Category: Blog Entries

Whew! Thank god that day was over. The day we had getting to PA was grueling. CD burner screwing up when on a very tight deadline. Changing a tire in pouring rain. Getting the RV stuck turning around. Semi-lost. Setting up in pitch blackness, getting muddy, etc, etc, etc!

The following day was much better. We packed up the puggles and headed out to Ohiopyle State Park near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water home. We planned on eating lunch at Falling Water and checking it all out, but it was going to cost us $32 for admission for both of us just to get in, so we said..NAY NAY (that was for you Alice 🙂 I always wanted to see that place, but for that price Ill settle for pictures.

hiopyle State Park was just a few miles down the road but on the way we stopped for lunch (after being scolded by a friendly female road construction worker) We found a little pizza joint off the beaten path in Mill Run that was a great find. We had awesome huge strombolis. The woman working at the restaurant…I am embarrassed to refer to her as “woman” as I should have gotten her name as we chatted quite a bit while waiting for the strombolis to cook…anyway she gave us a great treat to try and if you happen to stop at the Pizza Barn Family Restaurant you gotten try it to. It was fried dough and it is addictive in taste. Kinda like cinnamon sticks from Dominos but better. Just look for the signs pointing you down a small road to get there.&

So we got into Ohiopyle and were surprised to see all of the activity there. The Youghiogheny River was roaring from all the rains they had been getting. It was amazing watching all that water crashing over rocks and forming huge foaming rapids and waterfalls. There was an area that had natural waterslides carved into the limestone that normally people can slide down but it was a torrent that day. Way too dangerous. We hiked out to see cucumber falls and then just hiked for a bit through the dense foliage. It was so green and beautiful out there. The dogs had so much fun tromping through the thick mud on the trails.

On the way out we stopped for a beer at the Ohiopyle House Bar. With 72 different beers to choose from I was a kid in a candy store. I settled on Troeg Nut Brown Ale brewed in nearby Harrisburg, PA. It capped off a great day out in nature. We even found a solo pink flip flop perched on a rock, it almost looked too staged.

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Well I first have to apologize as this blog is going to take a bit to write as I am behind and a lot of things have happened this trip. So many in fact they have left me no time to write but once I get back on the road I will get caught up. But I do have time to announce …. I GOT THE BOOK FINISHED AND READY TO SELL!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 Look out, Oprah here we come!! Many things have happened on this trip and since I am a little behind I am going to summarize mostly. The first day into Cincinnati area we were headed to have dinner with our good friend Trish. On the way our rear brake caliper failed and seized up 🙁 I had to have Trish give us a ride home and my mom to take me back to my car where I got it fixed in under 20 minutes. I had time to drive around Loveland, where I grew up, with my mom. It was an emotional ride as we went by our house where I spent my entire childhood at and my mom last year was forced to sell. I had to hold back tears and be strong for my mom as she was on the verge of breaking down. It would not have been so hard had I not been with her. There are so many good times in that happened in that house along with some hard ones, but the good ones are the ones I hold on to. I plan to sometime in the future write a book about all the great stories from my childhood growing up with Skippy, Jason and others. And if anyone has been around me before, they will know I love to tell those stories, just hope I can do them justice in writing them down. The day ended by having lunch at Skyline Chili. If you are from Cincinnati, you understand what role Skyline plays in your life, and if it doesn’t, that must mean you are one of those Gold Star people 🙂 🙂 :) We did a side day trip to Lebanon, Ohio and were pleasantly surprised by its charm. It is a great small midwestern town. The Golden Lamb is its famous landmark but there are many other sites to check out. A place you should go to if there is the Wild Bill Cafe. The decor of the place does not portray what the menu is like. It is gourmet and fabulous! And the beer selection is not bad either. We had our One Shoe Diaries exhibition at Depot Square Frame and Art courtesy of our good friends Dave and Beth Magella. It was a great success, but once again not much traffic other than friends and family, but most of them showed up and it was so fun to see everyone. It was a great moment to be able to sell the first copy of our book to my older brother Doug. I wish there was a way we could reconnect as we are so busy it seems to find time 🙁 We would like to thank all those that came out. Pat and Vicky Costello, Trish and her mother and friend. My mom, sister Vicky, Skippy, Becky, Wayne, Randy, Jen, my nephew and Niece, along with Juanita, Mike and any others I may have failed to mention. I had my first interview with a reporter and will be posting the article as soon as it is published. The next day my cousin Terry, whom I wish I was closer to and my Uncle Junior stopped by with his friend Mary Ann. I got to hear a great story about my grandfather from him I have never heard before… My grandfather, Henry Geisner and his two brothers came over on a ship from Germany together years ago when they were just young men. So what do young men who have no job or life do when they get off the ship do? They get drunk, and get drunk they did. They ended up getting into a fight, over what he never said. But they were so furious after the fight they decided to part ways. One brother was so angry he said he was changing his last name to Geesner. The other brother, not to be outdone said he was changing his last name to Gessner. The third was so mad he decided he could not live in the same country with them and went back to Germany! And still to this day the two families have not spoken. You can even see the two families names, Geesner and Gessner in the Cincinnati phone book. My father never knew his father, and I never met his mother Hazel. My grandmother died when I was young and grandfather Henry Geesner died before I was born. Therefore I know very litle about my history and I am hungry to learn all I can when I get the chance. I hope to have more time with Uncle Junior some time, along with cousins Ron and Terry. Before our last day in town we were able to meet up with Randy, Jen and Trish at the Valley Vineyards. You know we cant go anywhere without finding a winery 🙂 This was nice as they have a dinner function on the weekends where you get a table and pay a certain price. And for that you get either steak or salmon. The twist being you grill it yourself on their outdoor grills. ALong with the main course they have prepared corn, potatos, salad and desserts for you. And oh yeah, you get a bottle of their wine. The wine was nothing special, but it was good and they grow all the grapes there. The best part was sharing more time with our friends. It was a perfect evening.

