Pedernales Falls SP

Just a quick post. Our campsite has no service. Text only and it's spotty. We linked up with Bill and Patty with some effort. They live in a pretty isolated location. We will see them again tomorrow.

Day Quattro

I'm not sure if that's the correct spelling. We had an Informative lunch with Maggie today. Our trip will get underway tomorrow. We have a short drive to Johnson City with a stop for a few days at Pedernales Falls SP. Bill & Patty Carroll live near the park and we will be visiting with them. For some reason we have never stayed in that park. With all the rain South Texas has been having lately there might even be a falls to look at. I'm going to try to post something every day but what frequently happens with these Aggie get togethers is that what I should do doesn't get done and what I shouldn't do does.

SA day 3

Just some more socializing today. We did drop by Jason's house for a brief hello. We have a lunch date with Maggie tomorrow. It's 10:00 Tuesday night and there is a frontal passage on top of us right now. We are getting tornado warnings and flash flood warnings on our phones every few minutes making in nearly impossible to get any sleep. The thunder is worse because you can turn off your phone. It goes without saying that I won't be able to post anything tomorrow if we don't survive this. If I post tomorrow you'll know that we did. Here's hoping.

SA day 2

We spent most of the day at Jim & Anne's house in Garden Ridge. They hosted a traditional Memorial day barbeque lunch with Jerome and Yogi and Jenny & yours truly. Coincidentally, Yogi was celebrating her birthday. That get together broke up and left Jenny and I here for a 2 hour hot tub marathon. Jenny actually got in the water. It was amazing. We are spending the night here and will be visiting with some of our seldom seen relatives tomorrow.

San Antonio

We made it with nothing to report. Going through Houston on the Sunday before Memorial day was a good plan. Actually, it wasn't planned. In fact I was unaware that this weekend was a holiday weekend until a ranger at one of our first stops mentioned it. Tomorrow we have a Memorial day barbeque lunch at Jim & Ann's and the plan is for us to spend the night with them. They are about to leave for a stay at their house in Santa Fe. I'll try to remember to take some pictures tomorrow.

Sea Rim SP

 We drove through Sabine Pass to get here. There are Oil refineries out the wazoo, oil tanks and a construction crane forest. It was a spectacle of extractive exuberance. We have only one bar of cell service at the campground so I seriously doubt if this post will go out today. It has been raining all day. It's raining now and it's supposed to keep raining. Generally rain is good but this is Memorial Day weekend and the huddled masses yearning to be free want good weather for their 3 day weekend. We are currently under a flash flood warning but we can always get on the MP's roof. SA is 300 miles away. We will be there tomorrow and are expecting to park in Jerome's driveway.

Fairview-Riverside SP

We are near Madisonville La. Camped on the Tchefuncte river. Where do they get these names? The drive here was wet, windy and crowded. In one word I would describe it as:.................I'm thinking......bad. Yes that's it. Bad. Anyway we left Florida, drove through Alabama (Mobile was a hoot) then Mississippi  and here we are. Not too much blog worthy happened today. We hiked the 1/4 mile boardwalk through the swamp and I am currently boiling water for a Mac & Cheese dinner. Tomorrow Texas.

Chateau Le Coeur

This place is a "winery". That building in the background is the winery building. I think it's a double wide trailer. The tasting room is their kitchen. Not particularly impressive but the wine was pretty good. We bought 2 bottles, had a Charcuterie board and several other items they had for sale. It has been a pretty expensive stop. This morning began with a slight detour through Jacksonville to pick up 2 kayak paddles I left at the house we rented in April for spring break. We met up with the owners wife at a Walmart parking lot. We now have two paddles that we don't need. Our stop tomorrow is somewhere in Louisiana. We are doing one night stands all the way to San Antonio.

