Charleston, SC (10/27-11/5)

We used to live in Charleston, 30+ years ago.  We have been passed through a couple of times over the ensuing years.  Some things about it never change and others don't seem familar at all.  Charleston never disappoints on landscape, waterways, historical significance and food.  The traffic however, has become disappointing.   

We stayed at Oak Plantatation Campground on John's Island.  It is a large, rustic campground in which we had stayed before.  We had a bit of a snafu when we drove to our first site.  It was long enough for us to pull through but was extremely narrow which in turn made our picnic table basically 5 inches from our neighbors sewer hose.  Not ideal for an 8 night stay.  We got everything all set up and then decided that we would not love this site.  The office was accommodating and changed our site.  We had to do everything all over again, but it was worth it in the long run.

We had a lovely day on the water one day.  Got a boat out of Seabrook Island Marina was practically the only boat on the water. We saw a flats boat drop a guy in the water near a bunch of cages in the water.  He was jumping out of the water a bit, putting his hands on the top of the cage and flipping it over.  Not something you see everyday.  Turns out these cages were an oyster bed.  Who knew there was such manual intervention required for those tasty treats. 

On the way home from our boat ride, we passed this little market with a cute dog and an apple crumb pie, BONUS!Add caption

 

No visit to Charleston is complete without viewing the downtown and Battery.  The beauty of those old homes just never gets old.  Several of the shoppes on King Street were boarded up and closed, a very sad sign of our current times. The Market had a similar subdued feel.  There were tourists out and about, but not as bustling as I remember.  

A bucket list food establishment was on our list for Charleston as well.  If you have never seen the Netflix special about Rodney Scott Whole Hog Barbeque, watch it.  It is a great story. 

His BBQ restaurant usually has a line out the door, but I imagine a mix of Covid and shoulder season in Charleston allowed us to sneak in with only a few folks ahead of us.  We got a generous mix of porky goodness with accompanying delicious sides. 

 

We ate outside at picnic tables.  Worth the stop if you are visiting Charleston. 

There were some new distilleries to the area that we also sampled.  Both made very good small batch liquors.  We bought a bottle of Amaro from High Wire Distilling that we have enjoyed with the bourbon we brought along on our trip. Firefly Distllery made it's name distilling Sweet Tea Vodka, but has a large variety of liquors now with a great story and a beautiful tasting room experience. 

We drove out to several of the outer islands for sun and sand (Sullivan's Island, Folly Beach, Mt. Pleasant).

Also was able to fit in a little live music at an awesome little venue called Tobin's Market in the heart of the city. 

We experienced both Halloween and the Election in Charleston, which were both pretty scary, but had a great time revisiting The Holy City.  Next stop, Fort Mill, SC just outside of Charlotte to meet up with Mike's siblings.

St. Augustine, FL A Nice Long Stay (10/19-10/27)

 St. Augustine is a cornerstone of Florida's history.  There is much to see and do here and although 8 days seemed a little long we wanted to have some dowtime in between sight seeing days to do things at the coach. 

We received a lot of Amazon packages during this time, made many errand runs to Walmart and other places to further outfit Ruth for our adventures. As I said in my previous post, this resort was very well run and they were very gracious about receiving all our deliveries.  I have learned that every camping location you walk around, whether it is the morning or evening you see new campers with things that you think you might like.  It is almost like a roaving Camping World market each day as people move in and out of your camping orbit.  

Our neighbors during this visit to St. Augustine were a very nice couple from South Dakota on their way to South Florida for the winter with their two Vizla's.  We chatted off and on throughout out stay and they gave us some good tips on when and where to camp in South Dakota should we pass through there. 

We found a really fun group of folks to play pickleball with at Treaty Park.  They were welcoming and were a lot of fun to play with.  I tried to get some guitar practice in when we had some time at the coach, but we were out and about quite a bit. 

We walked around the exterior of Fort San Marco but it was closed to visitors due to Covid.  We walked Old Town St. Augustine.Some shops were closed, but it seem to deter the many tourists walking St. George street on a nice sunny day. 

We met up with some friends and family who were nearby, visited some of our old haunts from when we lived in Jacksonville, FL. We even drove by our first house in Orange Park, FL.  Not much looked familiar to us as development had changed the landscape from 30+ years ago.  It was fun to jog our memories though.  

 

We enjoyed a day of wine tasting at San Sebastian Winery and distilled spirits at  St. Augustine Distillery and drove A1A to get some gorgeous beach views and see the dunes of Anastasia Island. 

If you are in St. Augstine, have a meal, lunch or dinner at The Uptown Swinery.  It is a very lovely place for yummy porky products. 

Wild Boar Sausage - Mike's Favorite

Of course, there was still laundry to do and meals at the motorhome.  Our next stop is Charleston, SC.  This will be approxitely a 4.5 hour drive time, out longest yet.  

St. Augustine Arrival Day (10/19)

So far, I feel the same about Ruth's departures and arrivals as I do when I fly, take offs and landings are the most fraught with possible complications.  This was only our 3rd departure and while we have already developed extensive interior and exterior checklists for all the tasks that must be completed it still seems to take longer than we had hoped to get on the road.  I am confident that this will impove over time, but at this point, it feels like we are trying to launch the space shuttle each time we move. 

