Category: EasternLoop2016

Year In Review Number Two

Year In Review Number Two

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Y’all! Today is our second nomadiversary! Another year has already passed!

You might have noticed we’re doing our #50statetour in loops. We have to spend some time each year in Texas where all of our doctors are. Even though we’re nomads, we still have to go to the dentist and get check-ups.

For our second loop/year we headed east. We made our way from Texas all the way up to Maine and then we worked our way down the east coast to Florida before returning to Texas.

It was quite the year! We added 22 states to our map during our second year! 22!

I thought we could talk about some of our favorites from year two during our #easternloop2016.

 

We can’t talk about our second year without talking about Niagara Falls. The American side of the falls was kind of a bust for us, but the Canadian side was ah-mazing!

We stayed until the fireworks and guys…it was such an awesome experience!

Now, y’all know we’re foodies…so it should be no surprise that we’ve got some foodie things on our favorites list. Our favorite burger place also scores our favorite poutine place. We found this place when we ventured over to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Everything we had at The Works was delicious! We would go back to the Niagara Falls area just to cross the border for this place!

Our favorite state capitol building of our second year is the New York State Capitol Building. In fact, this is probably our number one SCB of all 38 SCBs we’ve been to so far. It’s also the place I developed a thing for staircases, but a staircase called The Million Dollar Staircase will do that. I could’ve spent hours walking around taking pictures of this SCB.

Out of all the National Parks/Memorials/Historic Places we visited this year three really stood out for us. We couldn’t come to a unanimous decision as to which one was best so we’ll talk about all three. Acadia National Park in Maine was great for all the wild places and hiking it offered and the views weren’t bad either.

Cape Cod National Seashore is probably at the top of the list for me when it comes to National Parks for year two of our #50statetour. Beaches, hiking, lighthouses, and amazing views. The only negative for me would be all of the people. It was crowded. We had to search out the empty places, but the effort was worth it.

The last National Park to top our list for this year is Everglades National Park in Florida. We didn’t get to do much hiking here due to the wildness of the park, but we learned so much and saw so many diverse biomes.

So, this next favorite surprised us in the best way.

The Newport Mansions in Rhode Island! Guys, they were breathtaking. We want to go back during the Christmas season to see them all decked out for the holidays!

It was so neat to see the opulence of that era and hear about their daily lives.

Even though they’re no where near each other, we kind of group The Biltmore in with the Newport Mansions. The Biltmore was built by the Vanderbilt Family who also built two of the Newport Mansions, but where the Newport Mansions were really made to show off all of the opulence and wealth of the era, The Biltmore was made to be more of a home and to entertain friends and family. It took us almost six hours to visit this place and we had to rush. It’s crazy big!

Another foodie favorite was the Crème Brûlée Shake from Burger 21 in New Jersey! It was eyes-rolling-in-the-back-of-your-head good! I’ve got to give a shout out to my friend Nicole and her family for introducing us to Burger 21!!

We caught this sunrise in North Carolina off the coast of Kitty Hawk. We had the beach pretty much to ourselves that morning. Luckily, we didn’t have to get up too early since all we had to do was walk across the road to get to the beach.

We’ve also had some pretty spectacular sunsets, but this one really stands out for me. We were having dinner with some friends of ours in Alabama and this was our view. *waves at friends* It was a great evening filled with friends, food, and views.

We ate a lot of BBQ during our #easternloop2016. Way more than we should have. Our favorite place is a little joint in Kitty Hawk, NC called High Cotton. Everything we got here was finger-licking good! It was so good that we ended up getting a family pack the night before we left the area just so we could have more of it!!

The boys all loved Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. Those light and airy pillows of fried dough were pretty good!

 

Y’all knew this one was coming, right?

We spent four days in HarryPotterverse aka Universal Studios living like wizards and it was totally awesome!

We ended our 2016 year with a snorkeling trip to The Keys in Florida. It was cold and windy and the snorkeling was a total bust, but we all loved it! It gave us island fever. We’ve been planning our next trip down to The Keys since we were driving away.

What did we learn during our second year as nomads? We learned quite a lot! Let’s chat about a few of the lessons we learned this past year!

1. Big cities aren’t really our thing. During our first year of nomads we didn’t hit too many cities…and none of them were what I would call big. Now, we’d been to big cities before. We are from the Houston, TX area so we knew what we were getting ourselves into.

We only spent a handful of days in various big cities

so we could see some of the iconic, historical landmarks,

but we didn’t really enjoy any of the days we spent walking endless miles in a concrete jungle.

We knew when we started the #easternloop2016 that there would be more cities and less wild places. We didn’t know how much we would miss the wild places. While we are grateful for the chances to see and experience the big cities, we are glad to be done with them.

