Heading for the barn.

Pictures: Bear and deer at Shenandoah Park, our Black Mountain campsite, (behind TICA is the mountain stream), Bill about to "launch" down the mountain, we hiked to this really nice water fall, nice view from atop Mt Mitchell, and a sunset that signals the end of this adventure.


After the Catskills and the Pocono’s, we headed for Shenandoah National Park for four days. While there, we enjoyed the vistas, the trails, and the guided hikes and talks by the park rangers. We had a small group tour of President Hoover’s summer cabin in the park. It was a very basic and rustic sort of place. We also had the chance to see the park deer and black bear. The deer are very bold, and unafraid of campers. They walk right by you or graze just a few feet away from you. The bears on the other hand, are shy and elusive.

After leaving Shenandoah we headed to Kerr Lake campgrounds on the Virginia/ N.C. border. We went there to meet up once again with our friends the Slater’s who were also on the road heading south.

After Kerr, we made it to a little know campground called Black Mountain Campground in the Pisgah National Forest. It was terrific. Way up high, very cool temperatures, great trails and waterfalls, and a beautiful little river running behind our campsite. While there, we spotted another Florida license plate and said hi to the guy. He looked at Elaine and said, “I know you”. Turns out that Gordon McClung was from our hometown of Temple Terrace, and Elaine knows Gordon’s wife Julie. Small world once again. Gordon came over for a campfire chat and we had a good time.

We made drove up to the highest elevation in the eastern U.S., which is Mt Mitchell in North Carolina. Bill brought his bike along, and after the hike to the top, Bill “launched”. It was a downhill run of about 6 miles at 30 mph! Thrilling, and the best way to bike. After a lift back up mountain by Elaine on our way back to Black Mountain, Bill launched for a second time, about 4 miles of very fast downhill run including a tunnel. WOW. Great rides. Zoom zoom.

Our next stop was the Davidson River Campground which is located near Brevard, NC. It rained all day, so we watch a little TV, read, and went into town. Bill did a little biking and hiking while there after the skies cleared. Then it was on to Unicoi State Park in northern Georgia. We stayed there for a few nights. The weather was great, and the nights very cool. We had a few really big campfires, and just relaxed.

From Unicoi, we headed to our friends place in Greensboro Georgia. Reid and Sharon hosted our stay for a night after we discovered that the nearby Georgia Power campgrounds at Old Salem had just closed for the season. We had a great dinner out and talked into the late evening. Then, the next morning, we drove home and arrived the 15th.

We’re busy now catching up with the mail, and unpacking the “El Burro” (the Toyota 4Runner), and the Casita “Tica”. We’ll see our boat this weekend, and begin the transition from campers to sailors once again.

In summary, we can say we accomplished what we had hoped to do. That is, enjoy cooler weather, and visit interesting places. The “rig”, as the RV’ers call it, which is the car and camper, did great. We were very happy with our choices on both accounts. We are thinking about a trip out west next year, so stayed tuned.

"Going Down to the Country"

VERMONT – “what happens here, stays here, but nothing really happens here.”

That’s the slogan for Vermont and I suppose it’s fitting. I think Vermont is our favorite yet. What’s so nice about it is that between the lovely mountain drives, there are little towns that are really neat. They are usually centered around what was once a mill, with a dozen or so two story brick buildings from a hundred to two hundred years ago. The other thing is that there seems to be no trash or junky homes along the byways, just cool little farms, with usually an old farm house. The architecture is beautiful on many of the buildings, particularly the ones that are made from stone. One of these neat little towns was Weston. This is home of the well known “Vermont Country Store”. We spent an hour in there before we drug ourselves out to keep going. Weston also sports a theater, and Christopher Lloyd was the lead actor in the play going on there. The little library, with internet, was absolutely stunning on the interior. (See pics).

Our campsite in Vermont was Winhall Brook Campsite. This is a Federal Corp of Engineers campground. It is situated high up in the Green Mountains where two streams run together. It was probably the cleanest, neatest, best run campground we’ve been to. We went on a couple of very long bike rides along the streams where way back when, there used to be a railroad that ran along here. We also visited a couple beautiful towns named Manchester and Middleburry. Vermont is the best.

