Our Wander Years

Just her luck

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Sparky

Jett had cataract surgery on both eyes in December. This was a major accomplishment because we have been trying to get it done for over a year, but a series of screwups and changes in plans made it far more difficult than it should have been. We were going to have it done during the summer of 2012 with her regular eye doctor, but his schedule didn’t permit it before we were planning to leave in September that year. So we then switched to a plan to get it done in San Jose where we planned to stay the winter. But we didn’t like the park and didn’t like the weather so we moved down to Temecula. She picked a doctor there and did everything that she was asked to do, but when she went in for her pre-op checkup she was told that she was supposed to have had her contacts out for a week – a little detail that they never communicated to her. They offered to push the surgery back a week, but that would have put the post-op schedule too close to our planned departure date. So we switched to a plan to get it done back in Boston last summer. I can’t remember why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t. Our fifth plan was to get it done in Ft Myers and – hallelujah! – that actually happened.

I expected that the actual surgery – once we got past all the scheduling hurdles – would be a piece of cake. My mother had both eyes done 10 years ago and I can’t remember her complaining about it at all. Everyone shudders at the thought of a root canal (which I actually thought was pretty painless), but no one talks about cataract pain. Well, just her luck… Jett’s pain the night after the first surgery was so severe that she got no sleep at all. It took nearly a week for the pain to subside and that got her to the surgery on the left eye. The doctor said her right cataract was far worse than the left one and he “had to dig deep” to get it out, so we assumed that the second surgery would be a piece of cake. Wrong! The pain wasn’t quite as bad as the first time, but it was bad. And this one didn’t heal right. The checkup a week after the surgery revealed that the “flap hadn’t closed” and she “had a hole in her eye”! Ewww!!! Makes my spine tingle.

In any case it has been an unexpected ordeal. I think she is on the mend now, but still hasn’t gotten a prescription for new contacts so she is still pretty blind. Hopefully it will all be worth it once she is fully recovered.

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Ogling the Christmas lights, Florida style

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Sparky

Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of my dad driving us kids around town just before Christmas, letting us ogle the houses all festively lit up with Christmas lights while dreaming of Christmas presents to come. Usually there was snow on the ground and it was always so frigid that the back windows in the ’62 Pontiac fogged up because we pressed our faces too close to the subzero windows. It was fun, but very, very cold.

The tour boat

Well, Jett and I went out last night to look at the festive Christmas lights, but we did it Florida-style: in T-shirts and shorts, sitting on the upper deck of a boat that meandered through the channels of Port Charlotte. The boat had no windows, but even if it did we wouldn’t have had to worry about fogging them up – the temperature at 7:30pm was 75 degrees.

Definitely a better way to ogle the lights.

I recommend that you click on the link above, because video definitely captured the tour better than the stills. But, for the video-challenged, here are some blurry night scene photos:

Festive sailboat

Artfully blurry lights

The Gulf from Pine Island

We arrived in Punta Gorda via Pine Island (a big island with a lot of nothing on it) in time for dinner. We tried the Sheraton Four Points first because the restaurant there got some nice reviews, but we didn’t like the ambiance. We did like the tiki bar there but it didn’t serve dinner (though it was having an Ugly Christmas Sweater contest that was tempting, but it would have cut our cruise too short).

The Tiki Bar at the Sheraton

We opted for dinner at Tortuga’s Seafood Restaurant, also highly rated. The atmosphere there was only slightly better. The food was very good (I really enjoyed the leftovers the next day) but there were several “almost good” aspects to the place. One was the seating arrangements. We were the first people in the place and they sat us in the middle of the (small) dining room. The next group in were seated right next to us, which we found a little annoying. Two customers, a dozen tables and you have to use two adjacent ones? Why? The other annoying thing was that I found, in an otherwise spotless men’s room, cleaning bottles on top of the sink. Again, why? There was no other place to store the cleaning bottles than right there, in plain view?

Nits, I suppose, but that’s what we do: we find nits.

The Mall at Fisherman’s Village

The Fisherman’s Village complex where the marina was located was interesting in it’s own right. It is basically a mall, but one with some interesting shops and an arena that seemed to have non-stop entertainment. When we arrived there was a band playing some oldies with several couples dancing. When we left there was a couple doing karaoke to Elvis. Very nice.

