Trip to Boise: Crossville to Lone Jack

It's been a few days since my last post. We stayed in Crossville, Tennessee, a couple of extra days to be able to attend the funeral of the father of my best friend in Lawrenceville, Georgia - about a 4 hour drive away.

We left Crossville on Tuesday, August 4, and drove through incredible heat. When we stopped at a rest area in Paducah, Kentucky, the temperature was 105 degrees. We drove on another 45 minutes to
Whittington Woods Campground in Whittington, Illinois, and stayed the two hottest contiguous days and nights on record there without satellite reception due to the density of trees in the campground. Had to revert to the antenna for local channels only, but the shade helped.

During our full day in the area, we tried to locate Tom Ryan, a lost friend of Bill's whose last known address as of 1975 was in Benton, Illinois. Benton is a farming community of around 7,000 people a little south of Whittington. The last public hanging in Illinois occurred there in 1928, when Charlie Birger, a Prohibition gangster, was hanged for the murder of Joe Adams, the mayor of the nearby town of West City.

In 1963, George Harrison of the Beatles stayed at his sister's home in Benton while on vacation. The house has become the Hard Day's Night Bed and Breakfast. He also sat in with a local band, "The Four Vests," at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in nearby Eldorado, Illinois.

In our search for Tom Ryan, we visited the Benton Chamber of Commerce, then the library, where we went back over old telephone books from the 1970's with no luck. Then we tried driving out to the Walmart off of I-57 where Bill had parked his 18-wheeler and Tom had picked him up by motorcycle in 1975. Bill remembered enough of the route of the motorcycle trip to get us to what he thought was the right area, but either his memory was wrong or the house had been torn down.

We left Whittington for the Lake Paradise RV Resort north of Lone Jack, Missouri, on Thursday, August 5. This is our second Coast-to-Coast campground. The site is on a hill with a great view of one of the many lakes in the campground. Nothing between us and the satellite but empty sky. Our only complaint is that the site is rather steep and rocky, so it took some doing to get the rig level.

We are staying here a total of 12 nights. We plan to poke around the Long Jack area while we are here. If we find anything interesting, I will post.

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The Cumberland Homesteads and Cumberland Mountain State Park

On Tuesday, July 27, Bill and I set out to explore the area around Crossville, Tennessee.

The Cumberland Homesteads National Historic District is one of the New Deal communities constructed during the Great Depression. Over 2000 families applied for one of the 252 planned homesteads. The winners then had to clear the land and construct the houses. They were paid fifty cents an hour - one third in cash and the rest toward the purchase of their homes.

The homes were constructed with indoor plumbing and wired for electricity, even though they were not connected to the grid until four years later. A hand pump in the kitchen was used to pump water into a reservoir in the attic. The homes are scattered all over the area. Most are easily recognizable, even if modifications have been made. One has been completely restored to its original state with period furnishings and serves as the Homesteads House Museum.

The Homesteads Tower was built in 1937-1938 to be used as the administrative offices of the Cumberland Homesteads. It is a museum today. Visitors can climb the 92 steps to the top of the tower and look down upon the nearby school and other community buildings, still in use.



Cumberland Mountain State Park is located on the Cumberland Plateau just south of Crossville, TN. The land was acquired by the Farm Security Administration in 1938 to provide a recreational area for the Cumberland Homesteaders. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Work Projects Administration (WPA) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) participated in the construction of the park. Alvin C. York, the most decorated US military hero of World War I, played by Gary Cooper in the movie "Sergeant York", was in charge of the CCC unit. The dam and bridge comprise the largest masonry structure ever built by the CCC. The park was opened to the public in 1940.

We hiked along the Byrd Creek trail and discovered this "suspended tree".



Crab Orchard stone was used in most of the construction of the homesteads and the park. If you are a Home and Garden channel follower, you probably have heard of it.

Trip to Boise: Gainesville to Crossville

It's been a long time since my last post. The knee surgery and physical therapy finally behind me, we pulled out from LMEA Longhollow Campground in Gainesville, GA, at about 11 AM on Sunday, July 25.

