Well it has been a while since we have posted. We are still doing our own things. Barb is enjoying the summer with Jim and her kids as well as the grand baby! Lots of social events, plus gardening/landscaping a backyard that already looks spectacular. I volunteered at another festival, did a lot of bike riding (until my biking partner wrecked his knee) and am off to play pickleball this afternoon.

Barb & I continue to work for Dr. Amy and will be taking this on the road with us. It is nice to keep your brain and skill sets fresh in retirement!

Here are some pics of recent biking trips. It never ceases to amaze me what is in our own backyards…….These pics were all within a few kilometres of my sister’s place, which is where I have been hanging my hat until the RV reappears in Canada.

The festival was for Highland Creek, where my sister is President, so of course had to lend a helping hand. It was a great event and we raised a lot of money for the community. Apparently 5,000 people showed up!

I also went to a book launch. My dear friend Janine Rogan wrote a book during Covid called The Pink Tax. It is a great book outlining some real challenges women face when building their own wealth. In fact I thought it relevant enough that I purchased a book for each of my five nieces. This particular launch was here in Toronto, a block or two from where I used to live in Liberty Village. Was great to walk through my old neighbourhood to the gallery for the event.

What else has been happening?? Well, not too much. Safiya still getting into places maybe she shouldn’t (good thing she was spotted before the boxes got thrown out). And Winston, well he is an old dog with a few tricks up his paw…….my sister does not like him on the furniture……which is precisely where he went after a bath when no one was paying attention. At least he was clean!

Then of course there is surfing the net and seeing a couple of extraordinary pics of places to go and incredible pictures taken at precisely the right moment. The first pic is a bridge in East China. How cool is this!

Next up on our joint travels?? September is shaping up for a tour of Eastern Townships Quebec where we will be able to visit lots of friends and family along the way. Looking forward to another excellent adventure!

Volunteer of course!!

I spent the day with my sister at a police function to raise awareness of all the police services in her area of the GTA. It was a great day speaking to the different officers about their roles in the community. My favourites? The Canine Unit of course, and the Drone Unit (I don’t think they call it that, but it really is just that).

There were also Aboriginal activities, dancers, community booths, and all branches of service were there. Paramedics, Recruitment, Canine, Fire, Rescue, Court Officers, Conflict Officers, and more.

Cool and ah-ha moments – the police have their own gas station in their parking lot (which makes sense, but still cool) AND apparently even the fire dept. needs directional help when backing up the rig to make tricky turns! It’s not just us somewhat rookie RVers!

Here are some pics of the day.

What else have we been up to? Well, Barb has been busy with her granddaughter, who is super cute! And making her backyard even more wonderful, planting & gardening. I am over at my sister’s in Scarborough taking advantage of all the bike trails in the neighbourhood and along the waterfront. The weather has been spectacular so like they say “you have to make hay when the sun shines”. We hope you are all getting out and enjoying the summer.

For those of our friends and family on both coasts, we have been following the fires and are glad to see things are being held & contained. We are also grateful that so many firefighters from around the world came to help out our fellow Canadians.

Update on the Motorhome: Still in Buffalo waiting on some items that are covered under warranty. We hope to get it back soon as we miss it! Funny how you can get so attached to something, but we LOVE our RV!

Will keep you up to date on our summer adventures and potential Canadian travels before heading back south in November.

A great end to our first U.S. tour in 2022/2023.

We decided to stay at a couple of Harvest Hosts on the way home, and Barb once again found the best two around for sure. They were both farms, one larger than the other. They both had multi-generational retired owners with children/grandchildren either living in the same home or very close by. Both men were incredibly fit for their age. Both were well off, with the second being very well off. Most important……they were all wonderful, kind, considerate people.

While travelling back north and to these last two locations for the final two nights, we did see an interesting sight on day 1, as well as had a great stop midday on day 2.

The first interesting, and sobering, sighting was the remains of some buildings after a series of tornadoes had hit Little Rock Arkansas just days before we passed through. The severe weather in that area made the top 3 list for number of tornadoes in a 24-hour period. Over 140. We are so blessed to have not been involved despite having been so close.