From Vermont we made our way down to the Catskills to a campground named Mongaup Pond. This was up at the top of the mountain range with a lake and a few streams. We drove through the Catskills one day, including a stop at the artsy town of Woodstock. This is not where the festival took place in 1969, that’s down the road in Bethel. We went there to, and toured the museum – which was very well done. Sure brought back a lot of memories from the 60’s. We’ve got our Sirius radio with us, and we’ll be tuned to the “60’s” channel for a bit. The Catskills are nice, the countryside is beautiful, and the rivers and streams are wonderful. We did come across one very interesting thing … that is, a town that seemed to be full of what I think were Hasidic Jews. It wasn’t like seeing the quaint Amish, it was just a little more different than that to us. The town was not very well kept either, it was kind of messy, with a lot of chain link fences which we hadn’t seen till then. The Amish do seem very neat and clean, well, except for the horse poop in the street part.

To our friends Gordon, Lori, Paul, Flo, Charlsey and Jeff …. We cannot seem to get away from the French Canadians up here! Don’t these people ever stay in Canada? You guys know what we mean.

From the Catskills, we made our way down to the Poconos. Again, very beautiful forests, streams, rivers, mountains and all. We didn’t stay long, just two days, but the campsite at Hickory Run was great, and it was nearly empty during the week. And yes, we did have a heart shaped campsite and all the trees have some ones initials carved on them. Ha Ha! The one thing I will say, is that the roads here in Pennsylvania and a little rough, even the darn interstate! You people need to get more of that Obama money like New York has.

We stopped in Carlisle PA to visit with Bill's aunt and uncle and their family once again. Our time went by much too quickly and we thoroughky enjoyed our visit with all of them.

The next stop is Shenandoah National Park as we head the “rig’ back south.

Oh so nice up here

A skinny bridge up in the mountains over a rushing stream. "El Burro" pulls the "TICA" along just great.




Our most wonderful campsite on Rollins Pond. Our private beach, a warm campfire enjoyed by Elaine.




Elaine canoes past a mother ducky. We also saw beaver houses nearby.




Bill kayaking Rollins Pond. A neighbor camper who owns Greenville Bagels on Long Island had an extra kayak that he let me use for a few days.


Does the bear poop in the woods?


Our camp is on the Lake in the distance. We hiked to the top of this mountain, then, climbed the fire tower for a view of the surrounding countryside.


Sailboats on Lake Champlain



We've been hanging out in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. This park is the largest in the lower 48, 6 million acres or something like that. The Adirondacks are lake after lake, surrounded by mountains. Rivers connect many of the lakes, and of course it's all forest land.

We have been camping at a place called Rollins Pond. Our campsite is right on the lake,with our own small beach. The lake is clear, rocky,and surrounded by the forest with mountains in the distance. We rented a canoe one day and found two beaver homes, came across a family of loons. These guys can really make some noise, but it's a beautiful cry, particularly at sunset.

We've made some day trips too, our favorite little town was Saranac Lake. Lake Placid was very touristy, although a pretty setting.

One day we went on a 8.4 mile round trip hike through the forest to a waterfall and rapids. It was a long hike for us,and it had lots of elevation changes towards the end. We brought our lunch and rested at the falls before the hike back. At the beginning of the hike, we came across some bear droppings, and a bear footprint, both were very fresh. I didn't feel the bear dung to see it it was still warm, but I'm guessing it was. I guess this answers the proverbial question about the bear pooping in the woods. We kept our eyes open from that point on ....

Lessons learned .... The other day I got some White Birch sap on my fingers. Do you know how hard it is to get sap off? Soap and water does't phase it. Well, I found out that it was great to have a little sap on your fingers for things like turning pages in my book, and for separating coffee filters. But, it's a real problem when handling toilet paper! Not a good thing.

We also hiked Mt. Goodnow. The hike was almost 2 miles each way. Even though it was a much shorter trip than our hike to the waterfall, it was just as challenging because of the climb. The walk was well worth it though because at the top of the mountain, we were able to climb a fire tower and get a beautiful panoramic view of the area. Wow! The area is even more beautiful from the air.

Our next stop was a campground not too far from Plattsburgh, NY. It is right along Lake Champlain. We took the car and boarded a ferry to get to Burlington Vermont. We spent Saturday there in the town and thoroughly enjoyed the sites,including a outdoor market in the town square.
Today is a rainy day so we are using it to get work done. That includes laundry and grocery shopping. Not too exciting, but we will be ready to hit the road again tomorrow.

