25 posts tagged “travel”

Pat's sister and her hubby have a new-to-them yacht. She's a great boat with nice bones that just needs a little TLC. They invited us down there (Chauvin) to spend the weekend with them in the Gulf boating and fishing. We arrived in time on Friday night to load most of our stuff on the boat, eat a sandwich, shower and sleep. First thing Saturday morning were here on our way!

We had to pass the drawbridge..swingbridge so Reynold radioed in to have it opened for us. On the way we passed this cool old boat.

 

It reminds me of our camping neighbors at Black Lake....one of them is named Skeeter. The bridge swung open to let us pass.

 

There are lots of cool things to look at along the bayou. The guys spotted a 7 foot alligator while we girls were unloading and putting away the groceries and making more coffee.

 

We were worried about the weather holding out but it turned out to be of no concern. We never even saw a threatening cloud.

Reynold let Pat drive.

 

We passed this rig they call the spider.

 

We also met a couple of boats being escorted in by the water patrol and game wardens...wonder what they did?

 

They yelled and waved to us as we passed...told us to have a great day...didn't look like they were having such a good day.

Reynold radioed his brother, Don, who is the captain of Capt. Wayne, a 54 foot shrimp trawler, to meet us so we could get some bait shrimp from him on our way to the island. We spotted him about the same time that Reynold realized that there was a problem with the yacht.

 

We had burned up the clutch in the yacht...bummer. Luckily Don was on his way back in with his catch when we met him so he was able to give us a tow into Cocodrie.

 

So, while we were being towed, the guys continued to assess the situation and make the necessary adjustments to prevent further damage to the yacht.

 

 

enough for today....tomorrow...the rest of the story!

Especially NOT when you're headed to Florida for two glorious weeks of sun, surf, snorkeling and seafood! I've been getting ready to go by replacing most of our beach gear and my footwear. I found these glorious flip flops at the Beehive in Ruston. I got brown and blue ones to wear with my new swimsuit.

 

And peace to wear with everything.

 

I couldn't resist the camo sparkly ones even though I have very little to wear with them.

 

I got this great bag to take to the beach when I wear my black swimsuit.

 

Don't 'cha just love the fleur de lis flip flops? I couldn't resist the blue bag and had it monogrammed with a brown B to coordinate with my new blue and brown swimsuit.

 

Tomorrow, hopefully by noon, we'll be headed here:

 

Be back in mid-July! Happy Summer!

There's a really nice OHV/Multi use trail near Mena, Arkansas called Wolf Pen Gap. There are about 31 miles of open trails in, around, and through the mountains and woods of the Ouachita National Forest. These trails are nicely maintained by the United States Forest Service. We are most definitely novice riders although we've owned ATV's or motorcycles since we were kids and these trails fit the bill. Corey had left his Rhino in our care so we took it because if its comfortable ride and ability for us to sit side by side. We had been given some good advice about local trails but ultimately decided to just stick to Wolf Pen Gap due to time constraints and lack of knowledge about the local area. Had we been staying or camping in a more populated area, we probably would have discovered more areas to ride and sights to see but, as I mentioned yesterday, we were isolated on top of a hill. The trails are very scenic, usually, but they had been doing a lot of 'control burning' in the previous couple of weeks and much of the area was burned over and a little smelly.

We stayed on the really easy trails for the morning but then graduated to the 'more difficult' trails by noon.

I refused to try these though!

 

 

 

The dogwoods were in full bloom, the butterflies were out in force (once it warmed up a bit) and the wildflowers were fascinating.

 

There are numerous stream crossings. Most now have bridges built over them to prevent damage but there are still a couple that you cross through the water.

 

 

That one was up about 6" in the floor board! Hard to take pictures when you're holding both feet up.

 

 

 

There are interesting things to see along the way like this old abandoned mine (silver I think). The view inside isn't as grand. Why do people have to throw their trash on the ground!?!?

 

As I mentioned before, the butterflies were out. This one was especially fond of dog turds.

 

If I were a beautiful butterfly, I'd probably hang out here on these adorable wild irises.

 

 

 

 

Some of the views were really nice though once you rode to the top.

 

 

But then you had to make your way down again.

 

After all the riding we relaxed by the campfire at the cabin and grilled dinner.

 

Watched the sunset and tried out the hammock. No relaxing in that thing though! It hangs out over the hill...if you fall out you'll be at the bottom before you stop rolling.

 

More from our trip tomorrow! Have a great day!!

 

Pat and I decided to hang around town for Easter weekend since it was raining anyway. We enjoyed visiting with family Easter Sunday and seeing the pics of the new boat his sister and her hubby are buying. Corey and Brittney left for their newest job assignment in Florida Monday morning. after sitting around looking at each other for a couple of hours, we decided to go to Arkansas and ride the Rhino in the mountains. I called and found a cabin to rent for a few days since we really aren't geared up to tow the ATV with the motorhome and off we went! I love impromptu trips.

