On Wednesday, April 1, 2026 we left Kolomoki Mounds State Park around 7:45 am for what was supposed to be a 4-hour drive. But the usual slowdowns and stopped traffic around Atlanta on I-285 added 50 minutes to our drive time, so we didn’t arrive until almost 1 pm at our site.
We’re about 8 miles from Cartersville, Georgia, which is a fair-sized town with a population of just over 25,000. Several major grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, a couple of small hospitals, a Lowe’s, Home Depot, movie theater, etc.
Our site for the next 6 months is a very nice level concrete pad, driveway and “porch” or “deck” area with full hook-ups including 50-amp electric. We got Nomad backed in and set up, something we wont have to do for 180 days. I know we’ll get out of practice and have to go back to using a list when we move on.
I was able to set up Cindy’s screen room on the front corner of the concrete pad and for extra outside storage we set up the bike shelter near the rear of Nomad in the famous Georgia red clay.
That photo at the top of the blog is indeed a used bar of Dial soap that was on top of the power pedestal. It is right next to the fresh water outlet, so my assumption is someone used the water and bar of soap to bathe sometime before we arrived when the site was unoccupied.
Although not officially on duty yet, we walked the parking area, lake shore, boat ramp and floating dock to familiarize ourselves with the area we’d be working. Lots of trucks with boat trailers (of course) as well as cars with canoes or kayaks and even some cars parked by people who were fishing or hiking around the lakeside. We noticed people did not really clear out until 10 pm at night.
Thursday we were up at 7 am to shower and have breakfast before a 10 am meeting onsite with our Supervising Park Ranger. We spent a little over 2 hours gong through training, form-filling and fingerprinting with her and enjoyed meeting her.
After the ranger left, Cindy and I drove into Cartersville for lunch and to get some groceries. Had a nice lunch at a sports bar, then braved two different stores to get the groceries we wanted/needed.
Although not officially on duty until the next day (Friday), we practiced patrolling and issuing Courtesy Notices for minor infractions for the rest of the day and into the evening. Just trying to get into the groove.
We’re STILL missing sweet Bella so deeply, but we found a no-kill-animal shelter to donate her beds, food, and medicine to so it will be put to good use. We’ll drop those off the following week.
Friday, April 3rd was our first full official day. We wrote about 30 Courtesy Notices, which felt like a lot. Ranger reminded us that there has been no one supervising this location for several months, so folks have naturally gotten lax about paying fees, parking correctly, etc. We met some nice people who expressed that they were glad to have us there because either they themselves or friends of theirs had their vehicles broken into when there was no one doing what we will be doing.
I’m channeling courteous, polite and friendly Andy Taylor instead of my usual taciturn Jack Reacher.
Saturday was VERY busy and we were out patrolling and managing the lot for several hours. Quite a change from our usual life of exploring or reading/writing/needlework. We’ll get used to it, I’m sure.
Easter Sunday and it rained, so we weren’t very busy, at least in comparison to Saturday. I changed my Bluesky and Mastodon profiles to reflect that Bella was no longer traveling with us…at least physically. She’ll always be with us in our hearts wherever we go.
Two Things We Did NOT Want To Do
On Monday, April 6th, we did two things we did NOT want to do;
- Donate Bella’s beds (she had one always in the backseat of Voyager for travel days and one in Nomad for day to day use), leashes, unused medicines, unopened food and snacks, etc. to a nearby no-kill-animal shelter. We felt like it was the right and good thing to do. Much like helping her to cross the bridge on March 30th. The staff was VERY grateful and VERY sympathetic to our loss. But it was still heartbreaking. We stood together in the parking lot afterward, holding each other and sobbing.
- Got Starlink. Cell service for AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are all weak here at our location. We can’t deal with little to no connectivity for the next 6 months, so as much as we dislike supporting Elon Musk we felt Starlink was the best alternative. We’ll cancel T-Mobile and Verizon plans to help afford the Starlink monthly cost. Plus, Cindy says we’ll be staying at places later where we face the same dearth of cell service, so we’ll still put it to use after this 6 month stay.
It took a little longer than their promised “plug, point and play” but we did get it set up and even the “bad” location (trees all around) gave us much faster connectivity than our cell services did. Now we have just a little buffering after 5 days of almost dead slow service with our cell service.
We celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary on Tuesday, April 7th, 8 days after our actual anniversary. There was absolutely no way we could do so on our anniversary, since that was the day we lost Bella. So, we postponed it until that Tuesday and enjoyed a steak lunch out at Longhorn.