Indiana was a nice stay. The Thousand Trails, Indian Lakes was not one we particularly liked. It had a lot of locals that essentially lived on the property for the summer. Which since they felt like it was home were just out of control. They justy thought they could let dogs run free, be tied up outside, and speed around in the bubba carts. A bubba cart is a modified golf cart with big mud tires and jacked up, not to mention more horsepower for speed.

But the towns surrounding the preserve Sunman, Batesville and such were great small towns, very charming. Also charming was the jewel of a vineyard outside Batesville.

We headed out to the Ertel Cellars winery to have brunch. They have a very classy dining area. It was even better food! They have the most incredible brunch buffet. You could tell the chef took great pride in his product as he made fabulous omelets buffet-side. That day was also the last day of their wine festival so we just a bonus. We tried many of their wines. They were pretty good, but this is a new winery and their wines will surely improve over time with experience as it is a top-notch operation.

Other than that our time in Indiana was pretty uneventful. This area of Indiana is a nice place to visit, with several quaint small towns to visit and explore, we just did not have time to do it.

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Bowling green was just a quick night stay over. We did get to eat at one of our top Thai Restaurants. Proved to be worthy of that rating too. Staying at Diamond Caverns was nice, we had stayed there before. It had lots of nice walking paths, people drive slow and respect walkers. It was still very hot though. We did not get a chance to hit “the Spa”. One of the buildings they constructed some years ago in the 80’s was designated a spa. It had tanning beds (with bulbs original bulbs I think) mirrors on the wall, old school workout equipment, a hot tub and a sauna. It was still kept pretty nice, just kinda funny to see all of the old school equipment.

The drive to Indiana from Kentucky included a stop at the Jim Beam distillery on the Bourbon Trail. We would have liked to hit more but time did not allow. The tour was neat and the most fascinating part was to see the barrel houses with the 12 or so stories of nothing but aging bourbon. The whole process of making bourbon is pretty cool, something you should check out if ever driving from nashville to Louisville.

As luck would have it there was a winery near our RV park so we just had to visit it. It was the Long Hollow Winery. Very nice tasting room, but it was not near a vineyard. The hostess for the evening was very nice, young and very quick witted. And seemed to be in fast forward, and her ears were ringing so bad so said. Not sure what that means. Anyway we bought their reisling and concord grape wines. The reisling was the best we have tried, more dry than sweet. We are not sweet wine fans.

The first place we hit in Nashville was the Blackstone Brewpub. The place looked great, very well done. An upscale brewpub with an awesome menu. Even if I did not drink beer I would eat there! But the beer is just as good. I actually loved the Heffeweissen the best. Would love to revisit this place. Next we headed down to Broadway to do the tourist thing. After shopping and visiting a mediocre brewpub we wanted ice cream. It was here I got the laugh of the night.

