you travel up the side of one razorback ridge to the bottom of the next ravine in short order, with what appears to be 1000-foot drop offs and the road crumbling away on the sides! 

Anyway... it was kinda pretty, and lots of ranching... cows and horses, and in some places lots of single wide mobile homes with the usual accoutrements that I've described before.

So... we rolled along.  We did start seeing an inordinate number of turtles and armadillos ran over on the roads.  We will never see a LIVE armadillo because we don't drive these roads at night.  So... we watched for a good road kill so I could get a photo of an armadillo.  Found a "good" one that had probably been hit last night.  Here it is:

After this photo was taken, we decided I had learned yet another Valuable Lesson in traveling, and also decided to summarize the lessons one or the other of us, or both of us, have learned since purchasing and traveling in our camp trailer. 


********************************************************************************************************
#1:  Always be sure all the windows are closed in the camp trailer before taking off if the mini-blinds are down.  If one leaves the windows OPEN for some air circulation and the mini-blinds are down, you will find the mini-blinds in a pile of 2-inch pieces under said window the next time you stop.  **We learned this one last summer.

#2:  CHOCK the wheels on the camp trailer even if you are on a teensy little insignificant incline BEFORE you unhitch from your rig.  If you don't, your camp trailer will roll backwards into areas you do not want it to go.  **We learned this one in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Behind the camp trailer was a 10-foot drop off.  Hanging onto the 5000-lb-plus camp trailer will NOT stop it from rolling backwards.

#3:  Do NOT get angry and flip off the locals, no matter how badly they behave on the freeway.  **Darrell learned this one in Virginia.  Fortunately we "lost" the local in traffic.

#4:  Be sure all the cabinet doors are still closed BEFORE you extend the slide out.  **We learned this one today.  We will be replacing one cabinet door and hinges when we get home.  :-(

#5:  Do NOT flip a dead armadillo over with your foot.  No matter how badly you want a photo of him right-side-up.  Especially when the temperatures have been above 100.
**Donna learned this one today today also, as she came gagging all the way back to our rig.

 We're hoping we don't have too many more Valuable Lessons to learn.
*******************************************************************************




Here is an interesting sign we saw several times along the road deep in the Ozarks:

Bwahahahaha .... yep.  And deep in the OZARKS even he might stand a chance of winning!  (IF he could find enough morons who are registered to vote.)



Here is a photo of the landscape from up in the Ozarks.  This beautiful big lake is one of many in the area.  Walleye is the "fish of choice", but they also catch record breaking bass, perch, blue gill, pike, and other stuff in these lakes.

We got to our destination in Monett, Missouri and set up our camp, and a short time later got a phone call from our daughter Terry.  She had stopped by our house today to check on things and water my houseplants ... and found a water pipe broken in the laundry room and 4-inches standing water in there, a couple inches standing in the kitchen and carpets soaked all over the place!  She found the water shut off, got most of the standing water swept out, picked through "wet" stuff to take home and wash for us to try and salvage as much as she could.  We have no way of knowing how long the water had been running, but obviously quite awhile.  She will check with Larry T and Randy to see if they can come over and start pulling up carpet and getting it out of the house and fixing the broken pipe.  We're hoping the old fir flooring UNDER the carpet doesn't buckle and have to be replaced.  What a nightmare.

Thank God for our kids, who are "handling" all of this for us, since we are too far away to be able to DO anything ... a very helpless feeling!  We are so used to doing our OWN things, and handling our OWN little disasters ... it's hard to feel like we're "putting this off" on our kids.  Larry T says he thinks they can get the pipe fixed and carpet pulled up.

Gulp!  Glad it was nothing worse.  It sounds "real bad"... but it could have been so much worse.... it's not like our house burned down!  THAT would be "real bad".

June 23, 2012 ~~~ Spent last night in Union City, Tennessee.  We pulled in there and got our "camp" set up about 9:00 pm, exhausted from a long and rather emotional day.  We were next to a HUGE corn field on one side of us and a military base not too far away on the other.  We got to watch the helicopters from the base flying over and this morning were awakened by a crop duster flying over at what looked and sounded like HOUSE TOP level!

This is one of the photos we took at Union City... we knew you would all enjoy it.  :-)

Yep, that's what it says... $2.97 a gallon.

