I cannot possibly say as well as Nick Russell did what this day is about so I’m just linking to his blog for today. Please, go read it.
http://gypsyjournal.net/blog/
Here’s another powerful one if you care to read it.
http://rvmirror.wordpress.com/
TTYL,
Linda
We are in Lake Aire RV Park near Hollywood, South Carolina, where it is raining. We are parked across from the pool but there is no one in it today. There are lots of people here but they all observed the 10 p.m. quiet time last night. I didn’t even hear the train whistles once I went to bed. We do get a lot of people walking through our site, though, since we are on the route to the bathrooms, laundry room, and pool. I know people like to take the most direct route when it is raining but they did it yesterday, too, when the sun was out and they were on their way to the pool. It always surprises me when people walk between our RV and our picnic table. I wonder if they’d still do that if we opened our awning?
We have good internet here using our aircard in our router again so I am content if somewhat frantic. I discovered last night I have done very little research on North Carolina which is, of course, the next state up the coast so I’m glad to sit right here for the holiday weekend doing more research.
TTYL,
Linda
I wrote the other day about Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River protecting the back door to Savannah. Today we visited the canal that connected that river to the Savannah River. This canal was what made it possible for goods to move to and from the Ogeechee River into Savannah.
The Savannah-Ogeechee Canal Society is trying to revive the canal area starting with a small museum and nature center at the Ogeechee River end of the canal.
The area has been declared a historical site.
The woman on duty at the museum gave us a private tour of the canal by driving us in their golf cart down the old tow path. It was a bumpy ride but it let me see the area in a way I would not have been able to do otherwise. The first two pictures below are taken from a new footbridge across the canal and the third one is as close as we got to the river end since mud from recent rains made traveling any further a risky venture.
Today’s rain chased us back down the path and into the museum where we found a model of a “rice trunk.” That’s a channel through a dyke that’s lets a farmer control the water level in a rice paddy.
Among other artifacts on the grounds are this Columbus No. 16 Sugar Cane Grinder.
According to one of the museum’s handouts, a wagon full of sugar cane is fed into this grinder where the juice is squeezed into tubs covered with cheesecloth. The juice is then boiled into the proper thickness and bottled. While the juice is cooking candy forms on the rim of the kettle and is scraped off onto peelings from the stalk and eaten like suckers by the children. Sounds good; doesn’t it? Makes my teeth hurt to think how sweet that must be, though. Please, pass me something salty-crunchy now, OK?
We are camped for a few nights at Skidaway Island State Park. This is another one with mostly pull-though sites but the one lane roads are two-way so it must be interesting to try coming here when it’s busy. The are fully booked for Memorial Day Weekend so we need to move on Friday. I wonder where we will wind up?
I know we are not going to see all the sights here we hoped to see. It’s been raining day and night so we are staying in and staying dry more than we intended.
The challenge with that has been our internet setup. It appears our router is dying. So we’ve been taking turns passing our aircard back and forth between our two computers. It’s Dave’s turn again as soon as I get this posted. We are friends again now but for awhile there the “discussion” about what to do about our poor internet got fairly heated. It’s a good thing we have no close neighbors in this park. Dave wants me to try a new system that hasn’t been proven yet. Why me? Because it uses a cell phone to connect and he just bought a new iPhone. My phone, however, is five years old so my contract is now just month to month so can be cancelled anytime without penalty. He could use my new phone to connect to the internet instead of me having to do it but then do I get to just unplug him when when I get a call? More discussion to come but I don’t think the next round will be heated. Stay tuned for updates as they happen.
Speaking of neighbors, we almost met some the other night. An RV the same brand as ours pulled into a site across the road from us. We’ve been taught not to go introduce ourselves while people are still setting up because it can mess up their routine. So we waited a bit. Then we decided they were probably having supper since they pulled in about six o’clock. So we waited a bit more. Then it started to rain again. Then it got dark. In the morning I looked out the window when I first got up and they were breaking camp. When are you supposed to go introduce yourselves to neighbors, anyway?
