On Friday after leaving our camp we drove straight to Charlottesville to see Thomas Jefferson’s house which we love and have seen several times in the past. This is more of a side view of the house but I think I put a link to a site with 
photo’s of the house so I won’t do that again.
Around the back of the house is actually the side I like best 
the gardens. I’m talking vegetables, orchard, grapes, you name it if it can grow in the area he tried it and the garden people at the site take care of it all and has it looking like it did then. This photo on the left is part of the vegetable garden! yes just part. I love it – it reminds me so much of the garden we had when I was growing up – it wasn’t this big, but it was long like this and not quite 
to so wide.
Since we had been there last a new visitor center and store, theater and museum were also built. Here is a photo of that area. The house is at the top of a very tall hillside, the visitor center is at the bottom of the hill near the parking lot so it does not detract from the mansion. A shuttle bus has to be taken from the parking lot to the mansion, about a 1/2 mile to mile drive I believe. If you are ever in that area it is very well worth the trip to see it – allow a half day if you want to take any or all of the tours.
Now on to my quilting. I don’t think I have posted any of the photo’s of what little quilting I have done in the 9 days 
since we left the house! Here is a Dear Jane square on the right – G1 I don’t remember the 
name and do not have the book handy. On the left is my work space in the motorhome. I am working on G2 in this photo. We normally leave the bed made up for days on end inside of using it as the dinette area – it is easier to leave it made and not have to put the bed together at night. We have 3 captains chairs on the opposite end so it is not a problem with only the two of us here.
I do not think I will be back on the computer for the next 4 days or so – maybe longer. We will be at the Shenadoah National Park until the 15th – I do not think they have wireless in the park and then on to a state park in Northern Maryland. I might have to resort to a bookstore somewhere that has wireless. I will post more photo’s when I can. If we have a rainy day we just might load the computers in the car and look for internet cafe.
by Karen on May 9, 2009
in quilts
This evening Mike has been busy downloading photo’s after a busy day of visiting his mother and family. We went out for lunch and again for supper so no cooking for me today. We did mother’s day today instead of the busy waiting in lines for 
tomorrow.
In the Smokey’s we saw orange flowers growing here and there and got some good photo’s and then found out they are called “Flame Azalea’s” they grow wild. So pretty. I will 
have to see if I can find them in a seed catalog.
I told you about the waterfall trail that we went on it is called “Laurel Falls”, along the way several times there are these signs posted (on right) so don’t you just know you will see someone climbing on the rocks or someplace where they aren’t supposed to be – I think it 
should say “control adults” actually. When we got to the top there was a young lady half way up the rocks on the falls so her boyfriend (or husband) could take a picture, then she couldn’t get down and he had to part way climb up to help her so she wouldn’t fall – 
didn’t get a picture of that – I was ahead of Mike and he had the camera. The photo on the left is the view of the falls as you go around the corner. As you get to the bridge you see this other view of the falls here on the right.
One day in the Smokey’s we saw a coyote. We were driving in the car and I took the photo with a small digital so the photo isn’t as good as Mike’s are. It was trotting along side the road and just watching the cars by glancing over every now and then.
When we took the loop road where the bear were at there were old homesteads along the way. At this one we got out and took the umbrellas with us and walked through the place. It was quite a large set up and had numerous buildings and a 
grist mill. It always seems like places like this have a resident cat and they always follow you through out the whole thing and want to be petted. This white cat reminded me of one we use to have and I had to keep stopping to pet her. That’s me with the umbrella – it had just about stopped raining by then — and guess what it just started raining again this evening as I type this! It got up to 90 today and was very humid – a cool front coming through though and only in the 70′s tomorrow – that I can live with.
Mike is working on the photo’s from Thomas Jefferson’s house and I will try to do another post tomorrow before we will be off line again for awhile.
by Karen on May 8, 2009
in quilts
My computer is finally working at this campsite so I’m going to try to get a blog post 
done. Who knows if it will last long so better do it when it works!
