Greetings from Port Republic

Port Republic New Jersey is just a few miles south on the Garden State Parkway from Long Beach Island. We needed to dump our holding tanks after a week in Jimmy’s driveway and we figured we could check out the Thousand Trails park that is here. It’s called Chestnut Lake and its not as nice as the other TT parks we’ve visited. An old park. It needs some work. Everything worked fine tho for our 2-night stay.

We also took this opportunity to visit some more of Jim’s relatives. Jim’s Dad grew up in Port Republic and a few aunts, uncles and cousins still live in the area. Yesterday he called Aunt Kay and was happy to find her home – so we went for a visit.

Here’s Jim, Uncle Joe, Aunt Kay and Cousin Ray.

I’m going to post two photos here because Uncle Joe looks better in the first one, but Jim and Ray look better in the second. (Aunt Kay just looks good period!) Jim says he’s found a program that makes it easy to take one person from a group shot and put him/her in a different group shot. So, here’s his challenge – if it works I’ll post his fixed picture here.

Jimmy gets a Blog!

Yesterday, both Jim and I spent most of our time on Jimmy’s computer stuff. He has a scanner that has never worked with his new computer. Apparently, something got installed – or not – along with the scanner that simply didn’t work. It took many hours and a few support calls, but Jim finally got the bad stuff UNinstalled and was able to successfully install the scanner. Now Jimmy can get out all those old slides and scan them into the computer. Jim also made sure the computer was up to date with other drivers, operating system, and virus / spyware protection.

Then what’s he gonna do with those scanned photos? That’s where I came in – I registered a domain for him – www.sea-lyon.com – and set up a Blog and an email address. Actually, along with the domain comes 500 email addresses! So, we set up one for everyone in his extended family! Jim downloaded Picasa onto Jimmy’s computer and showed him how to use that to upload bunches of photos into WebAlbums.

So, what are you waiting for? Go check it out at www.sea-lyon.com. You can see the photos from our last 3 nights of partying in a row!

Odie mirrors how we feel today!

By the way … there’s a comment to my last post from someone who links to their flash travelog. Check ‘em out – they’re a hoot. hmmm, wonder if I could do that. It’s a bit of work but it would be fun.

Morning Paddle

Instead of our morning walk this morning we took a morning paddle!

This is when our mild-mannered poodle turns into ….

TA DAAAAAAA

*Kayodie*

What fun. Today was a first … he stood in his figurehead position for the entire paddle (about an hour) and didn’t fall off once. He made it all the way back to shore and jumped off the kayak just as dry as can be.

Ok, it’s almost noon. Time to get to work. I promised my client a phone call at 4 today to review my progress on their database project. hmmmmm, noon to 4. I’d say that’s a perfect work schedule!

Happy Birthday Jimmy

You just never get tired of the sunsets here at Sea Lyon’s resort!

You’d think we ordered this up special for Jimmy’s birthday – but, most every night is this good. There were plenty of people here to help celebrate. For those of you who know Jimmy, yes, we had a corned ham and the pineapple casserole. Yum.

Such a great place. Earlier today Jimmy took us all out in the boat and towed a big ‘tube’ behind that we got to bounce around on. Should have a video clip of that soon.

Our Favorite Parking Spot

We had a long day yesterday. Up at 6:30, pulled in to our friend Jimmy’s driveway at 10pm. He lives in Long Beach Island on the Jersey shore. That’s where Jim grew up.

We figured, “why not just drive and get here?” It is our favorite parking spot after all.

The night air was cool, the ocean air was calming. We had a great night. And, we’re looking forward to a couple weeks here. I have some Access database work to do for a client in Fort Lauderdale – and we have good cell phone signal and Internet connection here – we’re using the Wi-Fi from Jimmy’s DSL connection.

Jim will be visiting lots of family and friends.

We even went for a dip in the ocean today. Quite invigorating!

Shenandoah Sunrise

OK – this morning I have 10 minutes of generator time to make this post. Then we’re going to the visitor center to take a guided walk around Big Meadows.

Here’s our site. We had to move the coach a little to get the satellite aimed thru the hole in the trees. No way we could connect with cell phones here because they are on analog signal. Actually – I tried making a call and it couldn’t even connect. I hear so many people say that their Verizon phones work everywhere – voice and data. They just don’t go where I go I guess!

We got up at 6:30 and drove onto skyline drive for photos this morning.

There were deer *everywhere*!

Shenandoah National Park

OH Boy! We get to add another national park to our list! As we were camped in Lynchburg, we took a look at the map and realized how close we were to Shenandoah National Park. So, we made reservations in one of the campgrounds for one night and … here we are.

I really didn’t think we’d have Internet tonight. There’s no electricity but we can run the generator from 4-7. And, we’re in the trees. But, once again, our trusty Datastorm found a little hole thru the leaves. So – I have 5 minutes to publish this post.

Here’s the best pictures from the day:

overlooks everywhere

Looking out our front door in the Big Meadows campground.

a short walk from the campground.

Right in the campground.

