March 2nd-15th, 2024
In March we started on a new adventure. Although we plan to continue to travel and see as much of the country as we can we are also embarking on finding a new home base for us. With three of our children we started looking for property to buy in Tennessee. Frank’s mother’s family came from Tennessee and we lived there several years while our three youngest children where little and so that is where we want our retirement home to eventually be.
Frank and I left to visit the Tennessee area on March 2nd. We arrived in Lebanon, Tennessee on March 3rd. When my daughter Sara was little she played soccer in the same league as Reba McIntyre’s little boy Shelby. We use to drive by Reba’s beautiful farm all the time. In fact when we first moved to Tennessee and drove by the farm we mistook the big barn as Reba’s house. Since that time Reba has sold her house and moved on and the company which bought the barn and area around it have turned the site into a campground, with cabins. The barn stalls have been turned into rooms that can be rented by the night. We spent our first night at Reba’s or Starstruck Farms as it is now known. It was fun to walk around and explore the land Reba once rode her horses on. https://starstruckfarmadventure.com/ We enjoyed dinner that night at O’Charley’s in Gallatin where our son Bill worked as a waiter back in the 1990’s.
Old friends of ours had invited us to park our RV at their house while we looked for property but after driving up to their home we were sad to find we could not get our RV into their driveway and up to the house. So instead we were invited to camp next to the house of Tiffany and Eric of Jetton Properties in Portland, Tennessee. https://jettonhomes.com/ Tiffany took the time to show us around various properties in the area over the next couple days as we hoped to find something the whole family would like without much success.
When we weren’t out traveling the back roads of Tennessee going from property to property we stopped in Portland to see our old house. We were glad to see the garage we built was still standing strong. Then we were ready for a break so we headed up to Bowling Green Kentucky to do some exploring before getting back to looking at more properties when the rest of the family arrived.
March 8th we headed to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. https://www.nps.gov/maca/index.htm It was a rainy wet day and we got soaked but we were able to explore the cave with a tour group. There are many different cave tours to choose from. From a fully wheelchair accessible tour, short and long walking tours, lantern tours, and adventurous crawling tours. We choose one that, although it did have some stairs and about an hour long walk, was not something we couldn’t handle. Entering and exiting the cave we could see the water pouring in from the continual rain.
March 9th we did some more exploring of the area. We found a cute Amish market which was packed with all sorts of wonderful food items.
March 10th we attended church with some of our old friends in Lafayette, Tennessee. Then we moved the RV back down to Lebanon at Reba’s farm as our son Bill and family and our daughter and son-in-law Sara and Edwin and family arrived to do some property hunting too.
After several days of looking around the kids found a property they really liked in Lafayette, Tennessee. We thought it would be a good place for all our families and were willing to make a group offer with them to see if we could purchase the 36.50 acres. So on March 15th we all put in an offer on the land and headed back toward Houston.
On our way we stopped in Hot Springs for a day to enjoy the Springs and try to relax from all the stress of trying to find a new place to live.
We arrived home just in time to talk to Katy Jordan about listing our home in Porter, Texas and to get ready for our first cruise on Princess Cruise line.
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