After going-on 6 months of living on the road in our motorhome, it's time for some of that 'alone' time for me.  And thanks to KnitPicks and my pattern sales there, I will be spending an entire week - alone - in a condo on the beach in Crescent Beach, FL come mid-October.  To say that I'm excited would be an understatement.  :-)

I have great and glorious plans for the week - and I'm sure I will accomplish a fraction of what I'd like.  The time will fly by and it's already crossed my mind that I may want to do this on a regular basis.  Of course, money is always an issue, so there's even more reason to continue to work on my pattern designs and continue to expand the reach of Pam Daley Designs!

I'm hoping to finish up SEVERAL patterns that are currently in process, develop some specific ideas for new ones and - maybe - find time to work on this website.  I've wanted to redesign the layout to make it a bit more user-friendly and Mike came across another site that is set up exactly how I want.  It's a major job though - one that almost requires taking this one down completely and starting over.  After 3+ years, there are a lot of posts, pictures, journals here at Daley-Travels and I don't want to lose them.  So even if I were able to get the new format up and working, it would take some time to add the older content back in.  But I really would like to do that.

After I finish up just a few more patterns...

Last night we stayed in Cross Hill, South Carolina at the Moon Landing RV Park & Marina.  Not a super fancy park with the biggest, fanciest bathrooms, an enclosed rec room with 90,000 video games, or a gigantic flat screen TV.  But I'd stay there again in a heartbeat - and if we hadn't had reservations here we would have just hung out there for the weekend.  Why?  Pure Southern Hospitality and friendliness, that's why. 

As soon as we drove into the park Mike (the owner) came out of the office building to say hi to my Mike.  Asked if we had reservations, when we said no he waved us on in with a "we'll find something for you". 

By the time the 2 Mikes had walked around the park looking at the available sites so we could choose one, I'd had time to talk to the owner's wife and daughter in the office.  Lots of ideas for places to see - locally and in Florida.  Directions to the local grocery store, repeated offers for us to stop in for whatever we needed and I'd never felt so welcome!  We had a great spot - level, easy in and out, close to the laundry room (thank you!) and fantastic wifi. 

But that's not even all - Lake Greenwood is right there and they offered to let us use kayaks to explore the lake a bit.  If you know me you know there was no way I'd be getting in a kayak, but Mike and Sarah did!  Yup - little couch potato Sarah paddled a kayak around that lake!  No extra fees - just some of that Southern Hospitality I mentioned. 

If you find yourself in the western park of South Carolina and need a place to park the RV, check this place out!  You have to drive past several other campgrounds to get there - but don't be tempted by them, trust me.  It's worth following those country roads around for a while to get to Moon Landing.  While you're there do some fishing - they've even got a live bait vending machine!  And don't forget to tell them the Daley's sent you!

Along with these random occurrences and memories come some well-learned truths.  As we were driving from somewhere in Michigan to Van Buren, OH today I thought about some of them:

• No matter how much time we plan on taking to get from Point A to Point B, it's not enough.  Even if we think we've built in lots of 'putzing' time, it's not enough.  Double the travel time estimate.
• Even though no one west of the Rockies uses cash for anything except possibly illegal drug purchases, in the midwest it's not uncommon to find campgrounds and stores that don't accept credit or debit cards.  They'd rather take a check from someone who lives 5 states away than to take credit cards.

• Campground ratings in the directories aren't everything.  We've stayed in high rated ones with really rude people that no amount of fancy bathrooms could make up for.  Conversely, we've stayed in lower rated ones that had spacious sites, friendly folks, and were just fine.  BUT....if the directory says they are a combination 'trailer park and RV campground', RUN the other direction. 
• Just because some places say they have free public wifi, it doesn't actually mean you can access it from anywhere other than the front doorway of the office. 
• Campground laundry rooms with large washing machines and dryers, that don't charge extra for hot or warm wash water, and that have dryers you can use for just 10-15 minutes for touch-up drying are not to be wasted.  If the campground has them, DO WASH.  Doesn't matter if you just did it 2 days ago, do it again. 