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Sanibel Island

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Sparky

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was beautiful in the Fort Myers area (so what else is new?) so we decided to take a jaunt over to Sanibel Island. Sanibel is about 30 miles from the RV park, on the other side of a bridge with a $6 toll. But it is a beautiful place and well worth both the time and the money.

Jett and pups on Sanibel Beach

We made the lighthouse on the southeast tip of the island our first stop. This is the best beach on the island and thought it would be a good place to see how Rusty reacted to the ocean. We already knew how Grace would react – she would jump into the surf and start biting the waves. Weird, yes, but we love her anyway.

Rusty was not very interested in the water; he was more intrigued by the thousands of dead fish. We were lucky enough to visit during a “red tide” outbreak that killed lots of fish. Strangely, the presence of dead fish actually made the beach photos more interesting.

We walked the beach for a bit, then packed the dogs back into the car and drove around the island to see what was new since our last visit (10 years ago?). Not much. The place looked pretty nice, as always. Laid back, in an upscale way. I love the place, but I think living there would be boring. And expensive.

Dead fish

Sailboarding

We drove all the way to the other end of the island, to the bridge that connects Sanibel to Captiva Island, then turned around. We passed the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge but didn’t go in. We have been there before and it is worth a trip if you have the time. It is a good place to see large alligators in the wild. But we were hungry so we just passed by.

We had a late lunch at George and Wendy’s Sanibel Seafood Grille. We liked our blackened salmon and chicken fingers and were happy that the waitress invited us to bring the dogs onto the patio. We were also impressed with the service and the cleanliness of the dining room and restrooms. Good place.

On the patio at George and Wendy’s

We made one more stop on Sanibel – at a bookstore. I can’t remember the name of the place now but will be able to find it again. It was one of those bookstores that just don’t exist anymore – a warren of stacks piled high with books and videos. The staff was helpful and I was able to pick up the Sue Grafton alphabet book that I was missing – U is for Undertow – so I left happy. The DVD collection there was unbelievable. A huge quantity of classic movies of all kinds. There must have been at least 50 different Alfred Hitchcock movies, including some I have never heard of. Great place. I can tell you how to get there if you want to go.

It was a good day away from the keyboard.

Categories: FL, Places | 1 Comment

Hey! Don’t the Red Sox train here?

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Sparky

Lest you think that I am working all the time (which may be true but I don’t want you thinking that), I just bought tickets for two Red Sox spring training games. The Red Sox have a new stadium here in Fort Myers (JetBlue Park) and it is laid out to match the dimensions of Fenway. It even has a Green Monster! With seats on top of it!

JetBlue Park

Spring training tickets went on sale at 10am today. By 10:15 I was in possession of tickets to two games – one with the Baltimore Orioles and one with the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays tickets are on the Green Monster. I didn’t intentionally get them – I just selected “best available” for that game – and Jett may not like them as they are in the front row atop the wall. But it will be interesting, for sure. And, at $37 each, they are more affordable than the real Green Monster seats which run over $200.

The Minnesota Twins also have a stadium in Fort Myers and the Red Sox have several games against them. When their tickets go on sale (not until January), I may try to get some tickets there, too.

Spring training! Another item to check off on my bucket list.

Categories: FL, Places | 2 Comments

The downside of WFH

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Sparky

My work area in the RV

Since arriving in Florida, I have been working out of the RV using my Verizon hotspot. This has worked pretty well overall, despite the cramped quarters. I am able to access the servers that physically reside in Burlington, MA, just as I would if I were working in Cambridge. And I can participate in meetings – including group assemblies – using Skype and the company’s conferencing software. The worst thing about not being in the office is that I can’t get to the free coffee and snacks. But I have my own.

There is, however, one big downside to WFH (working from home, in case you didn’t know): an inability to escape. Having the computer right there, all the time, 24/7, means that I am actually connected more than I would be if I were in Massachusetts. Not having to spend 3 hours a day commuting means that there are 3 more hours a day to be online. On Thanksgiving weekend – ostensibly a 4-day holiday – I monitored a series of tests that were running on two servers. I actually checked on them at 3am one night and always checked on them around 5am when I usually get up. I was pretty much connected to those servers all the time, all four days.

This week had a lot of fairly urgent issues to deal with, so I worked long hours every day. I didn’t keep a detailed timesheet, but I think I averaged over 10 hours per day – over 50 hours for the week.

