Yesterday, I went to Amicalola Falls State Park, I didn’t camp there, I just dropped in for a day visit. I ate some food at their food bar in the lodge and went to see the Alaska String Band. I’ve been hanging around the old homelands, and will likely hang here until the Hellidays are over with, then I hope to hook up the Oyster Can of Adventure and ramble Florida some more.

Now the Alaska String band is this family of musicians from , of all places, Alaska, and they shared stories and songs from that area of the country. Now they do a variety of music, including old-time, folk, swing and other styles. I think the ones I enjoyed the most were the songs they did about the stories, histories and lands of Alaska. They all are talented with their instruments, but the Alaska tales brought in something different to this fella from the North Georgia Mountains who isn’t going to be impressed with just more bluegrass or gospel stuff (as those are done to death in my homelands). They are full time traveling musicians and you can check them out at http://www.alaskastringband.net/ . You might even book them for your church or hall if you are looking for something nice to feature to visitors.

I walked up the falls trail to check out the beauty and the lovely autumn leaves.

From Amicalola Falls State Park

Plus the trail is great exercise!

Amicalola Falls is a park between Dahlonega and Dawsonville Georgia and is the access to point to Springer mountain the start of the Appalachian Trail.

It features an incredible water falls, a lodge, many trails, scenic wonderments

From Amicalola Falls State Park

and fun stuff to do. The only thing I don’t like about the park is their campground, as for some reason, way back when, someone decided to put the campground half-way up the mountain and there is a 25% grade to pull an RV up. This grade would put my teeth on edge If I were in my pulling my Oyster Can with my  Mule (the mule is nothing to write home about, its a Mule with no name because someday I’ll have to shoot it) . I hope to upgrade my tow-vehicle someday, as I’m not putting the mule and Oyster Can on the Blue-ridge parkway either. But I hate debt. Debt is one of the biggest detriments to the kind of freedom that I’m working to design, and the mule has managed many adventures so far and is paid for.
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All join hands and circle to the South let a little country in yer mouth !

Yep, hell yeah by god, it was Gold Rush days in Dahlonega Georgia in the North Georgia Mountains.

Now for folks who don’t know, Dahlonega Georgia was the site of the first gold rush in the states. The Gold Rush Festival celebrates this fact, and has tons of booths selling folk-art, and lots of country type events.

From gold-rush-dahlonega

Now this particular fall festival is nothing new to this old fellow who continues his haunting of his old stomping grounds. But yes, I chose to attend the gold rush days festival for a bit this season simply because I was bored.
I cranked up my wind-up-toy-of-adventure (my 50cc scooter) and rode downtown Dahlonega Georgia to see some of the festival and see if anything had really changed.

I even got in town in time to catch the festival Parade which was even more boring than it use to be. Ya see they have this huge section of “little miss everythings”, yes, every little girl of all ages seems to have a car and a tierra in the Gold Rush parade. Oh there went “Little Miss Once Petted a Kitty“, oh and

From gold-rush-dahlonega

Little Miss likes Saturday morning Cartoons. I think the only  “little miss” that was missing was Little Miss Fetus (though I’m sure some pregnant mom with be waving on a float next year). They had also put hordes more people from the local military college into the parade. Yes, I think they even had the Junior ROTC kids and their shoe-shine boys in the college section. The college use to just have the band and the main drill team. It took forever, I got bored.

From gold-rush-dahlonega

But it was something to do on a Saturday in Dahlonega. There were hordes of people there (I didn’t see many locals), but I did get to do some people watching, and see a few cute girls.

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Well take a piece of t-backer - spiter err on the wall and until next time folks that is all.

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To some it is a secret land in the valley above the clouds, as for me, I call it my old stomping grounds (as I grew up in these hills), but nevertheless, it needs a write up on my travel pages.

From Indian Summer Festival

Yes, its lovely October in the North Georgia Mountains, the leaves begin to change, the feel of autumn is in the air, and its time for the Harvest Festivals.

From Indian Summer Festival

So I headed out over the mountain to the little town of Suches, Georgia to the Indian Summer Festival, that is thrown to support the local school in Suches, and the students and teachers and family folks all get together in the small community to put on the festival.

