Here are the two latest inputs from Gary and Margo. Enjoy!

 

Summary 113

At the end of the last summary we were at the Oak Grove Campground at Naval Air Station Pensacola.  We left there on April 16 and moved to Stone Mountain State Park, near Atlanta, Georgia.

 

For our very first time we went to a Ruth’s Chris Steak House for dinner.   The entrees were delicious.  A bit costly, perhaps thirty percent more than any other really nice restaurant.  The sides are huge!   Besides serving both of us, we took enough home for dinner the next night.

 

This was a really nice two week period because of the places we visited.  We are really blessed to be able to travel as we are.  Margo is ready to settle down, however.  Gary’s painful sciatic nerve is a severe limitation.  We no longer can hike the mountain trails and pretty much are confined to short slow walks.  We both are hoping for great things from the neurosurgeon Who will see Gary at the end of May.

 

At Stone Mountain we went to the visitors center and looked at the carving of Lee, Jackson, and Davis while the sun was still shining on part of it.  We bought daily passes at the museum and took the tram to the top of the mountain.  There is lots of room to walk around, which we did.  Nice views from up there.  We took the tram down to the bottom and visited Crossroads.  We went to the 3D Theater and watched “Tall Tales.”  It was entertaining.   We took the train ride around the mountain.  Went to the General Store and Margo bought some corn bread mix.  We went to the museum again and watched a film showing the Cherokee Story.  The white man certainly was cruel to the Native Americans. 

 

There is a lot of interesting history related to the mountain.  How it was formed is quite a story all by itself.  The carving was started by Gutzlon Borglum and it was intended that the side of the mountain be covered with stone carvings.  Sadly, he was replaced as the chief sculptor and his successor blasted Borglum’s work off the mountain.  There were several more sculptors.  It turned out the work was finally finished by a person who had no training at all as a sculptor.

 

We left Stone Mountain after only one day, enroute to the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, KY.   The Red Bud was really beautiful along the highway.  We spent the next night in a WalMart parking lot.  We do not do that very often but it is convenient at times.  We arrived at the Kentucky Horse Park the next day.  There were about 20 rigs from the Naval Academy RV Chapter there for five days.

We had the customary Happy Hour followed by a catered dinner.

 

The next day it was off to the races at the Keeneland Track.  Margo placed a few two dollar bets and came out ahead.  Not an amount to get excited about, however.  But it was an interesting day.  We had lunch at the track.  Came back home early and had more of last night’s dinner.

 

The Horse Park is dedicated to the preservation of information relation to the world of horses.  There are lots of statues of famous horses and specimens of many breeds live in the park.  The Rolex Three Day Event is one very famous activity there.  Thousands of people attend to observe the performance of the horses and their riders.

 

Next day there was a walking tour of Georgetown led by Anson Burlingame, one of the Chapter members who grew up there.  We went to lunch at Favas’,a restaurant where he told everyone about some of the specials and introduced old friends from previous years.

 

We went the parade of Champions and watched the Parade of Breeds.  There is an artist in residence working on a statue of John Henry, a famous horse who died recently.  We saw him the last time we were at the park.  He could be an ornery critter.  We all stopped and chatted with the artist and looked at the beginning of the clay model.  Pretty interesting.  We had a group photo taken in front of the Man O’ War statue.

 

We all went on a carriage tour of the park and had a guided tour of the extensive museum.

 

Most everyone went to the Toyota factory for a tour.  Gary would have like to go but has such pain he would not be able to keep up.  Later it turned out that he could have gone because the tour was by small carts.

 

We got underway at about 8:00 am, leaving the Kentucky Horse Park enroute to the Bear Creek RV Resort in Ashville, NC.   Incoming traffic was very heavy with many people arriving to attend he Rolex Three Day Event at the park.  The crowd probably was in the thousands.  The Empress Trees were prominent along the way driving through the Great Smoky Mountains. 