If it wasn’t for the need to walk the dogs 3 times a day I might never leave the RV.

So much for “fun in the sun.”

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Thanksgiving, RV style

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Sparky

We don’t have family or friends in Fort Myers, so it was going to be a quiet Thanksgiving, regardless. Jett doesn’t use the RV oven – she doesn’t like that it has to be manually lit and seems to think that she will blow up the RV if she attempts it. So if we were going to cook Thanksgiving dinner ourselves it was going to be something that fit in a toaster oven or a microwave. Not very appealing.

Going out would be a hassle as most restaurants that choose to stay open are packed solid. This is probably true everywhere, but even more so in Florida, with its incoming flock of snowbirds.

The takeout option is usually pretty limited. As good as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese can be, it just doesn’t cut it on Thanksgiving.

But Cracker Barrel offers a takeout Thanksgiving feast that serves 4 to 6 for just $56:

2 pounds of turkey
12 ounces of ham
2 pounds of stuffing
12 ounces of cranberry relish
13 corn muffins or biscuits
3 quarts of vegetables

We chose mashed potatoes (with gravy, of course), mac and cheese and cooked apples for our veggies. I added in an apple pie to complete the meal, picked it up at 1pm on Thanksgiving Day (nicely packed in a box with a handle) and brought it home. We then sat down for a sumptuous meal, still hot and very tasty.

That’s how to do Thanksgiving dinner in an RV!

I only wish I had gotten a picture of it after Jett laid it all out. It was an impressive amount of food.

BTW, it was a cool day in Fort Myers – only(!) 70 degrees.

I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving as much as we enjoyed ours.

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Car-buying in the modern age

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Sparky

When we arrived in Florida on Sunday, 5 days ago, we had not yet decided whether to buy or rent a car for Jett. We will be here for just 4 months and hauling a car north, while possible, is a hassle we didn’t need. On the other hand, renting a car also had a downside in their annoying rules (no pets, no smoking) and risks (uncertainty as to how an accident would be handled and whether we would get nailed for “loss of use” as rental companies are now wont to do). Close call. If we could find a rental like we had in San Jose – a decent car for under $600 a month – that likely would have been our chosen option. But in Fort Myers I could not find any such vehicle for much less than $900.

So, at 11am on Monday, we started looking for a dealer, thinking that we would go see some cars at lunch and mull it over a bit. We settled on AutoNation of Fort Myers, a large Toyota dealership not far from the RV park. I browsed its used car inventory and saw a number of vehicles that would fit the bill.

Off we went. We found the place, found a spot to stash the truck and walked into the showroom. And were informed that we were in the wrong place… the used car dealership was across the street. We were about to exit when we were introduced to Ezequiel Garcia, one of their used car salesmen who was about to head across the street. “Follow me,” he said. And we did.

But getting there was tricky. We had to take a right onto a busy road, then immediately cross 3 lanes of traffic to get into the left turn lane, then take a U-turn. Because he didn’t want to endanger us in pulling into the heavy traffic, we waited what felt like forever to get onto the road. And making a U-turn in our beast of a truck is always an adventure. But we made it, arriving about 1pm.

I asked about a Toyota Yaris that I had seen advertised, but it was gone. We looked at a Mustang that got Jett really excited, until she found out it was standard transmission. We looked at a couple more, then found a basic Corolla that we liked enough to do a test drive. It drove great and came with a 6-month warranty which would be fine for our expected 4-month term of ownership. The only negative was that it lacked power windows and locks, but Jett said she could deal with that for four months. We parked the car and were about to go into the building to talk turkey when Jett spotted another Yaris. This one had power everything, just 57K miles and came with the original warranty that was good to 100K miles. Ding, ding, ding! A winner! A short test drive convinced us that that car would suit us better than the Corolla. And we were going to finance it all, so the extra $1,500 wasn’t a deterrent.

In the Old Days the process would go like this:

settle on the terms for the car
go to the bank or credit union to arrange the loan
get a cashier’s check
go back to the dealer to buy the car
go to your insurance agent to arrange insurance
take all the papers to the Registry and stand in line for an hour or two to get the plates
go back to the dealership, put the plates on the car and drive away

The process could take the better part of a week.

