Home again!

 Made it back to VT, arrived in Colchester to park the coach at 3:45, home around 5.

Met our new puppy, Skye!  Carlene got her on Sunday and so now she has another new person in her life.  But at least she has had my scent these 4 days.

Matamoras PA

 The Tri State RV park is at the juncture of NJ PA NY on the Delaware River.  280 miles from home.  Colchester anyway, home base for the coach.  Home tomorrow.  

It was a long quiet drive today.  We deliberately avoided Washington DC by taking some off- interstate roads.  A bit longer in both time and distance and much less driving stress. That’s a trade off.  

Some views along the road.  Some blossoming trees, Dogwood & Cherry?

Found some smoke on the road, turned out to be mocking truck still on the move.  Slowly

Around the campground, and down to the river, I had to detour my tour of the grounds, there were a dozen Canada Geese at the edge of the river, so I went around to the other side of them.

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Fredericksburg, VA

 Back to the Washington DC -Fredericksburg KOA

It was a busy day of navigating.  Mostly trying to find a route with a campground to stay at.   I wanted to be a bit farther north tonight because we have to winterize the coach tomorrow night so we can go home. But several campground are not open yet or are full. So after a couple hours of looking we ended up here.  Nice place, I like it, and it won’t be too bad tomorrow.  

Went out to Joes Crab Shack for dinner. The shrimp sampler was delicious!   Some grilled, some crab stuffed & bacon wrapped and some scampi.   And a couple crab legs from Mike's steamer bucket.  

Just a photo of the resituar and tonight   If you missed it, I put several photos up this morning of yesterdays campground  

OK, one more.  It’s after 9 and I’m walking around the park and find these bikes for rent.  Might be fun!

Tuesday morning

 A few more views from walking around this morning.  

It’s an intriguing place having horse pens at camp sites and a few other pens around the field   There are trails too   Great place if you’re traveling with horses   

Daily Walk Stables Campground, Vass NC

 Delightful day’s drive north through most of 3 states, GA, SC and part of NC.  Stopped again to see Mike’s uncle and aunt in southern Pines NC and go out to dinner with them.  Valenti’s Restaurant is mighty fine, delicious shrimp scampi for me.  I went for a walk around camp after dinner.

pleasantly uneventful day’s drive.  Noticed that instead of fully leafed out trees in FL we have trees just budding out in the Carolinas.  We also have more bugs on the windshield than we’ve usually had.

This equestrian campground is nice, with the 2 donkeys I mentioned last time.  You may recall that we stayed here on the trip south a month ago.

We did have a little excitement on the road today.  On a 3 lane interstate.  A semi came up in the left lane (we were in the middle lane) pulled up to within a few feet of a pick up and made a sudden unsignaled lane change to just in front of us.  Left just a couple feet between him and our front end.  He is either a superb judge of the length of his rig and distance to our coach, or just plain lucky that he didn’t take off our front end.  I tend to think just luck and good guess.  “Oh I can make that”.

Virginia tomorrow.

Some views of the road today

The donkeys are in the stall just behind and right of the coach.

Kingsland GA, Country Oaks Campground

 Tonight at Country Oaks campground.  Nice but tight, it is a big credit to Mike that he drove the coach around the camp with the Jeep in tow though a tight winding narrow road.  

The Top Gun Shootoff was this morning and it was the usual good entertaining spectacle.  They have some fine shooters in FL and surrounding states.  You should see some good photos from that.

Then we had a 3+ hour drive to get to GA.  Some very flat and straight roads, but still interesting because of the very southern forest all along the way.  Tavares was in the midst of the lake country, as well as Lake County, and the seemingly endless lakes gave it full credit.  

NC tomorrow night.

Some scenes from the shoot off   They did not load in order so the series is all mixed, but you might be able to see how it progressed if you concentrate on the people  

Ides of March, main match, day 2

 The second five stages of the match were this afternoon. I did well enough, missed one when my arm made an unplanned twitch, enough to pull the gun off target.  Gun E was clean up to stage 9 (?).  

At the awards tonight I took second place in my Frontiersman category and Gun E got first in his Sr. Frontier Cartridge Gunfighter category.  Yahoo!

Back in camp it seems that all the neighbors are partied out.  Everyone is indoors. 

Top Gun shoot off is tomorrow and then it’s all done.  

Ides of March, main match day 1

 Beautiful day for a cowboy shoot.  We started with a good breakfast of eggs with chorizo that I brought from AZ.  I usually cook breakfast at the shoots.  We had to be ready for 9 AM safety meeting and shooting soon thereafter.  Shot 5 stages today and will do 5 more tomorrow afternoon.  With 205 shooters we shoot in morning and afternoon shifts, switching each day.

Good stages, not too complicated, although I still got a P because I don’t seem to know what a “Z: is.  That’s too late in the alphabet for me.  Stage called for shooting 4 targets  in a Z pattern, top 2 left right bottom 2 left right.  I did left right right left.  Oh well.  And a couple misses when i lost the target in my smoke cloud.  

We did get the shower door finished this afternoon.  This evening we went to the neighbors next door for some more social time.  Good bunch.

Some photos from the day.  Me, Gun E, and Crazy Kajun.