Where RV Now?

It’s been a chilly winter down on the MS Gulf Coast with a nice warm day intermittently thrown in as a teaser.
But nice weather is finally on the way! Last year we left Mississippi on February 1st, this year we will be staying until May 4th and then we head North to Indiana for a month, and finally home to Michigan.
The work camper gig a couple days a week has been fun and a great way to meet people. We have enjoyed some great games and delicious in the evenings at the clubhouse too.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone living FT in their RV has been keeping warm and not dealing with frozen pipes!

We dealt with some pretty scary storms here on the night of the 8th. I was up all night, rain, WIND, tornado warnings. I always thought we would abandon our coach and head for shelter. But when you’re in the moment- you don’t. It never seemed serious enough until it was. Next time I’m heading for a hotel.

Anyway-

It’s been a weird couple of weeks down here on the Mississippi coast. We have not escaped the cold weather totally.
This is probably my fault because I chose not to pack a winter coat this season!

What tips have you FT folks been using ?

Seems like every RV page I’m on there are complaints of frozen water lines, all to different degrees.
I’m amazed that some people in our resort haven’t filled up water tanks or have heated hoses or done even the basic precautions against park water being shut off-
Despite warnings it was coming 🤦‍♀️

Our Alliance has been solid. No issues even in the terrible winds and we have been warm and pipes have not frozen.

Wow it’s been since so long since I’ve posted!
A lot has been going on in our RV Life. I can’t remember if I posted about the sale of our home and our status had now changed to Full Time…but here we are in Biloxi rocking it!
We sold our home on September 1, (and completely moved out by the 8th) Which meant we didn’t have to go back to Michigan from Biloxi!
We were able to Close on the home remotely from South Dakota on the 25th!

That tied up some loose ends for us!
The trip Southeast from South Dakota was LONG and drawn out, we finally got to Biloxi on October 13th.

Biloxi is a great place to winter! We met up our friends from Montana again and are having a great time.

Did some museums in Vicksburg today.
Lunch was at Biscuit Company of Vicksburg (highly recommend)

We spent a couple nights in Branson, not sure why, it’s not our kind of place. The traffic is horrific 😝
I think it was because this KOA was 4.5 hours from our last campsite.
Nevertheless, we had a great dinner at Landry’s restaurant, stopped at a craft mall, (didn’t buy anything)…snapped a few pics of some cool stuff😊
We left this AM and are in Pine Bluff Arkansas now. We had a great meal at the casino, played some slots (Paul won 290$, I lost 200🤨)
Since what is his, is mine…I’m up $90😂

We checked in yesterday afternoon and were met with incredible efficiency by the check in staff!
This campground is fairly large with terraced sites. A little on the narrow side, but I’m sure it’s economies of scale for this area.
There’s a nice dog park (pictured ).
They offer pizza and wings made here at the park, we ordered that for dinner last night, it was EXCELLENT! They also offer breakfast and the two of us had Pancakes and Sausage, Paul added Biscuits & Gravy to his order- it was $12 for the both of us and it was delicious.
Today we plan to hit the Titanic museum and check out the town.

Just a few more states ….

We are in El Dorado, Kansas.
We arrived yesterday at our campsite…it’s a gravel parking lot with Full HU. 😐
The folks that run it are sweet. It’s just not my idea of a campground.
Anyway, I had the BEST BURGER I’ve ever had at the Black Gold Grill in town. I was skeptical after I had to explain to the server what an. Arnold Palmer was. 😝 But the burger was outstanding! You can still buy one here for 7.95
There was a great museum down the Road, dedicated to the Oil Industry in this area and Kansas in general. We toured the displays inside and out, very interesting.

We also took a tour of El Dorado State Park. It was HUGE…nothing like Michigan State Parks in appearance. It makes me appreciate them even more!

We move on to Branson, MO tomorrow.

An early morning start to avoid some predicted high winds-
Bonus at 6:00 AM on Sunday there’s NOBODY on the road!
Our destination is Holidays RV Park in North Platte, Nebraska.
For no other reason other than it’s along the route to Biloxi and we needed to fill the space on our map 😜

This park is convenient to the highway- it’s unfortunate that it’s so run down.
Its location is great with plenty of fueling and dining opportunities.
I’d give it a 2.
No frills here…

Today’s adventure took us to Hill City for the 1880’s Train Ride to Keystone on an old Passenger car, Orville pulled by an old steam engine. It was informative and the scenery beautiful!

