Once More Into The Rain

In recent years we have been alternating a winter of volunteering with a winter of traveling for pleasure. Since we are planning a long trip next summer, we didn't want to take a long western trip this winter. Florida beckoned, a thousand miles closer and still warm.

The last few times we've driven to Florida, it has been through rain or snow and this time was no different. We had a reasonably chaotic start on Sunday morning. This was only the second trip in New Speedy and we were not quite prepared. After five years with the old van, everything had its place and packing it up was well pretty simple. In the new van we haven't yet found all of the right places for our stuff.

We managed to get off shortly after 9:00 and took a route to the Tappan Zee Bridge via Hartford rather than I-95. Heavy rain along the coast was forecast and we wanted to avoid the rain as long as possible. It was gray but dry to the Tappan Zee and along some of the Garden State Parkway, but the rain arrived for real by the time we got to the New Jersey Turnpike.

We prefer to avoid the Baltimore-Washington corridor by cutting through the Eastern Shore and Northern Virginia using US 301 to I-95 above Richmond. Our slow start and the rain meant that we reached the Delaware Bay Bridge after dark and the Delaware and Maryland section was through the dark and rain, pretty much our least favorite driving scenario. But we reached our usual first night stop, the Cracker Barrel Restaurant just before the Bay Bridge in Stevensville, MD.

After our traditional Cracker Barrel dinner of salad for Ellen and meatloaf for me, we settled in for our first Cracker Barrel overnight stop in New Speedy. We found a relatively dark and quiet corner in their parking lot and spent an uneventful night.

It was still raining in the morning when we left and we made our way through Maryland and Virginia along US 301. The traffic seemed much heavier than we remembered along this route and it may be our last time taking it. Lots of new housing developments and shopping malls have resulted in lots more traffic. It was still raining when we got to I-95 but it finally ended in North Carolina.

Our original thought was to head to Buck Hall Recreation Area, north of Charleston, SC. But since it had been raining for so long along the coast, we figured that it might be too wet and we continued along I-95. We decided that we would just drive as long as it was light and then find another overnight stop.

One of Ellen's goals was to submit eBird checklists at each stop we made along the highway. This didn't work out so well. The Welcome Centers and Rest Areas seemed pretty devoid of avian life. One list (from a gas stop at Flying-J) was four House Sparrows and one American Crow. She was not happy. A more exciting (and unfortunate) bird encounter was with two pigeons who flew out from under a bridge in South Carolina and directly into Speedy's windshield. It didn't break the glass, but the impact was so hard that the overhead light popped out of the headliner.

After a 550-mile day, we pulled into another Cracker Barrel, in Walterboro, SC, for our second dinner and another overnight. We eschewed breakfast at the restaurant and left before dawn, stopping at the first rest area we found and made our own coffee (much better then Cracker Barrel's) and had some of Ellen's fine banana bread.

Finally a warm and sunny day as we trundled down I-95 with a detour to the east entrance of the Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. We had stopped at the west side of the refuge for a couple of nights at Stephen Foster State Park with our friends, Tom, Jean and Kathy, but had been unable to visit the Refuge Visitor Center, which was on the east side and a long way around. Today, we managed that stop, got my my Blue Goose Stamp and did a litte birding around the Visitor Center. After four sparrows and a crow, Ellen was delighted with a Yellow-rumped Warbler, an Eastern Phoebe and a few others.

From there we drove to Ocala National Forest and the Salt Springs campground. We are definitely needing showers and our water tank was still empty. We managed to snare the last available site in the paved, electrified area of the campground and are now plugged in with a full water tank for the next couple of days.

Tomorrow a bike ride and birding are on the schedule (such as it is) and maybe I'll get out the new Tenkara rod and practice a little flycasting in the springs.