Memorial Day Week(end)

Why spend the weekend camping when we can go for a week?  With our house on the market, a deadline to have our trailer (trash) out of the backyard, and previously-scheduled Memorial Day weekend plans, we packed up and made a week of it!  We love Red Top Mountain State Park!

Brian commuted from Red Top Mountain to work.  The kids found plenty of things to do outside.

On Wednesday some friends stopped on their way from Florida to Alumapalooza.

Thursday morning we had a surprise visitor.

These brave kids kept a close eye on our visitor while Tim and Alice made a quick getaway.

Don't leave me!!!

Afraid a venomous snake sighting would scare off our weekend company, the kids and I made pact not to tell them that we had just seen a copperhead.  Camping is more fun with friends!

A short walk to the playground where it was quickly ignored in favor of the gravel pit.

My grandparents in Fort Worth have been married for 60 years now.  On Memorial Day we headed toward Fort Worth before daylight to help them celebrate. On I-20 through Mississippi we started having a little trouble.  Every once in a while I was feeling a little tug.  It happened a couple of times before we figured out the trailer brakes were activating.  What's going on?

It was too hot to think straight.  I could hardly keep everyone hydrated walking back and forth across the parking lot to the gas station for drinks.  We needed shade. After disconnecting the trailer brakes, we limped to  the closest campground, just east of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The solution was definitely shade.We set up at our site and within 30 minutes of arrival Brian had figured out the problem.  We weren't about to leave this place though; the kids loved it.

The trailer brake solution?  Heat-tolerant electrical tape.  I-20 through Mississippi, is epically um, bumpy, err wavy.  Let me put it this way, driving on I-20 through Jackson Mississippi is the closest thing my kids have ever experienced to deep sea fishing on a catamaran.  It was so bumpy that it jarred a battery cable loose blowing 3 fuses.  Brian says it was a "hot ground."  See, shade was exactly what we needed.  That and the electrical tape.

Finally at Grandma's house.  It is just one year older than our trailer.

 Two mid-century beauties.

60 years!  Something to celebrate!

We celebrated with food, family, and a big rented ranch house on Lake Whitney.

Grandma, and Granddad  and their brood, at dinner:

Say cheese!  Time for pictures!

Lightning, our last evening in Texas.

Our overnight stop on the way home was Tannehill State Park in Alabama.  Our #1 animal tamer slyly tried to lure ducks into our car with her irresistible crackers.  At the last minute one duck was suspicious; they made a quick retreat back to the creek:

I suspect we'll be back.  A few minutes wasn't nearly enough time to investigate the park's civil war era iron furnace.  We've been looking forward to seeing this furnace for a year.  Last summer, during our Geocaching kick, our 500th find took us to an old iron furnace deep in the woods. Finding that furnace was so surreal, like a scene from Indiana Jones or Lara Croft.   

After hunting that cache, we learned about the restored iron furnace at Tannehill. 

We finally got to see it!

One gratuitous flamingo picture, taken at the Fort Worth Zoo.

I've been smitten with these longer than Airstreams. 

Wouldn't they look stunning beside our trailer?