Taking a ride on the 1880 Train…Cory is retired railroad guy and into it!

Tuesday saw the arrival of Dale & Loujean from the Wisconsin Dells.
Our “camping rule” is on travel days if there are members of your group already at your destination, a home cooked meal awaits you are your day of travel.
Pasta, garlic bread and a salad was on the menu followed by a campfire where we caught up on the past year.
Solving the world’s problems will likely take place at the next one.

Sunday, September 24, 2023 we hit the road for other short hop to Hermosa, South Dakota.
We will be spending a week at Heartland RV Park.
Our first day here we jumped in the car and drove to Custer State Park. And we are attending the Buffalo Roundup on the 29th we wanted to get the lay of the land.
As usual it did not disappoint.
There is a brand new building at the park. It contains a Gift Shop, interactive display about the Buffalo Roundup an restrooms.

Thursday & Friday we spent getting caught up on chores before we left on Saturday for Buffalo Wyoming.
The move was a quick 2.5 hours to the Koa in Buffalo.
We set up and went for a quick dinner at the Cowboy Saloon down the street, there, for the first time I found Rocky Mountain Oysters on the menu- of course…I had to try them 😂
Sheila and Cory were game as well, Paul not so much. So we got an order. They weren’t bad, not nearly as tasty as Gulf Coast Oysters!

On the 20th of September, we spent another great day enjoying what surrounds you in Montana…breathtaking scenery! Our “guides” Sheila and Cory showed us their favorite places.
We also had a great lunch in Red Lodge.
The next day the pass was closed because they had 4” on snow 😊

We have had an excellent two days of enjoying the essence of Montana!
We spent a day with Brian Rickert @ Tablerock Ranch and the second day Sheila & Cory Knutson took us to the most spectacular day! The Bighorn Lake Tour by boat…
I LOVE Montana!

We arrived in Billings, Montana on Friday. All in all it took four days of 4-5 hours OTR to get here.
The dogs were troopers! They love the RV life. All you have to say is “ready” or “ride” and they run to the truck!

This is our second time visiting this KOA, it’s Big Rig friendly and very tidy.
It’s the very first KOA ever established.

The Yellowstone river is on the side of the campground and you can walk down to it and it seems like you’re a world away from everything.

Tomorrow we are headed to a 1,000 acre Ranch outside of Ryegate that belongs to one of Paul’s cousins. Tuesday is a boating day with Sheila & Cory Knutson fellow Alliance friends that live in Billings that we met in Biloxi last year.
I’ll post pictures of our adventures.

I can’t say enough about this beautiful Campground! The sites are spacious the hosts are gracious.
It was definitely worth taking the long route here (to avoid Traverse City.
The checkin was flawless, the staff courteous, the grounds are meticulous.

We will definitely be back!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

https://www.holidayparktc.com

The last I posted we were at Starlight RV Resort and Campgrounds, heading to Mio Pines for a weekend of Canoeing, a lot has happened since then!

We returned home for what turned out to be the longest week of our lives!

Intending to camp at our home for a week between the Fall Michigan Alliance Rally and our trip out west, (to do some last minute preparations for our winter away), actually turned into a marathon house moving!

A showing on Friday the 1st ended the day in our selling our home!
The couple who bought our home (we met the next day) are great, they loved the home as much as we do and appreciated the improvements we made.

The Fall trip we are taking is out west with two other couples and there’s no way we were going to cancel.
Turns out the closing is scheduled for October 13th, which is the day after we arrive in Biloxi for 7 months.
We asked ourselves if we wanted to drive back to move or do it now…faced with a 2,042 mile, 37 hour trip with 3 dogs and a cat…the answer was easy!
And thanks to help from our sons, DIL’s, friends and some high school teens we did it!!
We are still in disbelief!
The inspection on the home went great, Paul is addressing these today and …we are now at KOA Holiday Campground in Traverse City, the Rally kicks off today!
Then, we begin our Full Time Adventure!!
I’ll review this beautiful campground in a separate post.

Good Morning! Today is moving day for us, we travel an hour to our next site 😂
Woke up to thunderstorms and winds!
We aren’t leaving our current digs until after 1 pm…waiting on a delivery at our Barn today which is scheduled between 10-1 so 🤷‍♀️
That means I can shower and pack at my leisure.
We will be back at Starlight on Monday until the 31st then back to our home (4.2 miles away lol) for a week and then we leave on 9/7 until June 3rd!
Our home is for sale and has two showings this weekend so 🤷‍♀️if it sells we will be back mid October to pack it up. If not we are south until it does sell.

