April 2017

April 2017

Happy Easter!  So glad to spend another Easter Sunday with my Mom and family.  I am so thankful and feel incredibly blessed to still have my Mom in my life.  Mom will celebrate her 91st birthday in June!

We have now planted another flower bed where we have lost those three large cedar trees.  Grow little flowers grow!

The field behind our home was a sea of red this Spring with the abundance of Indian Paint Brush flowers blooming.

We planned a trip to Arkansas to go to the official Ouachita Trail Shelter Dedication Ceremony.  The dedication was to be held at the final shelter that was constructed on the Ouachita Trail, the Suck Mountain Shelter.  We headed north to Arkansas and camped the night before the shelter dedication at the Highway 27 Fishing Village which is located at the western end of Ouachita Lake.

We pitched our tent and got our little campsite all set up and soon afterward my cell phone rang and it was Tom's brother telling us that their Aunt Ruth had passed away.  Aunt Ruth and Uncle Murphy live in Brandon, Mississippi.  So we made plans to travel there for Aunt Ruth's funeral service.

But in the meantime we enjoyed our evening at the Highway 27 Fishing Village campground.  It was a very peaceful and beautiful setting on the edge of the Ouachita Lake.

We witnessed one of the most incredible sunsets that evening!

As we watched the sun go down over the end of the lake we were made to realize how much we have to be thankful for, how truly blessed we really are.

The following morning we packed up our camping gear and we drove the short distance over to the tiny town of Sims, Arkansas (actually only a crossroads and a volunteer fire station).  From there we took a narrow paved road for two miles until it turned to gravel.....this is the road sign to tells us that the pavement is ending.

We then followed gravel roads taking right forks and left forks for 5.2 more miles until we came to the shelter turn-off.  We had been advised we could navigate this Forest Service Road for almost a half mile.........

......which we did.....it was bumpy, narrow, rocky, and steep,.....but we made it to a level spot where we could park our car and either walk the 2/3 mile the rest of the way up the mountain, or catch a ride with one of the folks who had a high-clearance, 4-wheel drive vehicle.......we opted to walk.....enjoy the surrounding woods and get a little exercise too.

 

Last Fall, we actually assisted in the building of this last shelter on the Ouachita Trail

                 This is a plaque that hangs inside the shelter.  Bo Lea is president of the Friends of the Ouachita Trail (FoOT).  Bo and his wife Brenda work tirelessly behind the scenes making it all happen.

FoOT member Debbie is spreading out an assortment of refreshments, coffee, juice, water, sweet rolls, etc. for all the folks who are expected today for this dedication.

As the storm clouds are building in the western skies, our FoOT president Bo Lea talks about all the planning, fund raising, and many folks' hard work in making the Ouachita Trail Shelter Project come to fruition.

There were close to thirty people who made the trek up to the top of Suck Mountain to be a part of this celebration.  Including a newspaper reporter/camera man, a judge, several representatives from the Forest Service Office, and of course the FoOT members who volunteered along the way on one, two, or several of the Shelter Builds.  I overheard several of those FoOT members wondering what they were going to do now that the Shelter Project is finished....great bonds of friendship were made along the way with all the challenges and hard work of so many volunteers.

          Just before the rains came it was time to cut the ribbon!

Yay!  What a awesome accomplishment from a great group of folks.

 

 

Following the Shelter Dedication Ceremony, Tom and I hiked back down to where we had parked our car and in a light rain we headed out of the forest back to the main road.  As we mapped a course angling gradually east across the southern half of Arkansas on our way to Brandon, Mississippi for Aunt Ruth's funeral, we decided to check out the Wegner Crystal Mine.

 Oh boy, they had every color, shape, and size of crystal and rocks!

 

 

                                            And a cool wooden carving!

After passing thru El Dorado, Arkansas we took U.S. Hwy. 82 east and by evening we crossed into Louisiana via U.S. Hwy. 425 and pulled into Chemin-A-Haut State Park, just north of Bastrop, Louisiana. 

 We felt it was very strange that on a Friday evening that the camping spots were all pretty much empty.  Nice clean campsites, water and electric, restrooms with showers in each campground, but we were the only ones here?  Weird! 

 Since we had our choice of any campsite, we set up right across from the building housing the restrooms and showers.  Nice.

 Just behind the restroom building is Bayou Bartholomew.

