Catching up...Part 1 AZ to FL Fall 2011

Tombstone,Arizona

 Since it's been such a long time since the last post, a bit of catching up is in order! By the way, this is being written on Memorial Day Saturday 2012, from Sheridan, Wyoming, a beautiful small town at the foothills of The Big Horn Mountains. The temperature is a balmy 44 degrees, and it's snowing all around us. On May 15th, 2012 we celebrated our first year of living and working and traveling in our RV. You might think from the last post that we never left the West after visiting Gallup. Well, that is not exactly the case! We are in Sheridan after more than a 4,000 mile trek from the Southwest last fall to South Florida and then back through the Gulf Coast and the Midwest to our present location. Here are some highlights of those travels.

Don & Greta in Flag

 We left Gallup, New Mexico in the fall of 2011 and headed to spend some time in Northern and Central Arizona. Munds Park is a small village about 17 miles south of Flagstaff. We spent almost a whole month there and left because it........started snowing...in September! While there, we spent lots of time in Flagstaff, had our bikes refitted with new tires, drank coffee at the great little bar in the old Hotel Monte Vista, visited with our friends Don and Greta (on the right here,who drove up I-17 a couple of times from Scottsdale to get out of the heat), hiked the Cococino Mountains behind our RV park, and drove over to Sedona a couple of times (one visit there brought us in touch with my college roommate, Bruce and his wife, Marsha from New Jersey. They were visiting with their kids in Phoenix and drove up to see us too!). We also made an encore trip over to the Grand Canyon for a little hiking. When the snow started falling, we packed up and traveled about 40 miles downhill to Camp Verde, Arizona, which is a little closer to Sedona and especially one of our favorite new towns anywhere, Cottonwood. With it's active retail climate and very cool little original downtown area, Cottonwood became our new go-to spot (at the expense of visits to Sedona). Don and Greta even did drives to meet us there too. One day we all drove up to the old mining town of Jerome, which is literally hanging off the edge of a mountain, and had a great time looking in all the little shops and walking the historic downtown. As the weather cooled, we kept creeping down to lower altitudes and wound up back in Scottsdale for more hangin' out with our buddies. In October, we finally began to head East for our eventual landing for the deep winter months in Miami with brother Ed and sister (in-law) Pat. We stopped for several days in Tucson, then rolled on through Tombstone, back through New Mexico to Las Cruces/El Paso, stopped at Balmorhea State Park in West Texas, and kept tracking South by East along I-10 towards San Antonio.

At The Grand Canyon

 Once reaching San Antonio (well almost...the quaint, historic little town near San Antonio, Boerne), we put down anchor for around a week, long enough for still another visit, this time with close Dallas friends, Bunny and Ivan. They had come down for business, and we waited for them to finish so we could see them. Halloween night we hung out in the Riverwalk area, we visited The Alamo again to see Mary Ann's ancestor's names on the plaques all over it, and went to Earl Abel's and a few other terrific San Antonio eateries. Then we headed to Houston, but not before a quick stop in Sealy TX for a total Harvey tire change (those are six big honkin' tires ya'll!). About 2 hours and we were on our way...and Harvey had some fine new shoes!! A quick stay near downtown Houston and a Sunday night in Rice Village (always a favorite area for us) and then on to Louisiana.
 Our next stop was off I-10 finally because we wanted to stay along the River Road, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The Poche Plantation is a neat RV park in Convent Louisiana on the grounds of a old plantation. The current house dates back to 1867. There we based ourselves for a trip in Smarty to Baton Rouge to tour the river town and many (stopped counting, actually) trips to a little crossing in the road called Sorrento, La. to The Coffee House. If you are a fan of beignets and Cafe Au lait, this place is worth the way off the road trip. Best ever...even better than Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans! Period.

All the sidewalks in Fairhope look
like this...

Two short trips into New Orleans, mostly to eat at places like Mothers, Central Grocery, and Cafe Du Monde, and we headed over along the Gulf towards an area we'd only heard snips of info on, Fairhope, Alabama. After turning south past Mobile, we drove down Old Highway 98 through one small town after the next in the area known as The Eastern Shore. We intended to stay overnight and ended up spending 3 weeks there. Fairhope has already been discovered by many travelers before us! There are plates from everywhere. We met folks from back East, the Midwest, Texas, just about everywhere. 

Monkeying around on Las Olas Blvd, Ft Lauderdale

It's an idyllic little town that looks like some designer from Disney went there to make it look real...only it is real! Enough said. We hope it doesn't catch on any more than it already has for fear it might disappear as we know it. Next, on along the Gulf into Florida. We spent a few nights in Destin, then to Bushnell in Central Florida. We took Harvey to a terrific RV indoor storage facility near Orlando, unloaded him, and drove Smarty and a rental car to Miami to stay with Pat and Eddie from Christmas to the end of February. We took alot of our cooking supplies with us and had fun preparing meals for the four of us, drove down to the upper keys for Stone Crabs, searched for new Latin restaurants, hung out on Lincoln Road at the Nespresso Store (we're addicted to the stuff!) and the Florida outpost of the NYC burger institution, The Shake Shak (addicted to those too!). We took Ed and Pat's boat out a few times, set up their new 83" 3D TV for them, and just had a great time visiting with family for almost two months.

Ed & Pat on Miami Beach with us

 At the end of February, it was time to get back on the road and restart our amazing American Odyssey. We left Ed and Pat and went back up to Orlando to get Harvey out of the kennel. After a couple of visits to Whole Foods, Publix, Penzeys Spices, and a few other merchants, we were stocked back up and ready to roll again. Part 2 of the catch up will head us back up the Florida Peninsula...stay tuned.