 

After arriving at the Bear Creek Resort we bought tickets to the Biltmore for tomorrow.  Pretty expensive at ninety dollars. 

 

The estate is impressive.  Huge, for starters.  Later we learned that it started out as 125,000 acres.  Now it is down to 8,000 acres.  You drive for miles before getting to the house.   We were parked in a handicap parking lot where a shuttle bus picked us up and delivered us to the front of the house.  We started the tour and quickly decided that we should get the audio tape system which told you about the different rooms.  It turns out that the tour would have been a bummer without them.

 

Almost the entire house is open for viewing.  It is just huge at about 250 rooms.  It also is very lavish.  It is said to be the largest single family dwelling in the United States.  The estate is still owned by the Vanderbilt family although no one lives there now.  The tour extended to the fourth floor and down to the basement.  There is a sub-basement also open on a different tour but we did not take it.  In fact there are a number of tours available, all of which sounded interesting.  Had we more time it would have been great to return.

 

Unlike most homes in 1895, Biltmore was fully electrified.  It even had an elevator.  In fact, it has a freight elevator as well.  Lots of other interesting things, too, like a bowling alley and swimming pool in the basement.  The house was designed for many guests and they were well cared for.  Some 65 bathrooms.

 

The house was heated with steam.  The system is still in use although the boiler has been replaced.  There are numerous fireplaces; dozens of them.  Everything is big.

 

Then we went to the winery.  There was a tour and a movie.  The tasting was elaborate.  The tasting room was enormous.  The winery was in what had been a dairy barn.  Hard to believe how grand the barn had been.  We tasted six different wines.  Many more were available.  There also was a premium wine tasting where it cost money for the wines tasted.  We went into the retail store and bought three different wines as well as a box of wine crackers.  They were really tasty.

 

Left the Bear Creek RV Resort about 8:00 am enroute to Sycamore Lodge in Jackson Springs, NC.  It is a sister park to Gettysburg Battlefield Campground where we are members, so we stayed free except that if we wanted sewer at two dollars per day, we had to pay for that. 

 

Went to a local Baptist Church in Derby.  It was pretty wild!  The pastor was very flamboyant.  He walked up and down the aisle, yelling, stamping his foot, etc.  Sometimes he would get right in the face of a person sitting next to the aisle.  It was very hard to understand him.  The regulars seemed to like his style. We were unimpressed.  He liked only the King James Version of the Bible and only old hymns.  He thinks the devil is behind contemporary music.  Did not have much time for Methodists, either.  He quoted the bible regarding the opening of the church to multiple views and said that is causing the downfall of the church today.

 

Margo attended an exercise session of Ta’ Chi’ with an instructor, Jan, and two other women in The Hen House-Fat Mary and Barbara, the resort cabin cleaner.

 

Found the left front tire was very low, just as the Smarttire system said it was.  Gary checked the air in all tires and all were OK except the left front which measured out at 12.5 pounds.  This was a very new tire, purchased in the Boston area to replace a tire which had side wall failure on our way to visit Marguerite.  Getting everything squared away turned out to be an ordeal.

 

The first thing was that a neighbor brought a compressor and we pumped the tire to about 50 psi. We intended to drive into Aberdeen and get repairs.  It was discovered, however, that the stem was damaged and with even a slight sideways push, lots of air was released.  Did not want to drive under those conditions, so we called AAA.  We were concerned about getting our spare from its storage location because we had never had access to it before.  Could not find the tools.  They certainly were not in the location shown in the owner’s manual.  Gary concluded that the tools had not been provided.

 

About this time a ranger showed and said that high winds were coming and that we should store our awning and flag.

 

Gary walked around and found a neighbor with a Silverado, intending to borrow his spare tire tools.  His rear seat was loaded and he suggested he come to our site and look at the situation.  He came and found our tools were indeed in the truck, just in a compartment Gary did not know existed.