For our purchase, we negotiated the terms, the salesman disappeared to work up the sales papers, came back a few minutes later, we shook hands, we called an insurance agent, bought insurance on our Visa, he faxed the insurance documents to the dealership, we went into the finance manager’s office, signed the papers, he handed the plates to the salesman, he put them on the car and we drove away.

We drove off the lot at 4:30pm. Total time at the dealership: 3.5 hours. Add in another two hours for doing the internet search and getting to the dealership and the total time required to buy a $12,000 car was less than 6 hours. Nice!

In truth it wasn’t quite as smooth as described. The hitch was the taxes and fees. I was SHOCKED at the high Florida sales tax and registration fee. Add in the mandatory $700 dealership document processing fee and these one-time extras exceeded $2,000! I just about walked out the door. As I explained to Ezequiel, that was, to me, an extra $500 per month as I expected to keep the car for just 4 months. Add in about $100 for insurance and the depreciation cost and the total monthly cost of ownership was hovering right around the $850 mark, which would make owning just as expensive as renting.

So they knocked $1,000 off the purchase price for me.

I guess I was playing hardball without even knowing it.

Anyway, we now own a steel-blue 2008 Toyota Yaris. Jett loves it. And we are already thinking about how to take it north with us.

Little Blue, parked next to Big Red

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QTS Hop 4: Savannah, GA, to North Ft Myers, FL

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Sparky

417 miles via I-95, I-4, County 557, US 17 and FL 31.

This was the last hop of the relatively short QTS and I was hoping to complete the trip with no “dings” to report. Alas, ’twas not to be. We got two rather significant dings on Saturday.

Day 1: Savannah, GA, to Daytona Beach, FL

208 miles, almost entirely on I-95, with a lunch break at a rest area just north of Jacksonville

QTS Hop 4, Day 1

The day started badly: as we were pulling in the slides in preparation for leaving Savannah, a cable on the left bunkhouse slide snapped. With a little cursing and some manual assistance, we got the slide properly stowed, but it was a bad start to what turned out to be a very bad day.

The trip down I-95 to the lunch break at the “Welcome to Florida!” rest area just north of Jacksonville was uneventful. We pulled into a slot next to a travel trailer owned by a 79-year-old gentleman who came over to strike up a conversation with me while I was eating my bologna sandwich and Jett was in the tourism office collecting brochures that we will likely discard before reading. He was waiting for assistance in fixing a blowout. I commiserated and, naturally, told of our “adventures” with exploding tires. I got out to show him our damage and directed his attention to the spare tire that was still mounted on the right rear from our near-flat in Louisville in early July. Anyway, when Jett got back we wished him well and went on our merry way, grateful that we were not the ones who had to deal with a blowout. Nope, we were headed for Daytona Beach, just 90 minutes away. We would arrive by 2pm, which would give us plenty of time to actually visit the beach.

Then, 20 miles later, just as we were approaching the Danes Point Bridge on the I-295 East Beltway around Jacksonville (which, ironically, we took on the advice of the gentleman at the rest area)… BLAM!!!

Yup, another blowout. Our fourth, if you include the one that was my fault. The three blowouts and the near-flat were all rear-tire failures. That makes sense as the rear tires carry more weight than the front ones because we can’t make the RV totally level when towing, due to the height of the bed of the truck. But they are not carrying so much weight that they should blow out so frequently. All of the blown tires had less than 2,000 miles of use. Only the near-flat was a failure of a tire with more than 5,000 miles on it.

Patience, awaiting assistance

As explosive blowouts go, this one was pretty ugly. The noise alone just about gave Jett a heart attack. I immediately looked in the side-view mirrors and saw debris – I am still not sure from what – bouncing all over the road behind me. Once again I was lucky, in that no one was in the right lane (I was in the center lane), so I was able to get to the breakdown lane without running anyone off the road. I was also lucky in that there was a breakdown lane. I was able to brake to a hard stop just before the breakdown lane narrowed to nearly nothing as the approach to the bridge began. If the tire had blown 10 seconds later I would have blocked at least a partial lane of traffic. If it had blown a minute later I would have been on the bridge and would have blocked an entire traffic lane.