 

Our litte cabin was rented through Adventure Trails Retreat. It was quiet and secluded but near the mountains atop a hill with a nice view. We enjoyed the outdoor cooking area and the jacuzzi tub!

 

 

 

 

The wood were full of wildflowers! The violets growing along the hillsides were absolutely beautiful!

There were also lots of these

 

and a lot of these in both purple and white

 

as well as a few of these

 

Mena was in better shape than I expected. Most of the tornado damage was residential but some of the roads were still closed when we were there so we probably didn't see the worst of it. I'll cover some of the really neat things we saw while riding the Wolf Pen Gap trails in my next post. Have a great Saturday!

In my last post I mentioned meeting the North Louisiana Geocachers at the Pickle Barrell in West Monroe for lunch on Saturday. What a great group they are! While I was there ‘pickin their brains’ about all things related to geocaching, I mentioned how cool it was to find nice geocoins. LSUFan brought me one of the prettiest coins I’d seen..the Louisiana geocoin from 2006. I took a pic of the front and the back to show you what it looks like but the pictures really don’t do it justice.

 

 

It’s a really pretty coin. I’m so excited to be attending their event (see link in previous post) next weekend. Just wanted to share that with you. Thanks Bobby!  Have a great day!

Due to the extremely nasty weather of late, Pat and I couldn't go fishing this weekend as planned so that just leaves one option open...geocaching! Don't get me wrong, I would generally rather geocache than fish but we pretty much do things as a family. We headed over to the Monroe area because we also knew that the North Louisiana Geocachers would be meeting for lunch at the Pickle Barrell and we thought we might drop by to see what to expect from their "Third Time's a Charm" event next weekend.

Wow! What a totally dedicated group! They have all sorts of very cool things lined up for next weekend. Lots of activities for kids, a group night cache run on Friday night and a bunch of event caches...even a Whereigo! Don't worry that you don't have the equipment...they'll loan you theirs! How cool is that?!? They're cooking for everyone, have a really cool GeoBingo Game planned, and Easter Egg hunt for the kids, as well as goodie bags and door prizes. If you geocache, think you'd like to know more about geocaching, Lake D'Arbonne State Park is the place to be next weekend. Most of the activities are on Saturday but the night caching expedition will meet up at the Visitor's Center at 7pm Friday for those who want to pass a good time Friday night. I've never been to a geocaching event but this one sounds like a good one to start with. Here's the link for more information The Third Times a Charm Event

So, as I mentioned, we did pick up a few caches both before and after the lunch at the PB. I truly don't enjoy city caching much because you have to be so careful not to attract attention to the cache so that it doesn't get 'muggled'. We had to pass on no less that 3 caches yesterday because there were simply too many people around to grab them without being noticed. One of them was here

 

at this pretty lake near West Monroe. We did find one at another park on the lake earlier though.

One of the most fascinating things about geocaching is learning history that you didn't know existed. Like, for instance, that a very famous dog is buried at a school in Monroe.

 

Georgia Tucker is an amazing old elementary school with an interesting history. The story of how the dog came to be buried at this school in Louisiana is in the link to the school.

Geocaching will take you places that you might not have found but for the hunting of the cache...like this sculpture in downtown Monroe.

 

 I knew about the next place but had never been to the Ouachita Riverwalk. There was even someone water skiing even though it was only 50 degrees F out. Beautiful view though.

 

All in all...abandoned geocaches and all...it was a great day. We enjoyed meeting all our fellow geocachers and listening to their amazing stories. I'm looking forward to "picking their brains" at the event and learning more about Whereigo. We plan to place our first hides soon and want to be sure we do it right and that they're interesting for the finders.

I really should get busy scrapping all this activity but there will be plenty of time for that this summer when it's too hot to play outside. Happy camping, scrapping and caching!

Marvelous March has become Messy March. I KNEW I would jinx it by bragging on a great month last week. We've had nonstop rain and cold all weekend. Pat and I are stir-crazy so we decided to head to Monroe yesterday, with a little detour through Ruston to take Taylor some supplies, to do a little shopping and geocaching. Pat picked up a new pair of shoes at Academy and we enjoyed wandering around looking at stuff.

We wanted to do a little geocaching since we couldn't find any travel trailers to look at for Corey and Brittney. We selected a couple in a little-known park called Restoration Park. It is a restored gravel pit? I think. It was restored to a wetland area nestled next to I-20 in West Monroe. It has a nice, graveled walking trail that is 2.5 miles. I think we covered it all! Some places were a little tricky since we'd had so much rain but it was fun. Found both the caches. Here's a shot from one of the overlook areas.

 

After picking up 9 more caches in West Monroe and Monroe we headed to Riverside Coney Island to enjoy some music and crawfish. They were deeeeelicious!

