July 26, 2023 – Hike
This morning we hiked the Little River and Birdwalk Trails. These were very nice, wide, well maintained trails. The Little River Trail had the longest boardwalk system we have ever experienced (as best we recall). The park brochure stated that the Little River Trail was 1.1 miles and the Birdwalk Trail was 0.8 miles for a total of 1.9 miles. Our hiking apps showed that we ended up walking 2.4 miles which got a little tough at the end in the 91 degree heat, but we survived and lounged guilt free in the camper the remainder of the day.
At 5PM when the gnats died down, we took the cats out for play time. They thoroughly enjoyed it and after Mercury and Kirby declared that they were ready to go back in, we let Phoebe roam free. She conformed to her “free roaming rules” like a good girl and when she was done she climbed up the front steps of the camper (where she came out) and waited like a good little girl for Beth to let her back in.
July 25, 2023 – Arrival
Today we started our summer trip up North. We left home at 9:30AM EDT and arrived at Reed Bingham State Park at 3:00PM EDT. It was the longest ride (5 1/2 hours) that we have taken with the new camper and we weren’t sure how well the cats would take it (they’ve gotten a bit uptight in this setup on some of our shorter trips). Beth bought them a tent to hang out in while in the Expedition and that seems to have made a big difference. They all seemed pretty calm today, even while we were setting up the camper.
We stopped for lunch at the Rest Area at mile marker 413 just south of Lake City and ate the remaining halves of our Pub Subs (Publix). Then we drove 16 miles north to the Exxon station on US-90 in Lake City to refuel. From there we drove the remaining 82 miles directly to the campground at Reed Bingham State Park in Adele, Ga which is just 6 miles west of I-75.
This is a very nice campground with 50Amp electrical connections, water, and sewer hookups. We are in Site #35 which is very shaded. The shade is a huge bonus in this 92 degree heat, but it does prevent us from even attempting to use our satellite dish. The internet connectivity makes up for the lack of satellite reception. We are getting over 50Mbps download speeds with our Spectrum phones (which ride the Verizon network) and close to 150Mbps download speeds with our AT&T 5G+ hot spot.
The 92 degree temperature doesn’t feel too bad due to the amount of shade in this campsite. There were a lot of annoying gnats while we were setting up camp between 3PM-4PM, but they seemed to have calmed down after 6PM.