This part of Tennessee is almost all farming and we drove by thousands of acres of corn, but it's not sweet corn... not sure what "variety" it is, maybe hominy?  AND the closer to the Mississippi River we got, the more peanut fields we saw!  Thousands of acres of peanut fields.  Neither of us has ever seen a peanut plant before.  This is what they look like:

Kinda like a regular pea plant on steroids!  Well, after all, a PEAnut is a kind of pea!  And now I want to grow some... must get some to plant with Katie and Wyatt and Tiny next year.

So we crossed the Mississippi River (VERY BIG) into the southern part of Missouri and into the Ozarks and the Mark Twain National Forest (oak trees), and stopped for the night at West Plains, Missouri in a Good Sam RV Park.

The Ozarks (so far anyway) are pretty, but NOT as spectacular as the Appalachians.  A few people had "warned" us about the route we took because of the "twisting and winding" roads.  These Ozark roads were a piece of cake after some of the Appalachian roads we were on in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky!  The roads had "curves" and lots of them... but we were traveling over rolling hills... NOT razorback ridges and up and down ravines a thousand feet down!  Once we got into Missouri we began seeing rice fields and no corn, and eventually no peanuts either.  In the area we are in now it's mostly rolling hills, hay farming, and cows.  And yes, they are still standing in the ponds up to their bellies to cool off!

Went for a little swim tonight as it was over 90 degrees and we had the pool (and nearly the whole RV Park) to ourselves.  There is only one other camper here and we haven't seen hide nor hair of them.  Very quiet, no children here at all ... and a nice pool.  :-)

Good night all.... Darrell is firing up the BBQ, so I'm going out to join him.

June 22, 2012 ~~~  This is a tough day to write about.  We DID accomplish our "mission", after a few wrong turns, the GPS totally failing us for the first time, and a few turn-arounds that Darrell managed to do on one-lane roads and 12-point turns!  We found Orville and Betty Powell's home in Dover, Tennessee.  They live at the very end of a lane right on Barclay Lake. 

We met Betty first, who was very gracious and we spent about 2 hours with her while she caught us up on her life with Orville and their courtship and marriage, and their many travels.  After retirement they were on the shores of Loon Lake in Washington for several years while they traveled, then traveled full time for 6 or 7 years and working as "camp hosts" in many states.  Orville decided it was time to get off the road (full time) and they decided to move somewhere warmer than Loon Lake area.  They chose Tennessee.  Orville did work for a few years for the county juvenile department as a Juvenile Parole and Probation officer in Dover before he "retired" again.

Betty told us that Orville has resided in a nursing home in a nearby town since December 2010.  He has Parkinson's and dementia.  He has had Parkinson's for some time, but had started falling because of his balance and the Parkinson's and she could not get him back up.  He is now in a wheelchair full time and their home is not wheelchair accessible... nor are the rooms and hallways wide enough for his wheelchair, and it would be impossible to remodel their home without very nearly rebuilding the whole place.  Betty warned us that Orville has "good" days and some "not so good" days, so when we visited him we could expect that sometimes he cannot follow the conversation and gets frustrated because he knows he is impaired, and knows what he wants to say, but sometimes can't find the words to express or explain himself. 

She also told us that it was too bad we had not arrived a day earlier because Orville was honored at a special award banquet last night and an award plaque was presented to him for "Distinguished Military Service and Personal Accomplishments" by the Sheriff of the county and the local Chief of Police for his years of service in the Army and in the Korean War, his years in the National Guard as a Battalion Commander, and his many years of law enforcement service.  We SO wish we had made it here in time for that!

We said goodbye to Betty, and drove to the nursing home, not knowing what we would find when we got there.  What we found was a VERY nice facility, and Orville lounging around in his nice air conditioned room in a black cowboy hat, sitting in his wheelchair watching the news on TV and drinking a coke.  (He later said he would rather have a shot of scotch.)

We didn't tell him we were coming, so he was surprised and so tickled to see us... of course he didn't recognize us at first (we may have changed just a little in the last 25 years since he last saw us)... but when he did, he was totally astonished, and very pleased.  We were apparently very lucky to catch him on a "good" day because we visited with him for 2 or 3 hours, catching up and reminiscing.  His speech was a little slow, and sometimes he had to think for a minute to process the conversation, but his sense of humor was intact and we all had a good time and some laughs telling stories about the "good ol' days" at Sweet Home P.D.  He told us he finally had to give up working at the Juvenile Department because he went to court one day and when the judge asked him to talk about the case, he realized he couldn't remember the case and it just wouldn't come to him. He said his memory was started to fail him more and more, so he retired for the last time.  He did ask about several people, including Patty (he couldn't remember her last name) and Sammye, and Jim and Carol Ann Salsbery, and we talked about others who are no longer with us... Terry Brooks, Bob Worthington, Jim Bean, and Chris Ives. 

