St. Augustine, FL

St. Augustine is the oldest continually occupied city in the United States. It was already several hundred years old before it became a part of the United States when Florida came into the States. The Castillo on St. Augustine harbor was built in the 1600s. The white on the walls is still some of the paint. It was originally white with red towers. The small sign says "stay out off moat wall."
This is the entrance into the Castillo. There are actually 2 drawbridges and gates to go through prior to entering. The Castillo was never captured by enemies, it was too well defended.
This is up on top of the Castillo looking out into the harbor. It was quite a view!
This is actually a mortar canon and it is pointing toward land, not the bay.
These are some of the canon that were used by the Spanish during their occupation of lands in the new world.
This is a cool pirate ship docked in the harbor. The tour guide said that rides are available on the ship. Maybe next time.
Mr. Flagler built lots of hotels to draw people form New York down to Florida in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This hotel is now a college in St. Augustine's. It takes up a whole city block and is really beautiful. It was a 5 star hotel and lots of dignitaries and presidents stayed in the hotel before it closed in 1967.
Neat architecture in St. Augustine and very narrow streets in the old part of town. The streets were made narrow and perpendicular to the ocean so the sea breezes would be funneled into the town to cool off the houses.
The cross below marks the spot where the first Spanish explorers landed in the 1500s! About a block from here there is an oak tree that is 600 years old -- it is huge. I couldn't get a picture of it because it was so big!
I am posting this from Williamsburg, VA. We are hoping to visit Colonial Williamsburg tomorrow afternoon. Then on Monday we'll head up to Washington, D.C. actually Ft. Meade, Maryland for about two weeks. Should have some pictures from there!

Lots since OKC

It's been awhile since we've posted our wanderings! After we left OKC we traveled back to Sherman, MS to get some warranty work done on our new coach. We had to travel on the weekend because of our appointment with Sherman RV, but it worked out great because it was Conference Weekend and we were able to bring up the link on our laptop in the coach and listen to the broadcasts as we traveled. Isn't technology great! We were in Sherman for two days and just camped at the RV dealer. The next leg of our journey took us from Sherman to Cumming, GA where we visited with Betsy's cousins and got to sitesee around the area. We spent almost a week in Cumming before we left for Gaffney, SC. Howard went to the Freightliner Chassis School for two days while I stayed home and caught up on sewing and other projects. We met some really neat people there and even got to go out to dinner with Carl and Tina. While in Gaffney we visited the Cowpen Battlefield, it's a battlefield from the Revolutionary War. Very interesting!

The azaleas were in full bloom around the south. I took this at the Cowpens Battlefield Visitor's Center. Some of the bushes we saw were 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall and just covered in blossoms. The flowers and trees are really pretty and the pollen is so thick it's visible in the air.
I had to take a picture of the Gaffney water tower! We thought this was pretty cool and you can see it for quite awhile when driving up I-85.
This is a part of the actual battlefield at Cowpens. History says this was a decisive battle during the war, because prior to this battle the war was at a stalemate and France was trying to decide if the colonies were worth investing in. When the colonies won the battle (and the next one in the South) France entered the war and within a year was the battle of Yorktown.
Howard checking out the uniforms of the colonial soldiers. The were quite a mixed bag with quite a few from the militia (just farmboys who agreed to be in this battle from around the area).
This picture was taken from the front window of the coach in a campground at about mile marker #1 just over the Georgia border from Florida. First park we've been in that had horses grazing! After the school in Gaffney, we drove down to Florida to visit the kids. I think everyone knew we were coming except Di & Rick. They were surprised!! It's been fun visiting with them and with our friends at Treasure Coast that haven't left yet. I'll try to be better taking pictures of where we are wandering. Sometimes we're having so much fun, I forget to take pictures!!

Oklahoma City

Since Albuquerque, we traveled through Amarillo, TX and arrived in Oklahoma City where we are visiting Betsy's cousin Nancy (and Al, her husband). Our first night here we got to visit with their son, Andrew and meet his son Alex. Alex is two so it was a fun, busy evening.

The second day we got to go to the National Cowboy and Western Museum AND have lunch with their daughter, Emily. The Museum was really neat with lots of western paintings and a whole section about rodeos (that was pretty cool!)

This morning we went to the Oklahoma City Memorial. They have done a wonderful job letting the public at least partially experience parts of the tragedies of the Oklahoma City bombing and remembering all those who lost their lives and the workers who worked so long and hard to not only rescue and find people in the rubble, but to bring the perpetrators to justice. It is a very moving exhibit!!!! The only picture I have remembered to take was just as we were entering the Museum at the Oklahoma City Memorial and it isn't my greatest work, but I really liked the saying.

Phoenix, AZ to Albuquerque, NM

Within hours of leaving Phoenix, we started seeing Humphrey's Peak, which is north of Flagstaff. They got a lot of snow in Flagstaff this year and still have a lot on the ground, especially for the 27th of March! Skiing is still open on Humphrey's Peak until the first week of April!!
Getting closer to Flagstaff. Still quite a lot of snow on the north side of the mountains.
This was taken really close to Flagstaff. What is so impressive about all the snow on the peak is that this is a picture of the south side of the mountain and that's where it melts off first.
This was such a typically western stormy day. It was raining, but the rain wasn't reaching the ground. We could see storm cells moving all around us, but none of the rain was reaching the ground. (There's a reason they call this desert, huh?!)
Driving into Albuquerque from the west is really spectacular. This picture doesn't do a great job showing how the mountains just dominate the horizon. We'll be in Albuquerque just until after church in the morning then we'll drive to a little town on the New Mexico/Texas border. On Monday, we'll hopefully get into Oklahoma City at a decent hour. We're looking forward to visiting with Nancy and Al and their family for a few days, then we'll travel to Memphis for Easter/Conference weekend. Should be fun!

Desert Flowers

Only one really good picture that I think captures the essence of the desert in bloom. This was taken on our way to Saguaro National Park outside Tuscon. Some things are starting to bloom, but not a lot as of yet. We are enjoying our last week in Arizona as the weather begins to warm up some. (It's sure windy here though!!!!!)

Cochise County

This was the view from our coach for a week -- not bad!! We were also camped next to a conservation area so there were birds all over the place. Our first visit here was to Karchner Caverns. No pictures allowed so can't post them. It is worth seeing though, it's only been open for a few years and they are doing a lot to preserve the integrity of the cave so there isn't so much damage like in other caves.

Bisbee is the county seat of Cochise County. It's a really neat Victorian town and was fun to walk through. We also got to ride on a rail into an old copper, silver, and gold mine here. That was really interesting.

Howard walking the streets of Bisbee.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Doc Holiday giving the cowboys a bad time (he was really good)

Here Lies Lester Moore four slugs from a 44. No Les, No More.

The results of the shootout at the O.K. Corral

Famous saloon with cowboys and horses out front.

Stagecoach going by.

Huachua Mountains south of us.

It started raining Saturday night and rained most of the day Sunday. Sometimes it was coming down pretty hard! The finale was this beautiful double rainbow that lasted for quite a long time.

We did have some flooding around the coach for a short time. The water puddles up really fast in the desert and then runs off really fast so all the creeks are running for a short time and roads are flooded for a short time, then amazingly soon -- everything is dry again.

This picture is especially for all our grandchildren. We came out of eating lunch on our way to Tombstone and there was a roadrunner right by our car so I took pictures of it. This one was the best shot. Pretty cool! (It ran REALLY fast!)