Updating Our States Visited Map…

Many miles traveled, lots of sights seen, and a couple of momentous moments later, I think it’s time to catch up the blog.

Since my last post, way back in December, 2011, we’ve traveled across the Mississippi Gulf Coast, stopped in Abbeville, Louisiana to stay at Betty’s RV Park and partake of her famous Happy Hours, and made a visit to our Livingston “home” at Rainbow’s End. 

In Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, we saw this old, damaged steeple sitting behind a beautiful new church.  When I saw pictures of the area taken right after Katrina hit, this steeple was all that was left of the church.  The congregation left it where it sat and built their new church around it.

This is Betty’s patio, where happy hours are held in nice weather, every afternoon at 4:30.

We spent a month at Castroville, Texas parked next to Deb and Rod Kendall.  Another month went by in Stonewall, Texas just a few miles from Fredericksburg in the beautiful Texas Hill Country.  While we were there, we experienced Mother Nature’s best flower show ever with the incredible Bluebonnet display.

We took a 13-mile loop to see the flowers, it took us over 3 hours!  Even though we took hundreds of pictures, it’s impossible to convey the incredible number of flowers and the sweet aromas!

As the weather warmed, we made our way north towards Amarillo, with a quick stop at Lake Brownwood on the way.  We were fortunate to spend six weeks parked at friends Vickie and Don’s special RV spot in their backyard.

As May progressed, we made our way to the same ol’ KOA in Fountain where we stay while visiting family and friends in Colorado Springs.

Our oldest granddaughter, Elyse, graduated from Smoky Hill High School on May 24.  We were so honored to be able to attend this momentous occasion!  She will be attending Colorado State University in Fort Collins this fall.  Congratulations, Elyse!

The other big family news is that our son in law, Paul has accepted a job in Amarillo, so he and daughter Robin, along with grandson Jacob are in the process of moving there this coming week.  We wish them great happiness and success in this new venture!

With our summer plans laid out on an Excel spreadsheet, complete with a whole list of reservations (I must have been channeling Terry Guiler to have made all these reservations), we set out on our current adventure.

Since the middle of June we’ve crossed Kansas and Missouri with just quick overnight stops.  We added Illinois to our states visited map with a stay at Edwardsville, a few miles east of St. Louis.  We had a great day visiting the famous Gateway to the West!  The ride up in the little capsule was very interesting, to say the least!

After a week of catching up with ourselves, we moved on across Indiana with an overnight stop on the way to another new-to-us-state, Ohio where we spent a week, visiting the Football Hall of Fame in Canton and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.  We took drives around the countryside, taking in all the green, lush landscapes.  Such a pretty state!  We also got a glimpse of our 4th Great Lake – Erie.

We’re almost caught up now – we’ve just moved along to yet another state we’ve not visited before - New York State.  We are staying at a park located off I-90 between Buffalo and Rochester.  Yesterday we took an exploratory drive and got to see the 5th Great Lake – Ontario.

Jasmine and Mr. Bo Jangles posed in their Halti leads in front of Lake Ontario:

We stopped in Albion to watch a boat on the Erie Canal go under the drawbridge we’d just crossed:

Today was the day to go see the really big waterfall:

This is the American Falls with the Horseshoe Falls in the background:

From our ride on the Maid of the Mist, looking up at the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls:

By the time the boat got to the Horseshoe Falls, it was way too wet to even see the falls very well, much less take pictures.  Then by the time we got back to the boat dock, it was raining – hard!  So we called it a day and came back to the RV Park to walk the dogs and relax for the evening.  Now the sun is peeking out and the park is filling up, people on vacation getting ready to celebrate Independence Day!

As we celebrate here with fireworks tomorrow, our thoughts and prayers are with those folks in Colorado Springs who lost their homes to the Waldo Canyon Fire.