We sold our house!
What to do?
Move into the trailer!
Goodbye, house.
Hello, fulltiming.
Time for a months long adventures across the country?
Not this time.
Just a month in the trailer, between houses, tethered to metro Atlanta.
Time for a months long adventures across the country?
Not this time.
Just a month in the trailer, between houses, tethered to metro Atlanta.
First, to a friend's house.
Plenty of kids and critters!
Is that a cat or a bird?
friends
Starting at Payne Campground, we did a tour of campgrounds on Lake Alatoona.
Brian commutes to Atlanta for work so staying within range was important.
Our 5th annual 4th of July party was hosted in a borrowed house.
(Note: We've been doing this party exactly one more year than the Birthday Bash. If only we could be in two places at once!)
My Mom and Dad's Mountain house is near the Georgia/Tennessee border, in McCaysville, GA.
It poured for most of the holiday weekend.
A little rain is nothing good friends can't cure!
After our party, we came back home to a soggy campground.
Sabrina: "It's two feet deep."
Me: "Really?"
Sabrina: "Yes. Because my two feet are in it."
Then, to Red Top Mountain State Park:
It seems Red Top Mountain is "the meeting place." Many people choose it for it's convenience to the interstate. We were still shocked to meet friends on their way back home to Florida from their trip to Yellowstone! They saw our trailer and thought it might be us but then KNEW it was us after they saw our flamingos.
Fun distractions to help us forget about waiting to get into our new house...
Cauble Park/Acworth Beach
The kids begged to go back the next evening but had to be reminded that the same carefree adults that started the tag game would likely not be there.
Breakfast by Brian.
(For any Yankee readers, that blob at 11 o'clock is grits.)
(For any Yankee readers, that blob at 11 o'clock is grits.)
Then to McKinney Campground which truly belongs to the deer. We regularly saw two sets of twins who moseyed though our campsite. By the end of the week the kids hardly looked up when I said "Look! There's another deer in our campsite."
We didn't get our reservations in soon enough for a lake site but decided proximity to the laundry room was a close second.
Annabelle just finished drawing hopscotch to 75 when it started raining again.
Georgia's Army Corps of Engineer campgrounds are nice; I only have one complaint, the night gate that's manually locked daily. One evening we stayed out too late. After parking our car in the overflow lot just outside of the gate, we took the walk of shame past the attendant booth (still occupied) thirty minutes past curfew. We felt like rebels coming home at 11:30pm.
Our friends in "the club" invited us to the summer buddy rally at Top of Georgia Airstream Park. Funny that we've been to two Airstream-only parks (TCPC and PennWood) but this was our first trip to Top of Georgia, which is closer to home.
We hardly saw the kids all weekend. They stayed busy with the kids rally activities. We sat squarely on our haunches outside of trailers talking to friends all weekend. Everybody was happy.
Then a week in Cumming, by Lake Lanier.
Did I mention it rained for most of July?
No complaints from me, I appreciated the cooler temperatures.
One evening we went to dinner. When we returned, our awning looked like this:
...but there wasn't a drop of water on it!
Love that rope and pole awning! You might think we wouldn't bother putting it up for a rainy week but having the awning is like having an extra room when it's raining, a mud room! Who doesn't need a mud room when it's raining buckets and you live in a trailer?
Our last weekend before move-in day we traveled three hours from metro Atlanta to Georgia Veterans State Park in Cordele for a weekend of sightseeing with friends.
Nearby [G]eorgia Rural Telephone Museum in Leslie, Georgia.
Not sure what this 1957 Special was doing at the rural telephone museum, but I'm not complaining.
Brian took a phone call while at the museum. I took a picture. I am easily amused.
The Sam Shortline train has several routes. The weekend of our visit, the train picked us up at Georgia Veterans State Park, made a brief stop in Americus, and then continued to Plains, GA, home of Jimmy Carter.
Our train stop in Plains was short. We high-tailed it over to the Plains High School Museum.
With a world for a classroom these four walls aren't familiar, but still interesting.
My favorite part of the museum might have been the video playing of Rosalynn and Jimmy walking through their home in Plains, giving a tour. The video made it easy to appreciate what down to earth, hard-working people the Carters are. "Rosalynn and I dug the posts for that fence..."
real people
I regret that we only had a brief moment to speak with the Carters.
The whistle sounded too soon. It was time to climb back on the train.
Our friend said it well, "Next time I vote for 2 hours in Plains."
The gracious ranger sent two goodie bags for our girls to be earned "upon completion" of Junior Ranger books. Our oldest Jr. Ranger eagerly finished hers on the train ride back.
Sitting around, enjoying each other's company, wondering why anyone ever lived in South Georgia before there was air conditioning. It wasn't the heat so much as the GNATS (you thought I was going to say "humidity," didn't you?) I'd never heard of "the gnat line" before our weekend in Cordele but I can assure you I'll be looking for places to camp north of Macon next summer.
Low country boil for dinner. Mmmm...
Then, at last...
Home.
Parking in the front yard.
