Day 17 - Skidaway Island St. Pk. to Myrtle Beach State Park, SC

So....it was supposed to be a short, easy drive to Myrtle Beach. Yeah, right. It started out when Dylan decided he wanted a Mocha Frappe thingy from McD's. We asked the "Nav Chick" where a McD's was and she decided to take us this complete round-about way to get there. Of course, there was a long line in the drive thru and it took forever. When we got to the window, we were informed that we were going to have to wait because the "milk machine" was broken. Huh? I complained that we'd waited so long already that they should have fixed the milk machine while we were waiting. We pull forward to wait for our order. 1 Mocha Frappe. The stupid bitch comes out with a mocha coffee!!! We sent her back in for the Frappe...like we ordered...and she comes back a few minutes later with the drink.....sans straw!!! Back in she goes to get the straw. Shit!! I should have known there were going to be problems when the person taking our order had blue hair, green fingernails and no teeth. Way to go, McD's!!!!

Well, we had to get gas too so we asked the "Nav Chick" where a Chevron station was. Once again, she took us on the shortest route which included a tour of some of the more aesthetically pleasing parts of Savannah. 45 minutes later, we were finally on the road!! Ugh!

The drive took us up Hwy 17 along the coast thru a bunch of smaller towns. I have never seen so many churches in my entire life. Literally, there is a church about every 5 miles or so. A lot of these churches have little cemeteries right next to them filled with constituents. We had to stop at a super gargantuan Walmart along the way so that we could fill up on supplies and return a tent fan that we had purchased a few days ago that didn't work out of the box. We spent forever walking thru the 5 football field sized shrine to American consumerism. A few comments about Walmart. They are dirt cheap, the California produce is better quality and far cheaper than you can get in California, each Walmart carries a slightly different selection of goods geared towards the clientele and EVERYONE shops at Walmart. There is no stigma attached to Walmart here in the East like there is in L.A.

Myrtle Beach State Park was packed!! There were only 3 spots to choose from and they were $35 a night!!! There are 336 spots in an area about the size of that Walmart I just mentioned. ;-) We set up and made a beeline towards the beach. The beach was really nice...not as nice as Panama City, but a very nice beach nonetheless. Dylan did some serious skim boarding as we walked about 2 or 3 miles down the beach. What a trip to be at the beach at sundown, look out to sea and have the sun at your back. Weird.

These 2 teenaged girls started up a conversation with us as we were on the pier watching the sunset. Come to find out, they were camping in the park and lived only about 20 minutes away. Finally, someone actually took the time to stop and talk to us!! We have been very outgoing and gregarious this whole trip trying to talk to people and very few have responded in kind. These girls, Chelsey and Cory, were the first. We rode bikes back to camp and guess who came looking for us (Dylan)? They joined us for popcorn, gatorade and watermelon while we sat in Citronella candlelight at the picnic table. Nice. I went to bed around 11PM and Dylan decided to go hang with these girls and their family at their campsite. I guess he had a good time cuz he didn't get back until about 1AM!! He finally met some kids his age! YAY!!!

Day 16 - Edgewater, FL to Skidaway Island State Park right outside of Savannah, GA

8:25AM Sunday July 4th, 2010 Happy Fourth of July!!!!


Yesterday when I sat down in the morning to write my blog, I was kinda down about the rain and the fact that we had to leave Key West and South Florida behind to keep our sanity. Today is a 180 degree change from that!! It didn't rain last night!! I know exactly where I'm going. I know that it's supposed to be clear skies and 88 degrees there today. I know that I only have a little over a 4 hour drive today. I know where I'm going to celebrate the 4th with Dylan tonight. I know that the tent will be dry when we crawl into it. I know that the next handful of days will take us through some of the most historic parts of our country and I know that we'll be getting back into the groove of camping again.

7:55AM Monday July 5th

Because so much happened yesterday, I really wanted to get it in on this particular entry.

So we were driving along the freeway in Northern Florida when a sign said, "St Augustine, Oldest city in America" I thought that it was appropriate to visit the oldest city in America on her birthday so we pulled off the freeway. St. Augustine is very cool with lots of history. We decided to just drive through rather than spend the $10 to park and follow along behind all the other tourists. One thing that really disappointed me was a Ripley's Believe It or Not right smack dab in the middle of the historic part of town. WTF? The whole place was really geared towards the tourists. Took some good pics, though, and it was kinda cool to know that people had built some of those buildings hundreds of years ago. You can't find history like that in L.A.

We arrived at Savannah about an hour later and I was duly impressed with what I saw. Beautiful old southern houses with huge trees in front draped in Spanish Moss. On our way to the State Park, we drove down this road that was lined with these huge trees...it almost looked like we were driving through a tunnel. Beautiful. The State Park was equally as nice. BTW, did I mention that there wasn't a cloud in the sky? NO RAIN!!!! Even though it was the 4th, we still had our pick of about 8 sites. We picked a great one and started setting up. The tarp and tent were, of course, still soaking wet but they were completely dry within an hour.

After setting up, Dylan and I had some time to go for a bike ride and explore a bit. We found this trail that led us to some old Civil War embankments that the Confederate soldiers had dug to protect Skidaway Island from the Union. Yes, they were still there and quite obvious. You could just imagine what it was like. The trail went through more of the same huge trees with draping Spanish Moss and skirted the border of the brackish swamp. Everything about it appeared to be fresh water until we saw these huge mounds of oyster shells called, Middens, that the Indians had built up over hundreds of years. There were also little hermit kind of crabs skittering through the forest which was, of course, seriously weird.

