Tire troubles

On a long trip you will spend some time in repair shops. There is some universal law that makes it so. Right now we are sitting in a truck repair shop waiting for them to look at the axles on the trailer.

This episode of repair work started as we pulled out of Folkston, Georgia. The only other camper at the "RV Park" stopped us as we were leaving to let us know that we left a slide out and that we had two low tires on the right side.  The slide was easy to fix but the tires were another matter.

This was Mother’s Day Sunday so all the tire shops in the small towns were closed for the day. We put air in the tires and drove to interstate 95 where we found a truck stop opened. They patched one tire that picked up a nail. The other tire was worn to the core in one spot. We mounted the spare to replace that tire. Both damaged tires  were shot and needed to be replaced but the truck stop only had huge tires.

We went on to he Skidaway State Park outside of Savannah. This is another fine park but there are lots of no-see-ums.

The next morning we toured Savannah. We took a city tour with Old Town Trolley. What a beautiful city!

Nancy Cleland told us we had to see the “squares” and walk along river drive.

 

This is the River Walk area in Savannah. 

The squares are little parks in the historic old town. There are 12 or 13 of them. The squares are surrounded by antebellum homes that have been restored. It surprised me that there were pre civil war homes still standing because I thought Sherman burned Savannah. He didn’t. He gave it to Lincoln as a Christmas present.

We ate lunch at the Shrimp House on the river walk. Really great food and fabulous Key Lime Pie (you’re right Rich, good key lime pie is not to be missed).

The Savannah River, Savannah, GA.

Brenda and I are covered with bites. On the Savannah city tour the driver said the Spanish Moss is host to these bugs. Skidaway State Park has lots of Spanish Moss. By the time we left, we were itching to get out of there.

The next day we took the trailer to a tire shop and got two new tires. At the tire shop they told us that the axle on the trailer was out of alignment and that is why the one tire wore so strangely. They couldn’t align the trailer axle. We called a camping world but they couldn’t fix it because their technician was injured. We tried another shop but they couldn’t get to us until Monday or Tuesday of next week. After placing several calls we located a place in Florence, South Caroline, to do the job if we got there by 10 AM today. We got here at 09:30 Am, it is now 10:30 AM – they haven’t started on it.

The trailer having its axle bent. For them to work on the axle
the trailer had to be backed over the pit on two narrow tracks
just 8 feet apart. I asked them to back it into position. I'm no
dummy!

It is Thursday now. The repair to the trailer went very well. The tires had a bit of camber to them so they bent the axle to fix the problem. We were on the road before noon and drove on to Wilmington, NC.

We are now in Virginia in territory we have seen before. We lived in Washington, D.C., for a year and used our spare time sight seeing. I lived for over a year in Pennsylvania and Brenda lived on Long Island for a year. Anyway, we have seen what we want to see of Virginia, mainland Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Also we want to avoid driving on the hated I-95 as much as possible. So we will cross over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tomorrow and drive to Lewes, Delaware, where we will take a ferry over to Cape May.

This trip we have been off the interstates most of the time. I really dislike driving on interstate freeways. They are filled with semi-trucks and therefore are potholed. Driving on them is boring because you really can’t see much. Then there are the potholes and debris on the road. I hate them. We avoid them as much as possible.

Today we did well avoiding interstates. We stayed on Highway 17 through rural North Carolina. It was a gorgeous drive. Some of the towns we drove through were home to now abandoned garment factories. A few of the towns were nearly ghost towns. There were big homes along the way, some plantations as well. Interspersed with these were homes people must have just walked away from. The forest is taking back many of those abandoned homes. All of this to see kept me awake.

A nice little picnic rest area along Highway 17 in North
Carolina. 

Brenda saw a sign the other day while we were in Savannah that is worth passing on:

DAVE’S CLEANERS

Drop Your Pants Here

 

We got the bird!

Florida is behind us now. We arrived in Georgia Yesterday after spending a couple of days in St. Augustine.

