One guess where we are, yep, Colorado

 It's that time again, time to escape the summertime heat of Florida and hit the high country of Colorado. Love to be here but the trip is pretty long, about 1800+ miles. Also, the logistics of preparing to leave our house tend to be quite a large pain. Oh well, it's worth it.

We head out and catch 75N up through Georgia. Long swaths of the highway had these bright yellow flowers growing thick beside it. I love to see an effort being made to make our pollinators happy.

Our next fun (for me 😁) stop was in Perry, GA at Stripling's General Store. He wanted to fuel-up and I wanted to browse. What a store!! A little bit of everything, yes everything. There must have been 50 different napkin patterns, all perfectly gorgeous, bunches of shirts, kitchenware, decorative household goods plus a full grocery with butcher shop. 

So much to see, and if I was local I'd definitely try their sausage. Here's their mascot out front.

First night spent at Lake Guntersville State Park Lodge in Alabama. It's our usual stop, up near the top of the state and a beautiful property. The views of the lake are wonderful, the rooms great, and they have a buffet-style restaurant onsite.

We did a bit of a tour around the area before dark and stopped down at the lake for a leg-stretcher.

Large parking lot area with a nice long dock
to fish from plus a boat ramp.

Some nice overlook areas along the bluff.

 As usual, I was mesmerized by the lovely mimosa trees in bloom.

Sunset was a pretty affair, and as darkness fell the fireflies came out to play. 

Parting shots of a mural and a cornhole base depicting the AL state parks.

After crossing the Mississippi at Dyersburg, much preferred over Memphis!, we spent the night in Jackson, MO and headed out the next day to make our planned "end run" around the St. Louis/Kansas City area on Sunday morning. The destination for the evening was the Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, NE, another usual stop with restaurant onsite. Beautiful ambiance with stately wooden beams and old world charm.

After dinner, we finished up the last of the delicious blueberry cobbler with homemade whipped cream. It was a parting gift from our wonderful neighbors with whom we had shared a great meal and visit right before we left.

It's nice to have good friends that can cook!

The next bit of scenery is always one I enjoy seeing, the bread belt of the midwest spread out in front of us - vast agricultural plots, large farm equipment, silos and hay stacking up for the lean winter months. 

The next thing you know we are getting our first peek of the Rockies and seeing the end in sight. 

They're wa-ay back there.

Thanks for riding along out with us and we'll have a report of how things are here @Rocky soon.

From Rustic with Love

Well, it's coming up on a week of our being out here at "Rocky" and here's how it went. After the hubbub of Memorial Day weekend was finished we did our last minute packing, staging and cleaning in preparation for our departure to our 5th wheel out in Rustic, Colorado. Those who have followed for a while know we have to escape the hot summers at home, thus we head out to the mountains. 7200' helps a whole lot, although the sun's rays are quite intense at this elevation, (we come home tan, lol). Most mornings after a chilly start, a little sunshine gets things warmed-up in short order.

So we got started last Friday, with our first stop being a return to Lake Guntersville State Park Lodge in Alabama. What a beautiful place, with nice rooms overlooking the lake and a restaurant on site. First however, let's talk about the gorgeous scenery heading up through the deep south in Georgia and Alabama, with it's picturesque little towns and long stretches of pecan trees.

Several towns had a nice showing of thanks and support to those who served and lost their lives. This picture isn't the best but it was quite moving to see each cross, with a name, and a flag lining the main street.

Something the Boss could tell you about, is the rubber-necking I was doing trying like the dickens to get a good shot of all the mimosa trees, which were in full bloom along the sides of the roadway. I just couldn't do it - I must have deleted 25 pics that missed the mark, but here's one that at least tries to show how pretty they were. Various shades of pink from light to dark! Excuse the reflection.

Pretty soon we start to see the hills of north GA/AL and the views make the miles tick away pleasantly. Not much traffic either, thank goodness.

We passed by the turnoff to Cheaha State Park, another lovely park which we visited 3 years ago, and which you can read about here. With the time zone changes in our favor while heading west, a longer haul isn't so bothersome. We prefer to arrive and get squared away before dark. Soon enough we made it into the park and checked in to the lodge.

Lake Guntersville State Park Lodge

The Lobby, lots of rustic charm and gorgeous
wood and stone touches.

Impressive front I know, but the back is where the money shots are.

The view of Lake Guntersville from our room

Observing with a smile on his face...
if only the winters weren't so cold, (*heavy sigh*)

The pool complex. Down by the lake is a small beach and marina.

After dinner we took in the air with a small stroll and the view of the lake with the moonrise was stunning. We're off to a great start.

From there we headed off across the Mississippi at Dyersburg and into Jackson, MO to spend the night. We had a gift card for the Outback Steakhouse, so we found one 3 miles away and had a nice bite. We were worried it would be busy/noisy on a Sat night but it wasn't bad at all.