This trip to Boise should take us about a month. I planned the trip to take full advantage of our Coast to Coast campground membership - $10 a night for 7 or 14 days, depending on whether the campground is Classic or Deluxe. We plan to stay in Boise about a month, then head back to Longhollow for a while. Can't beat the camping rates there ($0.00!).

After a beautiful drive up US 127 north of Chattanooga averaging about 8 mpg, we arrived at our first Coast to Coast Classic campground: Breckenridge Lake RV Resort south of Crossville, TN. We will be here seven days. The campground is well-kept and off the beaten path. Our campground hostess is a fountain of knowledge about the area. Our friendly neighbors are an inspiration. He is 88 and she is 93, and they are still out here RVing.

Since this campground has only 30 amp service, we have to watch what we turn on. Switching the hot water heater and refrigerator over to gas only and shutting off everything else allows us to run the washer/dryer and the big air conditioner at the same time without tripping the breaker.

You can see the satellite dish and the cats' "Florida room" in the picture.

USS San Marcos Reunion in San Diego

We are attending our fourth reunion of the USS San Marcos, an amphibious assault ship on which Bill served while in the Navy. We flew into San Diego Thursday evening from Atlanta and are staying at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina. Our room has a great view of the city across the waters of the marina.

San Diego is the eighth largest city in the United States. The Navy and the Marines have facilities here. The size and expenditure for the Navy facility here rivals the one in Virginia.

Friday we took a harbor cruise, got a tour and dinner on one of the newest ships in the US Navy, the USS Wayne E. Meyer - a destroyer that can launch guided missiles. After two hours wandering around in Old Town, we took the tour bus back to the hotel and collapsed.

The pictures are from the harbor cruise.

Farewell to Florida

We came back to Georgia last Saturday night. The bad part of that is that it had finally started to warm up nicely in Jacksonville. We had a couple of good beach days the weekend before we left. At least the worst is also over here.

The good part is the campground here. We are again staying at the Longhollow campground on Lake Lanier. It is so peaceful. There are violets, star chickweed, and bluets in our campsite. I have been sitting outside in the evenings watching it get dark and listening to the frogs and crickets.

This month I am seeing all my doctors in preparation for knee surgery in early May. The last weekend in April we are flying out to San Diego for the reunion of the crew of the USS San Marcos - a ship on which Bill was stationed during his Navy days.

The pictures are from a drive we took down the east side of the St. Johns River in mid-March.

Fort Caroline National Monument

The weather was beautiful March 10th. We packed some snacks and headed to Fort Caroline National Monument, the site of a short-lived French settlement on the bank of the St. Johns River. It is located in north Jacksonville and is part of the Timuquan Ecological and Historic Park.

The French explorer Jean Ribault first sailed up the St. Johns River in 1562 looking for likely sites to establish an economic foothold for France in the New World. The colony was founded in 1564 by a group of French Huguenot settlers who were seeking religions freedom.

The Timuquan Indians lived in the area for over 4000 years before the arrival of Europeans. They initially befriended the French colonists, assisting with construction of the fort and providing food to keep the colonists from starving.

When the Spaniards, who had already settled in Florida, heard of the French settlement, they attacked. Jean Ribault's fleet was wiped outn and the settlement was destroyed in 1565.

The Timuquans fared no better than the French. The Spanish demanded tribute from them and attempted to convert them. From a population spread across north and central Florida and southeast Georgia before the European invasion, they dwindled to less than 550 people by 1698. There are no Native Americans that identify themselves as Timuquans today.

We walked the mile-long Hammock Nature Trail and visited the monument to Jean Ribault, then headed to Neptune Beach for a short walk on the beach.

North Florida Beaches

On February 27, we took a drive along northern Florida A1A, stopping for snacks at the Sandy Bottoms Grill in Fernandina Beach, then at a state park location on Amelia Island. We finished up with a walk across the dunes to the beach at Little Talbot Island State Park. It was definitely sweatshirt weather, but still nice to be on a beach.