Jan 2007

Wednesday, January 31

We arrived at Monument Lake Campground early afternoon. My parents are volunteer campground hosts here so they had saved a nice campsite for us. We'll be here til next Tuesday; no electric, no water, so we're going to practice water conservation and try out our new generator.

Our campsite is beside the lake and we saw two alligators in it soon after setting up. The campground has been full all week, with many nice motorhomes but also several tents. A wide range of campers here -- including international visitors. There are 4 sights for campground volunteers and 2 of the sights are occupied by Canadiens.

The good news is that it is actually 'hot' today and we got to wear shorts. High in the 80s.

Tuesday, January 30

Travelled to the Astronaut Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center today. Toured the museum and decided to stay at a campground near the museum. Museum was nicely done and we ended up spending several hours there.

Campground was our most expensive so far, but it had sparkling clean restrooms and they gave us a free grocery list tablet :-)

Highlights today:
Interesting museum
Free grocery list tablet
Another pull-thru level camping site!!!

It was super windy by the ocean last night, but we were so tired from lack of sleep the night before that it never really bothered us. BUT it did indeed get down to 22 degrees last night! So time to head further south.

We're heading to Florida and planning to stay at Monument Lake Campground with my parents, but the campground has no water or electric! So today's first stop was at Camping World to buy a generator. In case any of you did not read my travelogue from our June trip last year -- this RV thing is definately NOT a money-saving vacation. Add the cost of a generator to the expenses of owning an RV. However, diesel gas is coming down in price -- today we bought diesel for $2.25/gallon! And pulling the RV, we get about 11 miles/gallon. So, as we're driving down the road, I try not to think about the $1 worth of diesel we spend EVERY 5 MINUTES!!!

Anyway, we basically spent the day driving from Myrtle Beach, SC to the southern border of SC, where we're staying at a KOA off of I-95. We were hoping to get farther south, but it was a full enough day of driving. I talked to my Dad today and he's working through Thursday anyway, so we will probably now get down to their campground Wednesday around Noon instead of tomorrow evening.

Sunday, Jan. 28

What a night last night! Lots of very loud raindrops from the time we went to bed til we got up. In my case that was 4:00am. Raindrops on an aluminum roof that is a few feet from your head are VERY LOUD! However, even though I didn't get much sleep, since I was awake so early I got to take a very long hot shower since no one else was waiting for one -- at 5am :-)

We drove to Myrtle Beach today and found a campground on the beach (Lakewood Cpgd).....another pull-through level site -- life is good.

Our nephew moved to Myrtle Beach last summer to work on the Hard Rock Amusement Park that is being built. So our trip to Myrtle Beach is primarily to visit him. We went over to his house and took him to lunch at Joe's Crabshack (great coconut shrimp), walked around a tourist area called Broadway on the Beach (which has nothing to do with Broadway and is several miles from the beach), showed him our RV and then ended the day at the acquarium. It was a fairly nice day and we had a good time. Unfortunately I was tired from lack of sleep and my back was still sore.

We took Kevin back to his house, stopped at Wal Mart for more pain medication and then went back to spend some time at the indoor pool and jacuzzi. I'm hoping the hot water will help the back.

It turned really cold and windy tonight. It's supposed to get down in the 20s. The jacuzzi and heated pool felt really good :-)

Highlights today:
Coconut shrimp at Joe's Crabshack -- so bad for me, but oh so tasty :-)
Jere complaining to me about having to do all the driving -- it's only the second day of the trip -- this could be a long trip. I'm nowhere near ready to try driving this big thing.
Camping a few hundred feet from the ocean but being too tired and sore to walk on the beach :-(
VISITING KEVIN :-)

Saturday, January 27, 2007

I’d like to make this travelogue well written and entertaining, but there are going to be a lot of days when that is just not going to happen. I think today will be one of them. It’s been a busy, tiring week and the creative juices are just not working. But I want to get something up on the website so something is better than nothing at this point.

For those that didn't hear, my brother died unexpectedly about two weeks ago. I travelled to Florida for two weeks to help my parents and niece plan his service, etc. Between being away for a week and the occasional waves of sadness, it's surprising that we were even ready to leave today.

We got up at 6am, finished all our last minute packing etc and left the house at 8am. We were hoping to leave yesterday but I was in a lot of pain when I woke up yesterday and could hardly walk, let alone finish packing. I had fallen down several stairs Thursday while packing – our cat Rosdale had decided to take a nap on the stairs and I never saw him til it was too late. The hip still hurt today but not as much and all I really had to do was ride in the truck.

We traveled to south of Washington DC before stopping for a break and some sandwiches. I was nervous about the traffic around DC so I was glad to be done with that part of our journey. I would have loved to stop and visit with our daughter Jackie, but there was no way we’d take our 52 ft long rig into Arlington.

After our stop for lunch Rosdale finally stopped meowing in the back seat of the truck and slept for the remainder of the day in the back seat of the truck, inside his ‘cage’. Rosdale seldom travels and he seemed petrified when I took him out of the truck at the stops.

We listened to our new XM radio a lot today (a Christmas gift from our daughters/son-in-laws) – enjoyed some disc jockey named Trucking Bozo on the truckers channel :-)

We stopped for dinner around 6pm at South of the Border. Jere is fascinated with the road signs for that place, but I think it’s a dump/dive/tourist trap/haven for many microorganisms. After checking out their fastfood and sitdown restaurants, we decided to drive down the road to the Waffle House. I can’t believe I ate the 'dripping with grease' sandwich and the almost raw home fries, but I did. Now I know how Jere talked me into getting an RV – I really don’t like eating out while traveling – too many unpleasant surprises.

Jere was tired so we decided to camp at South of the Border Campground for the night. The campground was surprisingly fairly full.

Highlights for today:
Finally leaving.
Greasy sandwiches and undercooked home fries at the Waffle House.
Cancelling our dinner order at South of the Border Hot Tamales fast food restaurant when Dad decided he wanted to eat dinner at the ‘Coffee House’, only to find out that they only serve COFFEE at the coffee house.
Joe playing “Stump Mom and Dad” with trivia questions from the Encarta 2005 software. I learned that an atoll is an island with a bay in the middle.
Rosdale meowing for only the first leg of the trip.
A pull thru level site, so easy set up. However, there is a very active train track next to the campground.
Being able to leave our winter coats in the car when we got to North Carolina (it was 20 degrees when we left home this morning).