Enjoying it in Coolsville

Yea, it's cool up here.


Our great adventure in TICA our little Casita is going very well. We’re getting pretty good at the camping routine, and we are learning a lot as we go. When we started out, we went as far as Greensboro, GA. We stayed with some longtime friends, the Conklins. We enjoyed a delicious dinner at their beautiful lakefront home. . We had not seen each other in almost 20 years so we had a lot of catching up to do! We had a wonderful time with them and hope that it will not be too long before we are able to get together again.

We continued our trip to the northern hills of Georgia near a town called Helen. There is a beautiful State campground there named Unicoi. The most interesting thing that happened there was … as we were checking in, another car pulled up with a Casita camper. Sightings are rare, and this was quite a coincidence. Then, as we pulled into our campsite, we saw yet another Casita. Now there were three of us, so I called for a campfire assembly after dinner. We had an interesting evening and heard a few great bear stories. Both of these other campers had downsized from much larger campers to the Casita. We have not had another Casita in our campground since then over the past 3 weeks.

After Helen, we had a schedule to keep to meet up with our daughter, Laura, near Washington D.C. On our way north we camped for just one night in North Carolina, and then in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. We cruised up the Blue Ridge Parkway and enjoyed some wonderful vistas. We saw lots of deer, but no bears. We hope to be able to spend some time in Shenandoah Park on our way back home.

After a great visit with Laura we stopped in to visit Bill’s uncle and aunt in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. What a great time we had ! Two of their children live in town so we were able to visit with them and their families over a delicious dinner that Aunt Connie prepared. We left the next morning for northern Pennsylvania and camped at a few State parks just south of the New York state border. We visited and camped at the Leonard Harrison state park that overlooks a river gorge. They called it the Grand Canyon (picture) of Pennsylvania. After that, we caught up with our sailing and camping friends, Paul and Flo Slater. We met them at the Hamlin Beach State park west of Rochester and on Lake Ontario. We shared cocktails and dinners and a lot of good laughs. The campgrounds at Hamlin were terrific and we stayed there for about five days. Elaine was happy that she got to catch up with a longtime friend, Kim Kay who lives just outside of Rochester, while we stayed in the area.

Following Hamlin, we and the Slaters moved together farther north to another campsite on Lake Ontario. We hiked to a beautiful waterfall (picture-Salmon River Falls) while there. After a few days, we moved a little further north to a campground called Wescott. This campground is up on a plateau with great views of the lake for miles. Nearby is a small town named Sackets Harbor that has a rich history, beautiful homes, and a neat little harbor and marina. We also took a day trip to the 1000 Islands. A tour of Boldt Castle was just a ferry ride away and we really were impressed with the castle and the grounds. Even though there is a major restoration project in progress, the place still had lots of impressive rooms that were open to the public.
From here, we will split up from Paul and Flo. They are headed to see their families in Connecticut, and Elaine and I are headed for the Adirondacks. We plan to catch up with the Slaters again on Labor Day in North Carolina a few weeks from now.

We’ve done a lot of hiking, some bike riding, and some exploration of small towns like Sackets Harbor. One of the neatest things was the Salmon River Falls, (picture) which are out in the middle of nowhere in New York. We hiked some trails near here too.

Until next time, we’ll be in the cool weather in the mountains of up state New York and Vermont.

Trial Run with the camper

We cleaned up the Casita, now named "Tica Casita", and made our first trial run. We spent a week at the O'Leno State Park about 40 miles north of Gainesville. We met our friends the Johnsons, Slaters and Nodlands there. These folks are very experienced campers, who helped us with our first endeavor. Everything went well and we had a great time. We biked, hiked, canoed, and floated down a river during the week. There was also a RV Salvage place nearby where I was able to pick up a few bargains for TICA.

We're back home now, and we plan to take off for the mountains on July 18th.

OH, one last thing, the name. TICA is an acronym for "This I Can Afford".

Yes, we are home.

We're back now. More about the last leg once we get caught up !

Wish you were beautiful, we're here.

Pictures, Sunrise in Nassau; Flo’s Place on Little Harbor, Triumph on the hook; Blue Hole; Our happy hour beach, and Elaine enjoying one in the chair we found.; Sunset at Devils cay; The anchorage at Devils Cay in the Berry’s.