From Indian Summer Festival

Now Suches Georgia is a very small unincorporated mountain town at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I began my festival jaunt by watching the auctioneer for a bit as he sold this and that, and I continued to watch all kinds of neat little events.

I opted for a good old fashioned cheeseburger, but they had BBQ, funnel cakes, and other goodies.

From Indian Summer Festival

Now the Indian Summer Festival had all sorts of mountain crafts, and some of them were cute. Now for me, all I wanted to take home was the cute gal who was selling mini-tea-pots and hand-bags (hey I can dream can’t I ?)… so I didn’t opt for any of the goodies on sale.

They also were holding several raffles, including a hand-made quilt raffle and one for a hunting riffle.

From Indian Summer Festival

So along with visiting folks, I rambled through looked at booths, watched the turkey shoot and also did some toe-tapping to the music.

Yep, there was a bit of pickin’ and grinnin’ (bluegrass), as well as a group of young cloggers from the school, and a group doing random stuff with drums.

Some of the other goodies that I caught included seeing the wee kids doing a sort of Indian Play in their little Indian costumes, and they did a little history lesson on the Cherokee Indians. Oh and I caught the crafts display hall as well, but didn’t buy any raffles or pies.

There are more pictures of the event at my Picasa album so you can go there if you want to check them out. You can also click the images in this article to view larger pics (links open in a new window).

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From Koreshan State Historic Site

As part of my backcountry backdates project

From Koreshan State Historic Site

(a project where I post impressions and photos of RV travel stuff that I forgot to write about), I am going to post a bit about the Koreshan State Historic Site where I camped for about a week in Florida. I’ll be brief with these backdates and photo teasers.

From Koreshan State Historic Site

From Koreshan State Historic Site

From Koreshan State Historic Site

The State Park and Historic site is located in Estero Florida. I found it sort of by accident, as I saw the sign. I pulled in and enjoyed my stay quite a bit. Now this park had some great places to put a canoe in, and things to see nearby. One of these is the Koreshan Unity Settlement. So I’ll post several pics of that as my photo teasers. Feel free to click on the photos and visit the public album at Picasa. These photos are geo tagged (a cool feature) and mostly feature pics of the settlement. Sorry I missed out on taking pictures of some of the other goodies at the park. Just click on the thumbs to get the full photos and captions and enjoy the photo teaser.
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Dale

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Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)

Well Dale needs to be more prolific with his travel blog. Bad Dale!

Yep I have been neglecting this blog for other projects, but alas, I think I will start updating this blog more and more in the coming weeks, and fancy it up some. So on that note, I have added a photo-teaser section today to the blog so I can post photos and little blurbs about places I’ve been that I didn’t do a full write up on.

From Tuscany

Today I was experimenting with the new picasa beta from google. Its a photo organizer tool of sorts. I’d played with the old one before for kicks, but I read about the new picasa beta over at geesonwheels who are fellow like minded RV bloggers, and well they talked me into it.

Now I’m a photoshop expert (among other things) but I still found the new picasa beta very handy, and I’m going to start using it to help save me time. Yay for time saving goodies.

Knowing how to do things the hard-way doesn’t mean that I have too do it the hard way.

So I’ve started adding a few goodies today to my new picasa web albums. You can view them over at picasaweb.google.com/travelfables

I hope to add a whole lot more pics to the thing. One thing I love about the Picasa is the GeoTag feature. It makes for even more funness I can have with GPS and google earth.

From Prince Edward Island

I plan to be a good geek and tweek that feature much.

Maybe it will even be a tool to get somemore attention to this wee travel and RVing blog.

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Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)

Been geocaching today. Its fun. I have a new Garmin Etrex legend handheld GPS unit. I’ve been treasure hunting around Osprey Florida at a State Park. I’ll post more later.

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Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)

Lovers Key State Park in Florida

I cheated I went to Lovers Key without a lover but alas they let me in anyway. I wasn’t camping here (no campground), but I was just visiting for a day visit. I’m staying in a park not too far away in Estero Florida.

Now lovers key was named such because it was once only accessible by boat, and lovers would go their for the romantic setting (wink wink nudge nudge). Lovers Key State Park is between Fort Myers Florida and Naples and it has some beautiful beaches about 2 and a half miles of beach for fun fun splash splash, walking, bird gawking or whatever. It is a complex of 4 barrier islands, Lovers Key (the one with the beach) Inner key, Black Island, and Long Key. Bonita beach hotels were out to the south and Sanibel island could be seen way off to the north. They also had a little tram to take folks out to the beach. I just walked, but I guess the tram would be handy for folks who had either too much beach stuff or too much blubber to walk the very nice boardwalks to the beach. Oh and they had a little gift shop, I had a coke after a nice swim.