 

An attempt was made to lower the spare and disconnect it from the cable which holds it up in the storage well.  It lowered quite nicely but we could not disconnect from the steel cable.  Our neighbor was still here, trying to help.  Gary thinks he felt sorry for an “old man.”  But we were down in the mud as it was raining by now.

 

In about an hour the AAA service man showed. He was able to get the tire disconnected.   But then had trouble raising the truck to remove the flat and install the spare.  He could not get the power lift on his truck under our truck.  He finally produced a floor jack, which was old and flimsy.  The handle was all bent and a weld was broken.  But he did get the side of the truck raised and the tire changed.

 

After all that and cleaning up the mess in the truck and trailer from so many things being wet and covered with sand, we decided to go into town tomorrow, and took a long nap. 

 

The next day we drove into Aberdeen to get our tire situation fixed.  Went to the Goodyear tire place first.  They would not work on the tires.  Claimed to know nothing about sensors inside tires and were unwilling to let Gary sort of monitor the dismounting and mounting of tires to prevent damage to the Smarttire sensors.  They suggested Thomas Tires. 

 

Thomas did a fine job taking care of the original problem.  Gary had some other work as well, involving dismounting and remounting, and balancing several tires.  The bill was $42.  Remarkable when you consider what all was done..

 

Both of us got haircuts.  Two for twenty dollars.  What a deal, except Margo does not like her cut.  She was scalped, says she.  Cost of living seems to be lower than usual here.

 

Margo is bent out of shape because she discovered the vanilla ice cream she purchased the other day is “homemade” which contains eggs.  There is nothing worse than a craving for ice cream when it is unavailable, says she..

 

End of Segment 113

...............................................................

Summary 112

 

At the end of the last summary we were at the Oak Grove Campground at Naval Air Station Pensacola.  We left there on April 16 and moved to Stone Mountain State Park, near Atlanta, Georgia.

 

For our very first time we went to a Ruth’s Chris Steak House for dinner.   The entrees were delicious.  A bit costly, perhaps thirty percent more than any other really nice restaurant.  The sides are huge!   Besides serving both of us, we took enough home for dinner the next night.

 

This was a really nice two week period because of the places we visited.  We are really blessed to be able to travel as we are.  Margo is ready to settle down, however.  Gary’s painful sciatic nerve is a severe limitation.  We no longer can hike the mountain trails and pretty much are confined to short slow walks.  We both are hoping for great things from the neurosurgeon Who will see Gary at the end of May.

 

At Stone Mountain we went to the visitors center and looked at the carving of Lee, Jackson, and Davis while the sun was still shining on part of it.  We bought daily passes at the museum and took the tram to the top of the mountain.  There is lots of room to walk around, which we did.  Nice views from up there.  We took the tram down to the bottom and visited Crossroads.  We went to the 3D Theater and watched “Tall Tales.”  It was entertaining.   We took the train ride around the mountain.  Went to the General Store and Margo bought some corn bread mix.  We went to the museum again and watched a film showing the Cherokee Story.  The white man certainly was cruel to the Native Americans. 

 

There is a lot of interesting history related to the mountain.  How it was formed is quite a story all by itself.  The carving was started by Gutzlon Borglum and it was intended that the side of the mountain be covered with stone carvings.  Sadly, he was replaced as the chief sculptor and his successor blasted Borglum’s work off the mountain.  There were several more sculptors.  It turned out the work was finally finished by a person who had no training at all as a sculptor.

 

We left Stone Mountain after only one day, enroute to the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, KY.   The Red Bud was really beautiful along the highway.  We spent the next night in a WalMart parking lot.  We do not do that very often but it is convenient at times.  We arrived at the Kentucky Horse Park the next day.  There were about 20 rigs from the Naval Academy RV Chapter there for five days.

We had the customary Happy Hour followed by a catered dinner.

