Geoose

We decided to head further west on the Florida panhandle and beyond. Our destination was Gulf State Park near Gulf Shores, Alabama. We drove this route 20 years ago and the landscape has changed a lot. The entire Gulf Coast is developed between Panama City and Gulf Shores, about 120 miles, with many resorts, large hotels and amusement parks. This campground has over 400 paved camp sites, a pool, tennis courts, gulf course, waterpark and is close to the white sand beaches on the Gulf. We got a very nice camp site next to a small river. We hope the alligators stay in the river. This area was decimated in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan. There are very few trees left in the campground, but lots of other vegetation has grown back. We are giving Gulf State ... read more

Karen retired after 9 years at the Baraboo library on Nov 2nd. Wayne had been semi -retired for the past 4 yehars and fully retired the last 10 months. Our Baraboo home was sold to son Eric and daughter-in-law Pam last July. We purchased a 5th wheel travel trailer and have been camping out in their back yard since then. We are planning on spending about the next 6 months traveling and living in our 5th wheel trailer. Our only firm plans are to go where it is warm and be in Arizona in February since we have plane reservations to fly from Phoenix to San Jose, Costa Rica on February 28th. We will try to update this travel blog once a week while we are traveling. We left home on Monday, November 5th. We had ... read more

It's been a while since I wrote a travel blog. Well I am off on an other cruise. This time Karen is coming with and we will be on a much bigger boat than usual, and I wont be driving. We are headed to the Western Caribbean on the cruise ship, Norwegian Spirit. People may wonder if we have any concerns after the Costa Concordia sank off Italy last month. We have more confidence in the Norwegian Captains than Italian Captains so we aren't worried. This is the boat! This is the route. As many of you know Karen isn't so keen on flying, so we will be taking Amtrak to New Orleans. We will be leaving from Wisconsin Dells on Feb 24th and from New Orleans on the 26th. Will try nto add to this ... read more

March 31 - April 2 The Road Home We completed our packing and were ready to start the long trip home at 10:30 AM on Wed. March 31. We made it across the Florida boarder to southern Georgia the first day. Our trip took us around Atlanta and through Chattanooga and Nashville TN. We had dinner the second evening in Paducah, KY near where we started our trip on Kentucky Lake last October. The last day we had a good tail wind as we drove up the length of Illinois. It would have been a good spinnaker run if we had our mast up. We finished our 1,500 mile road trip in Baraboo at 3:30PM on April 2nd. We will be with our loved ones for Easter. Rick and Wayne are still good friends after being ... read more

March 27 Day 20 Naples to Ft. Myers Traveled 52 miles We started the day by sailing with several other boats that were headed out to the Gulf for a sail boat race. They all went to the start line and we continued north towards Ft. Myers Beach. We had east winds again so were able to hoist the gennaker and have a fun sail for several hours. The wind died about 1:00 PM so started up the iron spinnaker and motor sailed for the rest of the day. Since this was a Saturday and the weather was beautiful everyone in Ft. Myers was out on their boats. We had very congested waters in the channel where we entered the Caloosahatchee River. We were traveling at 6 mph and every one else was going 30. And ... read more