Cross country Road Trip - May 22- Days 47-51

Hi y'all!

We are currently at James Island County Park near Charleston, SC. It is a very nice park with lots of bike trails, lagoons for kayaking, and a water park, which we visited today. Kyle loves the water slides.

Weather is warm in the low 90's. Yesterday we arrived here from Savannah, GA and stayed at

Skidaway Island St Pk. We took a trolley and walking tour of the town and saw a lot of history.

The RV is still having the stalling/hesitation problem which we now believe is vapor lock. So tomorrow, we hope to take it back in to have it looked at again, possibly to replace the fuel pump. We'll tour the town while it's in the shop. The good news is that while the RV eventually stopped running entirely, it started right up and ran flawlessly after sitting for 1/2 hr.

We've decided to change routes and travel through Elkhart, IN which many RVs are made. (It is also home (or thereabouts) of a good friend of mine, Eric Rosebrock. We decided that we're going to sell ol' betsy and buy a travel trailer, and pull it with the tundra, which is more comfortable to drive and should get better mileage than 8mpg. We're going to take a couple of RV factory tours in Elkhart, probably Keystone and Thor.

We'll

be there in a little over a week.

Cross Country Road Trip - Days 44-46

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

We are currently on Jekyll Island in Georgia. This is near the southern tip by Brunswick and Jekyll is part of the "Golden Isles of Georgia". After arriving today, we explored a bit and strolled the neato seaside village on St. Simons and had an ice cream. Tomorrow, well ride the bikes around the island and explore the village and historic areas. The island is 7.5 miles long and has 20+ miles of paved marked bike trails, so that will be fun.

Yesterday we explored the town of St. Augustine whilst the RV was at the Ford dealer for the intermittent missing problem (more later). St. Augustine is supposed to be the oldest town in the US, Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The pix above is of Castillo de San Marcos, a Spanish fort built in 1672 to help protect it's sea trade. It is built from a stone called coquina, which has a high shell content, so the rock is soft enough to absorb cannon balls rather than have them shatter the walls. We tool a 3-hr historic trolley ride about town and saw quite a few nice sights including the fountain of youth (huh?) and a lot of more serious landmarks.

The campground we stayed at in St. Augustine was Anastasia State Park, with a very 'jungly" feel to the sites and a great wide beach on the Atlantic. (This is the first time I ever body surfed the Atlantic!)

OK - the RV repairs ... So the Ford dealer had it all day and could never find anything wrong. It's a pretty intermittent problem that seems to happen when the RV gets real warm and the AC is on. Kind of hesitates and surges going up hills or accelerating hard. But, it hasn't occurred the last two drives and of course it wouldn't happen for them either, so they didn't charge us anything. If it gets to be a problem, we find another dealer, but for now, it's not really a big problem for us.

Cross Country Road Trip - Days 32-43

May 15, 2011

It has been a while since I have been able to update the blog. We were at St. Andre

ws State park, FL through May 5, then an overnight stay at O'Leno State Park, then 6 days and 7 nights at Fort Wilderness at Walt Disney World, which we were sorry to leave behind yesterday (May 14). It is a very cool campground with a very "Disney" feel throughout. Well finished trails, signs, shops, restaurants and great pool with a spiral shaped water slide.

Our campsite was at the "

Settlement" end, so we were walking distance to the boat dock to Magic Kingdom, and the Settlement store, Trails End restaurant and Hoop Dee Doo review, which we did the first night. Unfortunately a spotlight on Kyle about 3/4 the way through freaked him out and he was bound and determined to leave before we could finish watching the show or eat dessert. The show is similar to (but not as good as) the Calif. Disneyland Billy hill and the Hillbillies show, which is free.

We had a 6-day park pass, so we did Hollywood studios and epcot once each and Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom each twice. Animal Kingdom is extremely well done. Beautiful setting, well designed and really make you feel in the boonies. Some great new rides too including a Himalayan roller coaster, a dinosaur ride (like Indiana Jones at DL) and a safari bus ride. Also a water ride in which we all got totally wet. Kyle typically doesn't abide by shows and movies but we all really enjoyed a Lion King presentation at animal Kingdom. It is a singing, acrobatic, music, huge puppets thing. Really well done.

We had some great food too. We ate a really nice dinner at the Wilderness Lodge which looks just like Yellowstone Lodge, we ate at the Biergarden in Germany/Epcot, and had a country buffet meal on our last night at the Trails end in the campground.

My humble opinion is that the LA Disneyland is better than Magic Kingdom at Disney World. the Calif version has the matterhorn, Indiana Jones, and a better Pirates. Although being able to go there from the campground by boat was very easy, as is the bus system to all the parks and resorts at disneyworld.

Alas - but yesterday we left and stopped at Kennedy Space Center en route to our current campground Anastasia State Park in historic St. Augustine FL. We took a go=uided bus tour at KSC and we able to get as close as possible (1-1/2 miles) to the shuttle which is schedule to launch tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow we need to take the RV into the local ford dealer to have them check an intermittant missing problem we've had recently. I replaced the fuel filter and have been using fuel injector clean in the gas but that didn't fix it. more ter ...