                      As always my "Pyro" laid in a nice campfire for us.

The next morning we decided to stay on the U.S. Highways all the way to the Mississippi River.  We passed the small town of Mer Rouge, La. and were in awe of all the murals on the buildings throughout town.

When we reached the small settlement of Rayville we headed east on old U.S. Hwy. 80 (which parallels I-20) passing thru Ridge, Dunn, Delhi, all small towns that dried up once the interstate came thru, and on to Tallulah, La.    These white flowers were blooming along the edge of every farmed field along the way.

Just before the Mississippi River we had to jump over onto I-20 to get across the river.

 

Our next stop was at the Vicksburg National Military Park.....

......more about that in my next installment on this blog site.

 

Thanks for following along with us on our adventures both near and far.

March 2017

March 2017

We traveled to New Orleans to meet up with Tom's brother Tim and some of his family who were there for a wedding.  Tim's wife Kathy grew up in New Orleans and most of her family still live there so we met up with them at Kathy's brother Gregg's home.  Gregg was planning a "Crawfish Boil" .  I have never eaten crawfish and have never been to a Crawfish Boil.  Gregg's wife Laura went and procured two large ice chests full of live crawfish.......  

 ........where Gregg used a water hose sprayer to wash and wash those crawfish to get most of the mud/dirt off them.....mind you they are still alive and crawling around!......

......he already had a huge pot with some water on the propane burner heating up, to which he added seasonings, some link sausage, new potatoes, onions, ......

and I don't know what else.......then with Austen's help they dumped all those crawfish into the basket and lowered it into the hot, boiling seasoned water......

 .......Austen stirring with the huge paddle while Gregg dumped in more seasoning....

 ...then right toward the end of the cooking Gregg also dumped in some corn-on-the-cob and some whole mushrooms.....

 ....oh my, it sure was smelling good!  Well, I still did not eat any crawfish, but I did eat some of the sausage, potatoes, and corn and it was yummee.  Crawfish seemed like a lot of work for only that small morsel of meat inside?  That's just my own thinking.  I was totally impressed with Gregg's expertise in boiling crawfish and he obviously does this often since he seems to have all the tools and equipment for the task and he seems to really enjoy doing this!

 In the meantime all the children there loved it when Kathy's brother-in-law brought over his portable fire pit.  They spent hours running around gathering every little twig or branch they could find to throw in the fire.

One day we wandered around the French Quarter, people watching, checking out the street entertainment.......

               ...wandered down to the waterfront for a while....

The Mississippi River is a busy place with working ship traffic and pleasure boats.

Tom's niece Megan and her two sons Nelson and Henry are being entertained by a clown making balloon animals.

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Oh yeah, one more thing that happened in March

               I celebrated my 20 year anniversary with Walmart!

February 2017 (continued)

Late February 2017

In a previous entry I talked about the new concrete bridge that the county installed down the hill below our place and when I wrote that entry I could not find a photo of the old wooden bridge but now I have found a photo.

       Here is the old wooden bridge:           

                               Here is the new concrete bridge:

What a difference, huh?

The week following our Valentine Cruise we met up with our friends from Michigan (Michigan's Upper Peninsula) who were camping at Cagle Recreation Area on Lake Conroe.  It was so wonderful to see them again!  They are traveling and camping in their nice travel trailer.....you can see our little gray car and our tent in the background at the next campsite.   

 Jeff "Greenstone" and Joyce "Thimbleberry" are hikers I met when I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail.  I cherish the gift of their friendship and look forward to each year when they travel to the South and we can get together. 

 Lake Conroe is a beautiful lake and Cagle Recreation Area is situated right on the lake. 

                    We enjoyed this awesome sunset the first night!

                            We enjoyed having a campfire each night.

 We enjoyed our short hikes on the trails around the lakes edge. 

It was really awesome to see my brother, Don, who rode his bicycle from his home near Huntsville out to the campground to visit us.  Right after this visit, Don rode a bicycle over a thousand miles in Vietnam, from Hanoi to Saigon.  What an experience it was for him.  He served as a medic in the Army during the Vietnam War.

Also we were fortunate that my youngest grandson Dylan came out to the campground to visit both days we were there.  Yay!  Always good to see my family.

My A.T. Trail family is also special to me and I am so thankful that we are able to connect with them each year when they are traveling in the South.  

                                               Friends Forever!

                                             Love you guys!