My Journey

8:54:14 AM EDT

After treking the Cascades trail we spent time reading in the picnic area. Once we'd relaxed for a bit we decided to take the other hike from that area. It was to an area called Tomkins Knob and features several old buildings.

The hike itself was relatively flat, probably the flattest we were on anywhere along the parkway. I grew up in Florida so for many a year all I knew was flat. Maybe that is part of why the Parkway fascinates me so. I've had people tell me that the Blue Ridge Moutains are not REAL mountains, that you have to get into the Rockies to see real mountains. I've seen parts of the Rockies but if you ask me the Blue Ridge Mountains are just as pretty and close enough to real mountains for a flat lander like me. From  a Florida native perspective even the Tomkins Knob trail had some slope to it but in relation to say the Fodder Stack trail it was a piece of cake.

This picture is blurry because I took it from too far away using too much zoom. It still gives you a good idea of the area where we spent time ready and relaxing between the Cascades Trail and Tomkins Knob Trails.

We were in the Cascades Parking area which, as the sign says, is about half a mile thataway.

The first building we came to was the Cool Spring Baptist Church. It sounds like it never had a preacher of it's own but relied on circuit riding preachers. Somewhat understandably it also sounds like services were more likely to be held out under the trees than in the building.

A lot of the buildings along the parkway are like this one, log construction with those big gaps which obviously were, at one time, chinked with mud or clay to weather proof them. Many, like this one, have been left as nature has left them over the years.

Here you can see Connie on the way down to Jesse Brown's cabin. It's in a beautiful location. It's not very big though. Even with a loft there is not much space. It makes you wonder how large the Brown family was and how well they got along. Of course just to survive then you would not be spending a lot of time indoors I'd not think. There were no TV's or video games, just plenty of hard work going about the business of eeking out a living.

A ways from the house, down the hill aways in the trees you come to the spring house.

Water from a spring or two, no doubt Cool Spring (which the church is named after) bubbles up nearby and flows through the spring house. The water is cold not cool, near 40 degrees year round apparently. That would help keep the contents of the spring house cool all year which no doubt helped the residents keep more food.

It's always interesting to visit places like this, to look at them and think about what it was like for the people living there. How very different it was for them than for us today. How many of us could live like that and survive if we needed to?

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8:18:25 AM EDT

Eventually I'll probably post the rest of the entries about our recent vacation but I thought an entry about me and my life might be in order. No doubt in future years I will enjoy reading back through it.

As the title of the entry states moving day has gotten a bit more real. Not that I ever doubted it would happen. Heck, we already own the house we're going to move to and this past twelve months I've spent more time there in Mississippi than I have in Florida.

Last night Connie made the reservation to have a POD delivered the day after Christmas. I've been moving one pick-up load at a time for the past year and the result is a house in Mississippi that is liveable and capable of having guests visit. As a matter of fact we've already had friends from Orlando visit and just recently Connie's mom spent a week with us. The good news there is that we got the "Mom seal of approval". She thinks the house there is perfect for us...and she's right.

One kind of amazing thing is that both houses are now perfectly liveable and we only bought one piece of furniture for the house there, a futon for the living room. There are some things here that would be difficult to move in the pickup and that are kind of bulky. Those items will be the items moved in the POD. It's cheaper than a mover and should work just as well. Loading and unloading is not a problem, it's the transportation that I wanted taken care of. It appears that the price of a POD is going to be the same as, or probably lower than, a U-Haul if you figure in gas. Also come January when the POD goes so do both cars. Connie will be following along and Caylith goes then too. It should be an interesting trip. The plan is she will ride in the truck with Connie with food and water and her litter box behind the truck's seat. We'll break the trip up as I've been doing anyway by stopping for the night in Biloxi. That makes for a 9 hour drive one day and a 5 hour drive the next. Beats a 14 hour one day drive all to hell.

When we moved from the house in Orlando that Lee is now renting from us (long story and in my opinion a failed experiment) to the one we're living in now which is my Mom's old house we tried hard to take only things we really needed or wanted very badly. We were partially successful. Now we need to do that again with the move to Mississippi. Hopefully we will not over stuff that house. Time will tell on that one but I have my fingers crossed.