We got the heck out of Nassau after laundry, groceries, and fueling up. It was like a work day. We updated the blog and set sail for the berry islands. We landed at Alder and Frozen Cays just as a big squall was descending on us. After it passed, we reanchored and had a very peaceful night. The next day we snorkeled the nearby reef, which was loaded with fish. Bill shot at a nice grouper, but didn’t get the spear in him enough. Bill called it an equipment malfunction, which he repaired later. We’ll be back next year for him.

After the morning swim we dinghied over to the next island, Little Harbor Cay. We met Curtis and his son Curtis Jr. We visited Flo’s restaurant, which is the only thing to visit. Nice folks.. we’ll be back next year for a meal with them.

We met a Canadian couple there on a large catamaran named Ruahk who had their 6 kids (yes, as in 3 boys and 3 girls ) aboard aged 15 down to 3. Nice couple, we talked to them for an hour and met most of the kids. He is a dentist, and they go to the D.R. every year to do gratis dental work for the kids there. What a great experience for the kids.

Next, we headed up to Devil Cay and Hoffman’s Cay. What a great place! See the pictures of Elaine with the coconut trees behind her. We brought our Rum drinks to this beach, and just couldn’t get over what a beautiful spot this was. (Wish you were here, it’s beautiful) We explored nearby beaches, and took a hike to the Loyalist ruins and the “Blue Hole”, (see pics) which was inland about in the middle of the island (Hoffmans Cay). The hole was about 100 yards across with shear cliffs all around..

Based on the weather outlook, we decided to head back to Florida a day earlier than planned. We are going to have dinner at the Berry Island Club on Frazier’s Hog Cay, then this evening we’ll set sail for Florida, crossing the banks tonight, then the Straits of Florida on Saturday afternoon. We hope to arrive at Rodriguez Key Saturday early evening. The next AM we are going to try to get into Dana and Nancy Vihlen’s dock just south of Tavernier. We’ll visit with them, then weather permitting, we’ll set out for the final leg back to Tampa through the Keys and up the west coast.

We have now safely arrived at our friends Dana and Nancy Vihlen’s house.

Black Point to Nassau

We left Black Point and headed to Sampson Cay on Friday morning. On the way there, we stopped at Big Major Cay which is also known as “Pig Beach.”. The only inhabitants of this island are a few rather large pigs who seem to be well fed by passing cruisers. We had saved a few food scraps to feed them so we were prepared. We watched from our boat and saw that the pigs seemed to be conditioned to the sound of motors coming toward shore. We took our dinghy close to shore and threw some of our food in the water. Three large pigs waded into the water to eat it. As we were getting ready to leave, a motorboat of tourists came up. These people had obviously paid plenty of money for the excursion and they had cups of fresh fruit to feed the pigs. The pigs swam out to the boat and the people put the food into the water to feed them. It was fun to watch but the pigs got a little close to our boat for our comfort!!! In fact, it almost looked as if one of the pigs was going to get into one of the other dinghies when some people tried to feed it!

Our anchorage tonight was at Sampson Cay. The island has a few nice buildings that looked like they were private homes. There is also a marina here. We decided to stay on board and have dinner on the boat. We had several sailboats in this anchorage with us. One was a large sailboat about 85 feet long named “Seahawk”. There was a crew onboard this boat who were obviously busy getting ready for the arrival of the boat’s owners. They were very busy cleaning and polishing this beautiful boat.

Our next stop was just a short sail away to Hawksbill Cay. This island is a part of the Exuma Park. There were some ruins there from the days of the Loyalist plantation owners who had fled colonial America in the late 1770’s. Wonderful beaches there, we had them all to ourselves.

We set sail for Shroud Cay right after a nice night at Hawksbill. It was just around the corner from us. We got a call on the radio from our friends, Rick and Doreen on “Breathless” and they invited us to go with them through the mangroves at Shroud. Our friends had done this several times before so we were glad to have someone to show us the way. Because the water is so shallow through the mangroves, you can only get your dinghy in at high tide. We wound around the clearing in the mangroves through the crystal clear water from the ocean side of the island. When we got to the end, we left our dinghies and walked up a small hill . On the other side, was a nice beach. We walked on the beach and did a little beachcombing. It is amazing the kinds of things that wash ashore! We did not find any treasures but we definitely will put this spot on our list to return to in the future!