There was a fair amount of debris on the top of the rig due to trees and birds.  Mike was on a ladder cleaning them for a while before we could bring in the slides.  Also, just was we were ready to depart, one of the large back driver's side bay doors did not want to shut/lock.  Mike was able to take care of it though and we pulled our of our site and headed toward the entrance to hook up the Jeep for towing.  We are not yet too confident on hooking up the tow vechicle in the site.  Upon departure from Three Flags, there were definitely some trees that should be trimmed which unfortunately scraped across the top of the coach.  I figure this will happen a million more times as we travel.  

The drive to St. Augustine was uneventful. We made a fuel stop in Savannah on the way up.  We have stopped at two Travel America Truck stops on this trip and used our EFS Fuel Discounnt card, more on that later.

In St. Augustine we booked our 8 night stay at Compass RV Resort. We were in site #148. It was a lovely, very well run, Covid responsible resort.  A few of the turns within the campround felt a little tight, but again Mike did a great job weaving through the park to our spot.  Our entire red pavered site was spacious and even had trees for Mike's new hammock. 

We settled in for nice long stay, not worried about moving again for a few days. We have not been to St. Augustine for several years, so this gave us a great base from which to explore. 

First Shakedown Trip (10/15-10/19)

Before we went to purchase this rolling home, I had indicated to my spouse that I thought we needed a name for our new coach.  People name boats, cars, guitars, pets...stands to reason right?  Anyway, my SO was not too keen on naming our coach, thought it was silly.

However, she will be referred to as Ruth from here forward.  Now Ruth happens to be the name of my very lovely grandmother on my mother's side who lived to be 90+ and was a very bright light in my life until she passed away several years ago.  

In truth, the Ruth we are referring to when naming our coach was inspired by Ruth Langmore from the Netflix Ozark series.  A friend of ours suggested that she is the sexiest, hottest, bad-ass, sophisticated, street-smart train wreck he's ever seen.  She also has a very colorful, potty-mouth at times.  We felt this likely characterizes our first "big rig" experience in our 40ft traveling home.   In the immortal words of Ruth Langmore...  On any given day she may be Ruth Langmore or my sweet grandma Ruth, and possibly both in the same day at times. 

After loading her up with everything we anticipated we needed for a month trip and a rather harrowing experience backing Ruth out of it's parking spot we were off on our first adventure. The hubster did a great job driving and keeping us rolling on up to have our new coach weighed.  This is done to ensure proper weight distribution once you fill the thing with half you belongings from home and intend on driving it down the road.  This weight data also inform the proper tire pressure for your coach wheels.  We were declared "not overweight" so have some flexibilty for more stuff, but will need to monitor additional adds to the coach inside and out. 

We continued our journey on up to Three Flags Camping Resort in Wildwood, FL, mostly highway driving.  We pulled in and learned a couple of new lessons right away.  First. sites with trees are nice for shade, but also leave a significant amount of debris on your slide toppers which needs to be cleaned off before traveling.  Second, Ruth is equipped with auto-leveling capabilities so the blood doesn't rush to your head while sleeping an a wicked angle from an unlevel campsite.  This is good, but you need to make an assesment at each site to understand where all your slides will extend to and your entry step especially if there is a cement pad.  We missed the step hitting the pad by a very small margin once the leveling took place.   We will certainly learning things everyday about Ruth. 

We had an exceptionally fun time with our best friends who live in The Villages while staying here.  They were the first to preview our new rig.  If they thougth we had completely lost our minds, they were very good at hiding it.  It was nice to have a soft place to land near friends for the first leg of our journey.  

Our next stop is St. Augustine for an 8 night stay. Time to relaxxxxx.

We Bought An RV

I hope that all of you who may still be following my posts are doing well in this strange time we are in.  We have been staying to ourselves in St. Pete, FL since the pandemic reared its ugly head back in February/March.  We have been fortunate to stay healthy and safe during this time.  

During this period of togetherness, we talked a lot about our tentative plan to purchase an RV and hit the road for adventure.  International travel is certainly not desireable at this time and camping is somewhat self-contained social distance.  We searched and debated and searched some more, and then it happened.  

We found a lovely 2018 Tiffin Phaeton Motorhome that had been lovingly cared for by a couple near Bonita Springs, FL.  It had 85% of the features we were looking for.  The missing features were mostly cosmetic and not functional, and we felt lucky to get this coach, given the used RV market has skyrocketed since the pandemic. 

We picked her up in the rain on Friday, October 2, 2020.  Mike boldly hopped into the driver's seat and we drove to a nearby campground to learn about our new home on wheels.  The previous owners of the RV came over to the campground  with us and passed on their knowledge to us.  It was a very nice thing to do.  I think they wanted their baby to go to a good home.  

We stayed in our new rig for a few days and got familiar with its operation.  There is a lot to learn.  

We had two more hurdles to overcome after the initial camping experience.  Practicing backing up a 40ft RV into a parking space, towing our Jeep behind the 40ft rig and parking the RV in its storage space. 

On our departure day, we planned to go to a nearby outlet mall parking lot to "practice" parking.  Mike did a great job backing the coach up into an "imaginary" campsite. We then hooked up the Jeep to tow for the first time.   We drove home without incident, getting a feel for being high on the road next to 18-wheelers blowing by.  

We arrived at our storage facility, nerves slightly jangled but overall a successful trip home with our new rig.  The parking of a 40ft motorhome is not for the faint of heart.  It took us several tries to get the coach parked for the first time.  We were communicating via cell phone, me providing directions and Mike going forward, reverse, right and left.  It was serisously the most stress of the entire experience, but we got her parked. 

We will be taking our next trip beginning mid-October.  More to come on our travels soon.