They also have bike rentals, and canoe rentals at the park. They have bike trails as well. Hey maybe you will even see a Pirate ghost or something as local legend has it that Black Augustus a pirate made his home here after running away from the man.

The osprey and lots of birds had their nests right next to the beach. The park had the area fenced off with a string and Bird nesting area sign so folks would not frighten away the birds from their homes. I watched the big Osprey with its nest in a tree feeding its babies., The chicks would go squawk-squawk-squawk-squeek-squeek-squawkitee-squawk… which is bird talk for feed me- feed me feed me, no me, feed me already-feed me.

The area between Sanibel Island and lovers key didn’t seem to have alot of waves, there were ordinary small power boats mucking about out there, not something you see much on open ocean. but apparently all the keys and Sanibel
area offer the area shelter preventing excessive wave pounding. I didn’t notice any large boats out there, so I’d be interested in checking the Nav charts to see how deep it is out there.

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Wowie Zowie and super granulated coolness. I really enjoyed my stay at this beautiful state park just outside of Sebring Florida.

I pulled the Oyster Can of Adventure into the park and stayed for 3 days. I had a site with water and electric with a dump station to use on the way out. Now Highlands Hammock is one of the oldest parks on Florida, and has a museum to honor the CC camp boys who built most of it. But the part I loved was the wonderful woods and bike trails around the place.

Earth Day, I biked around the huge bike trails and explored all day then I went to the Music in the Park Earth Day event.
A band called Groovus was playing. It was Jazz and classic rock flavors, and they were a decent group. They had two awesome Sax players, and the other members were right on as well. I had fun. Music under the stars, relaxing in the park after a day of adventure, it was sweet. Oh and speaking of sweet there was this adorable cute little girl playing bounce-bounce- dance to the music, you could tell she was a born performer, I hope someone is springing for her ballet lessons, though I am sure they are. The Dragon Flies seem to hover above the visitors in a sort of air ballet, but hey a little blink, a wish , some of the innocent energy that was going around, and one was sure that those Dragon Flies were really just Faeries joining in the fun and play. Their ballet was of course just a competition for attention with the little girl performer and actress to be. As the sunset with the cool music , the accompaniment was joined by a full moon. it all was a very cool thing.

I came back to the campsite to the Oyster Can of Adventure after a day of bike adventures and music to grill up some BBQ. Apart from the typical lonliness that tends to surface sometimes when I, a single guy, am surrounded by families (which I am use to), it was an awesome day.

Now Highlands Hammock State Park has a very special feature, that is these really beautiful and old woods. Huge oaks and palms and all kinds of plant and animal life are a feature of the park. I felt like I was in Lothlórien out of a Tolkien story, wonderful faerie trees were abundant, a hello-how-are-ya visit from a huge eagle, and various wildlife that seemed to say look at me, look at me.

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I pulled into Crystal Lake RV Park in Scottsmoor Florida, simply because it was in my half price club and hence cheaper than the others in the area. I needed to do some work anyway.
I will refer to it however as Camp Crystal Lake, like the classic camp in the Friday the 13th horror series.
Now Camp Crystal Lake is right off of I-95 just north of all of The Space Coast goodies.
It was 16 dollars plus tax when my Happy camper half price discount was applied. It was very nice for an interstate park, and it had a decent rate.

Now I find it ironic that Camp Crystal Lake is run by the Kruger family.
I guess Freddy Kruger took over when he sent Jason to the future and deeded it to some of his kin. Though they seemed nice ;).

Now unlike the classic Camp Crystal Lake the park was missing hot teen young gals taking their clothes off (bummer), but it did have monsters in the lake.
I called the Alligator Jason Jr.
He was about a 7ft long fella.
He was sunning across the lake a lot in the 2 days I was there.
I took off my shirt and shook my booty at him from across the lake but he didn’t come to hack me up.