2. Secure the kitchen sink faucet before leaving. Cats. Why are cats such big jerks? We have two cats…

a fat one and a fluffy one. Don’t let them fool you, they’re menaces…both of them. The fluffy one likes to jump up on our kitchen counter when we’re gone and look out the window. We usually close the window blinds when we leave to keep him off the counters, but the day we went to New York City we forgot. Fluffy cat turned on the water at the kitchen sink while we were gone which eventually filled up the front grey tank which caused the grey tank to back up into the shower where we keep the litter box. I should point out…the grey tank is just rinse water from the sinks. But still…it gets stinky.

We got home from NYC about 10PM to find a note on our door that our water had been turned off because there was water pouring out of the bottom of our RV. We walked in to find the entire bathroom flooded.

The shower was disgusting. The entire bathroom floor was disgusting. And to top it off, Fluffy cat was afraid to use the litter box because of the water so he decided to use our beds as his own personal litter boxes. It was a looonnngggg night.

I spent the next day sanitizing beds, showers, floors, counters… We now have a way to lock the kitchen sink faucet in the off position. Lesson learned.

3. I (Jennie) have a slight obsession with flowers. I’ve always enjoyed pretties. During our first year, I had tons of pretties to photograph everywhere!

During the second year, the pretties were harder to find and I started going to greater links to get to them.

That’s when I knew I had a problem…is there a step program for this?

It doesn’t matter if the pretties are actual flowers or if they’re weeds.

And…if I’m being completely honest, my obsession isn’t limited to pretties…it just needs to look interesting for me to lay on the ground and snap a picture.

4. We kind of love National Forts, Battlefields, and Historical Sites. So, we really love them. A lot. Confession: When we started this nomad life, I didn’t think we would really be interested in any of them. Boy, was I wrong! I can’t even begin to tell you how much history we learned during our second year of nomad life.

One of our favorite forts is the Old Fort Niagara in New York. It sits right on the shore of Lake Ontario. We watched a big rain storm come in across the water while we were there…it got a little wet…and cold.

The first time the boys heard a canon fire they about jumped right on out of their own skins. I’m laughing at the memory as I type this. I really wish I’d caught it on video. If you’ve never heard a canon fired, it’s loud. Depending on the size of the canon…it can be very, very loud.

We’re cautious about period actors. Sometimes they’re fun and sometimes they can be…tiresome. These guys were great! They stayed in character just enough to make it fun, but not so much that it was weird.

You don’t need a time machine to travel back in time. All you need to do is visit one of the many National Parks/Memorials/Historical Sites. The NPS does a fabulous job of recreating life of days-gone-by and of teaching anyone interested enough to listen. We learned so much about the founding of our country, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War during our #easternloop2016. Our history lessons were very hands on.

5. We (Jerl) learned how to fix a pulley system slide. It was the last couple weeks of June and we were in New York when we started hearing a weird ratcheting sound while bringing our main living slide in. On June 24th we decided to leave the slide in because we were afraid of getting stuck somewhere because the slide wouldn’t come in. This reduced our living space by quite a bit. We learned to dance around each other anytime we were in the kitchen/living area.

We lived with the reduced space until September 8 when we made it to the DC area. It took all five of us to push the slide out so Jerl could work on it. Things were going ok, until there was a big pop and the slide tilted out. You can see the angle of it in the photo above. It was about this time that I got out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and started stress eating. I kept picturing the entire side of our RV sliding right on out and onto the ground. Luckily, it stayed put and Jerl was able to get a new motor put in and the pulley cables all reattached. So really, I guess we learned two lessons that night. How to fix a pulley slide system and how much Ben & Jerry’s I (Jennie) can eat in one night.

8. We can eat lobster for days and not get tired of it.  This lesson is one of our favorites. Lobster.

While we were in Maine, we found some really decent priced lobster and we found a recipe. We ate on that lobster for several days!

We also ate lobster when we went out!

Lobster was everywhere in Maine! Everywhere! We even tried a lobster roll from McDs! It was…ok…and very pricey. The lobster rolls we made were 100 times better and way cheaper.

We even found lobster mac-n-cheese in the grocery stores. Guys, it was soooo stinkin’ good!!!

 9. Not every state sells postcards. This one was a shock for us. We had the worst time finding postcards to send out to the postcard club in most of the states along the east coast.

I even had to resort to buying some state postcards from Amazon. *gasp* I know! Postcards are not expensive. Every gas station should have a small selection of state postcards. Postcards are such a fun and inexpensive way to stay connected to friends and family while on the road!