Lucky, I guess. Though I would have felt much luckier if it had not happened at all. Or if it had not done considerable damage to the RV, including peeling away more sheet metal, ripping off a big chunk of insulation from the underside of the kitchen slide and (we discovered later) cracking the plywood flooring of the kitchen so we now have a very noticeable ridge in front of the sink.

Jett, Grace and Rusty cooling their heels

I also would have felt a lot luckier if help had arrived sooner. As it was, the tire was not replaced until 3 hours later. At least there was a grassy area where Jett and the dogs could relax while I paced incessantly, trying to figure out some way to fix the flat myself (nope, couldn’t do it). Jett even had a little nap while waiting.

When the tire was finally in place we discovered that the pressure in the (new) spare tire was just 45 psi rather than the recommended 65 psi. We could not make it to Daytona Beach with a tire with pressure that low. So the roadside assistance guy escorted us to a service station where we could inflate it. But we missed the entrance and had to U-turn in a shopping center parking lot, which was like turning an aircraft carrier around in the Charles River. Then we found that we would have to turn the RV around in the service station to get the air hose to reach the bad tire, which was like turning an aircraft carrier around in a bathtub, so Jett got out and directed traffic while I threaded the rig through the gas pumps. Very exciting. But not in a pleasant way.

We finally got the tire inflated, got on the road again and made it to the RV park in Daytona Beach at 6:08pm, just 4 hours later than planned.

And with 2 dings added to our ledger.

The red marker on the map is where the blowout occurred.

We didn’t get much opportunity to sample what the Sunshine Holiday Daytona RV Resort had to offer, but I can tell you, without equivocation, that it was not worth the price we paid. It was, at $66 for a single night, one of the most expensive places we have stayed. And when we arrived the office was closed and the sun was long gone, so we had to find our way to our site and get set up in the dark. And it started to rain.

Tight site

The roads in the park are very narrow, the turns very tight and the pull-thrus very small. High price and poor facilities – a very bad combination. I think this makes our 10 Least Enjoyable parks list.

On the positive side, the staff there (which I met on Sunday morning) was very helpful and the pool was just about the best we have seen – second only to the pool at Paradise in Phoenix.

Sunday morning we decided to try to replace the spare. Finding a tire shop that was open on Sunday was not easy. I drove over 25 miles without success. But after returning to the park the nice folks in the office mentioned a PepBoys shop about 5 miles away. I called and they did, in fact, have a tire for me. So I ran over there and got a new tire mounted on the rim. That made the final day of the QTS a little more carefree. Besides, Murphy’s Law says that if I hadn’t gotten the tire we would have had another blowout.

Day 2: Daytona Beach, FL, to North Ft Myers, FL

209 miles via I-95, I-4, County 557, US 17 and FL 31, with a lunch break in a Publix parking lot in Winter Haven.

QTS Hop 4, Day 2

This was a fairly leisurely jaunt through central Florida. The I-4 segment was annoying because the whole route was under construction, meaning the road was rough and the shoulders were often non-existent. But the US 17 and FL 31 segments were flat and straight. With very little traffic.

The most interesting part of the trip was lunch. We pulled into a Publix parking lot and Jett went in to get us some sandwiches. I had to position the rig so it wouldn’t block anybody and try to figure out how to exit – not a simple matter as it turned out the the way out that I expected to use was actually an entrance. I finally opted for a U-turn in the lot, then exit the way we came in. But I had to back up a bit to get enough room for the turn, which meant that Jett had to stand behind the rig and block traffic – something that she hates. But we made it.

When we got to the Seminole Campground the office was closed and there was no answer at the phone number posted on the office door. So, after 1,500 miles, we couldn’t complete the last 300 feet of the trip. Fortunately, one of the maintenance people came along and we figured out where we were supposed to be. Before backing into the site, I gave the number another try and got an answer. The manager confirmed that we were at the right site, so we finished the trip.

I will, of course, describe the campground more fully later. No rush on that as we will be here for 4 months. But our initial impression?

We love it!

Categories: Adventures, FL, GA, Places, QTS, Routes | Leave a comment

Savannah, GA

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Sparky

We will be leaving the Savannah Oaks RV Resort today (Saturday) after spending a pretty nice 6 nights here. This was a working week for me, so we didn’t do a lot of sightseeing, but we did get to downtown Savannah twice to look around – once on Sunday night and again on Friday afternoon.