The camp has a wee pool, and a nice full hookups setup, except for cable.
If you stay at Crystal Lake be sure to ask for one of the pull throughs next to the lake, I got one of these, and I felt sorry for the poor blokes with some of the back-ins as they were right next to the very noisy interstate.

The Krugers didn’t haunt my dreams, but they did sell me a light bulb for one of my interior rv lights.

Now there is not a lot to do at Crystal Lake, once you have shaken your boodie at Jason Jr. Its next to the interstate, so it might be a handy crash and drive spot for an eve, or as an affordable base to visit some of the space coast goodies. but hey Camp Crystal lake is right behind a Stuckeys, and it was handy for beerness, and I even bought a set of tiki salt shakers for the Oyster can of adventure.

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Now for my attack on NASA. The nerd in me loved it!

My family and I went into the Kennedy Space Center at Florida’s Space Coast. We removed all our little pocket knives and other goodies before we went in.
Now Kennedy Space Center has a fair security system.
You will empty all of your pockets into a little plastic tray, hand it to the security person, and then walk through the metal detector, then they hand you the plastic tray and you go take it to another security person where they make you turn on all of your gadgets to make sure they are not dummy ones.

After that rigamaroe you are done. And its time to play at the NASA Kennedy Space Center.
We went straight for the tour busses, which take you around through the large campus and show you all the cool goodies.
You go past the huge building where they put together the ships (this building is way bigger that it looks),

and onto an observation platform where you can see the various launch sites and launch towers. Then you hop another bus and head over to the cool Apollo Exhibits, we had some pizza there, and checked out the huge rockets, after that just catch a buss back to the main visitor center complex.

Now one thing to just NOT miss at The Kennedy Space Center is the rather cool IMAX films , especially don’t miss the one on the International Space Station.
I saw the one on the Space Station and another called Magnificent Desolation or something like that. That later one was about the Apollo program and the moon visits, and it was very cool to see as well.

….

I milled around the Space Center and saw wonderful exhibits, very cool and inspiring things, a nice tribute to the fallen-astronauts called the Space Mirror. And I saw one exhibit that had to be one of the most useless ones I have ever seen. It was called The Robot Scouts. Now this was a wee little hallway that you walked though and some crappy mechanical robot puppet would appear on some TV and would talk about the robot explorers.
Now I think that subject could have been done quite wonderfully, but whoever put that one together needs to go back to the drawing board.
It lost me totally when I came to a section they called “the think tank” only to find a school desk with an early 1980ies calculator at it. I couldn’t help to make Doctor Who style Dalek impersonations as we traversed through the hallway. It was that big of a joke. I don’t even think modern kids would like it. The only redeeming quality that show had was Nadine a cute spokes person on the tellie. But alas there was so many cool things to see for a lover of science and space exploration that more than made up for the silly robot show. Miss that one, and use your time to see other shows.

Oh and another thing, Your ticket is good for 7 days after you use it so you can go back and see more space fun. You can also turn it into an annual pass for 12ish bucks.
I went back the following day before I went on down to the Treasure Coast, that is when I saw the IMAX on the Apollo mission. I had my Travel Trailer with me, so there is plenty of RV parking.
If I wanted to stick around the space coast I might spring for the annual one, but alas I found no Jennie on the beach like Major Nelson so I am off to other lands.

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Article source: travelfables.com (all rights reserved)

Montepulciano Tuscany Wanderlust in Wonderland.

A train ride from Roma got us to the station in the town neighboring Montepulciano (our destination).

Montepulciano is a small, medieval town sitting on a mountain-top overlooking incredible views of the Tuscan valley below.

We meandered-about awhile looking for a way to get up the mountain. We even started to walk up that town’s hill for a bit until we realized that our One Ton Tomatoes (back-packs) would kill us.

