Driftwood Beach

Wow!

We followed a trail to the beach today. It was just a couple miles from the campground. The pictures tell it all.

Savannah

Thursday we spent a fantastic day in Savannah. It's about 90 minutes from here. The visitors center was very easy to get to and that's where all the tour companies were. The visitors center gave us basic information. The Historic area was based on 24 squares and all the tour companies are required to go to the same basic places. The differences are in where they stop and how often the buses return if you get on and off. We talked to each of the companies and picked one. We just did the tour so we chose Old Town Trolley Tours because they did the whole River Front Area. The link will show you a map and some of the places we saw. We learned a lot about Savannah and it's history. The city was home to many authors and parts of it are in lots of movies and it was the inspiration to many books. We saw the home of Juliette Gordon Low - there's a special girl scout badge you can only earn in the city of Savannah! I think every square has fountains and/or statues. The statue of the Confederate soldier was made in Canada and then was shipped to Savannah by boat because it would be defiled if it touched Northern soil. We saw the mail order house where all the windows were put in upsidedown. We saw the "Pirate's House' , now a restaurant, it has tunnels from the bar to the waterfront and was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" . You can still see the tunnels and we were told to threaten not to pay our bill if we were not shown the tunnels. (It's on our list for a future trip). The next time will do the on and off the bus tour so we can explore more of the squares.
After the tour we asked about parking near the waterfront or if it was within walking distance, etc. The visitors center was great- they told us about the free bus service. So we took the bus to the RiverFront and walked around a bit then stopped at 'Kevin Barry's Irish Pub' for some refreshment before walking around more.
We went to dinner at 'The Lady and Son's' (Paula Deen's). The food was fantastic! The atmosphere was not what we expected- very crowded and noisy.
We asked the waiter to double check our directions for getting to the bus stop. The stop was less than a 5 minutes walk. We had to wait about 10 minutes for the bus. We missed our stop so the bus driver went around the block for us. We were one of the few cars left in the lot.
I definitely want to go back and see more. And everyone we talked to was very friendly and helpful.
We had no trouble getting back to the highway but the construction on Rt. 95 S made the trip home about 2 hours.
It was still a great day.

Cold

Monday and Tuesday were cold and rainy. Wednesday was cold (40’s)and sunny. They’re talking about freezing temperature overnight.
We’ve been driving around and getting a little bit familiar with the area. We now know where there are 3 grocery stores, Target, Lowes, and a car wash. We also found a couple streets we’d rather avoid in the future.
We got an annual parking pass for the Island and because Bob’s car is lower than most we were instructed to hug the driver’s side of the lane so the beam to read the pass (on the passenger window) is at it’s widest. It worked!!
I spent some time sewing (I can’t have the heater and iron plugged into the surge protector at the same time) and Bob worked on his stained glass- There was room and it worked pretty well,. We just have to put everything else away before and we can’t leave any craft stuff out after. We’re getting better at camper life.

Despite the cold there are wild flowers on the causeway (6 miles) to Jekyll. This is apparently yard cleanup time. There’s piles of branches and yard rakings by the road everywhere. The paper had an ad for pansies for your winter yard, and we saw people planting some. This is the winter we heard about – it sure is pleasant.

Sunshine

Saturday was a warm, sunny day in the 70’s. We drove to the beach with the top down on Bob’s car. It was low tide so we saw a lot of jellyfish and sanddollars. It was so nice to sit and watch the ocean and read. The sky was bright blue and clear, the jets had short tails and looked like shooting stars. Bob’s face and neck got sunburned so we rode around the island before coming back to the campground.
We have a beautiful view of the sunset from right here at the campsite.


People are very friendly. One gentleman’s hat said “Ranger School” after talking a bit I asked him about the hat- He is a graduate of Wanakena in the Adirondacks so we talked more about that area. Another couple stopped and asked if we knew some friends of theirs- yes, he’d been the principal at Bob’s school. We talked about the mutual acquaintances a bit and then more about camping etc. Other conversations with people are usually about the weather back home and grandchildren. Camping is such a nice, relaxed life.

Jekyll Island

We’re here!
We arrived at Jekyll Island about 3:30 Thursday. The weather’s fantastic-70 degrees when we pulled in!!
It took us a couple tries to get the camper between the trees, where we could open the slides, and be within reach of the hookups- but we’ve had more difficult sites.
We even have a Lamppost!! Lat year we saw them at lots of the campsites. It’s a lamppost with a sign that has the campers’ names and a picture of their state.

We cooked outside last night and had a campfire. The sun is out and I cooked breakfast outside this morning. We’ll explore the campground today. I need to figure out where to store stuff- its different staying for a month compared to a few days.
I think Bob has us well decorated now. We have lots of lights, a spinner, solar lights with stars, a flag spinner, and the wooden name sign.

Weather (just about everything but lake effect)

1st the good news. We’re in a KOA just south of Charlotte. We had a drink outside after getting set up and the temperature outside was around 50.

So… Last night we listened to the rain all night and woke up to everything coated with ice. The trees were pretty but the branches hung lower with the weight and scraped the top of all the campers leaving. We left about 9:30. The weather reports were better and the roads looked just wet. We quickly drove out of the ice and the tractor trailers were no longer losing big ice sheets off the top.
It was a gray sky, too many clouds, so we really couldn’t see much. As we drove into the mountains we drove into the clouds and heavy rain. We could see bits of the mountains through the clouds as we drove out of the rain. We could see the line of clouds followed by blue sky as we followed 81 through Virginia. By the time we got to rt. 77 we were driving back into the rain but a highlight was we saw a double rainbow. The views were wonderful as you follow 77 through the southwest corner of Virginia but the winds were awful the rest of the way. When we registered here they said they were expecting a lot more people because of the winds.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get to Jekyll Island.

On the Road Again

We left home Monday morning and had no problems as we headed South. We ran out of the snow quickly and even had periods of sun!!
We stopped at Candy Hill Campground in Winchester, VA. We were 2nd in line to check in. We were both told that there were ice/freezing rain warnings for Tuesday morning.
So after some debate this morning we decided, as did our neighbors, to stay another day (our decision was assisted by the fact that Bob didn't turn off his car last night and it wouldn't start this morning).
When we went to get propane around noon we were told that there were lots of accidents on 81. So I guess it was a wise decision. Tomorrow is supposed to be just rain.
Next time we make this trip were driving farther south to start with!! Delaying the trip home I handled but I'm not happy about a delay headed South!