Right now my life is in a bit of upheaval. Poker has been going horribly, bad enough that I've played only very sporadically for over a month now. I'm actually finding myself dreading when I feel I should play. Hopefully that will change. Connie, who knows enough about it and is good enough to probably be able to judge, says it appears to just be bad luck. Luck IS a large part of it of course but to this point I'd managed to always be able to apply enough skill to still make at least a LITTLE money even in bad luck times. Not so lately. I've taken some horrible losses and my bankroll is looking very anemic. Of course in part that is because I've had to spend out of it to get things for the MS house. Basically though I've had to scale back poker and am scrambling to fill the void with other things.

I'm trying hard to NOT make feeling sorry for myself one of them but that doesn't always work. I'm starting gardening again in MS and that will be nice. I have lots of plans on that score and it will be nice to get back to it. We eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies and growing my own will really help out a lot and be very satisfying. I used to do pretty good when we lived in Cocoa and gave it up after moving to Orlando and a house with a homeowners association that was not veggie garden friendly (hell they weren't friendly or neighborly at ALL...unless of course you were part of the in crowd). That won't be a problem in Mississippi. There are plenty of gardens around our new neighborhood.

I'm also doing more woodworking of various sorts. Some of that is practical, bookshelves and so on, and some will be fun and/or decorative. As long as it keeps my mind off watching my poker game crash and burn it will be good. Of course I have hopes that poker will pick up but I'm a bit afraid that it's a fundamental shift. Luck is going to be too much a part of it as I think skill is equalizing. For many reasons I won't go into I think the really bad players are finally getting out. I can hold my own against good players the problem is that if that is all there is then the game is unprofitable if you play in a casino because of the casino's rake of each pot.

Time will tell on that. If I seem quieter than usual it's because I really have not felt like talking or writing much. I don't have anything I really WANT to talk about. I did think it was time for an entry about my life though for myself in later years if nothing else. If anybody is out there reading and interested then that's just a bonus. If you're out there I hope you're having a grand life. (lol inside joke with the "Grand life" thing...you have to live in or near Tunica to get it)

 

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4:26:54 PM EDT

Day three of vacation was day two on the Parkway. It had rained on us the previous afternoon but Monday dawned clear and gloriously cool. Actually the whole time there the mornings were surprisingly cool. I specifically visited the Parkway at this time of year because I remembered that it was so much cooler than Florida (and Mississippi). I was still surprised at how cool. I guess I'd forgotten. The mornings started out in the high 50's with fairly low humidity. The afternoons got warmer, into the mid 80's but the humidity was still lower by far than either Florida or Mississippi would have been.

Monday was the first of what would turn out to be three hikes to waterfalls. This one was to the Cascades. It was, I believe, at around mile marker 241.

 

The trail was very picturesque and not too terribly steep. It mostly followed the stream, at one point crossing on a bridge.

The falls themselves were, as the name suggests, a cascade of water down a rock slope of probably 45 degrees or a bit steeper. No doubt younger and more foolish (or adventurous) types have tried to slide down the Cascades. It was sort of tempting while looking at it but then I remembered that not only are you not supposed to be swimming in any of the waterways along the parkway but I'm 50 years old now and too old to even think about trying it.

Needlesss to say this was a hike well worth taking. I love waterfalls and to stand there and watch it and listen to it was to lose yourself in it for at least a few precious minutes.

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8:23:52 PM EDT

There is a fantastic diversity of plant and animal life along the parkway. We've seen a fair amount of it on this trip.

On Sunday on the Fodder Stack trail we were joking that at least if we got lost we would not starve to death because of all the blueberry bushes with nice ripe blueberries.

 

We didn't take TOO many. Probably we were not supposed to eat any of them but I could not resist. They were good too. I love fresh blueberries. When we lived in Cocoa I planted Blueberries of a variety that grows well in the Florida heat. I never planted any when we moved from Cocoa back to Orlando. Now that I've been reminded how much I enjoyed having my blueberry bushes I think I will look into finding some to plant at the house in Mississippi.