While in line I had a guy behind me hand me a business card. White with black type, looked like it was printed using a home computer, complete with perforated edges. It was classic. On it was a bands name and website. The guy said that they are an up and coming band that just signed a 3 song record contract, he wanted me to check em out. I asked some questions finding out he was there PR manager. And then I saw a guy, a male Paris Hilton wanna be the way he sat trying to look cool. When in reality he cracked me up, he had sent his PR guy to go get his ice cream. He sat like he was a big shot. So i started to ask him the questions directly “where have you played” “what kind of music do you play”. The more he became uncomfortable talking to me like I was one of the little people that he did not have time for the more I asked questions. It was a fun little game that I do get bored of and let the primaddona off the hook. It was just so funny to me watching from then on at the people, noticing which ones were looking to “make it” in Nashville and thought they were important.

Overall Nashville was a fun time, wish we had more than a night to explore it.

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Well after making a few turnarounds in some country church parking lots we finally made it to the Thousand Trails Natchez Trace. As usual that place was out in the middle of nowhere, but what a better opportunity to explore a good small town. And a good small town is what we found.

Hohenburg, TN is a small town with a historic downtown area and is known for its junk stores and antiques. We ate lunch at the Junkyard dog restaurant, they had good food but the atmosphere is something not to miss. We only hit one junk store and did not find much we wanted, but the antique mall was full of affordable treasures. I bought an old 1950’s 95A Polaroid camera, but found out that night they no longer make film for it so I returned it for a newer 1970’s model. Complete with film, but wouldnt you know it, the film was no longer any good 🙂 Sharon realized she wants some amber glassware when we settle down, she fell in love with the vivid reds and oranges of it.

On our way up to Nashville we drove the “Trace” (Natchez Trace). It was a little elusive at first but we found it. The road is great, barely any civilization in sight, it was essentially a very long paved trail through the woods, no stop signs, lights or anything. There are numerous picnic areas, trails, waterfalls and historical places along the way. It would take a month to do it all, 442 miles in all

NOTE: Stop in the quaint town of Leiper’s Fork for a bite and gifts.

I almost forgot to mention the sweet couple that camped next to us in Natchez Trace. They were some of the nicest people, Someone is very lucky to have them as parents and grandparents, I hope they are as appreciated as much as they deserve. I know I would like to think if my grandparents wold have lived long enough for me to have known them, that they were be exactly like the couple we met. Safe Journeys to them!

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Montgomery: We only spent one night in Montgomery, so there really is not much to write about. Other than the RV Park we stayed at, had some pretty sad looking RVs in it. It is hard to see people living in such horrible conditions. I realize we live in an RV also, but it is a pretty nice RV and we choose to live in it, it is not our only choice.

Birmingham: It was just a short trip up to Oak Mountain State Park where we stayed for two days. Sometimes it is weird to stay in a state park, everyone there is camping and we are just living. The first day we spent in the coach until dinner. We ate out at what we thought would be a brewpub, but its brewing capabilities have been shut down. The laws are so screwy in Alabama we found out. In order to brew beer before, they had to make a seperate building next door and truck the beer around the block before bringing it into the restaurant. Something about a law you cannot brew beer and serve it in the same building. Also in Alabama, port is not considered wine, it is a liquer. So at the wine bar we could not get port. Whatever. We have not really settled on where we want to live, but we know we cannot live in Alabama. We need our brewpubs.

Now back to the restaurant we went to for dinner. The food was top notch, We ate so much we were gonna burst. They may not brew their own beer, but they had great beer on tap. They had our new favorite, Southern Pecan. We had it in Pensacola and loved it and it was just as impressive. I had a Sweetwater Brown ale, but it did not stack up so I switched (I just have a weakness to try new beers:) There was a lot going on down at the five points area, many of the choices were a little too upscale for us though. We had fun, although it would have been a lot more fun if Alice were with us.

Even in Alabama we can find a winery to visit. We visited the Vizzini Winery in Calera. We were a little taken back, because their “vineyard” was tiny, almost to the point where they should not advertise being a vineyard. Now after dogging out their vineyard, I have to give praise to their tasting room. It was very nice, we had a great lunch in the restaurant and sampled some pretty good wines. They import grapes from Washington State to create them. We purchased a Viognier. I actually cannot wait to try it paired with something spicy. In addition to nice wines so was the host, he was a good old guy. Quite funny too. We probably should have bought a bottle of wine for Alice, but she still has not drank the last one we got her.