The pictures I am posting are all from the Smokey Mountains. All of the photo’s can be clicked on to make larger.
Besides Bear and Deer we saw a ton of these critters. We see a lot of turkey’s in Arkansas but I rarely see any with the feathers fanned out like this one.
The photo on the right is of one of the beautiful rushing rivers that are in the park. I do not know if the rivers normally have this much water in them and if it was from the rain or not. The water however was not dirty water but nice and clear making me think it is normally this way.
The photo here on the left is more pretty water. I love waterfalls and rushing rivers. They
are just so pretty. I never tire of looking at them. The photo here on the right is of our woodsy campsite. The trees were so tall and we had no close neighbors most of the time.
I normally do not like going “east” for vacations as we very much 
love the mountains of the west but after this trip we feel we might come back to the Smokey’s sometime – hopefully when it isn’t raining!!! I have nothing personal against the eastern seaboard – I just don’t like the heavy traffic and the tons of people out here – it is too crowed for me, I like wide open spaces and a lot less people.
This picture on the left is of a small waterfall that was seen from the road. Mike has not gotten all of the photo’s uploaded yet. When he has the waterfall photo from the hike we took I will post it.
This morning after we left our camp in Western VA we drove about 45 minutes to Thomas Jefferson’s home “Monticello”. This is a beautiful place near Charlottesville, Va. We have toured the home and grounds 3 times at least in the past – the first time we went was in 1988. We really love the place. It is so pretty, the grounds and gardens are a site to see. We passed on the tour of the house this time as we just didn’t have time to do the whole tour. We did the tour of the gardens and the slave row area this time of which we didn’t really take the official tour of those areas previous times. I will post photo’s of those when I can.
We will be here in Virginia Beach until Monday morning visiting relatives so might not be on much except in the evening. I have not gotten any sewing done since the last I mentioned. I did take several pictures of what I have finished so might post those at a later date.
by Karen on May 7, 2009
in quilts
well I have barely gotten any sewing done really. I have gotten two dear jane squares done and about 1/3 of the Christmas Baltimore Album. I well try to get photo’s of those soon. I have been having a computer problem so I am using my husbands computer to get this post done. Computer will need some work I’m afraid it doesn’t want to connect to the internet.
We spent 4 days in the Smokey Mountain National Park in Tennessee. All four days it rained. We did manage to have 
some fun anyhow. One day while it was raining we took a loop road and if any of you are familiar with Yellowstone National Park you know if you see a line of cars parked on the side of the road and people with camera’s all out and walking out to a field like area that there must be a bear in the area. Some people are really dumb! You do not get out of your car – the bear can run faster than you can. We saw this guy, didn’t get a great picture he was too far away. We continued on down the loop road amid all this 
bumper to bumper traffic until finally cars picked up speed a little. Some people pulled off to see old homesteads that the park have for you to look at and we did that to get some of that traffic out of the way. About 45 minutes after the first bear sighting low and behold another traffic jam – I was thinking my god another! I can’t believe we are that lucky. Here are two more. And a close up of one of them after Mike took about 50 
pictures of them. We stayed looking at them for about 10 minutes or so and people were walking out to get closer – silly people.
Yesterday the weather finally cleared up in the afternoon and we raced back to the camper to eat a quick snack for energy – we had been out driving. We had wanted 
to take a hike and the weather just hadn’t been cooperating – finally it was clear and nice, we grabbed our little day packs and some water and headed to the trail to the waterfall. Great falls, great hike 2.6 miles round trip – up hill one way – a very good hike. Mike has not downloaded and edited the photo’s of the waterfall yet, so here is a picture of the river and the rapids very near the campsite that we were at for 4 days. Beautiful isn’t it. Oh and we got back from the hike and I started to cook supper and guess what – it started to rain again, and continued all night long!
