"We Sold Our House"

We closed the sale of our house on October 5, 2001 and now we're able to go "full time" and begin to do things we've wanted to do for a long time.

Now that we're homeless we moved to the FAMCAMP at Maxwell AFB. Jerry arranged to have necessary knee surgery and has done very well with it. I had needed hand surgery and it came out great. We spent 6 full months at Maxwell getting over surgery and trying to make plans as to when and where we'd go on our first "full time" trip.

When you're retired and are now a full timer you realize you don't have a schedule you have to follow and don't have to cut short your plans to get back to work. We decided we'd like to leave about 8:30 or 9:00 AM and stop and park about 3:30 or 4:00 PM. Those things we are going to see have been for millions of years and it's sure no one is going to remove them tomorrow. Therefore why drive long hard hours to get to them and when you finally get there you're so tired all you want to do is sleep. Also it is possible we won't get back that way again so let's find a good camp ground to be able to see everything before we move on.

Our friends, Jim and Torchie" came over from a trip through Georgia and spent a week with us at the FAMCAMP. She made a trip to the commissary and boy did she really stock up.

We left and followed them on the "red roads" through the Alabama country side on the way to the Smokies. We had a real good trip and the roads were surprisingly good. Jim doesn't believe in traveling the Interstate roads if at all possible. He says you can see more of the country by traveling the "red roads". I've used some of them and I agree with him that by and large they are better than the Interstate and you don't have to worry about large trucks and construction. We met a friend Steve at a Flying J Truck Stop in GA and had breakfast with them. We then traveled with them to the Smokeys.

We arrived in the Smokeys for our OLC campout and we had about 40 rigs there. This is one event we really look forward to because it's like going to a "family reunion". You have a chance to see friends you haven't seen in a year or so and in some cases meet new friends.