Well, that’s it! We wanted to share with y’all some of the highlights and bloopers of our second year as nomads! We love having y’all along for the ride so stay tuned for year three!!

See y’all down the road!

NOLA

NOLA

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Hey Guys!! We spent one day exploring New Orleans.

We stayed about an hour north of NOLA so we got to drive across Lake Pontchartrain on the longest (continuous) bridge over water in the world to get to New Orleans.

 This bridge is about 23 miles long with several crossovers on it. Can you imagine getting on it by mistake and having to go the full length of the bridge before being able to turn around? Yikes!

We went on a Sunday morning hoping to avoid some of the crowds. Too bad we didn’t know about the 5k run that was taking place. There were cars everywhere, no parking spots, and streets blocked off! We made it to a parking garage where we choked on the cost of parking. We learned later that traffic is always bad and parking is always pricey in NOLA.

We’d been told that NOLA isn’t really family friendly. We were hoping by going on a Sunday morning there would be more families out and there were! We had a good time strolling around looking at all of the street performers. You can see how many kids were around in the pic above.

We headed right to Cafe du Monde! The line was long, but moved fast.

 Make sure you take cash if you go to Cafe du Monde. Things run a little differently there. You order with the waiter and then they go stand in the line you see in the photo above to get your order. The waiter pays with their money before they bring you your order so you then owe your waiter for your order. We’d never seen a process quite like that before. I wonder what happens if the costumer didn’t bring enough cash?

Our fluffy pillows of fried dough (otherwise known as beignets) and chickory coffee came in record time. They’re pretty good, but I think it’s mainly the novelty of eating at Cafe du Monde that brings people in masses to this cafe.

 We took some time to look through The Cabildo where we learned about life in Louisiana starting in the colonial times.

Check out this blunderbuss! It’s so ornate! We also got to stroll through the room where the Louisiana Purchase transfer happened in 1803.

This is called an Immortelle. An immortelle is a wreath made of durable material (the one above is made from wire and beads) to be placed on crypts and tombs.

Throughout the late 18th century, most of south Louisiana suffered from epidemics of yellow fever, malaria, cholera, and smallpox.

We stopped by St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 to see what the famed “cities of the dead” look like. We made it to the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 for a quick walk through. I wanted to go to the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, but you now have to have a guided tour just to get in the gates. Pretty much all of the graves are above ground in crypts.

We went the week before Mardi Gras and everything was decorated for the party. 

We took a quick peek at Bourbon Street, but didn’t actually walk down it. We’d been warned it wasn’t really family friendly.

Since pralines (pronounced Praw-leens) is the Louisiana state candy…we had to grab some. Plus, we wanted to compare them to the ones we got in Charleston. You might be surprised by how different they were. The ones from Charleston used heavy cream in theirs and there wasn’t any milk in the ones from NOLA. The ones from Charleston only came in two flavors (original and chocolate) while the ones in NOLA came in five flavors (original, peanut butter, coconut, rum, and chocolate). We all enjoyed the ones from NOLA more.

We couldn’t leave NOLA without sampling some of the dishes they’re known for. We found a place called Mother’s. We found it on one of those tv food apps. Mother’s has been on quite a few shows.

I wanted to make sure and get a little of everything so I ended up with a sampler plate. I got to try the crawfish etouffee, the jambalaya, the red beans & rice, and the turnip greens. It was all really good!

The thing Mother’s is really known for though are the Poboys. Jerl got the Famous Ferdi Special which has ham, roast beef, debris, and gravy on it. Debris? What the heck is debris? It’s magic. Mother’s cooks their roast for hours and all of the juice and shavings that fall off the roast is then ladled onto the top of a poboy. It’s basically a NOLA version of a french dip. Like I said…magic.

So! We survived NOLA! We got to see most of what we wanted to see and got out of their before it got dark.

See y’all down the road!!

Louisiana

Louisiana

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Hey Guys!

We spent one week in Louisiana!

Maybe I should say…we spent one week in Louisiana…eating. ;-P

I knew it was bad when we found this place called Ronnie’s only five minutes away from where we stayed. We went there for dinner our very first day in LA and it did not disappoint!

I know, I know…it doesn’t look like much, but let me tell you….woo-WEE…it is amazing! What you’re looking at are boudin balls. They’re made of rice and smoked pork then deep fried. The ones we got were stuffed with pepper jack cheese. If you’re ever in Louisiana make sure to get yourself some and make sure you pronounce it like a local… boodan. Ours was served with a spicy remoulade sauce that just really pushed it all over the top! We went back to Ronnie’s just for these. Y’all, I think we gained twenty pounds here, but you know what…I’d totally do it again!