We have seen several deer along the roads, a few in the trees and a few in fields. It's always fun to see them.

A few times now we've seen turkeys. I've never hunted turkeys but my dad did and he always talked about how hard they were to find. The ones we've seen were along the roadway. Tuesday afternoon we even saw a mother turkey leading a bunch of baby turkeys across the road.

The deer and turkeys have all moved way too fast to get pictures of so the only picture I had for this entry was the blueberry bush picture above. Hope springs eternal and if I get a chance I'll get a picture of some wildlife.

In the next entry I'll tell ya'll about Monday's trip along the Cascades Trail as well as a short jaunt from the Cascades Trail parking area to the Tomkins Knob parking area which included several very old cabins.

 

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8:06:58 AM EDT

I'll have to write about my most recent time in Mississippi some other time. On the other hand it may be better left unwritten considering the miserable way poker went. The rest of life was great though so there is plenty of positive stuff to write about there. I'm not going to do it now though. Instead I'm going to skip to the present.

We're on vacation! Our first in a year. Usually we take two during a year but it just didn't happen this time, it's been very nearly 12 months since the last vacation. Of course for both of us the house in Mississippi feels a bit like a vacation.

For this vacation we decided to re-visit the Blue Ridge Parkway. Rather than try to drive the whole length, which we've already done together once and I've done alone once or twice more, we decided to focus on a couple of areas and take some hikes on some of the moderate to easy trails.

We left Mississippi around noon on Friday and drove to just short of Nashville, TN to stop for the night. Then we drove from there to Boone, NC on Saturday. Most of the drive was on Interstates and while still pretty was still on interstate highways. The last hour of the trip though was on relatively small local roads through the mountains and it was gorgeous. The curvy roads made Connie a bit nervous but I had fun. The Miata was built for those kind of roads after all.

Sunday was day one on the Parkway for us. We planned to take a hike in the morning and then have a picnic lunch and another hike in the afternoon. We didn't get the afternoon hike in because it rained but did get the rest in.

The morning's hike was to Fodder Stack. The trail head is at around mile marker 241.1. It's a 2 mile round trip that the book we are using calls "moderate". Turns out the first part of the trail is steep not moderate but we survived anyway. We just thought that we might have trouble with the other moderate trails and were relieved to see we won't.

There were several benches along the way making this is good trail for those in less than perfect condition. Some of the views are truly spectacular.

Above and below are a view of part of the trail itself. You have to go under that broken tree.

On the way back up the trail toward the car as we were huffing and puffing from the climb I could not resist picking on Connie who had, at first, resisted my desire to use the stairs at the hotel to get to our 4th floor room instead of using the elevator. I kept muttering (when I had enough breath to mutter) "Four flights of stairs...geeze...this is a LOT worse than four flights of freaking stairs." Luckily for me she did not have enough breath to retaliate in any way. <grinning>

We had lunch at a nice picnic area and were reading when it began to rain. We quickly packed up and headed back south.

We ended up driving out of the rain and stopped at the Mahogany Rock Overlook purely because it was cute, available and had a picnic table.

It's a great way to spend a vacation even if we did end up getting chased out of here by rain and ended up back at the hotel a bit earlier than we'd really planned. None the less we both agreed it was a very nice day. Dinner last night was at a local BBQ place about a quarter mile from our hotel that turned out to be very good.

Now it's a bright clear morning and we're itching to get back out on the parkway so I'm going now. Hopefully I'll post pictures from today's jaunt in an entry either tonight or tomorrow morning. Today should be The Cascades trail and maybe one other.

Have a great day ya'll!

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12:29:40 PM EDT
Feeling Quiet

It's almost time for me to leave Orlando and head back to Mississippi. Things will be changing on that front as a sign of the times. With gas prices as high as they are it's becoming more practical to make less trips back and forth. I still have lots of stuff to move but we're going to move the bulk of it in a POD. It's cheaper than a regular mover and what we have left to move will fit in just one 8x8x16 POD anyway.