Well we found the bus stop but being the “afternoon” (a kind of siesta time in Italy just not called “siesta”) every thing was closed. So there were no bus tickets to be had. We finally (after waiting) found the bus, paid a bit extra for our tickets from the driver and got a scenic tour all the way to Montepulciano. The great big bus was like a Japanese monster compared to the other tiny micro machines that made up the common Italian vehicle.The driver weaved through the tiny streets like a real pro, and delivered us to the main hotel in Montepulciano at the bottom of the town’s hill. We asked around for directions, consulted our guide books and read signs to find that the tourist office was at the top of the huge hill before us. We survived (whew!) the lengthy and exhausting walk up the hill (though the sites were nice) to find one of the most amazing views of the Tuscan land-scape and also to find a little sign at the address of the tourist office stating that it had moved (somewhere near the bottom of the hill we just walked up). We relax , take pictures , have a tiny picnic eating some of Wanderluster DC’s stock of junk food. and head back down to the tourist office to inquire about places to stay. We found the tourist office after the walk back down and went in to pick their brains for places to stay. A fellow back-packing couple were in the line ahead of us, and we listened as they told them and us that there were no rooms to be had in Montepulciano and we would have to catch a bus (the last one) to some neighboring town so that we maybe could rent some shabby hovel they knew of there, but we would have to hurry. I couldn’t help but to get mental images from Lewis Carol’s “Alice in Wonderland” “No Room! , No Room!” Shouts the Mad Hatter”. Now this information was from the “Official Tourist Office” ; So, we beat and tired Wanderlusters, who rarely trust anything “official” and are quite accustom to the ramblings of mad people, decide to ignore them. We easily pushed away momentary visions in our mind of 3 worn out backpackers camping in an alley-way with bottles of wine and sleep-sheet lingto, and we wander (just like Alice) about a block down a random street and effortlessly secure a very comfortable and affordable tripple with our choice of bath, view or whatnot. for the night. We wanted to catch the other back-packing couple who had been sent on the Mad Hatter’s (tourist office’s) goose chase, but we were moving too slow at that point as they had hustled to the bus stop as they had been instructed to by the hatter .. Throughout our stay in Montepulciano, we occasionally stopped by the “Official Tourist Office” or the Mad Hatter’s lair and constantly confirmed, as a kind of inside joke, that the travel office would almost always convey wrong information about everything. Now we 3 wondering idiots in wonderland had, without trying, developed a workable system for getting around, which was coming in a bit more handy in Montepulciano than it did in Roma. I had 3-4 years of Spanish in College about 8 years ago so I could read Italian for the most part (as it is similar on paper) but I would retreat to my Spanish if I tried to speak more than basic words which didn’t do me any good at all. That’s where Wanderluster Fred came in. He had spent a summer in Italy a few years back and had a fair use of the very basic spoken lingo. Where neither of us could communicate that’s where Wanderluster David came in . He would bumble up and say in plain-English “can I get that?” The way it worked out usually the three of us together could communicate with the locals.

Montepulciano was wine country, and we lovingly participated in the enjoyment of the fine local vintage with our various picnics in the parks, hill-sides, and restaurants of the beautiful little hill town.. The Let’s Go had recommended the Ristorante Cittino, and I just have to say YUM!. Truly a wonderment in this wonderland. Yes these were some of the best meals I had had during my entire trip to Italy. We had an excellent meal It was quite a deal too. After dinner we were enticed intoa cool clock in Montepulciano another little local cafe by a beautiful staff and yummy looking deserts. Quite yummy with wine and this gave us even more of that rejuvenating relaxation we Wanderlusters needed after our previous evenings at the heart of Roma’s night life. It was here that we were charmed by fine wines, cheese-cakes, and the relaxing demure of the town into staying another day in lieu of trying to get out on Easter Sunday. The inn (Albergho de Borgehise) at Montepulciano was relaxing. It wasn’t noisy at all ,as Roma was, and the innkeeper was very friendly conveying understanding, patience and comradery as we jokingly struggled with each other’s language. His English was much better than our Italian. So after the comfortable rest we three idiots were energized and ready to live up to our name. We had seen a flyer at one of the restaurants telling us that there was the annual horse race ( Corse de Camili) in the neighboring town (Aquaviva). Knowing there were no busses, we made a little sign with the word Aquaviva on it and set out trying to hitch to the horse races as there were no busses running on Easter Sunday. We walked for a while toward Aquaviva with our little sign, befriending all the neighborhood dogs as they barked at us from their fences on the way past the neighborhood homes. Well no one picked us up. And we weren’t about to walk 6km to a horse race we would be late for anyway. “On second thought lets not go to Aquaviva Tis a silly place”.So instead we opted for wine and food again at the Ristorante Cittino and then people watching at another well situated Montepulciano cafe. We hit the sack early that night to be fully recharged for our attack on Florence.

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