We Have Not Fallen Off the Face of the Earth.

I know, I know it has been awhile since the last addition to our full-timing journal.  From the moment we left St. Simons Island in March we have either been driving or unable to get connected.  And then there is the lazy factor, even the times when I could, briefly, get connected I just didn't get to doing the writing thing.

However, Cyndee has been gently encouraging me to get back to writing and chronicling our travels and volunteering adventures.  My last journal entry was just as we were preparing to leave our visitor center host position at Ft Frederica National Monument and our campsite on St Simons Island, GA.  Living among the moss draped oaks and pre-revolutionary war history was a hoot.  Our supervisor ranger was a delight to work with.  The fort is a very small operation and we got to know every single staff member, all seven of them.  With the exception of our supervisor, I have never seen so much office drama in such a small staff in all my years.  That includes my 35 years working for 5 industry giants in 3 states and 5 cities.  Even though all of our volunteer positions for the past two years have been with the National Park System, the culture from park to park couldn't be more different.  And now we are moving to a Georgia State Park, yet another culture we'll have to figure out.

But first we have to get to the factory in Kansas where our rig was built.  A leak we discovered upon arrival in St. Simons may have caused extensive damage, in the form of mold and wood rot, in between the walls and flooring of our master closet and bedroom.  It's a solid 1,000 miles from St. Simons to Junction City, KS., at least by the route we are taking.  We are going to avoid the interstate highways, not that there are that many to use between coastal Georgia and central Kansas.  Since I don't know the cause of the failure of the trailer brakes I prefer to stay on state and county roads where the speeds are lower and access to service seems to be closer.  Plus we find that traffic is far more docile which makes it easier to take in the scenery that is usually better.

Even though we are just leaving Georgia for a short time there is still some angst about being out of reach of the new grandbaby.  They change so much every day in the first year and neither Cyndee or I wanted to miss any of it.  While we may not have taken many pictures of our St. Simons adventure, we do have lots and lots of baby pictures.

A month without holding this little bundle of joy is going to be tough to do.

We have roughly a month until our next assignment starts, our expectations are that the repairs will not take that long but it is still winter time where we are headed and our travel time and route will be influenced by Mother Nature.  In the two weeks leading up to our planned departure date there were significant ice storms all across our planned route.  We were researching road conditions right up until the night before our departure and had to make the decision to only go a short distance our first day because ice was still on roads all the way down into Tennessee and Arkansas.  But they were improving each day so we are just going to get up to the ice-line and move north with the thaw each day.

As it turns out, that strategy worked pretty well.  We drove a comfortable distance each day and found a campground that was thawed out and open for business.  We spent the better part of a week getting to the factory but pulled in on our scheduled arrival day.