The next day we stopped at Blake’s. Not Blake Shelton, wouldn’t THAT have been a great story! But Blake’s Orchard & Cider Mill in Armada Michigan, where a local farmer built a cider tasting room, two restaurants, and a great bakery with fresh donuts, fresh baked apple cinnamon bread, lots of fresh pies (we bought a strawberry/rhubarb pie along with an apple cinnamon loaf), lots of jams, salsas, and gifts. Quite lovely really. We decided to order some takeout and chose chicken wings and sautéed Brussel sprouts. While we were waiting we decided to start with chicken cordon blue egg rolls. They were OK, but we both decided that regular egg rolls were better. We also decided to walk around while we were waiting for our takeout. We thought why not try some cider, so off we went to the cider house. It looked open and in we went. Interestingly, as we stepped in, a few people turned from the bar and stared, then a few more, then everyone turned to stare. Weird……..so I said, “I know we look good”, to which the bartender said, “we are closed for a private event.” OK, there were a couple of guys who thought this was funny, but maybe put up a sign to say closed for private event???? Sheesh.

Here are some pics of the restaurant/bar and our spring rolls.

Wings came home with us and we had a delightful last night in the U.S. Our final task before crossing the border the next day was to get Jim a large bottle of vodka. Not sure if any of you have crossed the border into Canada around the Niagara area, but there is NO sign for duty free…….anywhere! When we got to the border crossing, Barb asked the guard where the duty free was as we hadn’t seen any signs, to which she replied “ ya…..there is no sign, you have to take the exit that says last exit in the U.S.”, good grief. Soooo Jim didn’t get his huge bottle of vodka, but a promise that next year we would “do better!”.

So now back in Canada, quickly getting back into the routine of life not on the road. There is still a lot to see/do and we are both looking forward to hitting the road down south once more in the fall.

Barb took a look at what we could do leaving Nashville to make our way home and found a GEM of a spot! This park houses the largest underground cave structure on earth. Intermittent exploration has been going on for over 4,000 years; the full extent of this water-formed labyrinth is unknown. Mammoth Cave’s over 420 miles of mapped tunnels make it more than twice as long as any known cave. Geologists believe there are another 600 miles to discover yet. Prehistoric peoples explored 10 or more miles of Mammoth Cave 4,000 years ago. Archeological evidence shows that these early cavers collected crystals and other salts in the cave. Cave exploration ceased 2,000 years ago, not to resume until the cave was rediscovered in 1798.

The vast cave system holds one of the world’s most diverse cave ecosystems. About 130 forms of life can be found in Mammoth Cave. Life in the cave is not separate from the rest of the park’s natural communities. It is an extension of the larger biological whole, whose diversity and abundance are preserved here.

It was warm so we did the self-guided tour as we had to leave the animals in the RV and couldn’t be gone long. Here are the two of us going into one of many entrances to the cave system.

Inside the cave structure the caverns were huge. There are many tours you can take where you have to cave dive or spelunking is required to get through the passageways. We were NOT in those caves.

One interesting spot in this part of the cave was a war memorial. Not a clear shot, but you get the gist.

Above ground the park itself is stunning and there are 33 miles of Green River you can kayak and over 60 miles of hiking trails throughout.

This is definitely on the list to come back to. Stay a few days and really explore the caves and the park.

What a night to go! We had a few firsts. 1. Meghan Patrick from Bowmanville Ontario made her debut in “the circle”. 2. Carly Pearce performed her 100th show. 3. The second half of the evening was filmed and we were part of the live audience and Bobby Bones was the host!

We had a great time seeing all the stars perform, and while some of the music wasn’t to our taste, a lot was. Here was the lineup and a couple of pics from the audience.

We took a few photos of the show as well, which is hard to do with an older iPhone.

It was great having done the backstage tour earlier in the week, seeing the dressing rooms that these performers were getting ready in, and then seeing all the live performances. A MUST-DO if you are ever in Nashville.