We're really close to having everything we need up in Mississippi anyway. What is left is things we want there more than truly need. The pier type headboard set for our king sized bed, the china hutch and a few more large bulky and in some cases delicate furniture. I've got many boxes of books also but those can either go in the POD or in the pickup when I do drive back and forth.

I can't stay in Mississippi full time yet anyway as I still have projects at this house. I made wonderful project on my new flooring this trip. I got the family room, living room and dining room done. I was planning to do one bedroom. It turned out to be easier to do the outer rooms at this time so that's what I did. That leaves me two bedrooms, their closets and a hallway to do with the one style of tile. Both bathrooms need to be done with a different tile as well. There are also some closet doors to replace with bi-fold doors but that can be done in one trip to Orlando.

The fact that the housing market sucks so bad is sort of working in our favor. We will be in no hurry to sell either Orlando house. It will probably be a year, maybe more, before we try. That gives me time to work on them. I will make infrequent trips to do just that.

Another sign of the times is that Connie is working from home more. It saves something like $10 a day in gas and tolls, not to mention wear and tear on the car. Since she will be working from home full time in MS she has started to do it a bit more in Orlando, it just makes sense.

I'm driving a LOT less. I love to drive and get out and see things but with gas as it is that is just too bad. Trips now have to serve not only one purpose but multiple purposes preferably. I'll still be going to the Tunica casinos, I make enough there to pay for my gas and still make it worth going. I can't say the same for any place to play here in Florida. The games are too small and the card rooms too far away to make it profitable. Another reason I'm glad to be moving to Mississippi.

I just wanted to post an update since I doubt I will be writing again until I get to Mississippi. I leave Monday. I will be stopping in Biloxi on the way. That stop usually pays at least for the night's hotel room and sometimes for the gas for the whole trip as well. For whatever reason I do very well in the IP's poker room. I"m not sure why but I'm glad it works out that way.

I'll write again from Mississippi once I get to the house and get settled. That will be somewhere around Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. In the meantime I hope ya'll are doing well. Hang in there and, if you feel like it, let me know what changes, if any, you've made because of the high gas prices and other rising prices.

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10:11:37 AM EDT

Shortly after we moved into the house in Hernando, Mississippi we found there were a bunch of wild cats living in the area. Many of the neighbors didn't like them at all and kept calling animal control to try to get them removed. I on the other hand fed them. Only one of the original kittens is left. I'm not sure what all happened to the others and I don't want to know. I'm not in a position yet to take them in as indoor cats since I'm not there enough at this point.

The one kitten, now fully grown, who hangs around I have named Tux. Short for Tennessee Tuxedo after a cartoon character of the same name. His coloring looks like he is wearing a tuxedo and he's almost in Tennessee so it make some sense, to me anyway LOL. Scary how my mind works huh?

I'm probably never going to stop calling Tux "he" but I know now that he is a she. He looked like he was really gaining weight. I figured it was partly because it was winter and partly because the little devil probably had eight people all feeding him. It turns out that 'he' was pregnant. We finally saw the one kitten (I know cats usually have more than one per litter but I'm trying not to think about that).

I swear that Tux brought the kitten out to show Connie when she was there. It never showed up while I was there alone. We only saw it after she got there. One momma showing off for another I suppose.

Tux is not one to let you near him, even now, a year after we met I have never touched him (her). The kitten is just as skittish or moreso. That made it hard to get pictures. I got a couple but they're not the best. I'll put them here anyway.

Here are Momma Tux and Baby Tux chowing down one morning.

And here is the best shot I could get of Baby Tux. He seems to reside under my airconditioner. That won't last much longer as he was visibly larger from the first time we saw him to the last time before we left. He just won't fit under that AC much longer. It will be interesting to see how big he is when I get back.

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7:31:44 AM EDT
Feeling Frisky

Believe it or not I do other things than play poker. I know it can be hard to tell that sometimes from my entries. I've been building new bookshelves for the Mississippi house as I bring books up there. This past trip I started on a new platform bed frame.