St. Augustine is another touristy town, in the league with New Orleans and Key West. In each of these places you will find that a certain type of business is dominate. In New Orleans the dominant store is the tacky souvenir shop. In Key west by far the local bar is dominant. In Saint Augustine it is the museum.

Let me give you a partial list of the St. Augustine museums:

         The Pirate and Treasure Museum

         The Oldest House Museum

         Ripley’s Believe it or not Museum

         The Light House Museum

         The Lightner Museum

         The Villa Zorayda Museum

         The Fort Museum

         The St Augustine History Museum

         The Wax Museum

And I could go on and on. We got tired of going to museums just driving through St. Augustine.

A street in St. Augustine

Brenda doing s favorite thing in St. Augustine.

All in all, we liked St. Augustine. It is historically very interesting and is actually a quaint town. We spent two days at the Anastasia State Park there. The sites were beautiful with lots of space between sites.

We even went to the Alligator Farm there and enjoyed it! (They have a natural bird rookery there that you walk through.)

Brenda in the Rookery at the Alligator Farm, St. Augustine, FL.

Our drive from there to Folkston, Georgia, and the Okeefenokee Swamp was 92 miles. This is about the perfect day drive. We left St. Augustine at about 10 AM and were in Folkston at about noon.

I saw an RV Campground on the internet at Folkston I thought looked nice. We drove right to it. It did not look nice. We stopped in front of it. A shed was falling apart on the right. The narrow mud rutted driveway led between two sick pine trees into a grass field. One oldish travel trailer was back there. We drove a few blocks away to where we could look at the Woodall’s camping guide and find something decent.

 Brenda got into the trailer and I was sitting there at the wheel, thinking, when there is this rapping against the window. A fat fellow without a shirt is there on a bike getting my attention. He is the owner of the “RV Park” we passed up and he really would like us to, "look at it at least". I wasn’t too interested. When Brenda came back to the car she asked how much it cost. “Full hook-ups $15 per night. I was quite interested. We followed the guy back and it actually wasn’t bad and the price was just right so, that is where we are.

The owner of this “RV Park” is a dreamer. And he is clueless. 

He wants to put in cottages for older people in the back where he also wants to put in fishponds, more RV spaces and what else, who knows. All this on 10 acres.

At the entrance he is building a pizza place. He learned how to make pizza in Hawaii. He was doing the framing for the postage stamp sized slab. He won’t serve beef because he is scared of mad cow disease.  

As were setting up he is telling us all this and then asks,  “Do you think I should pour a concrete driveway?” 

Clueless!!

Our RV Site in the South Eastern RV Park, Folkston, GA.

After setting up we drove into the Okeefenokee. This is a different type of swamp. This is fresh water with cypress trees. At least there are some cypress trees growing back after the loggers took the old ones out. It is a pretty place and well worth visiting. We took a boat ride this morning and will take another at sunset tonight. I’ll stick a few pictures of the swamp in this blog.

Okeefenokee Cypress Swamp.

Lillies in the Swamp

Water Lilly

GREAT NEWS!!!!!  We finally, after over 1,000 miles of searching have seen the unremarkable Red-cockaded Woodpecker. We got the bird this morning along with three other life birds. This is a great swamp! Now life may become even more relaxed. (The other three life birds were: the Eastern Red Sided Towhee, The Eastern Screech Owl, and the Bob White).

Love Bugs

Two days ago we left Key West. Now we are in Clermont, Florida. You have never heard of Clermont, FL? Shame on you! It is home to the beautiful Lake Louisa State Park and, this time of year, to thousands of “Love Bugs”.

We actually encountered some of these bugs a week ago. Today we encountered them again – hoards of them. They call them “love bugs” because you see them in pairs locked together in joyous (I assume) copulation. They slam into the truck windshield in this state the impact not seeming to stop the activity they are involved in. I noticed, while cleaning them off the front of the trailer, that the dead ones seem to attract live ones whom, it seemed, did not care that the object of affection was but a smear on our trailer.