 

The photo is titled "sorry" because I had to apologize for posting it for Corey and Brittney to see. They're working near Austin, Texas and don't have access to these wonderful crustaceans right now. Hopefully, they'll be back home before the end of the season.

Time for us to head to Mass. Have a super Sunday!

March has, at least for the past few years, been a horrible month. It may be on it's way to redeeming itself this year though, although I probably shouldn't speak so soon it will just jinx the rest of my month. Pat had to work this weekend and I found myself home and bored out of my mind so I asked my friend Kathy to come geocaching with me today. She's the person who first told me about geocaching, knowing that I would LOVE it, so it seemed fitting to ask her to help me seek out 10 BRAND SPANKING NEWLY PUBLISHED CACHES very near where she lives. I had one FTF (First to Find) under my belt so we set out with a goal to find 10 more today. Here's a picture of Kathy with her very first FTF,Uhmmm, actually that's me pulling it out of it's hiding spot..guess she didn't send me the one I took of her.

 

We had quite a few navigating adventures on this cache run. Not the least of which was walking at least a mile down a logging road only to discover that we had apparently started on the wrong end and didn't ever get to the cache!

There were some very interesting hiding places.

 

 

 

Some I had to really stretch to reach.

 

 

And some that were no trouble at all.

 

 

But wouldn't you know it...my 100th cache was almost a DNF (did not find) but I was too stubborn to give up. I left an unusual amount of DNA in these bushes locating this cache. Good thing it had a first aid kit in it. I needed it!

 

 

I thought we'd both starve before finding the last cache of the day here at Uncle Earl's monument (although you can plainly tell that I never starve).

 

The butterflies were out and it was a really nice day for caching. Kathy even found a beautiful butterfly that was perfectly preserved to give my boss ( a huge fan of butterflies). When the day ended, I had 101 geocaches logged as found and Kathy and I split the 10 FTF ribbons for the day.

 

 

 

It turned out to be a great weekend even though I had to stay home. Hope yours was too!

 

The last morning of the trip, we had scheduled a tour of the wineries through the Lodge. The trip was cancelled due to lack of participation so we just headed to Altus on our own to do a tour. We began by stopping at the Poste Families Store to do a little tasting and buy a few bottles of wine.

Our next stop was Wiederkehr Wine Cellars which has been in business since 1880. The signpost below makes you wonder if you're still in Arkansas.

 

We started our tour at noon. First we went down into the cellars. The kegs are really very old and smell delighful!

 

The old wine press is beautiful.

 

After tasting a half-dozen or so wines, we headed over to their charming Weinkeller Restaurant for a delicious lunch of Swiss and German influenced cuisine. The candlelit tables are located in the original wine cellar and is on the National Register of Historical Places. It is quite a treat to visit and the food is wonderful.

 

We ordered our black forest cake and apple dumplings to go and waddled over to the Wine Shoppe to spend way too much on wines to bring home. I figure I have enough to last at least a year or two. But that's good because their nicer wines are difficult to find in stores.

On the way back up the mountain, we stopped at Cove Lake to get a picture. We would have liked to stay longer but it was very cold and windy.

 

I'd love to go back up there when the weather is warmer. We had cake and dumpings for supper and got things in order to head home on Wednesday morning. It was a fabulous trip and just enough of a trip to feel like I'd had a vacation.

Oops! I almost forgot, the Blog Frames which produced such nice rounded edges on all my pics in this post are by Lanne and can be found here ON SALE 20% OFF. While you're there, check out all the beautiful new products in the store. SMJ has some awesome free goodies there as well that would make nice gifts for teachers and friends.

After our lovely scenic drive. We started hiking. Mom really loves walking through the woods and we had several geocaches that were located along the trails that we wanted to try to find. We began with Greenfield trail.

 

It was really cold and windy but the hike was beautiful. We located our first Arkansas cache!

 

 

With one under our belt we headed for another cache along the Benefield Trail. That has to be the nicest trail I've been on...so clean and level. You can really enjoy the scenery without worrying about stepping in a hole or tripping on a rock. Our second cache was spotted by Mom.

 

It was still cold but we weren't ready to quit hiking so we headed for another nearby cache. I thought I was going to give Mom a heart attack when I parked on the roadside near the edge of a dropoff. She really doesn't like being near the edge of a cliff!

Here she is checking out all the treasures in the cache while I signed the log.

 

After lunch and a brief nap, we were determined to climb to the highest point in Arkansas, Signal Hill to locate a benchmark and the last cache of the day. I hope I'm still able to do it at 87 like my mom!

 

 

There's a huge stone map of Arkansas at the top...very impressive.

After hiking down we went by the lodge to log our finds of the day.

 

The Lodge is very nice and has this great view of the valley.

 

What a great day! My legs ached from the hiking but we had a blast!