We did actually get out and see some of the state. We didn’t just eat. I promise. We made it to the SCB in Baton Rouge.

Check out that front door! We were completely surprised by the Louisiana State Capitol Building.

This is the front hall of the SCB. We haven’t seen too many great halls like this. Out of 35 states…maybe three (including LA).

I mean…look at the ceiling. Look at our ornate and detailed it is! We spent several minutes with our heads craned back trying to take it all in.

One of the things I always look for at a SCB is the State Seal. In LA they’ve got a huge one right in the middle of the great hall!

This is the Senate Chamber. Check out those columns. We really walked around totally stunned at the opulence of the LA SCB.

Now, there’s not a dome at the SCB, but there’s a fantastic view on the 27th floor! And…you can actually go outside on the walk! That was a first for us. Usually, if there’s some kind of walk up that high it’s locked. It’s usually off limits. You can look out the windows, but you can’t get outside. It was so nice being able to go outside and checkout that view!

We also stopped by the old SCB. It looks like a castle! It was very cool!

 When you walk into the old SCB you immediately see this amazing staircase!

And Guys…look at the dome!!! I took sooo many pictures of this dome! But, look at it! Gorgeous!!

 

The old SCB has been turned into a small museum. We didn’t really look through it all due to time.

The stained glass wasn’t just on the dome. There were several of these wonderful windows too!

Check out this mirror! I had the boys stand next to it so you could really see how huge it is!

Here’s another view of that ah-mazing dome…

and one more shot of the outside. Because, castles are cool.

Zapps chips are offered in tons of states, but they’re a huge thing in LA so we grabbed a couple of bags. We weren’t too impressed with the VooDoo flavor. It was both very sweet and very sour all at the same time.

I’ve struggled this entire EasternLoop2016 to find decent root beer. Y’all…it’s been so hard! And then we get to LA and there’s four different Barq’s!!! What?!?! I had to get some of each.

Guys, we had a great week in Louisiana!

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

Vicksburg National Military Park

Vicksburg National Military Park

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Abraham Lincoln thought that Vicksburg was “the key” to winning the Civil War. The Vicksburg National Military Park has a 16 mile road that winds through some of the major battlegrounds of the Siege of Vicksburg.

One of the cool things that the NPS offers at these battlefields is an audio tour of the park. There are usually a few different ones to choose from. We always get the longest, most detailed one. This time the longest one was two and a half hours. It took us over five hours to complete the whole driving tour. We get out at each stop and look around. Talk about it.

One of the times we stopped and got out to look around we found some hidden canons.

Along with the audio tour we got this great little booklet. In the picture above you can see one of the stops. At this stop we learned about the Shirley House. This house was caught in the middle of a siege. The army dug a “honeycomb” of shelters all around the house during the battle.

The house is still there today

and so is the “honeycomb”. The shelters have all fallen down and been cleared away, but the land is still scarred from the battle.

The Illinois Memorial was the biggest memorial we saw. So much thought goes into each Memorial. On the Illinois Memorial there are 47 steps that lead up to the entrance. One for each of the 47 days of the Siege of Vicksburg.

Inside the Illinois Memorial was this gorgeous seal.

We’ve been to several different battlefields, but this was the first time we found a tunnel!

We learned about the different types of artillery. You can see in the pic above that the opening isn’t smooth. It has notches. These notches are super important! They allow the artillery to go farther and with more accuracy.

I think, perhaps, our favorite stop on the tour was at the USS Cairo Museum where we learned about the Ironclad River Gunboats.

On December 12, 1862, the USS Cairo became the very first armed warship to be sunk by a mine. They weren’t called mines at that point. They were called “torpedos” or “infernal machines”.

 The NPS has restored bits of the Ironclad and installed walkways that allow you to really get inside and see the guts of the boat.

The USS Cairo came equipped with 13 guns, including 3 large 64 pounder Navy smoothbores. Two and a half inch plate armor made of charcoal iron is what covered the mid section of the boat in order to protect the vital guts of the boat.

There was a model in the museum to show what the USS Cairo looked like. The USS Cairo sank in 12 minutes, but no lives were lost.

I did find a few pretties.

I don’t know what tree this was, but it had pretties all over it.

We really enjoy the battlefields. We learn so much and it’s such a great way for the boys to really get an idea of what took place there. Instead of just reading about it in a book while sitting in a classroom, they get to walk around the grounds it took place. I didn’t go into extreme detail about each stop, but hopefully I’ve intrigued y’all enough to go visit the Vicksburg National Military Park!

See y’all down the road!

A Parkway And More

A Parkway And More

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Hey Guys! 