Speaking of wine, we opened our bottle of Pietra Santa Zinfandel. It was better than we remembered. Sharon made a great sun dried tomato pesto pasta to go with it, it just brought out the spiciness of the wine. Sooo good!

View Milton Photo Gallery>>
Well we are back in the Pensacola Area. Our good friend Bryan has offered up a spot at his house for us to park the motorhome for our stay in Milton. It was great, we were right on the water. Although the water is so warm right now I am not sure fish could live in their to even make it worth fishing.

It was a pretty uneventful stay. It was so nice to see our friends. We got rollerblade with Kirsten and Belinda, played some volleyball with Charlie, hung out with mocha and Sharon got to catch up with Monica and Kim.

;In addition to seeing all those friends we also spent the weekend with our good friends Wayne and Alice. First of all I want to thank them for their generosity. They are like older siblings to us. Whenever we stay at their house, we feel like we are staying with family. It is always just a good time. We laugh and talk, and just like to hang out with them in general.

Oh yeah Alice, Thanks for the clothes! I love my shirt and but I think I may love Sharon’s more, she is prettier than me so it is not really fair 🙂

Since we are thanking people, we need to thank Bryan and Tolly for their hospitality, it was nice being your neighbors for a bit.

So now it was time to start a new Journey. Another volume of the One Shoe Diaries, this time a trip up the East Coast, One Shoe at a Time. Hope we will find enough shoes to do a whole other book. Hard for me to think about another book, when I am still working on the first. I am very close top having it done, should be done in a week or less!

NOTE: Jinjer is crazy, we love her, but she’s craaaazy

Well it was time for another Miss Georgia American Coed Pageant so we left the motorhome in Pensacola for the weekend and drove up to Atlanta in the Jeep. We stay at the Westin Perimeter North where the pageant is being held. It is a very nice hotel and is pet friendly so the Puggles can come with us. They even have their Heavenly brand of dog beds for them. On our way to the pageant we stopped at a dog park in Piedmont Park near downtown. It was rated as a top 10 dogpark in America. It was nice, well kept and the dog owner’s seemed responsible, but not sure if it makes our top ten parks as there was no where for the dogs to swim and cool off. There is also a brewpub on the park’s edge that we did not get a chance to go try but will visit later in the weekend.

The pageant is pretty grueling for us, we work over 12 hours 2 days and 17 hours 1 day. The nice thing was we can keep the Puggles with us in the ballroom where we set up to do backdrop photos, and they behave perfectly. People are amazed how good and calm they are. But if we took them out they would be “willy nilly” all over the hotel.

We had a good time overall. I hit a few snags, I lost some photos, forgot some equipment and broke some equipment. We limped through it though and it ended well. The parents and contestant’s were great. Hopefully it will be financially worthwhile since we are trying to earn a living 🙂

On the road home, we were talking about our future plans for a gallery/studio and missed the I-75, I-85 split and drove an hour down the road before figuring it out, we had to cut over on backroads to get back to I-85 but the long route worked out for us as we were able to get some straight from the grove peaches and some peach ice cream. And to fit in with the way the pageant went, I photographed a shoe on the highway but ended up erased the disk and losing the photos 🙁

The rest of the drive to Pensacola was smooth sailing. I was hoping the next day’s photoshoot would be smooth sailing as well and not like the pageant 🙂

Manteca, CA: The journey back had a scheduled stop in Manteca, CA at the Thousand Trails Turtle Beach for us to give the coach a once over. I changed the oil and planned on replacing brake pads on the rear brakes. Upon inspecting the pads I realized I needed to replace the calipers as well, which needed dot be ordered and would take two days to get in. We now had only 10 days to travel almost 2500 miles. In the meantime we did get to have dinner with an old friend of Sharon’s, Jeff. With whom she used to play volleyball with years ago. We met them at the HopYard Brewpub, of course. They had average food and good brews. And the town of Manteca had its own brewpub, Kelley’s. This was an extraordinary pub, the beers were excellent, the food was as well and the establishment looked great, really done well. One of our top brewpubs visited for sure. The calipers came in and we were back on the road.