The drive to Virginia was beautiful though and we are on our way to Virginia Beach to visit the in-laws tomorrow and will be there until Monday morning and then heading to the Shenadoah National park in Northwestern VA. I will post as I can.
Here is a photo of our motorhome and our honda that we are towing. Here 
we are at a rest area. Look at these beautiful roses. The roses were growing all over at the front of the rest area. So pretty. A rest area that is taken care of is nice to stop at. We get out and walk several laps around the rest areas to stretch when we are on the road. This was in between the light rain that we had while traveling yesterday.
Today we were actually luckier than we thought we would be. It started out raining and we though ok here we go again, but by early afternoon it had quit. We drove over to the state park that we had originally planned on 
camping at these two nights to see the storm damage as we had heard that several state parks in the area had trouble with flooding. The part of the campground that we would have been in was ok, but the old campground was flooded and the roads were bad. A short way from that campground we had to back up a road as the road was flooded and we couldn’t chance trying to cross as the water looked deep and it was moving. Further on we at first thought we would need to turn back
again but that one had one lane open so we managed to continue on.
It is supposed to be a high chance of rain tonight and again tomorrow. We leave here in the morning for the Smokey Mountain National park on the eastern edge of Tennessee and the North Carolina border. We plan on being there for 3 or 4 nights and I doubt I will have internet connection unless we find a Barnes and Noble or something like that to bring the computers in and sit for a little while to catch up on mail and blogging! The connection here at this park has been bad and I have been kicked off more than I have been on and I’m constantly saving my drafts.
this post is from Saturday – May 2nd I think – I am posting this several days later as computer problems with getting internet. I will update as I can
We managed to stay behind the storms all day and only traveled in light rain now and then. We are in Tennessee about an hour west of Nashville where they had horrible storms all day from what we heard. There is a lot of flooding in the state. We are not at the campground we planned to be at originally – instead we are at a KOA for 2 nights on higher ground as I say a lot of flooding and we did not want to take a chance on the state park we planned on as we had no idea if it was one of the parks the news was saying were having trouble with flooding – evidently a lot of the parks are having a problem with it.
Tomorrow we will drive around and check out some of the parks and see what they are like so next time we are in the area we will know what they are like.
I did not forget anything that I know of so far but I already had to help out the economy by buying a new hair dryer earlier today! First thing this morning while getting myself ready I picked up my hair dryer to dry my hair and when I turned it on it started to make all kinds of weird clanking noises like something had broken inside of it. Immediately shut it off and threw it in the trash! Ok so I have a small back up hair dryer in the camper that is supposed to be for if we are at a place with no hookups and no generator allowed — I had never tried it, I saw it last year and you can plug it into the cigarette lighter. So I thought, oh great I have that hairdryer in the camper all is not lost! It is small I didn’t expect as powerful of an experience a regular blow dryer is – what I got was a tiny little puff of warm air — no blow – think puffing out your cheeks and puff it out. Nothing!! It is worthless — if any of you are thinking of getting something like this don’t bother, I believe this one is going in the trash as well. You don’t even want to know what my hair looked like today!!
When we were going through Memphis we always remember a good place to get out and take a walk is at the mall on the edge of the east side of Memphis. The parking lots are huge so we joined several other motor homes and campers in the parking. Parked and went inside and walked to get some exercise, use the bathroom, and Sears was down the hall, I figured I would pay about the same price there for a hair dryer as Wal-Mart so found one and got it. Do you know that at Sears you have the option of buying an extended warranty on a hair dryer — weird, they wanted $2.00 for a $15 dryer. It didn’t really sound all that economical to me so I passed on the offer.
No photo’s today as we just drove for almost 7 hours and then spent the evening in the camper out of the rain away from the thunder and lightening. We got out the scrabble board and played a game then we both got on our computers! On the quilting front I worked on my Christmas Baltimore Album block two times today and have started to make headway on the green mistletoe wreath. Maybe tomorrow photo’s of places we see depends on the weather.