We hugged him goodbye after a few hours ... and all of us teared up some.  Darrell and I, especially me, lost it once back in our rig.  It was wonderful to see him and visit with him, and with Betty.  But it was so sad to realize this is no doubt the last time we'll ever see him. He was such a vital, energetic, intelligent and sharp witted man and he was such a big influence on  both of us.  We have always thought the world of him.

And THAT is all I can write for now.

June 21, 2012 ~~~  Got up at 5:45 this morning and took a few daylight photos of this "Inn" we stayed at.  Not quite as spooky in the daylight hours.... but I still think Steven Spielberg would like this location.

By that little dark back door is where I went to smoke a cigarette in the dark.  But only once!

Ummm.. yes.  This was a sign posted prominently in the parking lot and behind the building.

And this is a picture I took looking down the side of the building ... weird "smoke" in the photo.  I was NOT smoking when I was taking photos, and I was the only person out there.  And as I mentioned earlier... we were the ONLY guests in the entire place!  Creepiness factor increased when I saw this photo.

After shooting a few photos, we showered and got out of there!  By 8:00 a.m. it was 70-degrees and steamy!

Driving through the hills again in Kentucky and came upon West Liberty... a small town we had never heard of... and discovered it had been hit HARD by a tornado in March.  Look up the photos and videos of that if you want, it cut a path a mile wide .... it's horrible to see it in person.  Nearly all the businesses in town took a major hit or were destroyed, as were whole neighborhoods.  Some hillsides were completely denuded of trees.  Clean up is still going on all over town.  Very very sad.

Down the road a piece we drove through Salyersville and learned that it too had been hit by a tornado the day after West Liberty!  The tornado had touched down several times, but fortunately wasn't as large as the one that went straight through the heart of West Liberty.

We got to the Tennessee state line about 12:10 p.m., and the temperatures had reached 90 degrees by 10:00 a.m., so it was a tad bit warm!

We stopped for a "snack" and to refill our iced tea and found boiled peanuts.  A "delicacy" neither of us have ever seen or tasted before.  Couldn't find them at first... because I was looking for a "bag" of them.  Ah ha!  Found them in the crock pots (of course!!) boiling away in brown water.  Okay.... so I bought a small cup of them and when they cooled off enough to touch we broke open a couple and tried them.  Hmmm .... Darrell said unprintable things about his, which I won't repeat here.  We were not expecting the texture AT ALL.... I guess we thought they would still be crunchy?  Anyway.... NOT crunchy.  In texture and taste, kinda like a big cooked pinto bean... very cooked.  Like "mushy".  All righty.  Probably won't need to buy any of those again.  :-)
BUT... the next time I see frog legs on a menu I'm going to try them.

We drove through really really TALL (10-12 feet tall) corn on a very narrow road... we think we might have found where they filmed "Children of the Corn".... it was like driving through an ALLEY of corn.  I was on the phone talking to Ter, so didn't get a photo.

Oh!  Did I mention that these people have had their gardens in for a long time??   Maybe since about February??  Their corn is tall and almost done!  Tomatoes are in roadside stands already!  And I think everyone here plants about a half-acre to an acre of garden, and nearly everyone HAS a garden, and no matter how "messy" their house is, or how many refrigerators, old furniture pieces, and junk cars, the garden is in perfect rows and all the grass is mowed and trimmed all the way to the edge of the road.  NO weeds or grass standing alongside driveways or ditches or the edges of the road.  These people take their weedeaters and gardens serious!

The "BEST" sighting of the day was seeing cows standing in a pond in the middle of a huge pasture.  We had seen this before... but in one today we saw several standing in water up PAST their bellies... and one creative cow was sitting down with only her head and neck sticking up out of the water!  Of course I couldn't get a photo of THAT one!   This photo doesn't do the sight justice... usually the whole group is in the water having a little "swim".  This group is just coming out of the water and appear to be heading for the barn.

Got to Clarksville, Tennessee and set up camp for one night near an Army base in a Good Sam RV Park.  Will get out of here tomorrow morning to try to find our old boss, Orville Powell, in Dover, Tennessee.  Can't find a phone number for him, but DID find an address so he doesn't know we're coming, and we haven't seen him in 30 years!

June 20, 2012 ~~~  So yesterday we finished up at the courthouse then came on back to our camp trailer at about 2:30 pm.  It had been warm, about 80 degrees, and mostly sunny.  Within 20 minutes black clouds rolled in and a downpour started!  I took this photo about 1 or 2 minutes after it started raining!