We made it to Mississippi! We spent two very busy weeks in Vicksburg, MS! I’m going to be breaking our time here up into two separate posts.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is 444 miles long and snakes it’s way through three states. We didn’t get to explore all of it, but we got in around 122 miles of it!

 I know, I know…how interesting could a parkway be? Well…pretty darn interesting when it’s sprinkled with historical stops! This natural travel corridor was used for centuries first by animals, then by Native Americans and then when people would catch rides on boats down the Mississippi River to sell their wares. They would then walk the travel corridor back home.

The natural travel corridor that would become the Natchez Trace Parkway goes through the traditional homelands of the Natchez, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations. One of the stops on the NTP is called Emerald Mound.

Emerald Mound is one of the largest mounds in our country. It stands 35 feet tall and is 770 feet by 435 feet at the base and covers 8 acres. There are two secondary mounds that sit on top of the primary mound making the total height come to 60 feet. Emerald Mound was used as a ceremonial center for the local people who lived in nearby villages, but abandoned the mound in the late 1600s.

Mount Locust Inn and Plantation is one of the oldest structures still standing in the area. The Mount Locust story starts in 1780 and stretches all the way to 1944. The National Park Service started restoring it to it’s 1820 appearance in 1954.

 In the late 1700s boatmen (also known as Kaintucks) were taking their wares down the Mississippi River in their flatboats. At that point the best way to get home was to sell all their wares and the boat then walk back up the natural corridor that we know now as the Natchez Trace Parkway. Mount Locust is right about a day’s walk from Natchez. The travelers would ask the owners of Mount Locust for food and a place to stay for the night. Eventually, the family added on a separate, four room, two story building behind the main house.

We didn’t get to explore the all of Mount Locust due to some bad weather. We would like to eventually go back and see it all.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s the growing number of travelers on the corridor tramped down the rough trail into a clearly marked pathway. On some parts of the pathway where the ground was soft, the travelers wore down the trail and made the “sunken” sections you can see in the pic above.

We made it all the way to mile 122 and the Cypress Swamp!

There’s a nice little boardwalk where you can walk right out over the swamp.

Not far from where we stayed sat the remains of Windsor Plantation. Windsor was built between 1859 and 1861 and was the largest antebellum house in Mississippi at the time.

The plantation once covered over 2,600 acres. It had wrought iron staircases and was four stories that housed 25 rooms, each with its own fireplace. The plantation was an important landmark along the Mississippi River. Mark Twain wrote about it in his book “Life on the Mississippi”. The Windsor Plantation survived the Civil War only to be burned to the ground by a party guest who was smoking in 1890.

We also made it to the Mississippi SCB!

Check out the gold coated copper eagle on the dome! It is 8 feet tall and 15 feet across!

Check out the inside of that dome! *cue wondrous music* This is one of the best domes we’ve seen in a while!

And…if that dome isn’t enough to wow you…check out the stained glass in the Senate Chamber. The pics not the best. We weren’t allowed down on the floor so I had to lean out and get the shot from the public gallery.

Not to be out done by the Senate Chamber, the House Chamber has its own stained glass dome. We weren’t allowed on the floor again…so the pic is kind of weird, but you get the idea of how awesome the domes are.

The Mississippi SCB has some very nice details. I love these light fixtures.

Y’all know I have a thing for staircases…check out the wavy balustrade! You can also see some more stained glass at the top.

We really enjoyed the Mississippi SCB!

We had some spectacular sunsets while we were in MS!

Stay tuned for part two!

See y’all down the road

Sweet Home Alabama

Sweet Home Alabama

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Hey Guys!!

We made it to Alabama!

On our way to Montgomery, we stopped by a friend’s house and spent the weekend catching up with them! We met this family in June 2016 during our time in New York and our kids became fast friends. After a week of chit chatting and getting to know them, we jumped at the chance to stop by their home and see them again. They really made us feel at home.

We all went to see the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park where we got to poke around all twelve decks that are open to the public!

 There are all kinds of nooks and crannies to explore on this huge battleship.

What you can’t see in the picture above are the two big boys up on the gun turret too. All of the boys loved getting to really check out the big guns.

Once we climbed around outside, we headed inside. Check out the lockers. One was open so we could see what it might have looked like when the ship was being used.

I love the old pics and other personal items they have on the door of the locker.

I had to share this picture of a food tray in the infirmary. Check out the Nestle’s wrapper! It looks so different that what we see now.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many valve wheels to turn in one place! I’m not gonna lie…I might have tried to turn more than a few. Maybe. *wink, wink*

What did I tell you? Valve wheels everywhere!! And buttons. Lots of buttons. I may or may not have pushed a few of those too. Shhhh…..