 

The next day it was off to the races at the Keeneland Track.  Margo placed a few two dollar bets and came out ahead.  Not an amount to get excited about, however.  But it was an interesting day.  We had lunch at the track.  Came back home early and had more of last night’s dinner.

 

The Horse Park is dedicated to the preservation of information relation to the world of horses.  There are lots of statues of famous horses and specimens of many breeds live in the park.  The Rolex Three Day Event is one very famous activity there.  Thousands of people attend to observe the performance of the horses and their riders.

 

Next day there was a walking tour of Georgetown led by Anson Burlingame, one of the Chapter members who grew up there.  We went to lunch at Favas’,a restaurant where he told everyone about some of the specials and introduced old friends from previous years.

 

We went the parade of Champions and watched the Parade of Breeds.  There is an artist in residence working on a statue of John Henry, a famous horse who died recently.  We saw him the last time we were at the park.  He could be an ornery critter.  We all stopped and chatted with the artist and looked at the beginning of the clay model.  Pretty interesting.  We had a group photo taken in front of the Man O’ War statue.

 

We all went on a carriage tour of the park and had a guided tour of the extensive museum.

 

Most everyone went to the Toyota factory for a tour.  Gary would have like to go but has such pain he would not be able to keep up.  Later it turned out that he could have gone because the tour was by small carts.

 

We got underway at about 8:00 am, leaving the Kentucky Horse Park enroute to the Bear Creek RV Resort in Ashville, NC.   Incoming traffic was very heavy with many people arriving to attend he Rolex Three Day Event at the park.  The crowd probably was in the thousands.  The Empress Trees were prominent along the way driving through the Great Smoky Mountains. 

 

After arriving at the Bear Creek Resort we bought tickets to the Biltmore for tomorrow.  Pretty expensive at ninety dollars. 

 

The estate is impressive.  Huge, for starters.  Later we learned that it started out as 125,000 acres.  Now it is down to 8,000 acres.  You drive for miles before getting to the house.   We were parked in a handicap parking lot where a shuttle bus picked us up and delivered us to the front of the house.  We started the tour and quickly decided that we should get the audio tape system which told you about the different rooms.  It turns out that the tour would have been a bummer without them.

 

Almost the entire house is open for viewing.  It is just huge at about 250 rooms.  It also is very lavish.  It is said to be the largest single family dwelling in the United States.  The estate is still owned by the Vanderbilt family although no one lives there now.  The tour extended to the fourth floor and down to the basement.  There is a sub-basement also open on a different tour but we did not take it.  In fact there are a number of tours available, all of which sounded interesting.  Had we more time it would have been great to return.

 

Unlike most homes in 1895, Biltmore was fully electrified.  It even had an elevator.  In fact, it has a freight elevator as well.  Lots of other interesting things, too, like a bowling alley and swimming pool in the basement.  The house was designed for many guests and they were well cared for.  Some 65 bathrooms.

 

The house was heated with steam.  The system is still in use although the boiler has been replaced.  There are numerous fireplaces; dozens of them.  Everything is big.

 

Then we went to the winery.  There was a tour and a movie.  The tasting was elaborate.  The tasting room was enormous.  The winery was in what had been a dairy barn.  Hard to believe how grand the barn had been.  We tasted six different wines.  Many more were available.  There also was a premium wine tasting where it cost money for the wines tasted.  We went into the retail store and bought three different wines as well as a box of wine crackers.  They were really tasty.

 

Left the Bear Creek RV Resort about 8:00 am enroute to Sycamore Lodge in Jackson Springs, NC.  It is a sister park to Gettysburg Battlefield Campground where we are members, so we stayed free except that if we wanted sewer at two dollars per day, we had to pay for that. 