Lots of farms, silo's and hay fields, lots of flat while we headed to Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, NE. Another favorite stop for us, a gorgeous lodge and great restaurant. I never take selfie's, but thought I looked rather nice after getting ready to go to dinner.

Here's a shot of the hazelnut orchard outside our room. The property is expansive and offers lots of planned activities throughout the summer.

Now it's a single shot straight into Rustic with one more time zone change to help us out.  Lots of farmland and then we spy a view of the mountains.

I'm sure there are many among you who have seen large
and more complex silo set-ups but they are cool & dotted all along.

Well, here we are on the last little stretch, "our" dirt road, the one that leads up from Hwy 14, (right at Glen Echo), to the Redfeather Lakes area. All's well at Rocky, everything is functioning which is a big relief! Now, to get this yard raked, mowed, weeded and flowered-up. We'll be looking pretty soon enough.

Thanks for taking time to read the blog, I hope you enjoyed it. 😊

And it's off to Rocky we go - yay!

 We had been watching the weather for our little northeastern corner of Colorado since the end of May and it was pretty consistently cold, chilly and quite rainy, so the decision was made to wait for fairer weather. Finally, by the 3rd week of June it looked like it was coming around for us. The Boss was fairly chomping at the bit by this time, so after making a last minute push to finalize things at home, we headed out.

Applying an old strategy we hadn't used in a long while, we sourced a large Omaha Steaks Styrofoam cooler from a neighbor and loaded it up with some of our frozen meats and ready-made meals. This not only helped clear out the freezers but also ensured we wouldn't have to shop immediately upon arrival, and would have a few easy "heat-n-eat" meals on tap. On the way out of town we stopped to pick up 2 slabs of dry ice, 10x10x2", loaded everything up, (it was full!), and duct taped it shut. It either would or would not last the whole trip - I was sure praying it would! 🙏🥺️ (PS. It made it with a little dry ice left!!)

Driving through Georgia we saw plenty of very green & healthy-looking pecan orchards. Some were large, old, established trees and some were young trees, but they were all very healthy looking. So pretty, wonder who owns them.. Bill Gates? the Chinese? Who knows.

A young Pecan Orchard in Georgia

We stopped for the night in Gadsden, AL, right by the Coosa river, and had a small stroll along the waterfront and a take-out bite for dinner.

I'm lagging behind with my torn meniscus but what a pretty evening.

After crossing the Mississippi @ Dyersburg, we headed further north and stopped in New Madrid, MO, a place the Boss has always wondered about. Sleepy little town on the Mississippi river now, but before the railroad came along it was hopping with river traffic and even carried some of the Native Americans westward on the Trail of Tears. It's main claim to fame is the New Madrid Tectonic Fault Line which in 1811-12 produced 4 of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in North America, along with hundreds of smaller aftershock quakes that year. We stopped at their museum and spent an hour or so there.  They had a couple of short movie clips describing the town at the time and how the earthquakes changed things including the course of the river, they had to move the town back more than once. Very interesting little museum with locally dug artifacts from early Mississippian Culture (600CE to 1600CE), the Civil War, WWI/WWII, plus an authentic 1800's kitchen - fascinating. I should have taken more pics.

Early American Kitchen with all the goodies,
you should have seen that woodstove!

The Mississippi looked low with quite a few sandbars in evidence, and I'm sure making navigation treacherous. 

Sandbars along the edges of the Mighty Mississippi

Traveling a bit further north we stopped in Sikeston, MO for the night and picked up a pizza for dinner.  

The next day we headed further north so as to catch I-80 westward, then stopped just west of Nebraska City, NE @ Lied Lodge, a stately lodge on 260 beautiful acres. This is the birthplace of Arbor Day, and they have all kinds of activities on the property. Maybe we'll stop for a more leisurely stay on the way home. We had a great dinner at Timbers, their fancy restaurant.

Entryway of Lied Lodge
(pronounced LEED) 

From there we travelled through some lush-looking farmland before coming into hills then mountains. Almost there.

Tidy looking farm

Rocky here we come!

One of the tasks the owners of the park were planning to handle in the off season was to replace the existing transformer with a bigger one. The intention being, so that when the RVers all run their A/C's at the same time Forth of July weekend it doesn't trip the circuit. Well, I guess it was a long, cold winter into spring and things just weren't conducive until the week we got here, lol.

The bucket truck in the foreground is handling the transformer
stuff while the guy in the background  behind the fence
is going to pull the old power pole straight up & out.

Whew! All's well that ends well. Here's a shot of the Boss in his happy place, here at Rocky, with his newly washed Explorer.

Well, that's about it for this first report from our summer abode. I'll close with a couple of shots of some columbines in bloom here in the neighborhood.

Thanks for dropping by and sticking with a rather long entry. Comments are great! Comments are welcome! 😄