November 12, 2003 - Quitman, GA

The more fun we have, the more pictures we take and the more behind in the updates I get!  And we've been having some fun!

These shots were all taken at the Thousand Trails park near Hershey, PA.  The geese can be problematic because after they've eaten the grass, they process it and deposit it on the ground....or parking lot... or sidewalk... or in the lake.  But it's still fun for us visitors to see them wandering around.  One morning after we'd hiked (some would call it a walk) up to the water tank, they were all coming back from their morning flight, and we watched the whole flock land on the little lake.  Pretty impressive.  We left Hershey and headed to Front Royal a day or so early so we could be with Carol and laugh at Bill while he was in the hospital; after the emergency subsided, we all took off in the Jeep for Skyline Drive, through the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.  Of course, I had to be the smarty pants and sit with the computer on my lap hooked up to the GPS while Barb drove, and rather than having her simply follow the street signs to Skyline Drive, I "made" her follow the instructions I was giving her as the GPS tracked our progress.  My goal was to do a loop drive rather than simply a down and back thing.  And we ran right into a dead-end.  Fortunately, nobody thought to take pictures as the road narrowed and finally ended where the trail started--on my GPS.  And I'll probably never live it down, either.  Yes, humble pie is bitter.  And eating crow isn't any better, either.

Stopping at all the overlooks eventually got sort of repetitive, but a few shots here and there seemed appropriate.  Nobody could give us a good reason (well, good to us anyway) as to why the colors were subdued this year.  Lots of speculation, like too much rain, not enough cold, and all that, but none of it made any sense to us.  And seeing the Gap named after us made sense, because I'd been told that my ancestors came from the Carolinas, and we're not all that far away here.  Of course, jokes were made about the "Jenkins Gap" having something to do with my thinking and the earlier dead-end road.  That yellow thing hanging down isn't some sort of ear infection running down my neck, it's the little strap I used to hold my glasses around my neck when I'm using my binoculars.

A look down Jenkins Gap, and then a few shots of the town of Front Royal.  The Royal Oak that is the town's namesake was nowhere to be found. 

While driving around the town, running errands, shopping and what have you, we got the feeling it was a peaceful small town with just enough to offer people without the overwhelming commercialism of larger towns.  Community pride was obvious to us.

Yeah, Barb had the camera again, thus the flower pictures.  And because of Halloween there were black and orange pansies aplenty.   Pure black--never saw this color before.

Maybe it will and maybe it won't keep the boyfriends from visiting the second story girlfriends, but it sure was different and interesting. 

What a hugging good time we had when Al and Eva came to visit the four of us.  We were parked alongside Bill and Carol, and knew that Al and Eva were in Wash. D.C. doing some visiting, but when they called to say they were headed our way, it made us all feel special.  Al and Eva were the group leaders of a bible study in Bill and Carol's house many years ago, and Barb and I attended it for a while.  Pretty special people with a special story.  Among their children they had a son who married and had a family, and then tragically drowned.  His wife eventually remarried, and Al gets a kick out of telling people back in WA that they're going to visit their grandkids and their daughter-in-law and their son-in-law.  That's the daughter-in-law standing by Barb, and two of her daughters with our motorhome in the background.  Some of the best potlucks we've ever had were at Al and Eva's house.

Al and Bill are merciless when it comes to teasing each other, and it's great to be around them.  And we all gathered in Bill and Carol's motorhome for a chat.  That's the son-in-law next to Carol.