Graduation and some of New England

You probably have better pictures than I got, but I wanted to share.  The whole university did the ceremony in the pouring rain.  Mark and family were soaked to the skin. We were lucky for Ella's college graduation because it had stopped raining and the sun was shining.

There is all of us at one spot.

And the rest of us were where Mark could get good photos. The young woman next to Sheila is Courtney White, Ella's partner.

Meema and Papa with the woman of the hour. 

And here we are the whole family.  Mendy looks short here because we are standing on a hill.  It looks like Ella and I are as tall as Papa and taller than Mendy.  Hee hee

We left Vermont on the 24 of May and drove to NH.  While there we visited  a bunch of places we had seen six years before.  This is a view is the White Mts.

Another view of the mountains.  We drove along the Kancamagus Highway for about 35 miles. It was so quiet up there and beautiful.

The Mountains are about 4000 feet and covered with trees.  Wow

The Swift River runs along the Highway.  I caught some people playing in the falls.

We are in Maine now and will be here for about two weeks before we start for Michigan.  The rush trip to Vermont was worth it to see Ella (Helena) so very happy. And so grown-up.  Our girl has done it.

More next time.  Love Mom nd Dad

Tennessee

The rain in Nashville made us very wet while we went to pick up our tickets for the show Saturday night.

We saw Crystal Gale.  Her hair isn't as lush as it use to be.

And we saw Charlie Pride.  It was a great show.  We were on the radio live.  Woo Hoo.  We saw several other stars as well.  Nancy Grace even did some commercials for the radio.

I can't figure how to flip this shot around.  I thought I had it when I down loaded it.  Anyway we went to Bush's Bake Bean Visitor Center.  It was fun and we got our picture made there. I next to Duke.  We also had lunch at their café.  Yum

Today we went The Great Smokie Mt.

The trees are tall and the waterfalls are unique.

Mendy, you and Mike could walk some of the 800 miles of trails.  Or you could hike the Appalachian Trail to Maine.  

Your dad walked up about 30 steps to over look the Newfound Gap.  I didn't because it would hurt my knees coming down.

This is the view from the highest point in the park.  It's called Clingman's Dome. While we were up here we were in NC.  The park is in two states. It was 56 up here and after we got back down to our campground it was 80. 

The park has several cabins that they keep up.  I read that there is over 80 homesteads in the park.  These people were all bought out to make the park. The only sad thing about this park is that a good 50%  of the trees are dead.  Up high it's Doug Firs, and down lower it's Hemlock.  It is some pest called woolly adelgid.  

We leave for Virginia in the morning.  Your dad has had a restful two days.  And we only have 230 miles to go tomorrow.

Our first week on the road

We are in Nashville for today and tomorrow.  We are going to the Grand Ole Opry tonight.  The headliner is Charlie Pride.  The last time we were here The Opry was dark the two nights we stayed.  This morning is kinda' weird.  We don't have to get up and put everything away to get ready to go.  There has been only one other day so far.  We did laundry, big whoop! Your dad reminded me that we have only one other time before Vermont for a one-nighter.  We out ran the rain pretty much so far until early this morning.  The rain caught up with us.  It's been raining about 8 hours now.  But that's alright because we don't have to go out in it except to go to the Opry tonight.

These are the only pictures I took while we traveled.  We're at Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, Ark.  You can see our view from our rig.  We had a lightning storm while we were there, but it only lasted a few minutes.  It sure was loud.  It sounded like the strikes were very near.

There was one row of RV's in front of us but we could still see the river and the huge barges going up and down the river.

As you can see we didn't unhitch the Honda at all, that is until we got here to Two Rivers RV about two miles from the Opry.

That's all for this week.  Will have more later on.

Love, Mom and Dad