Crooked River SP Ga

Today is day 1 of what is planned to be a 70 day trip. Of course, things can happen, bad things. I won't dwell on any negative possibilities. Our summer plans are these: A stop in San Antonio. A visit with my remaining Aggie Buds near Johnson City. North to Palo Duro. West on Interstate 40. Meet up with John and Jeanne Begnaud in Southern Utah for a 10 day visit to 3 national parks that they haven't seen. Drive back to Lake Powell for a 5 day houseboat trip with the mob. Head further West and attend "The Wizard of Oz" at the Sphere in las Vegas. Enter California and finish last years trip that was so rudely interrupted. That would be Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Head East and drive the Maverick into the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Really, we are. Of course there are many stops in between those milestones. What could possibly go wrong. I saw that Tortoise on a short ride I took after we got here. I think he hangs out in that hole. We are in Florida tomorrow.

Spring Break 2026

We rented a fantastic house on the St. Johns river a little West of Jacksonville Florida for this get together. Both sets of Grandkids shared the same days off for their Spring break. There was swimming in the pool, soaking in the hot tub, hunting for Easter Eggs, a trip into St. Augustine, kayaking and when the weather stopped cooperating a trip to a bowling alley. We all return home tomorrow. Seth has the longest drive, Jenny and I the shortest. These are some random pictures.

BTR 2026

That's the Beaufort Twilight Run. The boys ran the 5K and Sid ran 1 mile. I don't think the boys had too much fun but Sidney appeared to be smiling the entire time. As an added bonus we were able to celebrate Jamie's 44th birthday.

Fort Clinch day 3

 It was just another day in paradise. We had a couple of administrative tasks to perform today. Laundry and another trip into town to find a Publix. There are apparently some things at Publix that cannot be found at Walmart. Who knew? We visited the Fort and the visitors center. We threw some questions at a young man who was wearing a Union Army uniform. It was pretty cool. He was a walking encyclopedia about the Fort. Not surprisingly there was an afternoon hike to close the rings on Jenny's Apple Watch. Done! Tomorrow is our last night away from home. There is a monster storm headed this way and we are hoping, really hoping, to get home before it arrives.

Fort Clinch day 2

I didn't realize this when we booked this park but there are some really good bike trails here. It was challenging fun. We were getting pretty low on supplies so we drove into town, had lunch, and visited Walmart. We hiked to the fort and found a place to watch the sunset as our day concluded. The fort was built starting in 1847. When the Civil War started the Confederates took over the fort but were run off by the Union a few years later. We are here one more day.

Fort Clinch State Park

 We are still in Florida but not by much. The town near the park is Fernandina Beach. The campground has a lot of trees. There is a fort that we will probably walk through tomorrow. We have done quite a few forts. The picture is a portion of the road that brought us into the campground. We are here for 3 nights.

Ochlockonee day 3

Today we drove 20 miles to visit Bald Point State Park. It's sort of an unusual park because there isn't a headquarters building, an entrance station or any facilities at all. There are a few trail heads that require a few dollars to be inserted into an Iron Ranger. We paid our fee and did a loop hike through the woods. Those pics were taken looking out into The Gulf of America. The tide was out in that one picture. We actually couldn't see the water it had receded so far. A couple of hours later it had come back dramatically. That clam was just hanging out waiting for the water to return. We move tomorrow to a park on the Atlantic coast, still in Florida.

Ochlockonee day 2

We h

Had a little freeze last night. I subsequently had a pretty cold ride this morning.This park has white squirrels. In the parks squirrel population they are in the minority, however, they garner the most attention. The park is only 500 acres so with my ride and our afternoon hike we've pretty much seen it. We will probably venture outside the park tomorrow. There are a few things near here that might be of interest. We would like to paddle the river in the park but today was just too windy and cold. Tomorrow will probably be similar.