This is one of the caves in the area open for tours.... we didn't know if these were musical or anatomical, so we didn't go there.

So... we took off this morning (the 20th) westbound through West Virginia on the backroads again.  Here's a shot of what the Appalachians look like from one of the really high roads we took.  See how "smokey" it looks?  It's all mist... and sometimes it looks like "puffs" of smoke.  That's how the "Smokey Mountains" got their name.  Rain.... then 90 degree weather will do that!

We passed into Kentucky about 12:15 pm.

And driving through the back roads and hills of Kentucky we found about the same views and "hill folk" as in Virginia and West Virginia Appalachians.

Saw a lot of fighting cocks being raised, but we've seen that in Oregon, so didn't bother taking photos.  The MOST appalling thing we saw was hounds (coon hounds) in what appeared to be rabbit cages.  They barely had any room to turn around were 3 feet or more off the ground in slightly oversized RABBIT cages.  No photos of that either.

I don't want to perpetuate the myth that ALL hill folk lived in squalor, so here are a couple photos of nice houses, and we saw a lot of those too.

On the other hand, we did see an inordinate number of single wide mobile homes of various ages.  Apparently if you are less willing or able to "decorate" only have a few cement blocks for a front step.  The really habituated have a large covered porch with a railing, a large Confederate flag draped or nailed over the railing, a clothes line on the front roof line of the porch with the day's laundry hanging on it, a large BBQ grill, a full sized couch (or 2) and a couple old recliners as accoutrements.  All of these (except the laundry) must appear to have been there for several years rain or shine.  No photos though ... the best ones were always on the wrong side of the road.... I could hardly put the camera in front of Darrell's face while he's driving down a narrow twisty road... it makes him all grumpy.

We continued on looking for an RV park and couldn't find one so decided to look for a motel.  We were in Cumberland and Benham, Kentucky and finally had someone tell us about an old school building that had been converted to an "Inn" in Benham.  We were assured by the guy at the service station that it was really nice, so we went there where a cadaverous older guy checked us in. We then went out for dinner to Charlotte's Fine Dining where they had frog legs on the menu.  We chose salad and a sandwich with a side of fried green tomatoes.

 As we finished eating we noticed that the wind had started to blow and black clouds were rolling in pretty fast, so we hurried back to the inn.  The only parking lot at the inn that was big enough for us and our camp trailer was about a half-block away from the main entrance.  That would have been fine except the downpour broke just before we arrived.  We grabbed our overnight stuff and an umbrella and ran for the entrance... but even with the useless umbrella we were both soaked past our knees.  The rain was coming down so hard and furious it made rivers and waterfalls on the parking lot, stairs, and sidewalks, so we were dashing through ankle deep water!  Of course it was getting dark out... which made the old "Inn" kind of a spooky place.  The hallway was kinda dark, and looking down it was like being in an old echoey creaky (vacant) school building... even the old lockers still lined the hallway, and it still has the original flooring.  The school was abandoned in 1961, and was purchased and refurbished in recent years.  Creaky.

Did I mention that we were the only guests there?  Uh huh.

I went out the back door after the rain stopped to smoke a cigarette... and it was too spooky so I didn't go back out for another.  There was also an upstairs.... but fortunately I had asked for a ground floor room.  Just looking up the stairs to the upper floor gave me the willies.

 

June 19, 2012 ~~~  Going to try to do a little catching up here!  I had put the blog thing on, typed in all kinds of (probably boring) information stuff about what we were doing, along with a few witty comments, uploaded photos, etc..... then accidentally erased the whole dang thing!  Aaarrrgh!!  The only GOOD thing about that, is usually the re-write is better than the first one ... or so I keep telling myself!   Okay... so on with the updates since I haven't posted anything since Saturday.  I'll go a little backward this time because Sunday was the only day we really did anything to write home about!

We decided to stay an extra day because we were at the Greenbrier County courthouse all day yesterday (June 18th) looking up ancestors in the Thompson side of the family, the court clerk would NOT make copies, so we were hand-copying everything in sight!  And totally BEAT when we got back to the camper after being on our feet all day.