Cross Country Road Trip - May 10

We have wrapped up day 3 of 6 at Walt Disney World. The first night we arrived, we went to the Hoop-Dee-Doo Review dinner show here at Fort Wilderness. Ben and Jason probably don't remember coming to this show the last time we were here as a family 18 years ago. Kyle didn't particularly like the loud music and bright lights, so we didn't enjoy the show as much as we could have. On the first full day we went to Magic Kingdom (aka Disneyland) and had a great time. Yesterday we did Epcot and went to the Biergarden restaurant - same as we did with Ben and Jason, but Deb and I remember lots of polka music and german dancing. This time is was mostly a band on stage. Today we did Hollywood Studios, then came back to the campsite and went to the pool for a couple of hours - very relaxing. Kyle really liked the slide. Also today I replaced the fuel filter as we had some hesitation and jerkiness when goosing the gas the last few drives. Tomorrow we're off to the Animal Kingdom park.

Funny thing - Disney has a wifi hotspot at the Settlement trading post nearby, but charges $10/day to use it. Crazy - so I'm using the cell phone.

The weather has been beautuful, although warm - around 90.

Cross Country Road Trip - Days 30-32

May 3, 2011 - We are now at St. Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach, FL. We’ll be here a total of 5 nights. Most campsites are right on the shore of a bay, and across to the other side of the park is the Gulf of Mexico. We take about 6 steps to a nice little private white sand at our

campsite, and can watch the dolphins playing in the bay. Yesterday we explored the park, taking a long bike ride and sitting at the beach (gulf side) and played in the water and did some body surfing. We saw quite a few dolphins there too.

Today I did some minor maintenance tasks – replaced that water pump head, filled the RV batteries, and wrapped some presents for Kyle and Deb’s b-days. Deb filled the inflatable Kayaks, as we plan on taking a paddle this afternoon. We also plan on going into town for groceries and the RV supply store. We have issues with the fridge warming up while driving (like 60 deg) and people say a little battery powered fan helps in warm climates – we’ll see. We’re also going to try running it on propane versus AC to see if that helps.

The weather is mid-upper eighties and slightly breezy.

Trip factoids: Been on the road 32 days, traveled 3836 miles, and used 430 gallons of gas.

Cross Country Road Trip - Days 28-29

Today we visited the Big Easy. What a place. Lots of people and by time we left around 3:00, the party was starting. Did a walking tour of the French quarter, the French Market, Bourbon and Royal streets, and took the vintage 1920 St. Charles streetcar (aka Streetcar Named Desire) for a ride through the city and garden district. We even went to Cafe Du Monde and enjoyed watching 100's of people waiting in line for a doughnut. hmmm... The causeway we drove from Mandeville to New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain must have been 30 miles long.

Yesterday we went on a Honey island Swamp boat tour. We saw some really cool natural swamps, and saw several alligators. good fun.

Kyle really seems to enjoy our bike rides. The new trailer is working great, particularly with the help of the e-bike conversion!

Tomorrow we head off for St. Andrews State Park near Panama city, FL where we'll chill for 5 nights.

Cross Country Road Trip - Days 26-28

Fri April 29 - Yesterday we arrived at Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, LA which is across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. We had a short 2-1/2 hr drive to the park - a nice relief from the 6-8 hour drives we've had. This is a magnificent state park deserving a rating of "10". Bike/hike trails everywhere, a beach, air conditioned bath/shower rooms, laundry, water play area, an old sugar mill, etc. We hooked up the bike trailer and the three of us took a long ride to the boardwalk over a marsh and saw an alligator and tortoise.

Today, we are going on a boat tour of Honey Island Swamp, and will come back to Mandeville for some

authentic Creole dinner.

Wednesday we drove into the Atchafalaya basin and saw some great swampland, visited New Iberia (setting of one of my favorite author's (James Lee Burke) detective Dave Robicheaux) We then drove to Avery Island and toured the Tabasco plant and drove through the a bayou/jungle. We also saw an egret nesting colony. Most people don't know that while egrets fly south for the winter, ingrets fly north :)

Next we drove up to Lafayette and visited Vermillionville, a working museum of an historic Acadian (Cajun) village. It was neato and the architecture and grounds were interesting. We learned that the Acadian French were exciled from Nova Scotia by the British because they sympathized with the Americans. They settled in Louisiana because it was Spanish and they didn't mind the French and let them worship as Catholics.

We had a great Cajun dinner in Breaux Bridge, and enjoyed some authentic music while we ate.

Weather Update... Today is again beautiful and clear and should get up to 83. We hit some heavy winds, hot/humidity, and light rain coming in from Texas, but not too bad. The forecast is pretty much clear and moderate going forward 10 days. The hurricanes are further north - we skirt right along the gulf.