Late in the afternoon, we headed for the anchorage at Norman’s Cay. As we came into the anchorage, we looked at the boats and were surprised to see one that we recognized! We had spent some time with a very nice couple while staying on our boat in the Dry Tortugas four years ago! Pat and Kat live in Sarasota and have a sailboat named “Jade”. We had corresponded with them only a few times since meeting them and knew that they had been cruising in the Bahamas a few times. We were very glad to have the chance to spend some more time to catch up with them. Unfortunately, they are headed the opposite way on this trip but we will definitely get in touch with them when we all get back home to Florida.
We were hoping to stay to stay to explore Norman’s but the wind was perfect for our sail farther north. We decided to leave and get a little closer to Nassau. The day was just perfect and we sailed all of the way to Rose Island. Tomorrrow (Tuesday), we will sail just about four miles to Nassau.. We plan to stay in the marina there and get some things done. This will definitely be a “work day” because this destination had all of the modern conveniences of civilization: a grocery store, laundry facility, and internet nearby! We also plan to get fuel and water for the boat before we head to the Berry Islands, then Key Largo on Monday about 5 days from now. Then it’s back towards Tampa after that.

Pictures of boat at anchorage, osprey nest, beach at White Point, Boat anchored off beach at White Point, Bill’s fish, Rainbow and rough ocean on the other side Black Point.



On Sunday, we continued to head north and stopped at Isaac Bay. We anchored by “snugging” up to the shore and dinghied ashore to explore the island. We counted three inhabitants here -- two rather large spiders (snuggly attached to their webs, thank goodness) and an osprey. Under the watchful eye of the osprey who was perched high above us on a tall decaying palm tree trunk, we walked the shore.

The next day, we sailed just around the corner to White Point. The shore was a little rocky in spots but we managed to find a place to land the dinghy so that we could go ashore. We walked the rather long beach and enjoyed the scenery. It was a peaceful walk until we noticed a helicopter flying over the island several times. It got rather close to beach at times. We were speculating that it could be someone looking at the island as a place to develop the property. We were hoping that this was not the case, as it is such an unspoiled area. It would be nice to leave things just as they are.

We discovered a large osprey nest perched high on a rock.. We were able to get close enough to see the intricacy of the weaving holding the combination of sticks and old fishing net together. It looked as though the nest was abandoned. I was wondering if the osprey that we saw yesterday may have once made its home there.

Bill has continued to try his hand at spear fishing. This time he was able to catch three small snappers. He saw some lobsters but it’s past the season. We’ll get ‘em next year! Overnight, we had a few light rain showers. We were surprised to look out over the ocean from our cockpit and see a beautiful rainbow early in the morning.

Yesterday, (Tuesday) we have stopped at Black Point. This is a small town that we visited a few weeks ago. Our “to-do” list was short. We hopped to get a few things at the store, do our laundry, and get a little water for our tanks. By 5 PM and the only thing that that we had scratched off of the list was the laundry! The store did not have any of the four items that we needed. If you could compare the grocery stores on these small islands to our 7-11 stores at home, our 7-11 would be like a well stocked grocery store! The prices here would be comparable to Neiman Marcus!!! Thank goodness we provisioned wisely and have most of the things that we need!

We were hoping that the pump on the city water spigot will soon be fixed. They said that it would be fixed by 11 this morning but by nightfall it was still just a drip! I guess we are still not used to this “Island Time, Mon”! Luckily, we have enough water to see us through for several days, but we’d like to just top our tanks off.
While checking email at Lorraine’s Café, Elaine struck up a conversation with a fellow cruiser. He showed her some pictures of a five and a half foot bull shark that he had caught from his boat in the anchorage just yesterday evening. I guess Bill won’t be taking his daily bath off of the back of our boat! Elaine will gladly share her shower water with him!!!

At high tide, we decided to take a walk through town and visit the “ocean side “ of the island. Since it was so windy and rough, the blow hole was quite a sight. Several times we watched it spew water and seaweed up into the air.! It was quite a sight to see!

We need to wait here at Black Point for a day to see if the water pump ashore gets fixed and perhaps for a little better weather. It’s blowing 25 out right now, which isn’t bad, except for dinghy ride to the dock, which can involve a good splash or two. We’l lhead to Big Major next, then up to Shroud and Hawksbill Cays.