Besides the battleship, the park also had several aircraft. The coolest one (in my opinion) was the A-12 Blackbird spy plane. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a decent picture of it. Sorry. You’ll just have to take my word for it…it was very cool.

If the battleship and the aircraft weren’t enough, there was even a submarine we could explore! This was our first sub exploration and it was awesome!

The USS Drum is the oldest submarine on public display.

It was set up to look like it might have during it’s time in service. I love seeing all of the old items.

And added to the wheels and the buttons…levers. Tons of them! We kind of felt like kids on a playground.

I got a workout just going through all of the doors. They don’t look that bad, but when you’ve got short stubby legs and a big camera around your neck…well, I’m not the most graceful.

We had dinner that night at Ed’s Seafood Shed. Gotta have seafood when you’re in the Gulf Shores area, right? The food was fantastic, the view was ah-mazing, and the company wonderful! We had the best time visiting with our friends and we can’t wait for our next adventure together!

See y’all down the road!

Tallahassee, FL

Tallahassee, FL

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Hey Guys!! We spent a week in the Tallahassee area of Florida.

The whole point of this stop was to see the State Capitol Building.

The Old and the New Capitol Buildings are right next to each other in Tallahassee.

 The Old one has a very pretty dome, but the New one doesn’t even have a dome.

The Old SCB has been turned into a museum. We were able to go into both the House and Senate chambers and look around. It was pretty neat.

In the New SCB we had to peak through the windows at both the Senate and House chambers. That was kind of a bummer. Usually, the ceilings in the House and Senate chambers are totally picture worthy. We’ve seen everything from murals to huge chandeliers to stained glass domes! So, I’m always curious to see inside the House and Senate chambers.

The Old SCB had some fun picture opps!

The New SCB had an art gallery and

a 360 degree view on floor 22!

The RV Park we stayed at had some huge live oaks trees! They were amazing!

And…we even got to eat at a Whataburger! Woot, Woot!! We look forward to being back in Whataburger country all year! Yum!!

See y’all down the road!!

Lake Louisa State Park

Lake Louisa State Park

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Hey Guys!! We stayed at the Lake Louisa State Park in the Orlando area for one week.

Guys…this park…

There are three lakes that make up this park. There’s a beach on one of them with a swimming area. I’m not sure I would swim there…there are gator signs around, but there’s also a great playground and picnic area.

There are docks that you can fish off of. We walked to this one often. There are stairs that lead down into the water, but again…gators.

There are some very nice sized sites at Lake Louisa State Park. We had to site hop throughout the week because the place was booked and we stayed here spur-of-the-moment. This park books up a year in advance. If you’re going to go to Disney or Universal…this is a great place to stay. At only around $30 a night it’s quite a bit cheaper than staying in a hotel.

There are tons of tangerine trees around the park. We went on a walk and passed a couple of guys who had bags full of tangerines so we thought we’d be cool and grab some tangerines for ourselves…they were the so sour…we spit them out. I couldn’t keep it in my mouth! Bleh!!! I don’t know what those two guys were doing with all of the ones they picked. Maybe they knew which ones to pick and we got ones that weren’t ready?

One of the coolest things about this park is that you can rent canoes. We took the opportunity to teach the boys how to paddle a canoe. I kept an eye out for any weird looking logs…aka…gators. I didn’t see any, but we avoided the areas we thought they would most likely be during that time.

I did take my camera out on the canoe to get a shot of the cypress trees in the water.

We found an awesome pizza place right down the road. Littlest told you all about it in his last Pizza Street post. If you missed it go check it out here.

We didn’t really do much the week we were there. Hung around the lake, had pizza, and stopped by an RV Dealer to check out what was new. We’re not in the market for a new RV, we just like to keep up on all the changes.

Seriously Guys…if you’re in the Orlando area for any reason check out Lake Louisa State Park. We will definitely stay there again!

See y’all down the road!

The Keys For New Year’s Eve

The Keys For New Year’s Eve

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We were sooo close to The Keys that we really didn’t want to miss checking them out, but we couldn’t stay long. We do have a schedule and in order to keep all of our doctoring appointments we could only spend two nights in The Keys. And…those nights happened to fall on New Year’s Eve.

I knew we were in trouble when the water turned this amazing color of blue as we drove along the Over The Seas Highway. I knew right then that we were all going to love the area and that we weren’t going to want to leave so soon.

For anyone curious…it really is just a bridge connecting a bunch of little islands or “keys”.