The camp store/service station

First, the park. I wouldn’t put it on our Top 10 list, but it wasn’t bad. It had the best camp store we have seen anywhere – a true convenience store, with an entire wall of beer and wine and an entire aisle of snacks. We didn’t buy a lot of stuff there, but it was nice to be able to make a short walk to buy a half gallon of milk or some TastyKake cupcakes (yes, Jett sent me out Wednesday night to get some because she had a craving). The store is also a service station with both diesel and gas pumps. It wasn’t cheap, but it was nice to have the option of topping off there before heading out.

The staff at both the office and the store was very courteous and helpful. The site we were given (#93) was wide and long, so we had no trouble pulling in and setting up. There was a pretty nice laundry that we used Friday night to do a couple of loads and there is a dog park that is not large but was a good walk destination for the dogs. The WiFi, while not particularly strong, was steady and very usable. I was actually able to do my work using their WiFi Monday and Tuesday when my hotspot was acting up. The hotspot seemed to be better by Wednesday, so I used that the rest of the week.

The park also had a pool that was OPEN (I guess we are truly in the south now) that we didn’t use and a propane filling service that we did use. Like Circle Cg, a flat rate was charged, but it was $19 – $1 cheaper than Circle Cg.

Dog park

Negatives:

The campground had a lot of street noise. We were pretty close to a busy road and we heard (and sometimes felt) the big trucks to by.
The roads in the campground are narrow and make some sharp turns. While we didn’t have any trouble getting into the site, getting to the site was a little tricky. And we still aren’t sure whether we can make the sharp turn to exit the campground; we may have to go through the service station to get a gentler approach to the road.
I am not sure what kind of trees lined the site, but they dropped a lot of crap on the RV. I have a feeling that Patience is going to look like Pigpen when we leave the campground, trailing a cloud of debris behind.
It is 17 miles from downtown. Getting to the places we wanted to see was a 30-minute trip each way.
Jett didn’t like the dryers in the laundry. She thought they were expensive and ineffective.

So not one of our all-time favorites, but not bad.

The OPEN pool

Narrow roads

Savannah River at night

The trip into Savannah Sunday night was to get our bearings and to grab some dinner. Bearings were easy to get at the Historical District is a grid bounded on the north by the Savannah River. There is a beautiful bridge to SC that my camera didn’t capture very well. Getting to River Street (along the river, duh), was a bit of an adventure as the street is paved with very crude cobblestones. We were thoroughly jumbled by the time we maneuvered our beast of a truck into a (free) parking spot along the river.

The Cotton Exchange Restaurant

We selected The Cotton Exchange as our dining destination, partly because it was very near where we parked and partly because it had an appealing menu. Once inside, we also found the decor to be appealing. The building was truly a cotton exchange back in the day. I would guess that the structure was circa 1900 with lots of exposed brick and beams. Very cozy.

Jett, never very adventurous in culinary terms, chose the chicken finger basket, which she found to be more than adequate. I chose one of the evening specials: shrimp and grits, which turned out to be about a dozen tasty shrimp in a mushroom-and-sausage cream sauce, resting on a puck of fried grits. Yes, fried grits. I never knew grits could be fried. Anyway, it was superb.

Shrimp and fried grits

The second trip was on Friday afternoon. The intent was to walk around the Historic District, with no particular destination in mind, so see what Savannah was all about. The weather, which was beautiful most of the week, did not cooperate as it turned cloudy and threatening. But we did get to look around for nearly two hours before the rain began.

Cotton Exchange

We parked near the Colonial Park Cemetary but delayed visiting it until we returned. Instead we headed north, toward the Savannah River, and visited River Street a second time. We wandered the street a bit, but were more interested in the buildings than the shops they housed. The city side of the Cotton Exchange building (where we had dinner Sunday night), for example, was quite striking. I also liked the 3-level sidewalk/alleyway that served that side of the row of buildings along the river.

3-level sidewalk

John Wesley statue

One of the nicest features of Savannah is the numerous squares that punctuate the Historic District. Each has its own character, but they all have some large, gnarly trees that would be awesome in fog. Some of the squares have statues or obelisks as centerpieces; others just offer benches for quite contemplation. They may not be as grand as the parks of Paris and they are miniscule when compared to Central Park, but they are very nice in their own way.