We are not moving our king sized mattress that we have down here in Florida. It's old enough that we decided to just replace it rather than move it. When we move up there full time we'll give it to Lee if he wants it or donate it if anyone will take it or just toss it.

I have a bed platform I built many years ago but it's not a great one. It's adequate but not great. I saw one on the internet that I liked a while back. It has three drawers on each side. It was relatively expensive and it also turned out it wasn't available as a king anyway.

What I did was to print the picture and study it some. Then this past trip I began building a copy of it. The pictures in this entry show the assembly process as far as it's gone. I've still got to decide what kind of finishing touches I want to apply to the head and footboards. Since you barely see them the way it's set up in the room I may do virtually nothing to them. I still need to apply a finish of some sort, probably a stain and a polyurethane coating for protection. The drawers have yet to be built also.

For the time being though at least I'm not sleeping on the floor anymore.

And that is what I did with a week or so of my last trip to Mississippi.

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4:30:27 PM EDT
Feeling Triumphant

I love these new Mood choices. I have long said there were not enough choices. LOL now there may be too many but I'll make do. I love it.

I just wanted to write to toot my horn. In between doing some real work today I played a free poker tournament on PokerStars. It was a round 1 qualifier for the WSOP. There were 5000 players and the top 50 advanced to a weekly final tournament.

I outlasted and/or out played 4950 other players and advanced into the weekly final tournament. This tournament was a format I hate and one that does not fit my playing style at ALL. I had to play very differently than normal and I'm proud that I made it work out. I didn't just squeak my way into the top 50 and advance. When we got to the final 50 I was in roughly 10th place, solidly in with a very healthy chip stack of nearly 300,000 chips.

The prize for the weekly final is a seat in the main even of the WSOP worth $10,000 and $2500 cash for the top 3 players. It won't be easy. All the people in it will have done what I did and there will be 600-1000 or so players to beat, maybe more. But if I do it then I will have made a dream come true and won a seat to the WSOP main event and will have done it for no cost to me at all.

Ok, now I'm done rambling about poker, go back to your daily activities and I will as well. I'll be doing it with a smile on my face though :)

 

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9:07:47 AM EDT
Feeling Thankful

My journey through life has now lasted for more than fifty years. I got my first every fifty plus discount this past weekend. My birthday was actually last Thursday and passed quietly for the most part. Two of my pen pals here had emails or e-cards waiting for me. It looked like that would be it until my wife decided to send a note out to the people she knows. I got cards and emails from people I've not heard from in a very long time. Most are more her friends than mine but it was still nice.

Actually I don't need or really want a lot of fuss over my birthday. Connie is the one who needs and wants a fuss made over things like that. I was happy to see who remembered on their own. I know I can't say anything because I can be bad at remembering birthdays and even then I sometimes procrastinate and don't actually acknowledge it.

I don't feel any older and in a lot of ways it's hard to believe I'm fifty. For so long that seemed so old. Now it doesn't. Most of the time I don't FEEL fifty. I guess my mental view of myself still has me in my 20's somewhere, or maybe early 30's I guess. There are times when a knee will hurt as it didn't used to or some other body part will send messages reminding me that I am, in fact, older than I think I am but mostly that is just a passing thing.

I'm back home in Orlando this morning, here for about 2 weeks. Mostly I'll be working on laying new flooring at this house here. I'm not planning on playing much poker except some online stuff for practice. With gas prices as they are it's not really worth the 60 mile drive to either Daytona or Melbourne or the 80 mile drive to Tampa. With the small games there I'd be hard pressed to count on making gas money and the profit would not justify the time expended. I'll take the time here to study a book or two which is something I need to do more of.

Ok enough rambling for right now. I've got other things to write about. People visited us in Mississippi this past time and I'll write about that. I built a new bed platform and I'll write about that and include pictures even. I may even write some more philosophical entries tying poker lessons to life lessons and vice-versa. I may put that one in my poker journal. Restarting that and catching up is another thing I hope to do in the very near future.

How much of that will happen? Your guess is as good as mine, tune in and find out. In the mean time I hope ya'll are having a wonderful day!

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