“Moochdocking” Once Again Back in Wisconsin

Since my last post I spent a week in a couple different spots in Tennessee. But since then I’ve now arrived back in Wisconsin and staying at my good friends Steve and Patty place. For those of you that do not know what moochdocking is. It is when you stay by friends or family place. And take advantage of a free place to camp and mooch off their goodwill. It has many great benefits, you get the spend time with loved ones and most of the time they won’t even accept anything for the electricity, water and food they usually supply you. Here at Steve’s and Patty’s they have a great spot that they share openly with many friends and family. Just take a look at this nice spot I have to park for a while. Steve has put in a 50 amp electrical service and has ample water, but I do tease him about not having sewer hookup. “Boy don’t I sound ungrateful”. As you may remember I stayed here last August and also traveled out east with them in September. One interesting thing that I noticed, is as I drove further north how there were less and less leaves on all the trees. I took about a week to get from Alabama back to Wisconsin. Stopping first at, a Tennessee State Park “Pickwick Landing State Park” right on the Tennessee and Mississippi border. I spent three nights at this nice state park. But it rained for one full day and evening while I was there so I didn’t do a whole lot of exploring. This park is on the Tennessee River which flows out of Alabama northward through Tennessee. I was on Pickwick Lake which is formed by this large dam. The dam was built by the Tennessee Valley Authority and there’s also a campground downriver from the dam. The water was quite high and flowing very readily because they are about 10 inches over normal rainfall in the area, for this time in a year. As you can tell in these photos of the lake the trees here are all fully leafed out and very much in their spring greenery. From there I moved north across the state of Tennessee to Piney Campground in the national recreation area “Land Between the Lakes”, right on the Tennessee–Kentucky state line. This is a large recreation area under the US forest service management. There are several campgrounds developed and undeveloped in this area. At this particular campground there are over 330 campsites many of them with electricity and some even with full hookups available. They even rent some of these campsites out by the season, on a lottery system. I spent three nights here also and did a little exploring of the area one day, but mostly just relaxed and enjoyed the nice weather. There are several large prairies in this recreation area. A couple of these prairie areas are fenced in with herds of bison. Here’s a photo of a few slowing down traffic. As you can see in this picture of a female bison, the trees are barely leafing out here, but the grass is growing pretty good. Here’s a photo I took at rest stop in central Illinois and the trees are quite bare, they are not even budding out yet. In this one I was sitting in my lounge chair at my moochdocking spot in Green Lake, Wisconsin. I’ve been here a week already and have had the chance to visit a few friends but there’s a lot more on my list to catch up with. The weather’s been pretty nice and warm in the 70s or 80s, but we’ve had three days already where it rained quite a lot. The next couple nights it’s supposed to get quite chilly down in the high 30s and during the day only in the 40s. But it should warm up again after that. Over the next several weeks I’ll be catching up with more friends and family all across the state. There’ll be a lot going on and I’m sure I will be quite busy. More the come about that in later posts. And after my time here in Wisconsin. The plan is I will move west, back to Oregon for my July and August work camp job at the lighthouse. That’s just a quick update hope all is well with all of you. Thanks for coming along, best wishes to all from, Rick and Maxine.

 

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