This blog hasn't been updated since we returned home in May 2014.  Looking back, it doesn't sound like much, but we were busy doing home things.   

Here's the streamlined version:

·         Home maintenance, repairs and reconnecting with neighbors

·         Zoo trip with our daughter and grandkids

·         Family time at the New Jersey shore

·         Atlantic City Air Show with daughter

·         Trip to Columbus, OH with daughter

Tiffany and Mom

 ·         A visit with our  niece from Houston

Lea from Houston with Chris and Tiffany

·         Maintenance and repairs for the coach

·         A month long trip with the coach in Sept.

 o       3 days at the Hershey, PA RV Show

o       3 days visiting friends near Wade, NC

o       3 days and our 1st visit to Myrtle Beach, SC

o       11 days for a return trip to Hilton Head Island, SC with a day trip to Savannah, GA

Our coach parked at Hilton Head Island

Different view of our terrific site

Butterfly (one of many) at Pinkney Island National Wildlife Refuge

Our day trip to Savannah

 o       A visit to College Park, MD for 3 days of sightseeing in Washington, DC

A lion cub at the Washington Zoo

Beautiful leopard

Tiger

 ·         A few babysitting gigs with the grandkids

Jake on his go-cart

Trevor on his tractor

Such joy playing with a ball!

Basketball net is on the ground......gotta stick my head through it

Can't beat ice cream on a warm day

Make my ice cream chocolate

·         Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays

Our favorite Native American at his Thanksgiving play

·         Bouts of  colds & bronchitis for both of us

Late 2014 - Early 2015 Travels

We're almost ready to start blogging again . . .

May 3 - May 12  Hilton Head Island Motor Coach Resort - Hilton Head Island, SC - addendum

While we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at this resort, we encountered an unexpected anomaly.

When we went to setup on our site, we found the sewer connection terminated with the typical 4-inch PVC female cleanout.  However, when trying to connect our sewer hose, which is terminated with the typical 4-inch male cleanout, we could not make a secure connection.  The resort’s 4-inch PVC female cleanout was actually about a half-inch beneath the grade of the surrounding cement pad. 

Sewer connection below grade

Since the typical RV sewer hose has a very short right angle connection to the 4-inch male cleanout, this prevents the RV sewer hose-provided male cleanout from securely connecting via a screw-in connection to the resort female cleanout.

Sewer connection problem

When I contacted the resort person who led us to our site, he indicated that many sites were configured like this and that we could simply place our sewer hose with the 4-inch male cleanout into the resort’s 4-inch PVC female cleanout without securing the connection by screwing the two pieces together.  He suggested anchoring our sewer hose to the resort sewer connection with a brick or board lying on top of our sewer hose connection.  While this will work in some situations, in other situations, when you open the black or gray valves to flush the RV black or gray tanks, you have to keep your foot on the connection to ensure the sewer hose does not suddenly come out from the sheer force of dumping the black or gray tank. 

After surveying many sites around our site, we found that almost all had the resort’s original below grade sewer connections modified with the addition of a 4-inch PVC male adapter and a 4-inch PVC female cleanout connected to the new male adapter.

4-inch PVC Male Adapter

4-inch PVC Female Cleanout

The addition of these two pieces provide the extra height to ensure the RV sewer connection can be made by screwing in the RV male cleanout into the new 4-inch PVC female cleanout.

 

Male-adaptor and female-cleanout

 We asked the person who led us to our site if the resort could fix the anomaly by providing the 4-inch PVC male adapter and the 4-inch PVC female cleanout  he indicated the resort did not have these spare parts available for rental user’s and to permanently modify the site would require contacting the owner of the site. 

While this situation would be expected in lesser RV parks, we would not have expected this in a resort as nice as this one.

A trip to the Lowe’s back on the mainland in Bluffton, provided the necessary 4-inch PVC male adapter and the 4-inch PVC female cleanout. We returned to our site, plugged the 4-inch PVC female cleanout into the 4-inch PVC male adapter.

then screwed the male adapter end into the resort’s female cleanout.  Next, we connected our RV sewer hose male cleanout to the elevated new female cleanout.

Sewer connection solution

The anomaly was solved for less than $15.00.  We enjoyed our stay using this configuration but we also took these two new sewer connection pieces with us when we left the resort so we can use them at other RV parks and resorts where we might encounter this same anomaly. 

Pictures have been added to supplement the following blogs:

   Coastal Georgia RVResort
   Hilton Head Island Motorcoach Resort
   Spartanburg/Gaffney KOA

May 12 - May ???  The final leg of this journey...

May 12 - May 14 Spartanburg/Gaffney KOA -  Gaffney, SC

We left Hilton Head and headed for Spartanburg/Gaffney KOA for a two night stay. We arrived about 4:30 pm on Monday.  We had a beautiful site with lots of shade on both sides of the coach.  A really nice luxury as it was quite hot (upper 80s).  On Tuesday, we visited the Freightliner facility and picked up some parts including a spare drive belt, fuel filter and fuel/water separator and ran a few errands before we prepared to move on Wednesday morning (5/14).