The Grand Ole Opry backstage tour was excellent! In fact we were so inspired, we have booked ourselves for Tuesday night’s concert!! We had no idea that it was such a HUGE deal to be invited to not just play, but to be asked to join. We started out with a movie hosted by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. It was very moving and inspiring. The tour itself backstage was awesome as we were able to see all the dressing rooms and stage equipment. Also interesting, no matter who you are, you have to show ID when entering in the dressing room staging area. Apparently there have been folks impersonating “Dolly” so they had to implement some checks to make sure they had the right Dolly!

They also have mailboxes at the Grand Ole Opry, so if you want to send a letter to one of your favourite stars, you can. When the stars show up, they check their mailbox before going into their dressing room. Here are some shots starting with the entrance, the lobby, backstage, dressing rooms which each have different themes, and onstage. The Circle of Wood was brought over from the original Opry house, the Ryman, when they decided to build a new location. Very cool.

Next stop, the Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman started out as a church and started bringing talent in to perform. Over the years, any and all music genres played at the Ryman. Hee Haw was also filmed here throughout its whole time on T.V. A lot of history in this location, so we were happy to hear that, when the Ryman was going to get torn down the stars stepped in and made sure the Mother Church of Country Music stayed alive and continued as hallowed ground.

Two great venues for seeing your favourite stars and both worth the time to visit.

We decided to go on a tour with Tommy. Tommy’s Tours came highly recommended if you wanted a laugh. The tour itself was a little bit of Nashville and a whole lot of the rich and famous homes. There are a lot of them. I will start with some pics of Tommy and the inside of a hotel that used to be the train station. The lobby was incredible.

Once we took a little tour of this gem, we were off to Music Row. This is often mistaken for Broadway where all the live bands/bars are. Music Row is actually all the music studios where the artists write/perform/jam with others.

Then off to see some huge homes. We took lots of photos but the homes were so far back we couldn’t get a lot of them in a good shot. Saw the area where Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman live. Also Taylor Swift’s homes…yes one for her cats and the other for her. Also Minnie Pearl, and Martina McBride, who apparently drives around in her red little car waving at everybody.

Evening was a nice dinner with friends we met just outside of Hilton Head S Carolina months ago. It was cool that they ended up at our campground for one night and were able to get together with us.

Tomorrow is the Grand Ole Opry tour and a tour of the Ryman Auditorium.

Where do we start?? Well let’s start at the beginning. We hopped on a shuttle which cost us $10 per person round trip, WAY better than a $20 Uber each way! We got dropped off downtown right at Printers Alley which is a Blues music strip off of Broadway, the main drag. We decided to walk to Germantown first which was a bit out of the way, but we needed the exercise! We saw a great memorial, pics below, and we went into the Farmer’s Market venue and purchased some sourdough mix to make in the RV. Here are some pics of the memorial and Farmer’s Market.

Next stop was downtown Nashville during the day. Big party city but much much cleaner and nicer than New Orleans in our opinion. The first 3 pics are from a massive bar we stumbled upon (not really, we were not drinking, shocker) and would like to go back to listen to some music. The next 3 are from the inside of other bars on Printers Alley. Then a pic of a 3 level bar, then onto Printers Alley to take a pic of a guy who has been playing for over 35 years there and some outside shots of the Alley itself.

Blake Shelton has to have a special mention as we love The Voice! Large bar, cool merchandise and clearly a place to film not only his own Barmaggedon reality game show but the Love is Blind reality show on Netflix.

Now we also had to eat! So stop #1 was at Slim & Husky’s. A pizza place started by two college students. It was excellent!! I have tried to upload the pics, but not working so you will have to take our word for it that it looked as great as it tasted. The next stop after wandering around Broadway was The Stillery where we had Mac and Cheese with Hot Chicken on top. Hot Chicken is what we would call buffalo chicken. It was “so-so” and while recommended by an Uber driver, we would not send our friends to have this. We were going to go to Prince’s for the Hot Chicken but the line up was WAY too long.

Tomorrow is another day.

