Sunday we made it to West Chester, which is just north of Cincy. Our friends Mary and Ron Turnau just built a new house after Ron retired from General Electric. Ron loved to plan and work on the house as it was being built. Some other picks are below. We always have a wonderful time with them and the food served is wonderful. Mary loves to try new food and it is always excellent.

Tweety is ready for the last leg of the trip to Findlay. It was 2020 miles in total. If you drive from Punta Gorda to Findlay is 1189 miles so this was a long route, but the most fun we ever had coming back from Florida. We are now in Findlay or Catawba Island. The blog has been fun and we may start it again in the fall when Tweety will start it's way back to Florida. The plan is to start the trip south by going north first to Niagra Falls in September for a Fiberglass Camper Rally Sept 14th. Then who knows where, maybe Montreal and Quebec.  Thanks for looking at the blog and we will let you know when it becomes active again.
Doug and Becky Asbury

 

On Friday we visited our dear friends Cathy and Jim Rosenbalm that live close to Boston, KY . You can see by the pics that they live in an enchanted setting in the woods on a lake. They are so far out that cell phones do not work very well and TV is limited to two channels. What a wonderful place to live.

 

We had a great time the two days that we were there. First day we took a ride on the Rosenbalm Yacht and it was very nice. Also, we took a tour at one of the many Bourbon distillers. They gave out samples.

Today we took it easy, we went to the Laurel Falls. It was only 1.4 miles and a 300 foot climb. We thought it was funny to hear people complain about how hard it was. The falls was very nice.

 The falls was easy to get to, but if you ever come to the Smokies you have to try the Rainbow falls. Just kidding, only if you want a real challenge. The Laurel falls will probably be enough for most of our friends.
Our campground is very nice and the pool is clean. We will be moving on to Hurricane Hills close to Boston Ky tomorrow to visit our friends Jim and Cathy Rosenbalm.

Today we biked a road in Cades Cove that was closed to car traffic until 10 am.  This road is a 11 mile one way loop around Cades Cove.  In the top pic we have 2 turkeys.  Pic #2 Doug is nealing with a turtle.  Pic #3 shows the beautiful scenery.  Pic #4, believe it or not is a black bear.

We hiked to Rainbow Falls, I did this 40 years ago with a group from Antioch College, The distance is 2.7 miles one way, but the altitude difference is 1200 feet. So actually it is like walking up a 120 story building.We did make it after many stops and the trip down was very easy except for one fall. I'm ok.

When I came down with the Antioch group we stayed in this cabin Easter break 1972.  No heat and it was really cold.
To say the least with biking 11 miles and hiking 5.6 miles including the 1200 foot climb we are really wiped out.

We drove from Stone Mountain GA toward the Smokey Mountains coming from the south instead of using I-75 we went to North Carolina and drove through the mountains. Tweety made it to Clingman's Dome and we took a break to walk up to the look out. The clouds were coming in from the tropical storm, but it was nice. We then drove the rest of the way down the mountain to Severville TN where we had a camping spot reserved at a new campground. When we got here it rained like crazy for a while and then stopped long enough for us to go to the pool and also play some table tennis.

We decided to go to Dixie Stampede for dinner and a show that was very good. Food was good and way too much. They will not let you take pictures during the show so I took a couple before.

 Today, we hiked to the summit of Stone Mountain.  We had done this once before 24 years prior with Jason and Jodi.

The weather today was clear as you can see downtown Atlanta in the distance.

G

 We had lunch at the top.  The view was spectacular.

We biked the five mile trail around the base of Stone Mountain.  This is the carving of
Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Notice no Northerners here.
Think they forget who got them into the mess.

T

This evening we had a nice roaring fire and roasted Peeps. Yes I said Peeps.

We went to the Georgia Aquarium today, we have always seen the sign for it on our way back and forth to Florida, but never stopped. I knew it was that larges Aquarium in the US, but until today we never saw it. The pictures say it all, it was fantastic. The Dolphin Tales show was hard to believe. The pictures with the divers and the one before we are in the underwater tunnel actually below them. I have a movie and tried to download onto the blog, but after an hour I decided to quit.

We made it to Stone Mountain today by 3pm. Long drive by our standards of only going 100 miles a day. The campground is nice, but at a slope going down to Stone Mountain lake.

Stone Mountain is the largest granite uprising mountain in US. Kind of surprising to see it, tomorrow we will go to the amusement park.

We will be able to go to the top of the mountain tomorrow and do some other things like Geyser towers to see if we can keep from getting wet. Of course with 95 degree weather it would be good to get wet.

We Traveled our 91 miles today and arrived at Florida Caverns State Park around 11 am

We rode our bikes to the visitors station where we will be able to take the cave tour.

Becky is cozening up to one of the CCC boys who helped working on the caves and other projects in the park

.The caves were surprising, who knew they have caverns in Florida. It was about a 45 minute tour and well worth the effort to see them. We were amongst only  6 other people on the tour.