Tomorrow we head to Mio Pines Campground in Mio (of course) for our 5th Annual Grote Float!
The weather looks like it’s going to be great!

http://www.miopineacres.com/

We will be there from Thursday to Monday…our summer in Northern Michigan is coming to an end!

MIOPINEACRES.COM

We’ve been home 10 weeks- in that time we have been to one Rally and hosted another, we have also been busy around the house…and we listed it on July 1st.
It’s been extremely exhausting!
I’ve packed up my office, we’ve rented a storage unit…and lots of boxes have to be moved.
I’m aiming for packing up everything except the necessities.
Looking forward to our next trip our annual “Grote Float” down the Au Sable River out of Mio with the family!

We are getting antsy to travel again!!
Picture is of our Rally on Fathers Day Weekend…we hosted 21 coaches and 45 GREAT owners!

We have had a whirlwind 6 weeks! We left Tennessee and headed home. To leave again a couple weeks later for our Alliance RV National Rally. As always we had fun and made more friends! Alliance always does a stellar job!
We came home and started preparing to list our home, first on the agenda was purging and a garage sale. That was a success and sadly- I have much MORE to get rid of!

Then- we had to prepare for our Michigan Summer FamAlly Rally at a local campground. (Alliance owners again)
Our first Rally in Michigan attracted 21 coaches - we had a blast! The smaller more intimate crowd got to know one another, what a great group of people!
Here are some pix.

This will be an annual event! Everyone had a great time.

Our next adventure is the 6th annual Grote Float in Mio, Mi later in August and a week or two later another Rally in Traverse City and we hit the road on September 11th !

Wish us luck on our home sale!! 🤞

Wow, I can’t believe we have been home a month already. It was good to see the kids and Grands, I can’t believe how tall they are all getting!

After we were home a day or two, we started planting flowers and have been busy at the house getting ready to list it this summer🤞

We have been getting rid of “stuff” that we didn’t want to part with on our last move in 2019.
Most of it- we haven’t touched 😳
So…it’s time.
Some we list on Facebook Marketplace and we are planning a Garage Sale this weekend and maybe again in Mid August.

We took a break on the 28th of May and headed down to Goshen Indiana for the Alliance RV National Rally for 7 days.
I can’t tell you what a unique experience Alliance hosts for their customers.
It’s more like a Family Reunion- and this doesn’t just happen once a year, they live their motto “Do The Right Thing” every single day.
We are so happy we chose Alliance RV.
This was our second National Rally and it was a fun and educational time as usual and we met some great people!

Came home on the 3rd - and got right back into it!
Only two areas - the garage and basement storage room. How long could that take? 😝

It’s good to be home.

Today we took a ride to Cookeville TN to meet a friend for lunch at Crawdaddy’s West Side Grill, great ambience and a wonderful meal!
I wished I would have taken pictures of this cute downtown area or even spent some time walking around.
We had the dogs with us…the downside of traveling with pets is, they really tie you down.
Anyway, if you’re even in Cookeville or even near it. It looks very interesting!

It’s April 25th and we have ten days left at this park. (Site #38)
It’s been a lovely stay!
I judge parks on a variety of levels.

Serenity being the most important!

Spring Lake does not disappoint.

Also, by layout, cleanliness, staff, cost and location.
This park ticks all the boxes. I’ve really been enjoying it!
Definitely one we will keep on our list!

As you can see, it’s not a huge park. That ”smallness” is what makes it attractive.
The sites are far apart and well laid out.
I’ve seen a few children, (during a Rally) but overall it’s mostly transient retirees or long term stays like us, waiting for the weather North to break.
It does not have a pool and it doesn’t need one!
It’s pretty quiet and has been our entire stay, with the exception of a weekend of Rally folks who left their dogs on tie out, while they partied in the clubhouse, that led to their barking constantly. They were gone by early Sunday and peace was restored.

Crossville also has a Buc-ees, it was the first one in Tennessee! Walmart is a short drive, as well as a Harbor Freight…pretty much everything you’ll need within a 15 min drive. Google Things to do in Crossville for more ideas.

In short, it’s a nice place!
Reminder! Don’t be “those” people! Keep your dogs quiet and kids under control!

We head North on May 5. Next stop is southern Indiana for one night-