Beaches, Palm Trees, and Warmth!

Well, it's been a while since my last post and a lot has happened in the last three weeks, as we have worked our way down the east coast.  Our plan from day one was to be in the south by the time the weather turned cold in north and that plan has worked fairly well.  Other than a few inches of snow in Gloucester, MA in late October we have been following the t-shirt and shorts weather, as planned.  

 to make it to Florida by mid-December, it has meant moving a bit faster than we really would have liked...staying 3-5 nights in most places instead of 5-12 days at each stay, which we consider a bit less tiring.  We have stayed in three locations where we have stayed a week, which has allowed me to go home for four or five days, while Juli and the kids still had a home base, but otherwise, our average stay in most locations has been about four nights.  

As I write this post on December 20th, we are in Barberville, FL, which is about an hour and a half north east of Orlando.  We are staying at another Harvest Host called Barberville Pioneer Settlement, which is a living history museum with about 19 historic structures, including bridge tender's home, a post office, the old railroad depot, and a turpentine still.  At this Harvest Host, there were a total of four RV's staying with only one running a generator. ☹

After we left Washington DC, our stops included the Williamsburg and Jamestown areas in Virginia for some more history lessons.  We then bee-lined it down to Myrtle Beach for Thanksgiving at Lakewood Camping Resort on the beach, which was an experience in itself.  Folks on the east coast do camping a little different than us on the west coast.  These campgrounds are truly "RV resorts" complete with water parks, basketball courts, their own grocery stores, cafes, food trucks, and of course, the beach.  This particular campground has 1,300 campsites with another 1,200 beach homes that range from permanent trailers to beautiful three-story homes.  We were one of the few that didn't have our own golf cart or rent one from the resort to buzz around from place to place.  Many people just drive around looking at all the other RV's and in the evenings, the teenagers cruise around the park playing their music in large golf cart parades.  

Originally, we were a bit hesitant staying in a park like this, but it was nice to be around other people having fun with a beautiful beach right out your front door. Another favorite RV park down the road near Charleston was James Island County Park, which is a park run by Charleston County Parks.  I think we all agree it has been our favorite place to stay yet and to think it is run by the government!  It too was full of amenities, like paved biking trails, a huge dog park with a lake for dogs to swim in, climbing walls, frisbee golf, boat rentals, even a Christmas light show that people line up in their cars for.  

Juli's cousin, Lesley and her husband Bert live in Lexington, SC, so we headed inland to camp in their driveway.  They have three young children, so was good for our kids to have some other kids to play with.  There were many wrestling matches and we even were able to get a baby sitter one night, so all the adults could go out to a nice dinner at Private Property, one of our favorite restaurants on our travels so far.  That weekend, were able to rent a canoe and kayak for the day in Columbia to explore Cedar Creek in Congaree National Park.  It's probably a park many of you have never heard of and it is very different from any National Parks out west.  It is the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeast United States.  It is essentially a large floodplain with upland pine trees and bald cypress growing right out of the water.  

We then moved onto Skidway Island State Park near Savannah, which was a beautiful park, but we woke up on our last morning to find out we had no water in the RV.  It had to be one of three things.  1) Either someone walked by and thought it would be funny to turn off our water spicket; 2) there was a leak in the RV; or 3) there was a broken line somewhere in the park.  Well, it turned out to be the latter and when I walked out in the dark, I immediately stepped down onto a floating RV mat and sunk my foot in about four inches of water.  Our entire RV was in the middle of a giant lake!  Walking around our RV, I discovered a water line had broken underground (apparently common due to tree roots) and water was bubbling up out of the ground at a good pace and clearly had been for most of the night.  At this time, it was still around six in the morning, so I walked down to the park office to call their emergency line, but no one answered and no voice mail.  After walking back into the park, I saw the lights on at the camp host, so I stopped by and let him know what was going on.  He said, "yeah, we have had some problems with some dampness at the sites in those loops."  I replied, that this was a lot more than dampness and we were sitting in about five inches of water at this point and that someone needed to get the water turned off.  He said there wasn't much he could do at this point, but he would let the ranger know.

I went back to our site and woke up Juli and the kids and everyone stepped up to get things packed up quickly and ready to roll out before we became stuck in a swampy mess.  At 8 AM, the park rangers showed up and were quite surprised to see what they had on their hands.  At that point everyone was extremely nice and was trying to find a new site for us to go to, but we were already pulling out.  We drove to a nearby parking lot and were able to get cleaned up and showered after wading around in the swamp water and headed down the road toward Florida.  The folks at Skiddway were nice enough refund us our entire stay.

We rolled into Florida on December 16th to St. Augustine, a city that has been highly recommended to us by many and it did not disappoint.  It lays claim to be the oldest city in the New World, founded in 1865 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles.  The city was the Spanish capital of Florida for over 200 years.  Today, the historic city is filled with good restaurants, bars, ice cream shops, tourist shops and small inns.  We spent several hours exploring the Castillo de San Marcos fort.  A fort built over 450 years ago that the Spanish built to defend Florida from the British.  Another highlight here was watching a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket take off from Cape Canaveral from the beach next to our campsite.

Today, we are on our way to Orlando, a long-awaited destination on our trip to meet up with my parents, who will be flying in from Oregon for the holiday.  My sister and her two sons were supposed to be joining us on Monday, but just found out that she will now not be able to make the trip due to a new Covid lockdown in London.  This was very disappointing for us all, as were very excited to see them and spend some time at the Disney parks with her two young boys.  The next few weeks will include spending some time at the amusement parks and then we travel down to the Naples, FL area to spend Christmas with my Aunt and Uncle.  Oh, it's nice to be warm!