About

IMG_2601-A-LogoSquare-WORDS 2-250x250 — Selfie at Trogon Lodge in 2014,
the year I moved to Costa Rica.

In short, after 12 years of retirement in Nashville I realized I couldn’t afford to travel for nature photography and live in retirement there, thus deciding to go live in one of my favorite places to travel, Costa Rica! I didn’t say it then, but I also wanted to get away from right-wing Republicans who are partly responsible for America being mostly for rich white supremist men and crazy gun-toting right-wingers. Plus Southern Baptists (and all “Evangelicals”) no longer represent my faith or how I follow Jesus, plus their politics makes it an embarrassment to have spent my whole adult life working for Southern Baptists. Costa Rica is a relief from all of that and more! I love it here! And I’m thinking about becoming a Quaker, receiving their weekly newsletters and videos, though hampered by no Friends Meeting site near where I live.

This website was started in year 2000 while serving missionaries in The Gambia, West Africa for 3 years with reports from that experience still here. See the Gambia Missionary page + links there.

The blog is all about me being “Retired in Costa Rica” that I started in June 2014 seven months before moving here in December 2014. I have a page on Why I Blog that explains how I got to this point in blogging and my sometimes changing reasons for blogging. 🙂 All were fun!

I have decided that Costa Rica is the perfect place for me! I can’t imagine living anywhere else now with my love of the outdoors expressed in my Hiking & Camping history or now in the Costa Rica Trips Links on Menu below plus my earlier World Travels and Tennessee Travels. Enjoy my stories and photos! And then go live your own dream! You only live once! 🙂

Explore, Dream, Discover
-Mark Twain

ABOUT ME PERSONALLY (sub-pages here)
- Why I Blog
- Biographies
- Jobs (Career & other work history)
- Scrapbooks (from childhood until retirement)
- Journals (overlap much on this menu)
- Life Stories (overlaps much on this menu)
- Schools (Elementary through Graduate School)
ABOUT MY HOBBIES (Sub-pages here or links elsewhere)
- Boy Scouts
- Hiking & Camping – A lifetime avocation! 🙂
- Doing Good – Volunteering or another avocation!
- Art Lover
- Photographer
- Birder
- Butterfly Photographer
MISC. PERSONAL LINKS (to other page on this site or gallery)
- Photos of Me (in Gallery, mostly since moving to Costa Rica) *
- My TN Bicentennial Mall Brick * (in photo gallery)
- My Brick at Nashville Zoo * (in photo gallery)
- Name on Plaque at Hardgrave Cemetery, Johnson Co., AR (in photo gallery) *
- Ship Named Charles Doggett (not named after me but a fun story with my name and a relationship to Nashville and a friend there)
- ABOUT TRAVEL (Worldwide – stories, articles) *
- ABOUT HIS SPIRIT (Being a follower of Jesus) *
- ABOUT FAMILY (Family History & What Went Wrong in My Marriage) *

* Star/asterisk means this page is found under another main menu tab above & linked here because it relates to this page, just not physically under this tab or a sub-page here. Travel, Family and His Spirit are on the main menu at top which and when I decided to move them here totally, I could not because they were linked to those addresses in too many location. 🙂