While driving around the Savannah area I saw a couple of signs some of you might like. One was a church sign that said, “Exposure to ‘Son’ may prevent burning.” The other was place advertising Angus burgers that had put a “D” in front of “angus!” Any of you remember Roger Miller’s son Dang Me? How many of you besides me are going to have that in your heads for the next few hours?
Dave just showed me a weather map for Memorial Day. It pretty much doesn’t matter what part of the U.S. you are in–plan for rain. Sorry about that.
TTYL,
Linda
As we approached Brunswick, Georgia, our transmission once again developed hiccups. This is usually a precursor to the loss of our turbo. Today the turbo kept working but the incidence of hiccups is increasing. One of these days we are going to wind up in an automobile repair shop again. Hopefully, this time the system will generate a code that lets them fix whatever is going wrong.
We are camping at Blythe Regional Park for five nights. There’s so much to see and do around here. Plus we need to do housekeeping chores like laundry again and catch up with this blog. Plus we like to stay parked for the weekends since camping spots are getting harder to come by as part-timers decide camping season is here again.
The former Hamilton Plantation on Saint Simons Island is now Epworth by the Sea, an historic site for the Methodist Church. Located near there are two tabby slave cabins that are supposedly open on Wednesdays from 10 to 1. We rearranged our stops to be there during that time but they were not open. I would like to see what furnishings they had in these cabins but that doesn’t appear to be going to happen.
We bought grocereis at Winn-Dixie. I know there’s a story about a girl growing up at Winn-Dixie or some such thing but I don’t know the details of it.
More transmission hiccups.
We finally succeeded in buying my replacement cane tips. Rainbow Drug did indeed have them. They don’t anymore, though, as we bought their entire supply. Which was only enough to replace my three and have one spare.
And we finally got the oil for our engine. Dave was not happy with me because I pressured him to go into a Dodge dealer that doesn’t sell Sprinters. He figured they wouldn’t have the oil we need since they don’t service vehicles with our type of engine. I figured we had better odds there than at all the auto parts stores we’ve been trying with no luck. I won.
So now I’m sitting here in the park writing blogs and Dave is over at the main building doing laundry. This is not a vacation we are on here.
TTYL,
Linda
While being a tourist is fun you can’t do it all the time. There are still chores to be done wherever and however you live. So today is shopping day.
First stop, Napa Auto Parts. Our oil is low. Our engine is a Mercedes Benz and it requires a type of oil not readily available. We weren’t too surprised when Napa didn’t have it.
Second stop–Publix Food. We managed to get some groceries we’ve been having trouble finding at WalMarts lately.
Driving up the US 95 towards Kingsland, Georgia, we lost our turbo again. I asked Dave how he could tell while driving on the flats and he said there was a sudden drop in the manifold pressure. So we got off the highway at the next exit and found an abandoned building with a circular drive where we could safely stop. Turning the engine off, waiting a couple of minutes, and turning it back on again resets everything so our turbo is back. An easy ramp back up to the freeway and we are on our way again.
We stopped at a Georgia visitor center to get a new highway map. I really appreciate that states give us these maps that I can fold, spindle, and mutilate however I want to make them most useful to us. I write all over them, too, circling places we need to be able to find on them.
Then we went to Ace Hardware trying to buy new tips for my cane. I wore one completely though so Dave made me a temporary cover from duct tape but I’ll feel much safer when we get real tips in it again. Unfortunately, Ace only had 7/8″ and I need 3/4″.
Then we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. Have I told you yet how much I like their roast beef and hashbrown casserole? And the fact that they serve me enough of it to make two meals out of it? Yum!
A search on Dave’s iPhone for medical equipment found Jones Medical Equipment just up the street from us and they assured me they have cane tips but they hung up before I could ask about size. Yup. We got there OK but they had a choice of too small or too large. They recommended Rainbow Drug in Brunswick, Georgia.
But we’re not going that far today so we pulled into Crooked River State Park where they told us to feel free to take any empty spot. We choose #8. The whole area is one big grassy field with trees and electrical boxes scattered around. The ground is lumpy but that mean moving a few inches once way or another is likely to get you level enough. It would be a good place to have an RV rally, I think. Do you happen to know anyone looking for such a place around here?
TTYL,
Linda