For our first day there we were supposed to get there, set up, and then spend the entire afternoon in Key West. It went really well until we hit the traffic. It ended up taking us about four hours to go maybe 60 miles. It was a little insane. We did make it to Key West, but so did roughly a million other people (I may be exaggerating that number by a couple). We stood in line for 45 min to take our pic with the Southernmost Point buoy.

We tried to go to a fort, but it closed at 5pm and we were late so we headed over to the place I’d found for Key Lime Pie…but there wasn’t a free space to park…anywhere…within several miles. So, we left. We were tired and it was getting dark and I’d been warned beforehand that Key West after dark wasn’t exactly family friendly. On the way to the Key Lime Pie place we passed by the end of Highway One! We’ve been on this highway on and off all year so it was kind of neat to see mile 0!

The next day we had reservations for a snorkeling excursion! We woke up to a very cold, but pretty morning.

The water was so cloudy from the choppy water that we couldn’t see a thing. And…the water was pretty cool. Not cold, but cool enough that no one (there were 15 people on our boat) stayed in the water long. We were kind of bummed about that, but it’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re surrounded by the beauty of The Keys.

The Captain of our boat felt really bad about the conditions, but there wasn’t anything he could do about the weather. He ended up taking us on a little sightseeing tour to make up for the snorkeling! You can see Seven Mile Bridge in the picture above.

We got to see a pod of dolphins playing around! I didn’t get the best pics of them…they didn’t jump out of the water or anything, but they would surface and play. You can see two of them near the bottom center of the picture above.

By this time in the tour it was starting to warm up to a balmy 70 and we’d all stopped shivering.

 Our snorkeling/boat tour was a great way to spend our only full day in The Keys. We were done by noon and were able to relax the rest of the day.

I did get a little video of the boat ride. What do y’all think? Do you like the videos or not? It’s all done right on my phone…I’m not a professional at all…

Our Captain took us by this place. It’s a dockside restaurant called Burdines. We ended up going there for lunch!

Everything was fresh and we had some of the best burgers we’d had in a long time!

We were able to get some Key Lime Pie…

two different ways. Regular and fried! It was soooo good! We experienced the laid back Keys vibe at Burdines while we were waiting for our food. It’s not the fastest place, but it does warn you right at the top of the menu. Everything is made fresh…it’s not fast food. You didn’t go to McD’s. Everything we had was top notch and our server was genuinely nice.

 After we got our fill of food, we moseyed over to Bahia Honda State Park and stopped by this bridge view on the way there. This is the same Seven Mile Bridge you saw in a pic earlier. You can see it better here.

We’d heard that there’s camping at Bahia Honda State Park that’s suitable for RVs and we wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, only registered campers could get to the campground. But…we did get to stroll around the beach and do a short hike to the view above!

We hung out at the SP long enough to see the beginning of a spectacular sunset.

It was so pretty; I’m going to give you another shot of it.

We got back to our RV park just as the sun was sinking. We headed back to our little home on wheels and had a very nice, very quiet New Year’s Eve celebration. Our tradition is to have a Back To The Future marathon and some sparkling cider at midnight.

There were pretties everywhere, but I somehow only got a shot of these. They were at the park we stayed at.

We hated to leave The Keys. The small amount of time just made us hungry for more of the island life and we were already making plans for round two before we even pulled out of the RV Park.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

South Miami, FL

South Miami, FL

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We spent two weeks in the South Miami Florida area. This post is going to be a big one, guys!

Our very first night in the area we decided we should try some Cuban food. Y’all know we love to try the local flavors. We found a spot called La Carreta. I kind of wish we hadn’t. Cuban food is kind of…awesome. We spent the whole two weeks there wanting more Cuban food.

Our main focus in the area was the Everglades National Park. It took us three very full days to see what we wanted and we still didn’t see it all.

We started our Everglade exploration in Shark Valley where the main thing to do is take a tram tour. I was skeptical. The tram tour is extra. But it was the only way to really see this part of the park unless you want to walk the 15 mile loop…with all of the gators…and the heat. Um, no thanks. Can you spot the gator in the photo above?

The tram tour is guided by one of the National Park Rangers. Our Ranger braved the muck and the gators to teach us about the sawgrass prairie. She went out there bare foot. With the gators.

She brought handfuls of the soil and the periphyton (the stuff that floats on the top) for everyone to feel. Littlest wasn’t impressed with the texture and slime of it. Ha!

We saw tons of birds.

Please don’t ask me to name all of the birds we saw…

our ranger named them all…but, I’ve slept since then.

And we saw plenty of gators!

These guys were laying right by the road where the people who didn’t want to do the tram tour were walking. Right. By. The. Road!

We took an airboat ride. This place is one of only four companies allowed to go right into Everglades National Park!