Personally I've also learned that I brought too much stuff.  I won't speak for others in the family - they need to come to terms with their own pack-ratness on their own.  But when we head to Alaska next year I will be off-loading a few things I thought were necessary this time around.  Not yarn though.  :-)

As Mike has posted before, we like just about every town we visit and usually can imagine ourselves living there.  But I think this little city is top of my list.  There is just something about this place that makes me feel comfortable.  The town is easy to navigate (aside from the summer plague of road construction), they have a local yarn shop (The Happy Hooker!), the retail stores I prefer (in other words – something other than Wally World), a cute downtown area with all kinds of interesting looking shops and these REALLY big freighters that cruise the St. Mary’s River and navigate the Soo Locks.

As we were driving around yesterday we also spotted all these yellow ribbons on utility poles up and down most of the streets.  Turns out the local 1437^th Engineer Battalion (Army National Guard) is coming home from Iraq and the town has turned out the welcome mat.  I know it’s hard to see in the picture, but there are ribbons on all those poles down the street.  Trust me, it looked very cool in person. 

I’m hoping we have an opportunity to come back here and hang out for a few months – preferably not January, February or March though. 



While I have the wonderful built-in excuse that I'll be leaving the area so if I want this, I have to get it now; I also have the built-in limiting factor of space.  So while I imagined all kinds of cool things I could make today, I only walked out of the store with yarn to make my granddaughter her birthday present.  I did good.  :-)

On my way back to our RV park I deliberately missed the turn onto the highway and explored the town of Marquette.  It's a cute downtown area and I would have enjoyed exploring it a bit on foot, but I have to say that the parking sucks.  When you have a dirt lot across the street from the Ramada Inn for visitor parking there, you know they have some work to do to make the area more 'user friendly'.  They do have a wonderful new development right along the lake - big fancy condos and such.  They'll have a gorgeous view, that's for sure.

We have one more full day here and then we'll be heading up the road to Sault Ste. Marie.  The city sits right on the border between the US and Canada so we may walk across just to say we did. 

Tonight we had pizza grilled on the barbecue - and I feel like I've discovered salad in a bag or something!  What a great way to cook pizza - and it was pretty darn good.

I did take a shortcut and bought frozen pizza dough.  I think I'm going to have to practice spinning and tossing the dough to get it more evenly shaped and all, but that's okay.  Even though the finished pie was a bit ugly, both Mike and Sarah pronounced it "pretty good!".  Although they did seem a bit surprised that it WAS good.  Doubting skeptics!!  I posted more pictures of the whole process here - and I've got two more loaves of pizza dough in the freezer to experiment with soon!

I'm starting to feel that way.  We've been doing a lot the past few weeks and we have a week on the Florida space coast AND a week in Orlando coming up in September.  Between now and then we thought we'd visit Washington DC - why not?  It's on the way!

But we've decided to take a step back and leave visiting our nation's capital for another time.  I need to just 'stay home' for a while.  That means driving for 2 days - 3 days tops! - and then staying in one place for a week or so.  We only need to average a little over 50 miles per day to get to Florida for our next commitment, so there is no need to rush.  Although I'm sure by the time we have finished our 3 months of camp hosting at the end of December I'll be REALLY ready to hit the road!  But for now I'm looking forward to having a home base and doing a little more in-depth exploring around St. Augustine, Florida! 

The past few days I've discovered that you don't have to have periodic earthquakes to mess up the roads.  Cold, cold weather and lots of snow seem to do a job on them as well.  I-35 in Minnesota made us feel like we were on a train with the clackity-clack, clackity-clack...for miles and miles.  I don't know how they can even plow those roads in winter - the edge of the snow plow has got to catch on the bumps, ridges and crevasses!  I'm thinking maybe they just let it pile up enough to fill in everything, let that get good and compressed, and just plow to that point.  Sheesh.

Along with the well-used roadways comes construction.  I don't know why summer isn't just called 'road construction season' anyway.  And after a while I think the road workers just got kind of tired of people ignoring their signs.  You know, they put up the 'lane is gonna close in 1 mile' sign but most people don't start actually merging until they absolutely have to and you end up with this bottleneck the last 100 feet. 

