We slept in today and then went for a nice walk after breakfast. We departed shortly after 11AM EDT hoping to hit Atlanta in the early afternoon to avoid rush hour traffic. Apparently rush hour in Atlanta no longer ends and it took us quite a while to get through. Now I know why my parents take US-82 out of Tifton, GA over to US-280 and catch I-65 near Birmingham, AL. My wife assures me that we will try that in the future.
We are spending the night at the Cracker Barrel in Ringgold, GA (just south of Chattanooga, TN). Since we always eat breakfast at Cracker Barrel, we decided to give supper a try. The restaurant was packed and we had a short wait before being seated. Beth ordered the Chicken Pot Pie and I tried the new Hand Battered Fried Chicken Tenders with my usual order of Hash-brown Casserole. The kitchen was so busy they ran out of Chicken Pot Pie and without notifying our waitress they decided to make one by hand. Beth had already taken her insulin and 45 minutes later we still didn’t have our food. I thought sure I was going to get to test out the emergency insulin pen. Fortunately, I was able to get our waitress to bring us some orange juice. The food came shortly after but we all know how scorching hot a chicken pot pie is when it arrives. Beth’s tongue should heal in a week or so. Other than that, it was a good meal.
Today we departed on our 2021 Road Trip. We are heading to Denver to watch the grandchildren (and grand-puppy) while Aaron & Alysa get married in a private ceremony. Beth had a medical appointment this morning at 10AM in Tampa, so the cats and I departed shortly after she did and waited for her at the Rest Area just north of the I-75/I-275 interchange. Beth stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts and picked up two Turkey Sausage Egg and Cheese breakfast sandwiches (where have these been all my life) which we consumed before departing the Rest Area.
We are spending the night at the I75 RV Park in Tifton, GA. This is a no frills RV Park (13 sites) setup next to the interstate for travelers to spend the night. Considering that, it’s still pretty nice with full hookups and a laundry facility. In fact, the owner mentioned to Beth at check-in that he didn’t mind if we washed our RV which is good to know considering that this time of year we often come out of Florida covered in love bugs. He also mentioned that there is no checkout time which also works well for us since we are in no hurry tomorrow to depart (spending tomorrow night at a Cracker Barrel and don’t want to arrive too early).
The Wi-Fi here in the park is decent (3 to 4 Mbps download) and we need it because neither my Tracfone data connection nor Beth’s Visible data connection is worth a darn which is surprising since we are right next to I-75.
Unfortunately, returned home from our Palm Island/Don Pedro Island 20th Anniversary Trip to an air conditioner that was no longer cooling the house. We called the air conditioning company that sold it to us since it’s still under the 10 year parts & labor warranty and they came out that afternoon to determine that our compressor had failed. They didn’t have any in stock and had to order one. The temperatures were fairly cool (at least at night) Friday and Saturday. We brought the RV home Sunday and slept in it overnight. When we heard that he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday to install the new compressor we moved to Little Manatee River State Park in order to avoid the wrath of the Home Owner’s Association.
We got married at the Palm Island Resort on the same island and decided to celebrate our 20th anniversary by visiting the same island. This time we rented a VRBO Town-home so that we could bring our cats.
The island can only be accessed by boat or ferry. We came by boat for our wedding, but took the ferry this trip. There is one restaurant and one small store for sundries on the island so we packed quite a load in the Tahoe to ensure we wouldn’t have to make any trips back to the mainland.
The Townhome was great and we had an excellent time. We managed to make it the full two weeks without leaving the island other than when we rented a pontoon for the day.
We brought Aunt Jo within striking range of Savannah, GA so that she could visit her siblings who are gathering in Savannah at her sister’s house. Her sister and brother-in-law drove down (about 80 miles) to pick her up. We would have stayed closer to Savannah, but all the campgrounds were booked. We will use this opportunity to tour the local islands (Golden Isles as they’re called). We are in Site #28 at Southern Retreat RV Park. The sites aren’t very wide but we have been in much tighter. Our site is adjacent to a pavilion leading to the bathrooms/showers and there is ample room for Phoebe’s Outdoor Cat-A-Tat. We are able to access all 3 Dish Western Arc satellites from our roof mounted satellite antenna, but it is not necessary as they have good cable providing ESPN and CBS in HD so that we can watch The Masters golf coverage. The one time I tested their WiFi I got 5Mbs down and 1.75Mbs upload speeds. We are receiving excellent Visible coverage on Beth’s cell phone and I was able to get 38Mbs download and 19Mbs uploaded connected through her HotSpot.