 

Went to a local Baptist Church in Derby.  It was pretty wild!  The pastor was very flamboyant.  He walked up and down the aisle, yelling, stamping his foot, etc.  Sometimes he would get right in the face of a person sitting next to the aisle.  It was very hard to understand him.  The regulars seemed to like his style. We were unimpressed.  He liked only the King James Version of the Bible and only old hymns.  He thinks the devil is behind contemporary music.  Did not have much time for Methodists, either.  He quoted the bible regarding the opening of the church to multiple views and said that is causing the downfall of the church today.

 

Margo attended an exercise session of Ta’ Chi’ with an instructor, Jan, and two other women in The Hen House-Fat Mary and Barbara, the resort cabin cleaner.

 

Found the left front tire was very low, just as the Smarttire system said it was.  Gary checked the air in all tires and all were OK except the left front which measured out at 12.5 pounds.  This was a very new tire, purchased in the Boston area to replace a tire which had side wall failure on our way to visit Marguerite.  Getting everything squared away turned out to be an ordeal.

 

The first thing was that a neighbor brought a compressor and we pumped the tire to about 50 psi. We intended to drive into Aberdeen and get repairs.  It was discovered, however, that the stem was damaged and with even a slight sideways push, lots of air was released.  Did not want to drive under those conditions, so we called AAA.  We were concerned about getting our spare from its storage location because we had never had access to it before.  Could not find the tools.  They certainly were not in the location shown in the owner’s manual.  Gary concluded that the tools had not been provided.

 

About this time a ranger showed and said that high winds were coming and that we should store our awning and flag.

 

Gary walked around and found a neighbor with a Silverado, intending to borrow his spare tire tools.  His rear seat was loaded and he suggested he come to our site and look at the situation.  He came and found our tools were indeed in the truck, just in a compartment Gary did not know existed.

 

An attempt was made to lower the spare and disconnect it from the cable which holds it up in the storage well.  It lowered quite nicely but we could not disconnect from the steel cable.  Our neighbor was still here, trying to help.  Gary thinks he felt sorry for an “old man.”  But we were down in the mud as it was raining by now.

 

In about an hour the AAA service man showed. He was able to get the tire disconnected.   But then had trouble raising the truck to remove the flat and install the spare.  He could not get the power lift on his truck under our truck.  He finally produced a floor jack, which was old and flimsy.  The handle was all bent and a weld was broken.  But he did get the side of the truck raised and the tire changed.

 

After all that and cleaning up the mess in the truck and trailer from so many things being wet and covered with sand, we decided to go into town tomorrow, and took a long nap. 

 

The next day we drove into Aberdeen to get our tire situation fixed.  Went to the Goodyear tire place first.  They would not work on the tires.  Claimed to know nothing about sensors inside tires and were unwilling to let Gary sort of monitor the dismounting and mounting of tires to prevent damage to the Smarttire sensors.  They suggested Thomas Tires. 

 

Thomas did a fine job taking care of the original problem.  Gary had some other work as well, involving dismounting and remounting, and balancing several tires.  The bill was $42.  Remarkable when you consider what all was done..

 

Both of us got haircuts.  Two for twenty dollars.  What a deal, except Margo does not like her cut.  She was scalped, says she.  Cost of living seems to be lower than usual here.

 

Margo is bent out of shape because she discovered the vanilla ice cream she purchased the other day is “homemade” which contains eggs.  There is nothing worse than a craving for ice cream when it is unavailable, says she..

 

 

End of Segment 113.

.....................................................................

 

 

 

24 April 2008

The latest from the Snyder's:

 

We drove to Lake Alfred, FL, to visit Joan Adamski, a high school chum of Margo’s.  On the same trip we also went to an orange grove and purchased some oranges in bulk so that we could make really fresh orange juice.  Weather very warm.  Air conditioner had to work hard.  Went to the pool fairly often.  It is a nice pool and we enjoyed the time in the sun.

 

We had to work on our income tax.  Most likely everyone has to do this at this time of year.  Found that Gary had not entered into Turbo Tax a large hunk of money which had been with held.  Now there will likely be a good sized refund.