Love Bugs meet RV.

A local told us these bugs are seen only when they mate and this happens two times a year, in May and October. We just were lucky with our timing.

Last night we were in Homestead.  Homestead is 130 miles from Key West. We got an early start so arrived in Homestead at noon.

After setting up we drove as far as you can drive into the Everglades National Park.

One of our hopes was to see a Mangrove Cuckoo. We didn’t. We did see a crocodile and lots of other birds but we have never seen a Mangrove Cuckoo in the United States. Pity, no? We took a guided boat tour and had a fine time on it. We were the only native English speakers aboard other than the crew.

Brenda enjoying the swamp boat ride.

Mangrove Swamp.

Another thing we hoped to do was to enjoy seeing Lake Okeechobee. This huge lake has fascinated me since I was a kid. The name is cool! I was dying to see it but you can’t. The Army Corp of Engineers has build a dirt wall between the lake and the highway. We think the wall must be there to contain the lake which, I suppose, must wonder about some.

 

Our view of the lakeshore of Lake Okeechobee. Thank you Army
Corps of Engineers.

The Lake Louise State Park where we are tonight is very nice. It is known for the scenery. This is Florida hill country. Yes, there are hills in Florida. Except for the land fills there aren’t tall hills in Florida. The hills here in the State Park must be about as tall as they get here in Florida. The highest point in Florida is something lie 384 feet. Maybe the park was established to preserve the hills?

Three days in Key west

The last three days we have been doing Key West and environs.

Key west reminds me a lot of New Orleans. It is about as congested with tourists because they bring  a couple of cruise ships in each day which add a few thousand tourists to the old town section. Many of the buildings are in similar style to those of New Orleans and just as old. The shops aren't as tacky. 

I took nicer pictures of Key West but somehow lost them. This is
the only one I found. It isn't typical of the old town area. 

 Parking is strange here. First of all it is hard to find. Then, when you find a spot, it is parallel parking on a narrow street. After maneuvering the F-250 into the spot you pay $2.00 per hour at pay spots on each block. If you pay for say 4 hours as I did and then decide to move to another area, guess what, your parking was good only for the block you first parked on. If you move, you pay.

Statues of dancers in front of the Key west Lighthouse Museum.

Parking aside, we have enjoyed the keys a lot. The birding has been great. The people are friendly. It has been fun.

My last blog I reported on the heavy rain we had as we arrived in Key West. It set a record for the day. Brenda was sitting in the truck waiting for a break and took the following picture through the windshield of the truck. I thought you might enjoy it.

View through car windshield during rain storm.

Yesterday we took the ferry to the Dry Tortugas. The Dry Tortugas are on the bucket list of every serious birder. Many birds migrating across the Gulf of Mexico from Central and South America stop here. At this point they are nearly dead and must refuel and rest before they go on. On some days during the peak of migration thousands of birds crowd onto the 16-acre main island. Birders can just sit and watch a fantastic variety of birds come in the few trees that are there. We were there after the peak migration so we didn’t see lots of birds but we did see a few we had never seen before.

The winds were above 20 knots but the ferry handled the seas pretty well. We sat up front so we could see the horizon and get a good view of things. The view was interesting.

Grand view from front of ferry.

 

Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, Florida

On the way back the ferry captain took the boat close to a key where Masked Booby nest. Brenda rushed out to get a good look while I was talking to a nice young Army couple from Kansas. These folks asked us what some of the birds were they had seen. When Brenda came back in aglow after seeing the Masked Boobies the fellow asked us to show him a picture of them. He said, “I think any day I can see masked boobies is a great day.”  I’m not sure how he meant that.

We head north tomorrow. We have now pulled the trailer 3,499 miles. We’ll pull it nearly 2,000 miles more before we turn west to head home.