We are off — and here's a three day summary.
We left bright and (not so) early on New Year's Day. The original plan was to leave tomorrow, January 4th, but the forecast for Massachusetts called for snow and rain tonight and rain all day tomorrow. We decided to push it up a few days to avoid driving in the lousy weather. The holiday seemed a good choice.
We hoped everyone would stay home watching parades and football and leave the roads clear. I think we were mostly right. Traffic through the tri-state area was fairly heavy but there were no back-ups. We took I-95 via Providence and then up to the Tappan Zee Bridge, then Garden State Parkway and NJ Turnpike. We got to the Delaware border just after dark and stopped for gas at the Pilot just before the bridge. Unleaded at $1.929/gallon. It was about $3.30/gal the last two times we came this way. Coffee was a bargain, too at $1.49 for both of us.
We took the route through the Maryland Eastern Shore (mostly US 301) that avoids Baltimore and Washington (and may even be a bit shorter) stopping at the Cracker Barrel in Stevensville, MD, just before the Chesapeake Bay bridge, a 450 mile day. We had a late dinner (probably too late), which included sweet potato casserole as a side dish, a mixture of sweet potatoes, pecans and way too much brown sugar. It should be offered as dessert. After which we retired to a far corner of the parking lot to overnight in Speedy. This is actually one of the better Cracker Barrel overnight spots. The back corner of the lot is fairly dark and far from the road. Dark and quiet, what more could we ask for?
Another 12 hour drive awaited us yesterday. The goal was to reach Buck Hall Recreation Area just north of Charleston, SC. This was mostly a long drive down I-95/I-295 until we passed South of the Border into South Carolina, then took US 501 and 701 to the coast at Georgetown. It was well after dark when we reached Buck Hall.
The campground was full!
When I was planning the trip down, I looked at the Buck Hall availability on recreation.gov, the online reservation service for Federal recreation sites (Park Service, Forest Service, etc.). It showed lots of space—but that was for next week. We hadn't planned on getting here until next Tuesday or so. It had totally slipped my mind that we'd now be arriving at the beginning of a holiday weekend. The RV sites are all reserved until Monday.
Fortunately, they still had tent sites available and we could just park in front of the site and not bother setting up a tent. No water and electricity (but it is cheaper). Boondocking is our style and this was no different than most National Park Service campgrounds, aside from it being a parking space. It was quiet and dark and we had a view of the Intracoastal Waterway in the morning. We parked, had another too-late dinner and collapsed.
This morning we did a short bird walk around the campground after breakfast and considered our options. We couldn't just drive on to Fort Clinch since don't have reservations there until January 9th and the campground is fully booked until then. It is pretty nice here. There are good birding spots and the area is pleasant. However, we didn't really want to spend the weekend, forecast to be rainy, in a parking space. We looked around and decided to go a bit north, up to Huntington Beach State Park for a couple of days, since we were planning to go there anyway to look for waterbirds and they had available camp sites, then return to Buck Hall on Monday for a couple of more days. We packed up (not much to pack) and set out.
On the way we stopped in McClellanville, a coastal town just north of Buck Hall, to have lunch. We'd lunched there on an earlier trip and had great oysters at T.W. Graham's, so we thought we'd try again. No oysters on the menu today! Ellen had the fried flounder sandwich with sweet potato fries. She was not particularly impressed. I had the bbq pork with collard greens and rice. The pork was pretty good. We finished off with pecan pie. It was in impressive slice, and tasty without being overly sweet, but it was a bit too cold. Oh well!
Finally, we were off to Huntington Beach State Park, with a stop at the Lowe's Market (no relation to the home center store) at Pawley's Island. It seemed a pretty nice market with good quality foods, at the upper end of the supermarket spectrum. One of the items they had, which we did not buy, was live lobsters. Our friend Peter would love to be getting these prices—
After getting fresh fruits and veggies, it was off to the park. We found a good site among the 40+ that were available and hooked up to electricity and water. It had been raining on and off all day, but we decided to take a short walk in the late afternoon. We got as far as the camp store and it started again. When it "stopped" we deciced to head back to Speedy. We were about a quarter of the way there when it started to pour! Did I mention that Speedy was at the far end of the campground? I suppose that I also didn't note that we were not wearing rain gear. A rather bedraggled pair arrived at Speedy, just in time for the rain to let up. A change of clothes and the application of electric heat helped a lot.
It is supposed to rain overnight and in the morning so the plan is to visit a laundromat to dry out our clothes in the morning. We will remember to wear rain jackets.
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