The Tree That Owns Itself

Back in the late 1800’s, Professor William H. Jackson willed the deed to a tree and the land in an eight feet circle around the tree to the tree itself due to his “great love” of the tree. In 1942, the 400 year-old tree fell in a storm. A local garden club planted an acorn from the original tree in the same place in 1946. No one has fought this will and the town of Athens is rather proud of this unusual land owner.

John is often embarrassed about the weird places we visit. The 70 year-old tree was up a steep cobblestone road and in front of a private house in small neighborhood. In this case, a group of people were at the tree at the same time. So weren’t the only bizarre people visiting the tree and I got a picture of them too!

Athens also has the World’s Only Double-Barreled Cannon. It was designed during the Civil War to have the two balls chained together so that they would spin in flight and cause more damage. Unfortunately, the powder in the two chambers wouldn’t ignite at the exact same moment. There are stories how the cannon destroyed trees, a cornfield, and even killed a cow during tests. Unfortunately, none of these were the actual target. The cannons were never used in battle, but it is now aimed North in case us Yankees attack.

Tornadoes and a Stupid Garmin GPS

After a dry winter, we’re hitting a lot of rain. Heavy rain can be bad if you have a leak in the RV, but tornadoes are pretty scary. This morning we had a tornado warning. The best we could do would be to go to the camp bathrooms as a shelter, but we were OK with nothing in our immediate area. The two red flags in the picture means the beaches were closed to swimming from the day before the major storm. 

As we drove to our next stop, we saw the results of two tornadoes with big trees ripped out of the ground and tarps on a few houses. At our stop near Columbus, Georgia we heard they had tornadoes north, south, and west of the campgrounds. Again at our next stop, we heard about tornadoes north of us. Definitely several exciting days but there was no real danger. 

We’ve always had a volatile relationship with our GPS lady. Today she thought she’d save us 0.1 mile or so by a short-cut between two good intersecting roads. This is the dirt road with mud puddles she put us on in our RV and pulling a car (all dirtier now). We were not happy with her and there were a few bad words spoken while bumping along this road. Hopefully she’ll learn, but I doubt it.

Air Force Armament Museum

We’ve been to quite a few military museums, but there’s always something to learn. The museum is full of different bombs and planes along with stories about them. Did you know that the Pacific War during WWII was considered a “holding war”? The main effort was made in Europe to stop Hitler while the Pacific was fought more defensively until after the European war was finished. It makes sense, but I never thought of it that way.

This is a MOAB (massive Ordnance Air Blast or Mother of All Bombs). It’s the largest-ever satellite-guided non-nuclear bomb.

I liked the artwork. The first is on a large drone.

Henderson Beach – Double Rainbow!

Farther north is Destin and Henderson Beach State Park. The park is listed in many top state parks. Unfortunately for us, we’re in a rainy season with about a week of rain in the forecast. Our first day we made it out to the beach for a little while. There were red flags (heavy waves and undertow) along with purple flags (dangerous marine life) out. The dangerous marine life is man-of-war. I love the colors in the floating portion while I’m not eager to experience the stings in the tentacle portion.

This was just a gorgeous piece of art. This shoe washed up on the beach and was decorated by all these shells with living creatures all over it.

Gult Coast Lulpine on the beach dunes. This species is considered threatened.

And we saw a double rainbow! Not the normal rainbows, but the type around the sun (a halo). Pretty special!

Spring Break at Panama City Beach

OK, this isn’t a story of debauchery at the beach. We’ve hit the tail end of spring break at the beach. There are big blinking light signs everywhere saying no alcohol at the beach as the town tries to keep the “rowdies” in control. All of that is farther down the beach.

We’re staying at St. Andrews State Park. Other than it’s very hard to get a few nights here (we were able to get only 2 nights), it’s a great park. It’s the only park I’ve seen where you can do laundry in view of the water (lagoon side). Having the bikes has been perfect, since the actual gulf side beach is a longer distance (1 mile?). 