May 14 - May16  Fort Chiswell RV Park - Max Meadows, VA

May 14th was another on-the-road day for us.  We crossed over the Blue Ridge Mountains and got into Fort Chiswell about 3:30 pm. In our trip over the Blue Ridge, we encountered the highest elevations (2800 feet) for our trip with OakRunner.  This is a beautiful part of the country and we're nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghany Mountains.  Our original plan was to spend one night here and then move onto Winchester, VA.  A look at the weather forecast changed our minds.  Heavy rain, flash flood alerts and wind advisories convinced us to spend a second night here before going to Winchester. 

May 16  Candy Hill Campground - Winchester, VA

We plan to spend one night here as a layover before moving on.

May 17 - May 20 Don Laine Family Campground - Palmerton, PA

Last stop before we head home.  A chance to visit with family and wind down from our amazing trip.  We want to be home before Memorial Day which will help us get the coach unloaded and returned to the storage unit before the holiday.  We'll also stay clear of the holiday traffic.

May 15 -- Pictures have been added to the posting for April 9 - April 12.  Bay Hide Away RV Park and Campground - Bay St. Louis, MS

May 3 - May 12  Hilton Head Island Motorcoach Resort - Hilton Head Island, SC

This resort is a new one for us, but one we want to visit again.  It's a big resort (nearly 400 sites)  with lots of mature trees (mostly huge pines and "live" oaks). Most sites are also beautifully landscaped.  Without any prior knowledge of this resort, we blindly picked a site near the back of the property.  It turned out to be wonderfully shaded from some huge live oaks. Our weather was terrific with highs most days in the upper 80's which gave us the excuse (like we needed one) to enjoy and cool off in the pool.

We took a day to visit one of the public beaches (Coligny Beach) where we were impressed by the rocking chairs and wooden swings that are available as resting spots for people coming and going to the beach.  We saw this beach on a Sunday so it was a hub of activity. It looked like the Jersey beaches on a summer weekend.  Jan made the mistake of taking her sandals off to walk in the sand without realizing hot the sand was away from the water and ended up with several small blisters on the bottoms of her feet.  Luckily they only presented problems for a day or two.

One day was devoted to errands and a car tour of the island including a stop at a fort called Fort Howell built in 1864 during the Civil War. This fort was built by black Union Army troops to protect the first town (Mitchelville) in the South specifically for the newly freed slaves.  After our visits to several forts while we stayed in Georgia, we didn't want to pass this one up.  Unfortunately, the mosquitoes near the fort were voracious and started attacking soon after we arrived.  We walked quickly out, viewed the remains of the earthen fort, took a few pictures and hastily returned to the car.  While driving the island, we also noticed that the island has a terrific system of bike paths.  Once again, we regretted that we hadn't brought our bikes along on the trip.  However, we learned that we could rent bikes and they would deliver them to and pick them up from the resort and to our site for us.  That convinced us to get a couple of rental bikes for the rest of our visit.  These bikes were better than the ones we rented on Jekyll Island and the same price for a week as we had paid for a day at Jekyll Island, but they still had coaster-type brakes.  After years of riding a bike with hand breaks, it took some time adjusting to the coaster brakes and we're anxious to travel in the future with our own bikes.

Our first bike trip was about 17 miles round-trip to South Beach located in an area of the island called Sea Pines.  We rewarded ourselves when we got to South Beach by having lunch at the Salty Dog Cafe.  Steamed shrimp, hush puppies and coleslaw.........all delicious.

To give our seats a rest, the next day, we went for a hike at Pinkney Island National Wildlife Refuge which is a small island located between the mainland of South Carolina and Hilton Head Island.   

We hiked about 3 miles and saw a busy bird sanctuary.  Before we visit this area again, we'll have our own bikes and a rack to transport them on the car.  We could have traveled and seen much more of the 7-8  mile island with our bikes.

One of our neighbors at the resort suggested a hike in a part of the Sea Pines area called the Forest Preserve.  We were intrigued and headed out to take a look.  We hiked 3.7 miles that day hoping to see a rookery that was shown on their map, but when we hiked out to the rookery, we found a sign that there were no birds.  

After our fun experiences at the rookery in Venice, FL, that was disappointing, but we had a great walk through a beautiful forest on mostly shady paths and enjoyed the trip.

For our last full day, we geared up and hit the bike paths again.  This time, we did a 15 mile (round-trip) to Singleton Beach. 

With the warm temperatures, any of the days with bike rides or hikes got us sweating (or is that perspiring?) .  On our return to the resort, we put on swim suits and headed for the resort pool.  Ahhhhh....so cool and refreshing.  A dip in the pool and some relaxation before we started thinking about dinner.    We were having such a good time that we decided to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary (May 12th) before we left. 

We met some wonderful people while we were on Hilton Head Island.  Our immediate neighbors on one side were a very nice couple from Quebec, Jocelyn and Michel.  Michel is confined to a wheel chair but that didn't seem to stop him from living in a motorcoach and being active in the resort community.  We also discovered that Michel drove the motorcoach.  Neighbors across the street from us, Roly and Carol were from Avon Park, Florida.  Roly and Carol gave us some great insight into other RV parks/resorts that we would like to try

This resort is a definite "must visit again", but for now, we need to continue our journey towards home.