January 28, 2005 Ochlocknee River Sopchoppy Florida

January 28, 2005
Ochlocknee River
Sopchoppy Florida

After leaving Arcadia we started to make a beeline towards Austin Pennsylvania to look at and hopefully buy what we hope will be out new bus. A little history…. Since we’ve decided to make the trip at least another year we have to get larger quarters to live and work. After a bit of research we fell in love with the old flex buses from the 1950’s and low and behold we found what looks like the perfect one. The rock group Raging Slab now owns it. Great music and you can learn all about them at:
www.ragingslab.com
The bus was built by Bud Hoover. Bud and his wife Judy lived in it for 17 years! If you look through the Internet you’ll find Bud all over as a very knowledgeable Flx bus person. Even built and ran a very fine Flx bus site, which is still up but no longer run by Bud:
http://www.flxible.net
Bud and Judy now run The Lookout up in Northern Pennsylvania. Check out their site at:
www.thelookout.biz
Needless to say we are super excited and can’t wait till the snow thaws out and we can go see her.
Anyway to make a long story short after seeing photos and lots of phone calls we headed north but by the time we hit Georgia, the weather had worsened in Northern Pa and it was decided we should put off the trip north until about mid-March to see/buy our new home. Seems the bus is under a bit of snow and lots more is expected with temperatures in the –3 degree range. Greg, from the band assured us that a small deposit would hold the bus until we arrived so we headed back down south… And here we are in Sopchoppy Florida and Heather wants to go to the Sopchoppy Opery after our anniversary dinner tonight, two years today! Aho
But back to the road. Last night we spent in The Okefenokee Swamp at the Stephen C. Foster State Park. Very cool good camps and they rent motorboats and canoes to go out in the Lakes (swamps) lots of turtles and alligators and rather inexpensive. Met up with Steve Donohue of Adirondack Guideboat Inc. They make some very cool wooden and glass boats. Look more like canoes but with oars that work like a rowboats’. Not too technical but you get the idea. Steve is from New Mexico but now lives in Vermont and builds boats during the summer and travels the highways seeking warmer weather and good fishing and boating during the cold months. He cooked us a great southwestern dinner. You can learn all about the boats at:
www.adirondack-guide-boat.com
This afternoon, just south of Tallassee we had hoped to stop and visit Missionary Mary Proctor. Joan and Jerry, from Houston, turned us on to her and her art. She is a very fine Folk Artist and runs the American Folk Art Museum and Gallery at 3919 The Woodville Highway. It runs south out of Tallassee. As we got close we gave her a call only to find out she was having an opening at The Smithsonian and she won’t be back until early February but by then we need to be heading toward Omaha. Oh well, perhaps the first trip in the Bus will be back down south to work with her I truly look forward to meeting her after seeing her art in Huston and her amazing space her in Florida. There are many sites that show her work on the internet, I recommend you look her up. The best site I’ve found on her is:
www.whohadada.com/maryproctor/maryproctor.html
Also met Randy J. Orton at the camp last night. Randy is on a pilgrimage to Caristas of Birmingham Alabama. Had a good time sitting around his camp getting to know him and made a great portrait of him.