So they decided to be blunt:  MERGE - not merge in a mile, merge when you feel like it, but MERGE.  (And actually some of them say MERGE NOW).  But just so you don't think they are rude, there is the little reminder to 'Take Turns'.  (Which totally cracks me up everytime I see it!) If this were California someone would have already shot the sign full of holes or graffitied it to death. 

 But the worst sign when you're travelling through uncharted territory is the dreaded 'detour' sign.  We've got a GPS - named Tommy - but she just doesn't always have the latest road construction updates in her database.  She gets rather irritated when Mike doesn't follow her instructions to the letter and doesn't understand that it's not nice to drive through those barricade things.  Because it is the middle of 'road construction season' we've been able to take the scenic route through downtown Minneapolis, downtown St. Paul and downtown Duluth.  It's not so bad if the road guys remember to put signs ALL along the detour, but they have a habit of forgetting a turn somewhere in the middle and then you find yourself detoured off the detour.

Oh well, all part of the adventure, right??

Your head snaps around, and you wonder, "Did I just see what I think I saw?"  You drive on and soon you are back to wondering about herds of cattle on the side of the road. "Why, when there are literally thousands of acres of  land to roam in, they bunch up in the corner like a swarm of bees?"  I am glad I am not a cow, "Guys, give some space here, will ya, sheesh!"

Then I see it, the one cow that dares to stand alone, but there is something wrong with my perspective.  He just looks too big to be so far off in the distance. This cow looks as big as the hills.  I shake my head and refocus, nope still there, and still getting bigger. Time to pull off and get this picture, because the friends back home simply won't believe me.

At the end of the day, we usually settle in for the afternoon. This past week we stopped in campground just a few blocks away from a spot in Jamestown, North Dakota that held a collection of relocated pioneer buildings.  Mike and Sarah walked the streets and browsed the display and came back with yet another large creature captured on, well, not on film exactly, but you get the point.

Just another example of life on the interstate that makes you say, "What is...?

Last week in Miles City, Montana the rubber met the road.  (ha ha)  Earlier in the day Mike came out of the bathroom, closed the door and stuffed towels in the gap between the door and the floor.  He turned around and looked at me sternly saying "You DON'T want to go in there, okay?"  Denial quickly kicked in and I said, brightly, "Sure!"  He went out to his 'workshop', gathered up all kinds of manly man stuff and came back to shut himself in the bathroom with said stuff.  I pretended I didn't hear all the knocking and banging noises coming from behind that door and kept on crocheting.  He finally emerged and - without looking me in the eye - went to his computer as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.  We all pretended nothing out of the ordinary was happening.  Me, intensely focusing on crochetin swatches, Mike checking and rechecking his email and facebook page, Sarah about to bust out of her skin at trying NOT to talk about IT. 

Gradually I relaxed.  Until about 8:30 that evening when Mike suddenly got up from the dining table and walked over to the edge of the couch (that I'm sitting on) and stands there looking down at a spot on the floor just out of my view.  I KNEW what he was looking at, I just KNEW it.  Apparently little mickey mouse was standing there looking UP at him.  Both locked in a stare-out that was not going to end easily. 

Mike quickly directed me to the bedroom and closed the door.  I found myself on the edge of slightly hysterical as I was now trapped in the back end of the motorhome waiting for mickey to come running out from who knew where.  I don't do well with waiting quietly when there are scurrying creatures in my house.  I just don't. 

After HOURS waiting in the bedroom (okay, maybe 15 minutes...) Mike opened the door and asked me if I wanted to get my stuff together as he was taking me to a motel.  I admit that part of me hesitated because I felt badly that he had to drive me to a motel (it was dark, I don't drive when it's dark).  But that didn't last too long and within half and hour I was safely ensconced in a motel room.  Leaving Mike and Sarah to a battle of wits with mickey back at the house.

They never did actually catch him, but it's been almost a week now and we've got super sticky mouse trap thingys in several corners.  And trust me, nothing is going to walk across one of those traps and sneak off afterwards. And I just can't believe that in this small space I wouldn't notice some signs that mickey was still with us. 

I do make Sarah get stuff out of the bottom cupboard though.