The following week, before we went grocery shopping, we stopped for lunch at a place called Guthrie’s, which specializes in chicken like you would get at a Zaxby’s or KFC or…well, if I had closed my eyes and only tasted the chicken and their dipping sauce I would have thought I was eating at Raising Cane’s Chicken restaurant. It tasted exactly the same. Made me wonder who was the first of those two in the market.
Our Starlink signal was better than our cell service, but we had it on the ground to start with and there was still a bit of buffering. Cindy wondered if it would be better on the roof of Nomad, however I didn’t think it would make any difference since there would still be obstruction from the trees around us. But I got the ladder out and moved it to the roof and what do ya know, it WAS better. We have an even stronger signal and very little buffering now and usually only at a certain time each night.
Dreams Of Bella
Sunday morning, April 19th around 3:30 am I awoke from a dream about Bella. In the dream Cindy and I were in the bedroom and Bella came trotting down the hall and into the room. She jumped up on the bed (something she hadn’t been able to do for almost a year before her passing) and was wagging her tail and snuggling up against us. So happy.
The dream was SO realistic. Cindy and I were ecstatic; hugging and petting Bella and she was nuzzling her head into our hands and it felt SO real that, in the dream, I thought that we had just awakened from a nightmare about her passing. I was crying tears of joy, my heart full of happiness, and saying to Cindy “I had a nightmare that Bella was sick and we had to take her to the vet and we had to say goodbye to her, but she’s here and well and happy! It was all a bad dream! It was all just a horribly bad dream!”
And then I awoke, my eyes filled with tears, and realized THAT had been the dream and the reality was that she was indeed gone. The sense of loss hit me like a punch to the gut. I was heartbroken all over again.
Cindy woke up I and asked me if I was OK. I explained the dream and she said “Oh honey, she just visited you and wanted you to know she’s well and happy. Don’t be sad, she loves you and wants you to know that she’s in a place of no pain.”
That’s just one of the many things I love about my wife; she looks for the positive and tries to offer comfort to her loved ones when they’re sad. She believes that kind of thing; that those we’ve lost come to visit us. I wish I could.
But that sense of loss, lying in our bed at 3:30 on a Sunday morning, was overpowering and devastating. It felt like happiness, my heart overflowing with it with Bella’s return, had been offered for a few brief moments, and then snatched away by waking from the dream.
It just all felt so needlessly mean and evil. Our minds, psyche, whatever you want to call it, can be so cruel. I wanted the happiness that was in that dream, and in waking up it was taken away.
I don’t know what caused that dream on that early Sunday morning, but I hope it never happens again.
The Difference Between T-Mobile and Verizon
Monday morning, April 20th, we drove into Cartersville to return our modem to T-Mobile and close out our account with Verizon. Let me tell you, there is a huge difference between T-Mobile and Verizon when it comes to customer service.
First we stopped at the T-mobile store. The friendly young lady there took the modem, clicked a few things on her screen, printed us a return receipt and we were done and out of there in less than 5 minutes. It was easy peasy and she was very nice.
The way it should be.
Then we drove to the Verizon store to make sure they had received our final payment and closed our account. The woman behind the counter was not friendly or helpful. In fact, she was borderline rude. We left the store and then talked to 3 other people on the phone who also were not interested in resolving the issue. Finally, we talked to a young lady named Alex in billing and she was awesome. She took care of everything and left us with peace of mind that the situation was handled. I asked her her if there was any way we could make a positive report about her because she had been the only one who was helpful (once you stop your phone service with Verizon they cut off all access to your account AND their rating service, so we couldn’t leave a review of how she helped us) but she said she appreciated that we wanted to and was glad she could help.
Too bad all their staff aren’t as helpful.
We finished up the month of April watching the season 1 finale of “Shrinking” on AppleTV and it was a literal cliffhanger (if you’ve watched the show you know what I mean). I’ve never been a big fan of Jason Segel (“How I Met Your Mother” and “Knocked Up”) but he and his stellar cast (including the legendary Harrison Ford) really make this show something special to watch.
All in all we felt like our first month in the volunteer position went well. It was different for us to be in one spot for 30 days after 5 years of moving every couple of weeks, but we’ve adapted. And being stationery has allowed us to handle some things that needed to be taken care of with regard to health treatments, which we’ll cover in the next post.
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