Stay at Home Projects

We decided to stay put for another day and take care of some projects. I picked the mundane job of laundry – then I had lots of computer projects. Jim decided to tackle the ugly project of checking into why our blackwater has been leaking when we dump. Nasty. So, he took everything apart and saw the problem. If you look closely at the big vertical pipe on the right, you’ll see a gap. Jim had to close that gap and reattach the rubber gasket that holds the top and bottom together. It took some doing and I had to crawl under the coach and help at one point – but, he got it all put back together nice and solid. Whew. Shower time hmmmm – I wonder what that would have cost at an RV place?

When he finished the sewer project, Jim was all set to find another motorhome project, but, alas, it was not to be. My computer gave one little hiccup and just went black. I turned it off and turned it back on … nothing. Hey Jim! I got your next project for you.

Here he is with my computer all apart and blowing out the dust bunnies using an attachment on a scuba tank! -that’s how he inflates our tires too. They do get dirty traveling on the road.

After a few hours of Jim’s magic, my computer restore CDs and a few incantations – my computer came back to life. So, my project was to make some complete backups … immediately! I did have backups, but they were a few weeks old.

As it turned out, I had some bad DVDs and the backup process took me a few hours. There goes my time for computer projects. But, I’m thrilled that my computer is back in business. I’m doing enough ‘real work’ projects these days that I decided it was time for a daily backup process. We like Karen’s Replicator for that. So, there went another couple hours, downloading, installing, setting up and running the backup to my external drive.

I’m going to bed But, I can sleep tight knowing that both our motorhome and my computer are clean and safe.

p.s. If you notice something different about the photos in this post, it’s because I downloaded the latest update to Picasa. So, I figured I’d try the ‘Blog This’ feature again. It works better than it did – but it still won’t upload more than 4 photos at once. And, it doesn’t let you determine exactly where to upload them to. So, it works – but I still like the blogger way better.

Stay at Home Projects

We decided to stay put for another day and take care of some projects. I picked the mundane job of laundry – then I had lots of computer projects. Jim decided to tackle the ugly project of checking into why our blackwater has been leaking when we dump. Nasty. So, he took everything apart and saw the problem. If you look closely at the big vertical pipe on the right, you’ll see a gap. Jim had to close that gap and reattach the rubber gasket that holds the top and bottom together. It took some doing and I had to crawl under the coach and help at one point – but, he got it all put back together nice and solid. Whew. Shower time hmmmm – I wonder what that would have cost at an RV place?

When he finished the sewer project, Jim was all set to find another motorhome project, but, alas, it was not to be. My computer gave one little hiccup and just went black. I turned it off and turned it back on … nothing. Hey Jim! I got your next project for you.

Here he is with my computer all apart and blowing out the dust bunnies using an attachment on a scuba tank! -that’s how he inflates our tires too. They do get dirty traveling on the road.

After a few hours of Jim’s magic, my computer restore CDs and a few incantations – my computer came back to life. So, my project was to make some complete backups … immediately! I did have backups, but they were a few weeks old.

As it turned out, I had some bad DVDs and the backup process took me a few hours. There goes my time for computer projects. But, I’m thrilled that my computer is back in business. I’m doing enough ‘real work’ projects these days that I decided it was time for a daily backup process. We like Karen’s Replicator for that. So, there went another couple hours, downloading, installing, setting up and running the backup to my external drive.

I’m going to bed But, I can sleep tight knowing that both our motorhome and my computer are clean and safe.

p.s. If you notice something different about the photos in this post, it’s because I downloaded the latest update to Picasa. So, I figured I’d try the ‘Blog This’ feature again. It works better than it did – but it still won’t upload more than 4 photos at once. And, it doesn’t let you determine exactly where to upload them to. So, it works – but I still like the blogger way better.

At Home in Virginia

Yes, it’s true.

We’ve moved to Virginia.

… for a couple days anyway! (to see the map above, click on the link at right to “where we are right now”, then click on the ’satellite’ button)

It still amazes – and delights – me that we are equally at home in a parking lot in the middle of a racetrack in Charlotte, NC:

and in a forested campground in Lynchburg, VA.

And, I’m not talking figuratively ‘at home’. This literally *is* home. Wherever it happens to be. We love it. I’m tempted to point out that the home in the forest is much more pleasant than the one in the parking lot, but, we had *so* much fun at the FMCA convention that it simply isn’t true. We loved that spot in the parking lot. It was very special to be in the infield right next to the entrance. We thrived on giving the seminars and helping people with their WiFi and computers in general. Can’t wait to do it again … see our schedule.

The drive thru North Carolina and into Virginia was beautiful.

This park – Thousand Trails, Lynchburg is a campground in the woods. All the trees are beautiful, but we have a love/hate relationship with them now that we depend on our Datastorm satellite dish to get online. The first spot we tried didn’t work at all. The poor dish tried and tried to find the satellite thru the trees and gave up after a half-hour or so. We moved to another place and were thrilled that it found a way thru the trees to get connected.

So, we may stay for a few days! There’s a great path for our morning walk. About 45 minutes all thru the forest.

It is very quiet and peaceful. And fun … we’re going to go partake of their 59 cent hot dogs right now. Hey Lynne and John, check out the miniature golf! Wish you were here.