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.

April 23 - May 3  Coastal Georgia RV Resort - Brunswick, GA

We're doing it again.....staying at a resort that we visited earlier in our trip.  We were here back in January when the weather was cold and we were in a time crunch to get to Port Charlotte, FL.  Because of the time crunch, we weren't able to visit a couple of the sights we'd hoped to see so we came back.  Besides that, we liked the resort and felt that spending a few days here would be great!

We wanted to see Jekyll Island which is off the coast of Georgia. 

When we stopped at the Visitor Center, we heard people talking about Driftwood Beach and as we were driving around and trying to get the "lay of the land", we spotted a sign for it and thought we'd take a look. All we can say is WOW !!!  

 We walked down a path about 100 yards and were surrounded by greenery......then we hit the beach with every conceivable formation of driftwood.  With all the driftwood, it was like stepping from a technicolor world into a black and white world -- only the sky added any color to the scene.  Jekyll Island has beautiful oak trees dripping with Spanish moss and has a historic district with buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.   What a fascinating place to visit and it has such wonderful bike trails around the island that we came back a second time and rented bikes.  On bikes, we could explore in more depth and not worry about parking the car.

Another day, we visited a near-by island called St. Simon's.  The remnants of a fort (Fort Frederica) built in 1736 (that's nearly 300 years ago!) and the town around it are on this island.  During the pre-revolutionary war period, Georgia was in an area designated as "debatable land".   Both the British to the north and the Spanish from the south were interested in this territory and Fort Frederica played an important role in keeping the area under British control during the Battle of Bloody Marsh in 1742.   

We also enjoyed seeing the light house and climbed to the top (129 steps).  One trip up and down was enough for Jan, but Bob made 4 trips up and down to help us capture the moment in photographs.

 
The most popular building material used in

the early years on Jekyll Island and St. Simon's Island is called "tabby".  It was made of equal parts of sand, lime, oyster shells and water mixed into mortar.  The lime used in tabby was made by burning oyster shells which were abundant in the trash piles of early Indian tribes of the area.  The formula for this material was brought to America in the 16th century by Spaniards and was African in origin.  It was such a durable material that it was used even as late as the 1890's.

Seeing Fort Frederica sparked an interest for us in the fort used by the Spanish during the period of the battles at Fort Frederica.  Castillo De San Marcos is located in St. Augustine, FL and is only about an hour south of  Brunswick, GA.  This was an amazing fort.  Built between 1672 and 1695 and most of it is still standing.  It's the oldest masonry fort in the continental US and it's in the form of a star.  It's made of a stone called coquina (small shells) that are bonded together to make a material similar to limestone.  Possession of the fort changed six times over the years (always by treaty or ruling)  but because of it's solid construction, it has never been breached.  It's truly incredible to see structures like this that were built without all the technology available today and that have survived for centuries.  It was so impressively designed and positioned to protect the eastern coast of Florida.

During our time in Brunswick, GA we watched the weather closely.   Weather always plays a big role in travels via motorcoach.  It's unpredictable (even though the forecasters try) and a force that's not to be taken lightly.   Areas of Alabama (near where we had visited) were threatened with tornadoes and the panhandle of Florida was devastated by flooding.  Route I-10 in Alabama and the panhandle of Florida which we had driven only two weeks ago was actually washed out in places.  Out of respect for the weather, we extended our stay in Brunswick, GA by a few days.

In spite of the threat of rain, the first of our extension days started out looking very nice, so we ventured out to visit Fort King George which was only about 1/2 hour away near Darian, GA.  Fort King George is a recreation of the oldest English fort remaining on the coast of Georgia.  It's structures include a blockhouse, officers' quarters, barracks, a guardhouse and moat.   There are also remains of three sawmills and tabby ruins.  From 1721 to 1736 (nearly 400 years ago), Fort King George was the southern outpost of the British Empire in North America. 

 We also found a local place to buy fresh seafood.  Not as big as Joe Patti's in Florida, and with a very small selection, but the fish was really, really fresh.  We truly enjoyed  eating a lot of wonderful seafood during our stay along the Georgia coast.

As it turns out, we had very little bad weather.  A little rain and some wind were the extent of the storms by the time they reached the Brunswick, GA area.  When we did have rain, we took time to do some work around the coach.  Laundry, cleaning, home improvements and the budget.... also the blog and pictures for the blog are always waiting to be done. Next stop on our trek is Hilton Head Island, SC.