  

The beach sand is very white and the waves are fairly high. The beach has been listed in several top 10 lists over the years. This is supposed to be a good beach for surfboarding for Florida. We saw several people with boards. Every once in a while they’d catch a wave for a few seconds. But it’s certainly not big waves like you see in the movies.

In the park they had a turpentine still and saw mill from the early 1900’s. I liked the saw mill park since it reminded me of Dudley Do-Right and how someone was always tied to the conveyor going into the saw. It even has a big lever that is pulled or pushed by the good guys and bad guys.

Paynes Prairie State Park

We bought bikes from John’s brother who was going to sell them at a garage sale. We’d been talking about getting bikes, but just didn’t know where to put them and didn’t want to go to the hassle of buying them. Anyhow, I love having them. We spent a few days enjoying the trails at Paynes Prairie State Park.

It’s not just spring here, but summer since it’s hot, muggy, and buggy. The ‘prairie’ is prairie in spots, but also a swamp in spots. You can't see it, but there are two dark spots in the prairie picture that are wild horses. More prevalent are the mosquitoes which are out in full force. OK, the picture is a dragonfly. It’s hard to take a picture of a mosquito.

We visited a nearby state park that has a large (500’ across) sinkhole. The fun part is going down the 232 steps (and back up again, of course). We talked to one guy who did this 6 times. More power to him!

More RV Excitement

While I haven’t been writing much in the blog, things have been exciting for RV living.

The toilet seal has been leaking. That doesn’t mean it leaks on the floor, the liquids just drains to the tank before you can flush. Not to go into too much detail, but you don’t want your liquids to leave the toilet before you can get the solids flushed. John bought a new seal (it took stopping at 3 different Camping World’s to find the right model). There’s a lot of work involved, but he changed the seal.

We stayed several days with his brother Jack and sister-in-law Becky. That gave John the opportunity to do some more intense RV repairs. First, John changed the anode rod on the hot water heater plus flushed out the crud in the bottom of the tank. It hadn’t caused us any issues, but just good maintenance.

Next, we’ve been having problem with the truck portion of the RV. When we push the motor hard like driving up a hill (and hills aren’t much in Florida), the fan stops on the air conditioner. John did a lot of internet research (like a full day) to find out this is a frequent problem with the F450 trucks. Something goes wrong with the vacuum system. The biggest problem is that there is no access to fix it. People talk about taking 14 hours to get to the problem or paying $500-1000 for a shop to fix it. The less expensive fix is to get hose and a vacuum tank/check valve, and duplicate the system in an area that can be easily reached then to pipe it back. As I said, after doing a lot of research (he has MUCH more patience and persistence than I do!) he found out where all the hidden connections are to fix it, bought the parts, and fixed it. The truck works fine now and it only cost ~$20.

As we were driving along to our next campground all happy that things were fixed in the RV, a tire blew. Luckily, we were within 2 miles of a garage. Since the 2^nd tire beside the bad tire was good, we could still slowly drive. They found a nail in the tire (we don’t know where we picked that up) that had ripped the tire into shreds. They quickly ordered a new tire and replaced it for a very good price. Thank you to Thompson Garage in Lawton FL!

Now, we were really happy that things were all fixed as we set up at our campsite. Suddenly, we heard a loud explosion of air as another tire blew. Two flat tires in one day! Again, luckily, John had the blocks and tools to remove the tire (though we waited until the next day since it was too late to find an open store anyhow). We found a tire store several miles away and bought a new tire. The failure was different from the first, so we really don’t know what happened.

  

Now we were happy (and a bit tired) that everything was fixed and then I got a call from Discover Card. Turns out someone got our credit card number and was trying to buy things in another city in Florida. The good part is that they found it and called us the same day. Given all our traveling around, I’m not sure how the fraud detection program works, but apparently it works very well. We don’t have to pay anything, but they had to deactivate our current cards. Given we’re traveling all the time; Discover shipped the cards to the state park where we’re staying by the next day.  Nice service!

Now, I’m almost scared to be happy.