Selkirk Lighthouse Tom in Mammoth Cave

Many things have happened since we last reported to the blog. Tom lost his mother, so he and Sally flew to Alabama to be with family and attend the funeral. We returned to Bethel Outdoor Adventure to work the office for the owners while Jeff and Pattie went to England to attend a reunion of Jeff’s Marine division. It was an exciting two weeks but we didn’t get to do much besides work.

On our last weekend in Maine, Sally went to the Fryeburg Fair – the largest agricultural fair in Maine. It was a lot of fun – she got to watch part of the Fireman’s Muster. That’s a competition between fire departments with events like the Bucket Brigade. There were sheep dog trials and draft horse pulls. And there were sheep, alpacas, and a large fiber exhibition. One notable exhibit showed horse drawn wagons. They had one beautiful wagon that was especially interesting to a full-timer – a Romany wagon. (Romany is what most of us know as Gypsies prefer to be called). The wagon is gorgeous and very complete – stove, bed, flowers….Now I want to redecorate :-)

We are in Alabama after taking 10 days to go from Bethel to Anniston. We made stops in Syracuse NY for work on the RV. We then traveled to Pulaski NY to see a lighthouse where an ancestor of Sally’s lived in the 1800’s (G-G-Grandfather Hiram Page). We then traveled a two day period to Dayton OH where we visited friends for the weekend (and attended a chili cook-off.) We stopped at Mammoth Cave and visited Tom’s brother at Ft. Knox. A stop in Scottsboro AL for a visit to the Unclaimed Baggage store was our last station before reaching Anniston. We will spend some time here to visit. We will then move to our winter duty station at Lake Eufaula National Wildlife Refuge.

We’re looking forward to being so close to everyone this winter – only a short trip back to Anniston, to Florida and to New Orleans. We should be able to visit everyone several times before we take off next summer.