 

Got a message  from a dermatologist that one of three moles which had been biopsied is atypical.  Made an appointment to have it removed in two weeks after we return from a Comearound in Melbourne.

 

Myrna Steele, an old friend from our NASA Days in the 1960ies, called and came to visit for an afternoon.  We spend several hours ;looking at old photographs, mostly taken at the three PlumBrook  Reunions we have had so far. 

 

Gary finally got his new camera.  Margo thinks it is too heavy.  It is complicated, that’s for sure.  It will take quite a long time to master all the bells and whistles.

 

It has been chilly at night.  Good sleeping weather, however.  We stay in bed quite late many mornings.  Some times we did not get up until almost 8 am.

 

The other members of the USNA Alumni RV Chapter came and we started what will turn out to be a very nice five day meeting.  The Shuttle landed one evening.  We had returned to our trailer when we heard the sonic boom.  It was a double boom.  That has to mean there were two shockwaves.  Do not understand why there would be two.

 

We took an airboat ride in the swamp.  Saw lots and lots of alligators stretched out on the banks, sunning themselves.  Alligators and Big Blue Herons were the extent of the wildlife, but they both were pretty numerous.

 

 

End of Summary 111.  This was a pretty low key, two week period, but it was pleasant.

..............................................................................

At the end of the last summary we were at Thousand Trails Peace River, near Wauchula, Florida.

 

We were not far from a small citrus growing activity known as the Citrus Barn.  We learned that you could purchase a five gallon bucket of Hamlin oranges for six dollars, and that Walmart had a small juicer for about fifteen dollars.  So we bunch of oranges and headed for Walmart.  It turned out that several Walmart stores were out of the juicers.  We ended up with a slightly more expensive model at a Kmart but it enabled us to start drinking all the fresh orange juice we wanted.

 

We finally made contact with a long time friend of Margo’s, Joan Adamsky.  The two of them worked for Leeds and Northrop in the early fifties.  We visit every year except last when we went out west instead of south.  She had been out west at a grandson’s wedding.  It was nice visiting with her after a two year period.

 

We left Thousand Trails Peace River in early March and went to Thousand Trails Orlando for three weeks.  It is seventy miles north of Peace River and not far from Disney World.  We had a nice time there, just hanging out, soaking up the nice weather.

 

Gary continued his endeavor to purchase a new camera to replace that which was squished while it was under a power seat when the seat was moved.  He knows what he wants but is seeking what he believes to be a good price.  He discovered that those on-line merchants which claim to have a low price generally do not have the camera he wants, and if they get them in stock, it very likely will be a knock-off, seemingly referred to as the Asian model.   It would be made of plastic and not have any Canon guarantee, since it is not a camera made by Canon.

 

His old camera might be able to be repaired by Canon but this cannot be determined until they have the old camera in hand.  Gary’s old one is considered by Cannon to be an archived model.  They would fix it if they happen to have parts left over from the days before it became so old as to be archived.

 

Gary had a bad fall while exiting the trailer.  Reason undetermined but it had something to do with his being angry with the squirrels being all over his bird feeder and his planned high speed attack to frighten them away.  The next day he was in such pain that we decided to skip going to Titusville to see the launch of the space shuttle.

 

Interestingly he had already set up an appointment with a dermatologist to have some mole-like blemishes examined.  The nurse practitioner biopsied three spots and froze three others.  Then we went to the emergency room at South Florida Hospital.  X-rays did not show anything broken.

 

We had been trying to get in contact with long time friend, Myrna Steele, a co-worker at NASA, in Sandusky, Ohio, back in the fifties.  We decided to go to her home and see if she had moved or was in a nursing home.  She was there at home.  She does not use her answering machine and is slow getting to her phone at times.  We had a nice visit revisiting the old days.

 

Gary finally ordered a Canon EOS 40D from Broadway Photos in New York City.

 

End of Segment 110