Southern Retreat RV Park – Site #28 – Front
Southern Retreat RV Park – Site #28 – Rear
We visited Jekyll Island on Friday and took a horse drawn carriage tour of the historic district. It was interesting to see all the “cottages” built by the super rich (J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William K. Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, etc.) as winter retreats.
Jekyll Island – Crane Cottage
Jekyll Island – DuBignon Cottage
Jekyll Island – Beth and Voodoo
On the way back to the campground we stopped off in downtown Brunswick and ate a late lunch at Fox’s Pizza Downtown. Beth had a cheesesteak and I had an Italian Sub. Both were fine, but not great. We tried an appetizer of 5 Buffalo Wings (medium) and they were delicious. We ordered a seasoned ground beef and sweet onion pizza to take back to the camper as Beth forgot to pack the lunch deli meat. It didn’t have a lot of sauce, but that seemed to work with the seasoned ground beef. It was very tasty.
We arrived at A Stone’s Throw RV Park (just East of Tallahassee) at 3:30 PM EST. We stayed here last July on our way West to see the kids. In July we were in Site #17 which faces due West so we decided to try Site #18 which faces due East (not that we needed protection from the sun today). We will avoid this site in the future. The entry to the site was steep uphill and we had to jack the rear of the RV up quite a bit (using blocks) to get level. Our data access to Beth’s Visible phone was the best we’ve experienced on this trip (15 to 20 Mbps download speeds).
We departed from The Old Pavilion RV Park near Perry, FL at about 09:00 EST and went across country (Beach Rd to US-98 to SR-267 to SR-20 to US-331 back to US-98) to Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. These were all good roads with interesting old Florida scenery. We wanted to get there as early as possible in order to get setup to watch the Tampa Bay Bucs Win the Superbowl and arrived at 12:30PM CST (2.5 hours prior to check-in). Our site wasn’t ready, so we had to hangout in the parking lot for about 30 minutes. We used that time to unhook the Tahoe and go purchase firewood at the park store.
This was our second time at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. This time we were in site #57 which had a clear view of southwestern sky. Our roof top satellite dish worked fine the first night (although it couldn’t seem to get all 3 Western Arc satellites, so we operated in Hybrid mode). The second day we couldn’t seem to get 3 satellites in either configuration, so we broke out R2D2 and used it all week until Saturday at which point it couldn’t seem to get all 3 Western Arc satellites, so we switched back to the roof which worked just fine (go figure).
We had good access to the Verizon Wireless cell phone towers, but Beth’s Visible phone seemed to get de-prioritized regularly during busy hours. It was barely acceptable for surfing, but would not have worked for streaming. We ran into similar issues at the previous campground.
We were close to the laundry facility and it had 8 washers, 8 dryers, and a bill changer. The washers and dryers were $1.50/load each.
Topsail Preserve SP Site #57
Topsail Preserve SP Site #57
Beth’s brother Dick joined us at our site on Monday evening and stayed with us for the week. We parked our Tahoe in a parking area behind our site and he parked his converted Ford Transit Van in our driveway and slept in it. He has been doing the van conversion himself and was using this trip to shakeout any issues and help determine what direction to head in with the remainder of the conversion. We definitely enjoyed his company.
The weather wasn’t much to write home about (we rarely saw any sun), but it was generally kind enough to stop raining early in the morning and not start up again until around supper time. We managed to walk to the beach several days (2 miles round trip) and cook several dinners over the fire. Dick took his new drone to the beach several times and got some great video.
Wednesday afternoon we went to Harry T’s in Destin to confirm that their food was still as good as it was when we ate there during our 2018 visit. It was still delicious! Beth and I had the Grouper Strip Platter while Dick had the Blackened Redfish Entree. Everything was delicious.
