On to Home

By our last week on the road, we were more than ready to get home. We found ourselves too early for the spring migration and Ellen's ankle sprain meant that long hikes were out of the question. However, we wanted to stop and see some of our friends who were also out traveling and were on intersecting routes.

After a day's rest at Fort Pickens campground (Gulf Islands National Seashore), which included a short, slow bird walk from the campground to the fort and back, we were off to meet up with our friends, Harry and Sally, at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park. It was one of the easier drives of the trip, even though much of it was in the rain and it took most of the day.

Our route was almost entirely on secondary roads following the coast, US 98, all the way. Being a weekday, the traffic was light and it was pretty quick going through Destin, a town which we crawled through on a sunny weekend on our last trip to Fort Pickens. We stopped for provisions in Miramar Beach and the rain really started pouring then, but it had let up by the time we got through Panama City and across St. Andrew Bay. After a stop for lunch at a recreation area at Tyndall AFB, where we had a nice water view and a parking lot all to ourselves, we continued on to FL 30A just beyond the town of St. Joe.

About halfway to the state park, we decided to detour a bit further east and stop at the St. Vincent NWR. As we were heading towards the refuge, Harry and Sally passed us going the other way ... pretty good timing. There wasn't really much to see at the refuge. It is a small refuge with most of its land located on a low island. It has no visitor center nor a Blue Goose stamp. I stopped in the office and chatted with the biologist there. There is only a staff of five and the refuge's mission is to protect land as a stopover for neotropical migrants.

Then it was a west turn and on to the state park. This is a very popular park and we had been able to make a reservation for only one night. The park has two separate camping area and our campsite wasn't in the same campground area as Harry and Sally. Thinking that the rain might have caused a cancellation or two, we asked about the bayside campground. It worked and we found a site there. Even better, the site next to us was also available and Harry and Sally were able to move into it. The travails of camping in Florida in the winter!

It was still quite damp and raining on and off so we all piled into their Roadtrek for a combined dinner. We had a very good time catching up after more than four months. Harry and Sally were the last people from home we saw on our way out west, traveling a bit in New Mexico together, and now they were our first friends we met on the way back.

We weren't in any hurry the next morning, which gave Ellen and Sally a chance for another short bird walk together. Harry and I just relaxed and talked Roadtreks.

By mid-morning it was time for us to be off to our next rendezvous, meeting Tom and Jean, the next-to-last friends we traveled with last fall, at Stephen Foster State Park in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. Our drive was long but uneventful. We stopped in Apalachicola for an oyster lunch (and spent too much time doing so). We continued along US 98, passing the St. Mark's NWR without stopping, before turning northeast and inland. We even drove a short stretch of I-10 to make up for that long lunch, but got off as soon as possible onto US 90 and then the secondary roads to Fargo, GA, and Okefenokee.

It was nearly sunset when we arrived at the state park and the registration office was closed. We'd made reservations for two nights in a 40-foot site, assuming that Tom and Jean, who have a trailer, and Tom's sister, Kathy, who has a Class C RV, would have done the same ... but they didn't. We actually didn't know their sites but found them by driving around the campground. They had reserved 25-foot sites which were not near the longer ones that we had reserved. So we just took an empty 25-foot site directly across from them and would sort it out in the morning. It was still pretty damp, but we were able to join them around their campfire and chat a while before retiring to Kathy's RV for dinner.

It was still damp the next morning (Okefenokee is a swamp afterall). First task was to register and try to change to a 25-foot site. Fortunately, there were enough sites available to do so and we were able to stay where we were. Then it was off to Fargo, 15 miles away, and the Okefenokee Visitor Center, which turned out to be closed. So it was back to the swamp and a swamp tour.

The state park rents boats and also gives boat tours up the bayous and into the swamp. It turns out that we were on the west side of the huge Okefenokee. The main visitor center and headquarters are on the east, more than a hundred miles away. Next time we pass this way we'll stop there as it is truly fascinating. Since we were there for such a short time, we'd signed up to take one of the boat tours. We were looking for birds but everyone else was looking for alligators including the Boy Scout troop on our boat. They were not disappointed, there were plenty of alligators, but not many visible birds at mid-day.

After the tour we walked the nature trail near the park registration building. Again, lots of bird noise, but not lots of visible birds. We managed to see 20 species including a big flock of White Ibis, a very unconcerned Hermit Thrush, a Black and White Warbler and a Northern Parula in his spring finery who perched about an arm's length away.

We got back to the campsites and had too many tasty snacks with Tom, Jean and Kathy before making dinner and, once again, getting together in Kathy's "Mother Ship" for an evening of food and chat.

The next day was Sunday and time for us to make the big push home. We said our goodbyes and headed north to US 84, which we took to I-95 south of Savannah, GA. It was then I-95 all the way to Wilson, NC, stopping at the Cracker Barrel restaurant to have dinner and overnight. On Monday we continued on I-95 until we did our usual detour onto US 301 just above Richmond, VA. We took US 301 from there to I-95 again, just south of the New Jersey border to avoid Washington and Baltimore. It is also a very pleasant drive along most of it, a breather from the rush of I-95.

From there we took the NJ Turnpike to the Garden State Parkway, the Tappan Zee Bridge and I-684 to I-84 in Danbury, CT, and the Danbury Welcome Center. It had been a very long a day and we pulled into the Welcome Center well after dark. This is usually a nice quiet stop. They have a section in the back, away from the truck parking, for RVs and the welcome center allows overnight parking. But quiet was not to be. There is currently a major construction project going on right next to the RV parking which had very loud, very-low frequency thumping going on well into the night. We moved several times to try to get as far away as we could, but nothing helped until they shut down for the night a bit after midnight.

We were up and out of there well before dawn and, with just a few stops for coffee, drove directly to Cohasset. By late morning, we walked into our warm house, very glad to be home after five and half months on the road. Speedy had driven 10,943 miles (with her usual drama of course). We had a fascinating winter in the Arizona borderlands. We did interesting work and met wonderful people who we miss already and hope to see again.

This brings to a conclusion this chapter of The Speedy Journal. Stay tuned, however, for a new edition in the summer!

Final Slideshow