Maria and Joe came over with their families. We had a nice meal together, watched old family videos, and just caught up with Gma and Gpa. We definitely miss our kids in the winter, but we LOVE our catch-up time throughout the summer!

We even took a small walk to the RR tracks where Mark proposed to me in 1996!  :-)

If you don't know Ashley, you are really missing out!  She is Joey's new wife!  So, we celebrated Ashley's 33rd birthday by a nice evening visit and dinner.  It's always nice to be back home with family!  Love you Ashley!  And of course we love you Joe, Arlo, TT & Mia!

Maria invited me to tag along on a bus trip she had for the school. It was going to be her, Bree and me (3 generations) to spend time together during her off-time in Petoskey. We really had a great time, looking for rocks on the beach, eating out, and walking the town. Thank you for inviting me Maria, it was also great to be your "wing-man" during travel!  :-)

Maria won a scholarship from the Community Choice Credit Union for her amazing contributions to the community, specifically the special needs kids. Her scholarship will help pay for tuition and books toward a web degree at Washtenaw Community College.

We are so proud of you Maria!

To make our driving days a bit shorter, we always try to stop after 200-300 miles, then stay for a few days. We always love stopping at Arrowhead Lakes on our way home. This is a resort that is affiliated with our home resort membership. We get to enjoy the amenities of a very nice pool, putt putt, and nice daily walks.

We invited the kids down to be with us here, and Maria was able to squeeze in the time. We enjoyed the pool, putt putt and just plain catching up.  :-)

OMG! I cannot express enough how much we enjoy our bi-annual camping trips with Katie, Tony and the kids, and this was no exception. We all decided to meet up at the Mammoth Cave to give the kids a new caving experience.  The weather was super awesome (actually a little too warm), but the kids had their usual water time outside, and we all grilled, ate, and just got caught up on life. 

The cave tour was the "Domes and Dripstones" tour. A 2-hour long moderate level tour that took us through a mile of cave.  We enjoyed watching the kids see everything for the first time!

This is the 3rd cave we visited this year, and even though Mammoth is the largest, we still vote for Carlsbad as the prettiest.  :-)

​Thank you Katie & Tony for taking the time to come out and spend the night & day with us!

During our stay, on one of our trips to the garbage, we were stopped by a couple that wanted to talk about dogs.. This is pretty normal. What's not normal, was during that visit, another couple tapped us on the shoulder and told us that they had met us earlier this winter!  Where? At Palatki Heritage Site! It was within our first week there, and we had really connected with them about camping and full-time RV living.  We met up several more times during this stay, but how AWESOME to meet up with such a wonderful couple after touring half the country and five months later! I sure hope we get to visit with them more!  Thank you so much Mark & Debbie for stopping to say HI!   You definitely made our day!  :-). 
* Check out Mark & Debbie's website HERE!

Stay Details:  Mammoth Cave Campground - Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.  A dry-camping campground that has water available around each loop, and a dump station. It is a mere 10-minute walk from the Mammoth Cave visitor center which is where all tours depart. We chose site 82, which was a pull-through spot right next to the restrooms. It also gave us a very large site to house the clam tent, and 2 sleeping tents.  
The campground itself has a lot of trees, so be prepared to have very little sun, or have a generator. We needed to use our generator twice each day even though we have 1000 watts of solar. Generator hours are 8am-8pm, and the campground is VERY quiet after that. Sites are large, restrooms are clean, and cell service is minimal, but we both had enough to upload these pictures.  :-)

One of the volunteer things we wanted to do after Mayfield was hit by a severe tornado in December 2021, was to volunteer and help clean up or start rebuilding. We contacted several agencies and never heard back. So, while at LBL (Land Between the Lakes), we took a drive over to Mayfield to see the tornado damage first hand.  This was the first time I've ever seen damage this bad. Even though I know there's been worse, it brought the severity of these storms to reality.

If you haven't been to Mayfield, imagine your entire downtown - GONE! This has hit them very hard, and we will continue to pray for Mayfield as they recover through this devastation.

We have been wanting to stay here for a while. At the last minute though, we decided to reserve an electric site instead of depending on an open spot at a dispersed campground. Mostly because we're larger.  We're glad we did, as it got pretty cold at night, so we were able to use our fireplace to keep warm instead of propane.

The site at Energy Lake Campground was awesome!  Site 7 gave us a 100 degree view of the lake. Site #9 would be best if you're interested. It's for larger rigs, and provides a GREAT view of the lake at the top of the hill. 

We visited the Nature Center Zoo during our stay, and their animals were all found on the peninsula and are being rehabilitated or are injured and cannot be released.

Stay Details: Energy Lake Campground - North/east side on Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky. There are a LOT of areas on the peninsula that are dispersed camping, but only 3 campgrounds that are more modern with electric and water. This being one of them.
Out site was #7, but if we stay here again we will reserve #9. All on this loop have beautiful views of the lake, and the campground has spacious, well cared for sites.

I must apologize for the delay in posting. We stayed at a Coast to Coast resort in Hornsby, TN that was supposed to be pretty nice. It ended up being a very tight, ugly park with run-down buildings and an unsightly pool. However, cell service was awesome, so we got some much needed digital work done.  I was also very under the weather, so I took this time to just rest.

Upon arriving, we had to get some recall work done on the RV, so we stayed overnight at Walmart, just down the road from the dealer. This was our first Walmart stay, and it was amazingly VERY quiet! We got in to the dealer at 8am, and were on our way at 10am.

During our 10-day stay at Big Buck resort, it rained almost every day, and 3 storms that went through were severe. One, so scary that we packed some emergency stuff in the truck in preparation to shelter from a possible EF-3 tornado in the clubhouse.  Once again though, the Lord granted our prayer and parted the most severe part of the storm, so we never had to leave the RV. Max wind that evening was 48mph along with some pea-sized hail made it very tense for about 30 minutes.

The last 2 pics, one of the stormy skies and the other of our local turtle that walked along with us for a while. 

Such a beautiful day, we needed to take an excursion to Hot Springs to see what all the Hoopla was about. Come to find out, there are hot springs leaking out of the ground everywhere around this little city, and people have made it a place of spas, relaxation and FREE water!

The photos below show the old spa houses there were used by some pretty famous people. Also took a trip up the tower to take in the beautiful views of the area.