Ochlockonee River State Park

The drive here was unpleasant. A cold front was blowing through north Florida and we were driving through north Florida. An unfortunate coincidence. We have been here before. That's becoming pretty common. The thing is when we booked this park we didn't remember being here before. Could that be indicative of something? Surly not. Anyway, a hard freeze is predicted tonight. It's a very pretty park and a pleasant campground. We are here for 3 days. The only shopping within 20 miles is a Dollar Store. Hopefully, that means we won't be doing any shopping. 

Wekiva Springs RV resort

 Just a short synopsis of our 2 day visit with Mike and Linda. Linda kept us well fed. Cooking wise, Mike has some issues. All in all it was a great visit, good weather, good conversation and good bourbon. We bonded with Chief. He's a really cool dog and is proud to give his master something to carry. We head North tomorrow and will be in the Florida Panhandle.

Jonathan Dickinson last day

The weather crumped this morning so there wasn't a lot of excitement. I did have cereal for breakfast in case your interested. We did get out some this afternoon and we walked along the river. I took those pictures on that walk. The mangroves are an impenetrable mess. Tomorrow we visit with Jenny's cousin, Mike Everett and his wife Linda near Sorrento.They are spending the winter in Florida, escaping the weather in Ohio.

Jonathan Dickinson day 5

We spent part of today exploring 'The Blowing Rock Preserve' in Jupiter which is just a few miles from here. The Nature Conservancy acquired 75 acres back in the '60s with beach on one side and estuary on the other. The beach side protects a strip of exposed ancient coral rock. There are several places in the rock that during high tide and big surf shoot columns of water into the air. That's where the Blowing Rock name originated. Our shorts and T-shirts weather is about to come to an abrupt end. Lows are forecast to be in the 30s starting tomorrow night. I took that one odd picture of the bike trail I rode this morning. I was trying to show the artificial obstacles that are placed periodically along the trail to make it more interesting. The elevation in the park is around 35 feet so there is not a lot of naturally exciting terrain. Two more days here 

Jonathan Dickinson day 4

I guess something that I've never had to think about is that staying in the same place for so long things become redundant. I rode this morning and we hiked this afternoon. Tomorrow Jenny has something different we can do. Here are a couple of pics we took on our afternoon outing.

Jonathan Dickinson day 3

Today's weather was nice. It was actually a little too warm yesterday. We didn't fire up the Air conditioner but we thought about it. This park was built on land that was once an Army Post (Camp Murphy). That explains the size but it also explains why there are many narrow weathered paved roads. Jenny and I rode most of those old roads today. 14 Miles. After that we drove into the town of what we think is called Hobe Sound and attempted to invigorate their economy. There are many hiking trails here that we need to walk on and I have just scratched the surface of the biking trails. So many things to do and so little time. More tomorrow.

Jonathan Dickinson day 2

 I think I mentioned yesterday that this place is huge. This morning I rode to the mountain biking trailhead and that was a 4 mile ride. I did some of the trails and was completely lost in the first 10 minutes. After I returned from that adventure Jenny and I put the Origami kayak together and took it out on its maiden voyage. I'll include a couple of pics of the process. When we first got this "boat" it took me over an hour to fold it into a boat. The YouTube video of the process was extremely misleading. Jenny and I folded it a few times in the garage and got the time down to under 15 minutes. It performed pretty well on the water. We were out for 2 hours and saw a few gators. We were happy they seemed uninterested in us because the boat is pretty flimsy. More tomorrow.

Jonathan Dickinson State Park

 We are near Jupiter Florida on the Atlantic side  We discovered this place when we came down here to have the Maverick rigged for towing and the MP suspension beefed up. At the time, we drove around the campground, as we are prone to do, and decided that we liked it. We immediately went on the Florida State Park website and saw that there was only 1 site available for any length of time in January. Damn snowbirds. Anyway we booked the only site available for 6 days. For us that is a long stay. This place is huge. There are biking, hiking, and kayaking possibilities. I should also mention that drinking is a possibility......well a probability. Today was a long drive so I only took one pic during our bike ride to try to find a place to launch the yak. More tomorrow.