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Category: Destinations

Lake Louisa State Park and Clermont, FL

Lake Louisa State Park and Clermont, FL

The extended chronicles of our travels as recorded on this blog have been largely chronological. We’re taking a bit of a departure from that linear model of storytelling and skipping a few months of recent history immediately following this brief update. Our new camper is working well – we’ve adapted to towing a trailer, mostly because I am overly cautious and usually well-prepared if given the luxury of time to plan. The set-up/tear-down time of the trailer is virtually the…

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Mt. Airy, NC – Mayberry USA

Mt. Airy, NC – Mayberry USA

Mt. Airy, North Carolina is not only home to one of the most well-known Old-Time and Bluegrass festivals in the country, it’s also the birthplace of that piece of classic American television The Andy Griffith Show. Andy Griffith, you see, was born in Mt. Airy (in which his boyhood home still stands and is now available as an overnight rental) and modeled the fictional town of Mayberry and many of its inhabitants after the very real town and some of…

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The Wineries of North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley

The Wineries of North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley

When you think of wine regions in North America, three locations likely top your list – Napa Valley in California, Willamette Valley in Oregon, and the Finger Lakes in New York. You might even include the Niagra Peninsula in Ontario or Texas Hill Country, if you know a thing or two (which I will admit right now that I don’t) about wine. But there’s a less well-known region in North Carolina that probably flies under the radar of most amateur…

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Exploring Elkin and Stone Mountain State Park

Exploring Elkin and Stone Mountain State Park

The Summer of Fiddle Festivals continued with the next stop on the horizon – Mt. Airy, North Carolina and the Bluegrass and Old-Time Fiddlers Convention. But with a couple of weeks between Fiddler’s Grove and Mt. Airy, we needed to find somewhere to park and pass the time. We chose to spend a few nights at Stone Mountain State Park because it’s nice to have some RVing amenities – like shore power, fresh running water, and a dump station to…

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Fiddler’s Grove Old Time Music and Fiddle Festival

Fiddler’s Grove Old Time Music and Fiddle Festival

Driving may be my least favorite part of RVing. Sitting in a seat for hours on end, constantly scanning your surroundings, navigating a large vehicle through unfamiliar territory – all the necessary aspects of taking your home on the road are certainly not the most enjoyable. That’s the main reason we try to limit the length of our travel days, with a four-hour drive as our general upper limit for a day on the road (and even that would be…

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Back to the Mainland on the Fiddle Festival Trail

Back to the Mainland on the Fiddle Festival Trail

It finally happened – we packed up the RV and left the Keys. Those of you following along on Instagram or Facebook already know this, but we’ve been back on the road and actively traveling for about ten days now. Rather than bore you with the activities of the last two months on Geiger Key, I’ll relay a quick summary and a few photos and call it done. We celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary in early April with happy hour…

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Not So Lazy Days in the Florida Keys

Not So Lazy Days in the Florida Keys

Our days here on Geiger Key continue to be packed to the gills with activities, which you already may have deduced from the distinct lack of blog posts lately. “How can a ‘retired’ couple with no kids stay so busy?” you might ask. Most days I wonder the same thing. But when we take a few minutes to slow down and reflect on the past couple of months, it’s easy to see what fills our typical days. In the previous…

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Visiting with Family and Another Fish Tale

Visiting with Family and Another Fish Tale

As much as we both value our personal daily routines, neither of us are rigid taskmasters driven to achieve daunting to-do lists day after day simply for the sake of accomplishment. Although if you ask Ashley, I may act like that on occasion. Nevertheless – when the days with visitors in January outnumbered the days without, we practiced flexibility while still finding time to do those core activities important to each of our lives. Cecil had been stationary for over…

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Holiday Happenings and the Tale of the Conch Republic

Holiday Happenings and the Tale of the Conch Republic

Life continues to roll on here in the Keys this winter, and we certainly can’t complain about the mild weather with all the reports of snow, ice, and frigid temperatures up north. We find our days to be busier in this pseudo-early retirement than when we lived a more traditional lifestyle complete with full-time jobs and a sticks and bricks house. January was the first month since we started this little blog in March 2017 that I didn’t post at…

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A Return to Island Life

A Return to Island Life

After cruising through three wineries thanks to Harvest Hosts on our way to Florida, we had two more locations lined up as tentative stops through the Sunshine State before reaching the Keys. Central Florida experienced extended rainstorms shortly before we arrived, eliminating one of our potential stops since it was simply too muddy to park an RV in the grass. Our second choice was located back a long country dirt road, and as I wrote in the last post, we…

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