February 2015 - Westward Bound!

Feb 1st - Feb 8th, 2015

Magic River Resort - Long Beach, MS
Check out our Carport!

   Finally starting our trek from the East Coast to the West Coast. What I have not yet shared is that we will be making our way to Washington state to begin our first workamping job, which will start in mid April. After signing up to Workampers.com, we submitted our resumes to their online system and were soon contacted by several campgrounds wishing to interview us. We chose a position at a campground on Hood Canal, located about 45 min. from Bremerton, WA, as we have close friends there that we would like to spend time. We are so excited! It is also close to Seattle, so there should be plenty to see and do on our days off. We will be parked and working at Summertides Marina and RV Park from Mid April until the end of September, which will give us plenty of time to get up to speed on the whole workamping thing.

Fountain, FL.

Pine Lake RV Park

    First day back on the road we take it easy and stop at Pine Lake RV Park in the small town of Fountain. Time to catch up on laundry, stock up with groceries and supplies, and use the Internet to pay some bills. You see, the last three nights in the motorhome were spent dry camping first at the shop where we had the exhaust manifold problem fixed, then at the Flying J after we had the parking brake stick and were unable to move the RV, and then finally at the Napa Auto Shop where we had the parking brake problem checked out. Thank goodness for MK and Mimi, where we spent the first night that the RV was being worked on....a shower with real water pressure felt good! The RV shower is good, but the water pressure is not the greatest. Anyway, here we are and will stay two nights because so far all it has done is rain....great weather for catching up on bills and blogs. 

Passport America Main Office
Long Beach, MS

   
Long Beach, MS.

    Back on the road refreshed, we have driven on to Long Beach, MS. This is a small coastal town between Biloxi and Bay St. Louis. Using the Passport America App, we located a little campground with a great nightly rate called Magic River Resort. Nothing fancy, but it's winter time and more about finding a reasonably priced place to park than it is using a lot of park amenities.....at least when the weather is staying in the 40-50 degree range. Out our front window we have a view of a swamp, which is actually pretty cool!

They have two small lakes here, some gabby ducks, and an alligator! Well, at least that's what they tell me....we haven't seen it yet. Park is pretty full, but in the Summer time they say it is pretty much empty. I would imagine with the swamp  the bugs would be horrible and the humidity unbearable. Right now, tho, it's great! They have a morning bond fire around 6:00AM, which I can't tell you much about as I only get up long enough to pee that early in the morning. I suppose I need to work harder on being a morning person...hmmm.

Gulf Coast Beach

Art Sculptures from trees destroyed
by Hurricane Katrina

   The first couple of days in Long Beach we did regular stuff like laundry, groceries, get prescriptions refilled, haircuts, etc. The weather then warmed up some and the sun came out so we drove to the beach and enjoyed a walk there.

Evie, Red, Terry, Me, Paula, Darryl

Catching the beads!

    Not being early risers, we failed to meet our neighbors at the morning bond fires, but the day before our planned departure we met up with Paula and Darryl and their guests Terry and Evie, and hit it off right away! The day we arrived Paula and Evie had literally come running down the park to meet us when they saw us back our Smart Car out of the back of our motorhome......Paula said she told her husband she just saw a  motorhome sh*t a car out the back and had to go check it out! Their motorhome is 20 times nicer than ours, but I think she was ready to trade down for it just for the garage! Too funny! After meeting these folks, there was no way we could take off the next day....especially since they invited us to go to the Mardi Gras Parade in Bay St. Louis with them and come to their shrimp boil after. Wow! I'm so glad they made the effort to get acquainted with us - we haven't been too good at getting out and meeting people much on our own. The Mardi Gras parade was a first for us, and it was fun catching the beads. I'm sure it was a much tamer parade than in New Orleans, but that was fine with us...it was a good time! 

Goofy glasses and all!

Red did the flashing! I just helped
carry the beads...

You know, it really is the people you meet along the way that make the memories so memorable! If we had left that campground when we planned to we would have missed making some new friends and some great memories! I guess crazies attract crazies, cause we felt like we had been old friends rather than new acquaintances. The shrimp boil was great too, even tho Darryl said it was his first try....followed by the traditional King Cake and an introduction to a new card/board game of Horse Racing. Didn't know what to expect, but seems to be a popular game on the RV Trail, and was easy to catch on to. Taking over for Paula while she took a break, I managed to lose most of the nickels she had accumulated....but luckily, her husband Darryl came to the  rescue with enough nickels to keep us in the game! Fun game, so I guess I'll be saving nickels in case I run into some other players on our travels.

Stay tuned in for our next stop!

The Bee-gals
   Kathy & Kathy (Red)