Obelisk

Duellist’s Grave plaque

After grabbing a coffee, we ended our self-guided tour of Savannah at the Colonial Park Cemetery. It has lots of atmosphere and purportedly has the graves of many Revolutionary War heroes. Unfortunately, almost none of the headstones was legible, so unless there was a modern explanation of who was buried nearby (as with the “Duellist’s Grave”), we would have no clue who was there. But even with the help we didn’t find anyone we knew.

Then the rain began and we headed home.

Colonial Park Cemetery

Corner house

Row houses

Categories: GA, QTS, RV Parks | 2 Comments

QTS Hop 3: Lorton, VA, to Savannah, GA

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Sparky

2 days, 577 miles via I-95 and some local roads.

Day 1: Lorton, VA, to Wade, NC

QTS Hop 3, Day 1

293 miles, of which all but 10 miles were on I-95, with a refueling stop in Rocky Mount, NC.

As usual, tears were shed when Jett said goodbye to her sons and her grandkids. We had her 8-year-old grandson, Patrick, overnight on Friday, which is always a pleasure. But everyone was tired from an exhausting (physically and emotionally) week and we were all in bed before 10am. Patrick’s father, Josh, picked him up at 8am Saturday morning, as planned, but we were surprised by an early morning visit from Jett’s other son, Devin. Coffee was consumed, tearful goodbyes were exchanged and we were on the road by 9:30am.

Jett doesn’t like to navigate (thank God for GPS!) but even Mr. Magoo couldn’t have gotten lost on this trip. Straight down I-95. The only “difficult” part was the refueling stop in Rocky Mount, NC, which meant leaving I-95 at the correct exit, traveling a quarter of a mile to the gas station, refueling (me), grabbing sandwiches (Jett) and getting back on I-95. We almost got Jett some Marlboro’s at $48 per carton (read it and weep, Massachusetts smokers), but the cashier leaned over the counter and drawled in my ear: “Between you and me you can get them cheaper somewhere else.” So we passed on the cigs and eventually got them on Sunday for $46 in South Carolina.

Patience at Fayetteville RV Resort

Our destination for the evening was the Fayetteville RV Resort in Wade, NC. I had planned this hop so that no refueling would be needed at our overnight stop, so we didn’t even unhitch – just pushed the slides out, hooked up the utilities and relaxed. For this kind of quick, overnight stop just about any park would do. But this park was so nice that I found myself wishing we were staying longer. A beautiful office, two swimming pools, two dog parks, a clubhouse, a fitness center, a walking trail and a large open space in the middle for activities. And CLEAN. The sites didn’t have trees, so there weren’t even leaves on the ground. No trash anywhere. Spotless. This park is now on our Top 10 list. I don’t know which park got bumped, but we certainly haven’t seen 10 others as nice as this one.

The open field

Enjoying the 70-degree day

Day 2: Wade, NC, to Savannah, GA

284 miles, all but 6 of those miles on I-95, with a refueling stop in Florence, SC

Hop 3, Day 2

This was another long day of pretty boring driving – I-95 is flat and tree-lined along most of this route, making for good gas mileage (almost, but not quite, 10mpg) but hard to stay alert. We listened to a book-on-CD (Jonathan Kellerman’s Gone) and that helped pass the time. We refueled at a Pilot truck stop in Florence, SC. Jett loves truck stops – they are easy to get into and out of and they usually have a nice mini-mart and some good food. We made the stop at 11am, which was a little early for lunch, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying a nice meal from Wendy’s. This truck stop also had something I have never seen before – some diesel pumps dedicated to RVers. I didn’t have to choose between the gas pumps which are generally very tight for our rig or the truck pumps which usually don’t take credit cards at the pump and have a passenger-side hose that has to be laid on the ground(!) in order for the driver-side pump to work.

Later in the day we stopped at a rest area to let the dogs stretch their legs and water the bushes.

Our destination and home for the week was the Savannah Oaks RV Resort in Savannah, GA. I will report on the park more fully when we leave, but I will make two preliminary observations: (1) the Wi-Fi is pretty good, which was fortunate as our Verizon hotspot was pretty iffy at this location and (2) there must really be oak trees in the park because something dropped on the roof of the RV pretty regularly. I am hoping it was acorns.

Categories: GA, NC, Places, QTS, Routes, RV Parks, SC | Leave a comment