I could put up tons of the pics I took while on the ride, but sometimes a video does the job better. So here’s a little peek into our airboat ride through the Everglades National Park.

The airboat place had a restaurant that served gator and frog legs. We had to try them. I’ll be honest, I wimped out trying the frog legs. I just couldn’t get pass the frog part. But the gator was excellent!

We spent an entire day making our way to the Flamingo Bay part of the Everglades NP. We stopped and did some of the hikes on the way down and some on the way back. If you go…take bug spray. They were really bad during one of our first hikes. We forgot to spray down for that first hike, but you better believe we didn’t forget on the second hike!

We saw several trees we hadn’t seen during our travels yet. The red barked tree is a gumbo limbo tree. We also saw tons of mahogany trees.

We made it all the way down to Flamingo Bay right about lunch time. We stopped by the marina there just to check it out and was rewarded with our first salt water crocodile! And he was a big one!

We also got our first look at a manatee! They kind of look like a huge floating potato.

I took this shot quickly as we were leaving the marina area. I didn’t notice the crocodile in the bottom right corner until I was looking at the shot on my computer.

We’d heard there was a campground down at Flamingo Bay so we went to check it out and scout for future trips. We found this great place for a picnic. It was pretty deserted there.

We stopped by the Royal Palm area for the last hike we wanted to do. We got there and noticed tons of these guys. Then we noticed there were tarps on most of the cars there.

Apparently, the vultures are destructive.

The NPS provided tarps and bungee cords for everyone to use while in the area.

We also made it to Biscayne NP. This NP is mostly underwater. We did get to walk the one small trail at the Visitor Center.

We had to be quick since the little spit of land the trail takes you out on was disappearing as the tide came in.

We were treated to a storm cloud and a rainbow while we were making our way off the little spit of land.

We were in the Miami area for Christmas. Our Christmas tradition is tamales. We searched high and low for Mexican tamales and came up with a big fat nothing. Nadda. But we did find this place. El Palacio De Los Jugos. This Cuban market is awesome!!

Our Spanish revolves around food items, but that didn’t help us here

because we weren’t familiar with everything here and there weren’t any labels. I’m pretty sure we were the only ones there who didn’t fluently speak Spanish. We got some of this and some of that. All by pointing and gesturing. We were pretty confident that we were in the right place because the line went out the door. Everything we got was absolutely excellent. We ended up with some Cuban tamales with some fixings for our Christmas dinner.

While we were looking for Mexican tamales, we asked around at the RV park we were staying in. One of the ladies in the office offered to try and find some for us and when she couldn’t she offered to bring us some that her mom was making. I should mention here she’s from Mexico. We were thrilled with the offer, but unsure if she would follow through. The day after Christmas she delivered with about a dozen homemade tamales. Guys, they were the best tamales we’ve ever had! I meant to snap a pic of them but they were devoured before I could think to stop and take a picture of them. So, you’ll just have to take our word for it. They were wonderful!

Since we’re talking about Christmas, I’ll mention here what we did on Christmas. We started our Christmas morning at Miami Beach.

We weren’t really impressed with Miami Beach. There were tons of jellyfish and more trash than I like on a beach.

We got there early and pretty much had the beach to ourselves for awhile. Right about the time we were ready to go, the crowds started to come out.

We stopped by a fruit stand called “Robert Is Here” one afternoon.

It’s an avocado. I sat a lemon and a key lime next to it so you could see the size difference. We bought one. We haven’t eaten it yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. But it is huge!

We got suckered into buying some of this fruit. I’m not sure where this guy is getting his cotton candy, but he needs to find a new place. This fruit was nothing like cotton candy. It was kind of a slimy gel texture that made me want to go brush my teeth. Mr. Man and Littlest both liked it.

We also bought one of these. It’s not ready yet, so I can’t tell you if we got suckered again. I’ll let you know.

We did find some really good Mexican food.

A good friend of mine met us at El Torro Taco! I got the plate above. It did not disappoint! So. Good! It was so fun spending time with another of my HP friends! *waves to friend and her fam* Her kiddos and my kiddos are all about the same age and into the same nerdy stuff. They all hit it off. My boys have already asked when we will see them again. It’s been fun this year meeting up with so many of my HP friends!

There are flower stands all over the place. People also sell them on the street corners.

Are you ready for some pretties? The pic above isn’t the best, but I wanted to share it anyway. The purple flowers and the bright orange/red seed pod are the same plant! Whhhaaattt…. mind…blown…

I took so many

pictures of pretties here.

I could have done a post

on just the pretties.

We love this area. We’re already trying to figure out how soon we’ll be able to come back…and spend more time.

See y’all down the road!!

#easternloop2016