Harry T’s – Caesar Salad
Harry T’s – Grouper Strips
Harry T’s – Blackened Redfish with a Creamy Snow Crab Meat Topping
Floating Bar
Thursday evening we cooked a Filet Mignon, Porterhouse, and Ribeye steaks over the campfire along with twice baked potatoes. Another excellent meal (thank goodness the beach is a 2 mile round trip walk).
Beth and Dick Enjoying a Fire
Late afternoon and evening on Friday was very rainy so we had to cook supper inside. Beth was cooking chicken and vegetables in an electric skillet and then fired up the microwave to heat some water and our power went out. After some diagnosis it looks like the inverter/charger went out. It still appears to charge the batteries, but all of our outlets on inverter are dead. Unfortunately, that includes the refrigerator, so we had to run an extension cord from the utility post to the outside access panel for the refrigerator to get it running again. For the rest of the evening we had to live like our forefathers by reading books and talking to each other. I downloaded the electrical schematics from Winnebago and discovered that we have one electrical outlet in the bathroom (intended for a washer/dryer hookup) that is not connected to the inverter, so we ran extension cords from it up to the entertainment center so we could watch TV on our satellite dish (we were “glamping” once again). I also determined that I could move the refrigerator connection in the breaker panel back to it’s original position (before we upgraded it to a residential A/C compressor) which is not connected to the inverter. We will investigate replacing the inverter when we get back to Tampa.
After bottoming out the tail end of RV while trying to enter a Walmart gas station on the way home from our previous camping trip, we decided it was time to stop trying to save a fortune on diesel fuel and start using Truck Stop fuel pumps as much as possible. Once we made that decision we decided to try out the TSD Logistics diesel fuel discount program. After setting up our account we downloaded their cell phone application which shows their discount fuel prices at nearby Truck Stops. The have agreements with a number of Truck Stop chains, but currently their best deal is with TA-Petro (Travel Centers of America-Petro). The best deal on our route was at the TA Truck Stop in Wildwood, FL. This worked out well. It was the fastest we have ever fueled (usually at Truck Stops we have to go inside and leave a credit card to enable the pump and then go back in an pay after fueling). Our fuel card eliminated the trip inside and Truck Stop pumps are faster than our RV can handle (you have to hold the pump trigger just right). We were in and out in minutes and saved $0.55/gal on 40 gallons of fuel.
After fueling we took US-27 North out of Ocala and then Alt US-27 out of Williston, FL. In Chiefland, FL Alt US-27 joined US-98. We picked up Hwy 358 near Steinhatchee, FL. In Steinhatchee we took SR-51 to cross the Steinhatchee River and then took Beach Rd the rest of the way to Keaton Beach near our campground. The Beach Rd portion of the trip was very interesting. We drove over 15 miles without seeing another vehicle (or human). When we got closer to Keaton Beach we passed some large fish camps.
The Old Pavilion RV Park is directly on the Gulf of Mexico and there are quite a few sites right on the beach, but our site is in the interior. As with most beach campgrounds, the sites are packed fairly close together, but there’s plenty of room to maneuver. The Wi-Fi signal here is strong, but like most RV Parks, there’s no bandwidth (0.32 Mbps download). This gave us a chance to test using Beth’s Visible cellular service. We were originally getting 15 Mbps download speeds, but that dropped down to less than 1 Mbps in the evening (there are no caps, but we get prioritized below regular Verizon subscribers if the cell site is busy). By 10PM the speeds were good enough again to watch television on our Spectrum TV application on ROKU. By the next day, I gave up and turned our Dish Satellite service back on. On a positive note, our Visible service works fine for our normal (non-streaming) internet activities.
Friday night was our maiden voyage in our king size bed. Previously we had an RV Queen (which is shorter than a normal Queen) and always felt like we needed more room. This winter we ripped out the night stand on Beth’s side of the bed and our good friend Raul built a frame that allowed us to place a king size mattress in the bedroom. We both slept great and now have plenty of room for everyone (including 3 very cold cats).
Mercury, Beth, & Phoebe
It was cold and rainy all day Saturday (our second day), so we just hunkered down and watched college basketball. Beth re-heated spaghetti she had made and frozen for days like these.
