WE'RE HOME !!!!!

After leaving Pigeon Forge, we had a great visit with my brother and sister in law George and Lyn in Seneca South Carolina, we arrived back home in Tavares last night. We want to thank George and Lyn for their hospitality. They have a beautiful home on the lake, they took us out for a boat ride around the lake and Lyn  fixed us a great meal and we had great fellowship during our visit.
 When we got up the following morning we had thoughts to make one more stop in Georgia but after looking at our gps and realising that home was around 480 miles, we decided to see how well things went, and ended up going the whole way home arriving at 6:30 that evening.
 As a recap we drove approximately  6800 miles on our trip in our motorhome and an additional 3000 miles in the Honda toad for a total of almost 10,000 miles.  Other than the initial electrical problem with the motor home and Jeri being sick for the first 2 weeks we had a great trip and a ton of pictures and memories to remember our trip by.  We will definitely do it again some time as there are so many more beautiful sites to explore and see in this great country of ours.
 We want to thank all of you who followed us and thank you for all your great comments even though it took me until almost the end of the trip to figure out the settings that allowed all of you to post.
 We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Love,
Ton and Jeri

SMOKEY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK

The last couple of days we  spent visiting the Smokey Mountain National Park.  We camped in a very nice, but small park just outside Pigeon Forge, only 5 miles from the park entrance.  We did 3 of the auto trails and stopped several times to do small foot trails to waterfalls and to some of the original churches and buildings such as a working grist mill.  We where amazed at the beauty of the park.  
We visited Clingmans Dome,  the highest mountain in Tennessee and I took the foot trail an additional  0.7 mile 300 ft climb to the outlook tower on top.
  On 2 of our outings we ran into black bears, today we spotted a mother with her cub leisurely crossing the road before us.  We will post some pics from the visit.

 The haze over the Smokies

 

Walkway to Clingmanns Dome Observation Tower

 Relaxing with my King of the Mountain

Beautiful horses in the meadow

 3 beautiful bridesmaids for the wedding

taking place in this old Baptist Church in the Smokies



 Working Grist  Mill

Our 1st bear on Cades Cove Road

Out for an afternoon stroll with Jr.

Mom and Cub on Roaring Fork Road

Great ending to a perfect day!





J.PERCY PRIEST LAKE C.O.E. PARK NASHVILLE TN.

We have spent the last 2 days at this army corps of engineer park close by Nashville and today we visited Nashville and went to see Grand Ole Opry hotel and as was put forward in Tom & Carolyn's blog it is an very impressive place.  We also visited the Parthenon in Centennial park and learned quite a few interesting facts about the original  in Greece, as well as the Nashville identical replica.  No column is straight and they all lean to the center of the building and no to columns are spaced the same distance in between them.  The 42 ft statue of Athena inside is the focus the same as in Athens. 
Following are some pics from our last 2 days.  Also a few pictures of some beautiful sunsets at Jonesburo Craighead County park.

Sunsets taken from our campsite in Jonesboro, MS

 Great New Campsite near Nashville, TN

 Our View from the front of our campsite

 Waterfall in the Gardens at Grand Ole Opry Hotel

Flowers in the garden

 The Gardens upper level

 Murials of Tennessee in this beautiful hallway

Waterfall in the Cascades area

Jeri's new home

 42 ft tall Althea in 23.75 ct. overlay

 Her Shield

Her protector!?

 

JONESBORO AK.

It's Memorial Day and we are in Jonesboro AK.  It's a very nice county owned campground in Craighead county Arkansas. We left Branson Mo. this morning.  After 4 days we were pretty well "done" with Branson.
 Traffic is horrible in that town and other than shows there was not a whole lot that interested us there.
We did see a great show by the  Dutton family. It's a fast paced show and every member of the family plays 3-6 different instruments.We also did a dinner show with Jacov Smyrnov but were not too impressed with it although the food was not too bad.
The next day we visited the trout fish hatchery at table rock lake and Inspiration Tower.  We enjoyed our visit to both of those places.   We were hoping to do an oil change while in Branson but everything was closed over the memorial day weekend so we will try tomorrow here in Jonesboro.
 Here at Jonesboro we have a great spot overlooking the lake and we will post some pics from both
places,



Mom and Dad Dutton with their 5 kids

 The five Duttons and their families.

Their parents sang and played instruments with them too. 

 Jeri at the fish hatchery with the dam in the background.

 Church built in 1901 and is at Inspiration Tower.

My new Job

 Inspiration Tower

 Zip line from the tower.  Not for Us!

Our new home in Craighead County Park

The view out our window

 

BRANSON MISSOURI

Update!! We finally are back on line with Verizon.We got our new unit in the mail and after another 1/2 hour with Verizon tech service we were told that our laptop needed special drivers and to go to the local Verizon store and see if someone there could help us get it going. We were also told that if that would not work out we could upgrade to an 4G unit .Anyway we took it over and the salesperson there had it going in less than 5 minutes and we are finally back on line.
 Just as a recap 2 days ago we were in El Reno Ok. and were within a mile of where the tornado touched down and as faith has it we had planned to stay at Hinton Ok. at the base of the Red Rock Canyon state park and tere was a tornado touchdown there that wound through the canyon walls, so thankful we weren't there. Then yesterday we stayed at Natural falls state park in Siloam springs Ok. and when we drove in we noticed a lot of debris and the Ranger told us that they had a touchdown there a week earlier.So lets hope that things are quieting down here as Joplin Mo. is only 40 miles from here but the weather is suppose to be pretty good the coming week.We will be here for at least 5 days to rest and take care of a few things. 
 We will post some pics from our latest locations.

Storm Chasers as we arrive...Not a good sign

This is 4:00 in the afternoon and they stopped all traffic both directions on the Interstate

This is a nice park and they only had 3 campers last night

but are full for the weekend.

Another beautiful waterfall

Unfortunately, the state of Oklahoma is closing this beautiful

state park and 6 others on June 16 because of the economy.

I liked the colors in this butterfly

A TALE OF TWO CANYONS

We have arrived in Amarillo Texas very hot, very dry, and very flat here, so we were a little surprised to   find out they have there own Canyon called," Palo Duro Canyon" about 25 miles south of Amarillo. We went for a visit and even though it was not even close to the Grand Canyon it was still quite impressive and we will post some picks for you to judge.

Overview of Palo Duro

 Visitor's center

 Beautiful Prickley Pear Cactus in Bloom

 Yesterday about freezing and today this

Is it Hot enough yet?!!!

Texas longhorns