Barstow, CA:
We have decided to drive at night to avoid the heat and traffic. All went well over the big hill on highway 58 out of Bakersfield, it was a beautiful drive actually with the full moon lighting up the jagged peaks of Tehachapi Pass. The hill did seem to go on forever as we crept all, but the Cruisemaster was the little coach that could and peaked over the pass like a champ. We stopped and dry docked at a small truck stop just outside Barstow around 3 a.m.

Lake Havasu, AZ:
First off, after getting 30 minutes down the road I realized I left my flip-flops outside the coach. Sllep deprivation is rough. It was so hot going through Needles into Lake Havasu City we thought we were going to melt. We checked into Cat Tail Cove State Park early so we could get plugged into electricity and get air conditioning going to cool off. But on a 30 amp there is only enough power to run one air unit so it never really cooled off. We went to the lake to cool off but had to carry the dogs so they did not burn their paw pads. We had a great time swimming in the cool clear water. Once we got down we headed out to a brewpub. Yes a brewpub. Are you surprised? Even they could not get the place cooled off it was so hot, we heard at 6:30 it was still 112º. This was the hottest place we have ever been. The water coming out of the tap was warm, we just could not get cooled off. We decided we would stay until around 7 or 8 then head out when it was cool, because we would not survive driving in the heat of the day, we would get too grouchy 🙂

El Paso, TX:
I was pretty tired leaving Lake Havasu but got a second wind and managed to drive to the other side of El Paso at around 2:30 a.m. We stopped at a truck stop (Flying J, our friend on the road) We awoke the next morning to cool air, it felt so good! Upon exiting the coach we noticed that when we pulled in we must have ran over a woman’s white heel shoe. I was excited, I had been traveling on such a time schedule I was unable to find solo shoes, but this time one found us!! But being tired and not of sound mind we ended up leaving before I got the SHOT!! #%^&*%*#&@!%!!!!! But I have an idea, I am going to do a re-enactment photo 🙂

Balmorhea, TX:
Back to our oasis in the desert, Balmorhea State Park. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay here the first time so we figured it would be great again. And we were right. It was a perfect stop, we took a well needed refreshing dip in the spring pool. We snorkeled around the entire pool, watching the small fish dart everywhere around us. It was a gorgeous day out. We finished it off by going to the “cutest restaurant in Balmorhea” The Bear Cave. The girls working there work so hard and are so nice, we had a great meal. The dogs enjoyed having soft grass again to potty in.

Junction, TX:
This place seemed familiar, but we could not recall why for some time driving until it hit me. I photographed a shoe there during a night time drive in the rain on our way out. And a when we got off at our destination we realized it was the exit with the truck stop that scared us a little to eat at so we continued on. This time we were staying the night just a few yards down from that truck stop in the tiniest RV park (they advertise 14 sites, we counted 8). We had a check UPS’ed to us at that RV park, but it had a different address than in the book we had and ended up at the “shady” truck stop somehow. They were really nice and had been holding it for us. We and one other motor home were there. We went into town to check out the state park, but the recent onslaught of rain Texas has been receiving the South LLano River was flooded and angry so we could not get in past the low water bridge. Overall the RV park was exactly what we needed for just a night.

Columbus, TX:
Another place we thought we would not be back to again. It was nice though to see something familiar. We stayed in Thousand Trails Colorado River again. We ate at Nancy’s Steakhouse, they have great seafood dishes. We got a beer at Kristine’s, a must-do if you are at Thousand Trails. We met some nice people in there, the locals are very nice. Note: If you go there, have cash, they take cards, but you cannot tip using them 🙁 We shared our bottle of Granny Smith apple wine with a neighbor over a campfire, it was exactly why we bought our wines, to share.

Beaumont, TX:
We started to think we were never going to get out of TEXAS! I had a bunch of work to do so i could not get as much driving in as I would have liked and we had to stop in Beaumont to stay the night at the RV park we stayed at on the way out. At least I did get to get more of the free Texas-shaped waffles for breakfast before heading out.

Milton, Florida:
Finally making it back to Florida we felt exhausted. Ou friend Brian had RV hookups at his house on the water in Milton so we stayed there. But we only had one day there before having to drive to Atlanta for the Miss Georgia American Coed Pageant of which I am the official photographer for.