Sunday June 17th was much more fun.  It was a total "relax" day... we spent some time in the morning on the computer updating genealogy information we found on Saturday at the Historical Society, then went for a drive.  Made a good size loop through the hills and enjoyed the heck out of the mountainous ride.  We explored a state park dedicated to a Union/Confederate battle that took place there, where you can still see the old "soldier's road" where the Union army marched on Lewisburg near the beginning of the Civil War.
AND we saw Pearl S Buck's birthplace.  Before she was born, it was owned and occupied by her aunt and uncle... and part of that same North/South battle was fought right in their front yard (more like a meadow of several acres!).  Photos of those:

The right single-story side of Pearl S Buck's birthplace has unfortunately been "updated" and new siding put on some time in the past.  The two-story side on the left is still the original.  That isn't all that unusual around here... we've found homes that were built in 1750's along these same lines.... big hand hewn timbers (roughly squared off logs) or slabs/planks for the walls of the house and the houses are still in use!  I'm not talking about  "restored" homes ... they are just very solid and still standing, so they are still in use.  The white between the slab/plank boards (think very rough 2 x 12's) is where they have filled the inevitable cracks with mud, clay, or cement like stuff to keep out the cold and wet as the wood shrinks.  The houses still in use and actually paint the "filler" white to make it look nice, and leave the old planks or timbers unpainted, except sometimes a wood perservative, and sometimes not!  Here is a church alongside the road that is still using the old building, but has replaced or re-sided the upper level.

Anyway, after the Sunday drive, I decided to treat Darrell to a nice buffet dinner at Shoney's in Lewisburg.  What a FLOP that was!  Little skinny rubbery slices of turkey or ham (and the ham was liberally sauced with apples and cinnamon...ugh!), watery instant mashed potatoes, some nasty tasting turkey dressing, dried up baked salmon over rice, very dried up fried chicken, and no beef or pork at all.  And they were filling the meat trays when we got there, so it's not like the chicken and salmon had sat on the steam tables too long.  Disasterous!  Oh well.... it's not likely Darrell will forget THIS Father's Day dinner!  Needless to say we probably won't go to another Shoney's!

Here's an interesting business we saw... Darrell thought of a business "slogan" for them:  "Get yourself and your car sloshed all in one stop!"

We've never seen a liquor store/car wash before!

And here is a photo of a couple of our neighbors in the RV park.

We're thinkin' the guy in the second photo may have celebrated a bit too much around the old bonfire the night before.  They do have pretty EMS rigs here... dark green with gold lettering. 

And that's it for now!  Tomorrow, Wednesday, for sure we are pulling out of here and heading south and west again.

June 16, 2012 ~~~ Went to Lewisburg this beautiful sunny 75 degree day to visit the Historical Society.  Found a few records of the Thompson/Workman family, but not too much.  Will share what we did find, and plan a trip in Monday to the Greenbrier Courthouse to see if they have anything else.  Then we took a trip out in the "country" to see if we could find the community of Trout.  I was told years ago that Riley William Thompson, Sr. was born there.  And we FOUND it!  Nothing left of the "town" now except an old boarded up grocery store, but quite a few houses scattered around... after traveling up a single track slightly paved "road" that had many many twists, blind corners, 100-foot+ drop offs, etc.  Here's a photo of the old store, followed by some of the road we drove, some of the houses we saw (all occupied), and the view from the top looking out of the community of Trout.

The first photo is the old store at Trout, the last photo is a little church nearly next door to it.  These photos cannot do justice to the road, the drop offs, or the narrowness!   We also saw a lot of houses that we decided we didn't want to get caught taking photos of .... we were concerned that the locals might object.  :-)   And we were a long ways from town.

We kept seeing these bushes loaded with red berries all along the roadsides that looked a lot like huckleberries, only redder, so Darrell decided he would try some.  He started spitting them out after a 2-second "munch" and kept spitting for 5 minutes, then rinsed his mouth out with coffee and spit some more.  We don't know what they are, but there is apparently a reason why no one is picking them!  I asked him what they taste like, but what he said is unprintable.  I decided not to try any.  Here's what they look like, in case you're ever tempted to try them for yourself.

I don't think I would recommend it. 

Tomorrow we will go for a longer ride up around the same part of the county.

June 15, 2012 ~~~ Spent the day traveling from Williamsburg, VA to White Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier Co., West Virginia.  Not an eventful trip (that's always a GOOD thing!) ~~~ but were tired when we got here and picked the first RV Park we found.  We have full hook-ups, but are surrounded by Bubbas... and the RV Park is "shabby" (and that is putting it "kindly"!).

Not sure if we'll stay here, but want to make some trips to the Historical Society on Saturday to see what kind of Thompson family info they might have.  And we want to make a loop into the hills and find the town (?) of Trout.  It will be an adventure!