We are on day 2 of our stay, and so far we have only scratched the surface on places to eat. We still need to tour the city. The first night we were going out for dinner but decided to stay put and order in as there was a storm that blew in, and the animals, well really Winston as Safiya couldn’t care less, were a little nervous. We ordered Thai, cost a fortune, and was OK, not great. But, it was delivery so we were not expecting stellar and we have leftovers, so that is something.

Day 2 we decided to go to a spa and have massages!! As we mentioned in an earlier blog, wind can be a huge issue when driving. After two days of fairly windy travels, we needed to de-stress, and what better way than a massage. It was a great choice of venue and well worth the cost. In fact Barb called our benefits and it seems these will be covered by Sunlife! YAY! Next on the agenda…….

Night 2 we went to a restaurant called Husk. It was incredible! It is farm-to-table and the menu changes daily depending on what is coming out of their garden just outside the restaurant, and what is available from local farmers. There is a list of their suppliers on the wall when you come in (clever) which shows where their ingredients are coming from. The restaurant is in a very old home, retrofitted for a two level restaurant and a bar downstairs. We tried it all!

By the way, for those of you travelling, there are two more Husk locations; one in Charleston SC (seafood-based menu) and another in Savannah GA (more beef-based) and probably both just as outstanding as this Nashville location (more pork-based).

We started with Asian-inspired beef tartare with crawfish XO, and pigs ear lettuce wraps, along with a kohlrabi salad. Then onto the mains. I had heritage chicken with dirty rice and Cara Cara orange. The chicken was excellent as it had been slow cooked for 8 hours! Barb had the pork chop with squash and kale, also excellent. Dessert….we never order dessert, but when I hear butter popcorn ice cream…..well need I say more. And when Barb hears chocolate in the way of sorbet with pork fat caramel – yes pork fat …. OMG we ordered both and shared. We also had wine pairings with each course. THEN……a nightcap in the bar downstairs. Barb quickly made friends with two bartenders and a patron, and we had a great time with 2 custom cocktails! Wonderful evening!!! Here are some pics to enjoy.

Night photos as we were waiting for our Uber home.

Nashville day 3………….we are going to Germantown, a neighbourhood of Nashville.

We have made it into another new state, Arkansas! We are staying at another KOA Holiday which is within the National Park. It is more forestry than others we have stayed at. It has a nice babbling brook running throughout, which Winston is attracted to. It also has a nice pool. However, we were more interested in going in to the historic town to check it out than staying at the park. The park manager/owner was super nice and agreed to drive us in their shuttle van to town and also arranged to pick us up later.

Didn’t realize that one of the presidents was born in this area.

Just outside of Little Rock Arkansas is a jewel of a small town in the heart of a National Park. We decided to go a little way off the beaten path to the town of Hot Springs, to go to a bathhouse with the natural hot springs. These bathhouses started in the early 1900s when people were charging a penny to put your feet in these springs. What a concept and clearly something you could make money off of, so the bathhouses were born and built. There are 8 large bathhouses along Bathhouse Row. Only 2 remain open as bathhouses and only 1 has been open consistently since 1912. We both decided that the pools were worth the trip. The pools (there were 4) were each set at different temperatures so we were able to hop from one to another.

First pics of the Main Street of Hot Springs which is Bathhouse Row. Then inside the bathhouse where you can see the three hotter pools below, and then a cooler one above. Again, great stop!

On the way back from the hot springs afternoon, the park owner gave us a tour of the area and talked all about the horse racing that takes place annually here at Oaklawn Hot Springs, where the winner goes to the final race of the year at Kentucky Downs. Interestingly, the winnings of the races held here are all over $1 million. 80% goes to the owner of the winning horse, 10% each to the trainer and jockey.

Next stop on the way to Nashville was a Harvest Host just west of Jackson Tennessee. This was a working orchard called Blessed Bounty Orchard. Nice people, only cost us $20 for the night. They also had a storm shelter which was cool/scary/hope we don’t need to use it. There were/are a lot of tornados that have hit around the areas that we have been and are still in, so being diligent on where the safe places are to hole up until the tornado passes is a must. Here are the pics of the storm shelter, and we are glad to didn’t have to use it!!

Next stop……MUSIC CITY………NASHVILLE !!!