July 2016 – Wandering Dawgs

Butterflies and Blooms in the Briar Patch

July 20, 2016June 19, 2017Posted in Butterflies, Georgia, Nature, Photography, WildflowersTagged Butterflies, Certified Monarch Way Station, Eatonton, geo-caching, Georgia native plants, Giant Swallowtail caterpillar17 Comments

Last summer as I was browsing through some blogs I stumbled upon a post on Winged Beauty Butterflies that mentioned Butterflies and Blooms in the Briar Patch, a butterfly habitat in Eatonton, Georgia. The next time we were visiting near there I stopped by the habitat and fell in love with it. I posted about my first visit to the habitat at Wandering in the Briar Patch.

My latest visit to the habitat was this past weekend in July, 2016. While I was wandering through the garden I had the pleasure of meeting Virginia Linch, the woman with the vision to create this magnificent butterfly habitat. Her enthusiasm was contagious as she gave me a tour and introduced me to many of the native Georgia nectar plants that I wasn’t familiar with. She also knew where to look for caterpillars and showed me some so tiny I would have never seen them if she hadn’t pointed them out.

The blooms were vibrant throughout the garden.

I could see swallowtails, monarchs and other butterflies landing on the blooms but none would stay around long enough for me to get a picture. A Viceroy landed on the ground in front of me and paid no attention to me at all.

This Gulf Fritillary wasn’t shy.

I would never have spotted this Giant Swallowtail caterpillar if Virginia hadn’t pointed it out to me.

You can see how small it is compared to Virginia’s hand.

There are benches for resting and even a new porch for sitting.

Thank you Virginia for giving me a tour and for all of your hard work!

Butterflies and Blooms in the Briar Patch is Certified Monarch Way Station No. 9045 and is also an official site for geo-caching.

Celebrating Ten Years of Wandering

July 15, 2016Posted in Lighthouse, Road Trip, RVing, Sunset, WildlifeTagged black bear, Enchanted Rock, Fifth Wheel, Split Rock Lighthouse, Yosemite Valley33 Comments

What an amazing ten years! Each marker on this map represents a place where we camped in our RV.

Ten years ago, on July 1, 2006, we spent our first night in an RV park in Tampa, Florida. Two weeks later we left Georgia with no reservations anywhere and a bucket list of what we wanted to see. You can see highlights of that trip at Looking Back on our First RV Trip. Last year I posted a few of our most memorable experiences from our first nine years at Celebrating Nine Years of RVing.

Many of our trips revolved around either visiting family or attending a special event such as a wedding or Titanium Rally. Sometimes we traveled just for the fun of seeing new places. No matter where we were going, we always took the long way around to get there.

We discovered beauty in every state and province we visited. Sometimes the everyday things were the best.

I love watching the changing landscape and seeing the many farms and ranches.

I love seeing the farms as we drive along

We always enjoy seeing lighthouses.

Split Rock Lighthouse on Minnesota's North Shore — Split Rock Lighthouse on Minnesota’s North Shore

Seeing wildlife is always a treat.

Black Bear beside the road in British Columbia

And of course we loved visiting many of our National Parks.

Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View Overlook

Sometimes we enjoyed watching the sunset from our campsite.

Mount Redoubt sunset in Ninilchik, Alaska

We did a few amazing hikes.

At the Summit of Enchanted Rock in Texas

Chilling by a camp fire is always fun.

Now that we have ten years of RV’ing under our belt, our priorities have changed. Of course, we are ten years older and it is more difficult to make long trips. When we started our wandering, we only had two grandchildren. Now we have four and we want to spend as much time with them as we can. Going on long trips takes us away from them for too long.

Our wandering days are not over. There are still many places we haven’t seen in and near our home state of Georgia so from now on we will travel a little closer to home.