We ended up at an observation tower at the end of a wooden walkway over the swamp. From the observation tower we could see the Intracoastal Waterway and all the boats and jet skis flying by. Dylan says to me, "Dad, I just saw some dolphins" I said, "no way, there aren't any dolphins in here". I was wrong! Because the ICW looks like a freshwater river, it was so weird to see dolphins. We checked the time and decided to head back to camp to get ready to go into town for the festivities.

We followed GPS to River St. in the old part of Savannah. We found some parking in a parking garage and followed the masses to wherever they were going. Did I say that Savannah was a beautiful city? So we walk down these steep stone steps to an old cobblestone street right on the riverfront. All along here were the old cotton mills and other waterfront warehouses from the early 1800's that have been converted into stores, condos, etc. They've done a great job revitalizing the area and keeping it's charm. People EVERYWHERE!!!! We scoped a restaurant whose sign said, "Raw Oyster and Ale Bar" Right up our alley!!! The hostess said there was a 2 hour wait so we asked if we could just sit at the bar. She said, "sure" and we walked over and grabbed a table immediately. People are like sheep...they follow along and do what all the others are doing. We just thought outside the box a bit. We ordered a "Steamer Plate" which had 3lbs of crab, mussels, shrimp, oysters and a piece of corn. God, it was good!!!! I asked the bartender what kind of ales he had on tap and he said, "you're not going to believe this but we don't have any ales on tap" I had a choice of Bud or Guinness. I took the lesser of two evils and chose the Guinness. We inhaled the goodness that was before us.

When we left the restaurant, there were significantly more people than before. I'll bet there were at least 100,000 people lining the waterfront to watch fireworks. I'm basing my guess on the 90,000+ people that I remember seeing at the LA Coliseum when Living Colour, Metallica and Guns N Roses opened for the Rolling Stones back in about 90 or 91. Who remembers that concert? The sunset over the river was amazing, followed by a fireworks display that was equally amazing. For all the shit and disappointment that we put up with in Florida because of the rain, this kind of made up for it. We had a fantastic time!!

When the display was over, you can just imagine the crush of humanity as everyone left the waterfront to head home. Wow!! People everywhere!! It was exactly like leaving a huge concert. So we get back to the parking garage and, for some reason, there was nobody around our car...we were kind of off in a corner. I said to Dylan, "why don't you fire off one of your M1000 firecrackers over there in the corner?" I didn't have to ask twice. Unfreakingbelievably LOUD!!!! In a parking garage, nonetheless!!! Well, he was deaf after that and felt a certain satisfaction for shooting off a very illegal firework on the 4th of July!! Anything that explodes is illegal in GA. We're saving all our explosives for our visit to Reno at the end of our trip. That will be fun.

We made it back to our camp about an hour and a half later and had a fitful sleep.

All is good!!!

Day 15 - Key West to as far north as we can possibly drive today

7AM

I'm done with the rain. All of Florida is forecast for rain for at least the next week. I've made a decision to bypass Miami and keep driving north today. By my estimation, the weather front is sitting right at the Florida/Georgia border. Savannah, GA is forecast for clear skies for most of the upcoming week. Savannah is less than 700 miles from Key West so, as long as traffic isn't too bad, we should be close to there by tomorrow night so we can watch fireworks somewhere. The plan was to get a cheap motel outside Miami then drive in to South Beach to watch the fireworks. T'ain't gonna happen!!! (Sandra, you and I are going to vacation in Miami. It's still a city that I'd like to see....WHEN IT'S NOT RAINING!!)

My mood has soured a bit about this trip because of all the rain and the disappointment it has caused. All I wanted was to spend some time in Florida on the beaches and enjoy some time with my son. We got about 3 hours before the rain hit. I SO wanted to see South Beach in Miami and all the charm of the art deco buildings but it's not going to happen this trip. Everything we think about right now is based on the torrential rains. We peeked out the curtains last night at about 11pm and the palm trees were blowing, the rain was coming down in buckets and there was thunder and lightning everywhere. Fuck this!! I feel like I'm just dumping money into a rain barrel. We can't camp so we're stuck paying for motels and eating out at restaurants because we can't cook our food inside the motel room. I would be much happier at a DRY $8.50 campsite in the woods, cooking sloppy joe's on my little Coleman burner, then crawling into our comfy tent and falling asleep to the sounds of crickets. BTW, last night we were awake until midnight. You know why? Because the TV was on. We are normally in bed and starting to fall asleep by 9:30 or 10. TV is evil. When I get home, I'm really going to try to NOT have the TV on in the bedroom.

3:35PM

I'm feeling a little better about things now. Dylan is driving and we're on our way to about the Daytona Beach area to get a cheap motel. Tomorrow around noonish we"ll be in some State Park near Savannah, GA. The weather forecast for Savannah is clear and hot until at least a week from Monday. Exactly what we need to dry out the tent and get back in the groove of camping.

A couple things I've learned about Florida....it's a big-ass state and freaking boring to drive on the Interstates. They are flat and boring with nothing happening. Florida is a great state to fly in to, go to your resort, have fun, then fly out. Oh yeah, don't forget to bring lots of money for jet ski rentals, fishing trips, Disney World, etc.

7:30PM



Well, as far north as we can possibly get was only as far as New Smyrna Beach, FL at the All-Suites Motel. We're about 19 miles from Daytona and found that, not only were all the hotels and motels booked in Daytona because of the 4th of July but there is also a race at the Daytona Raceway. I didn't feel like driving further so we kind of took the first place that showed up. The price was right and these are old converted apartments with full kitchens and everything. We had leftover Chinese food so the microwave came in handy.

So...I'm sitting at the kitchen table plotting our course over the next few days and I hear this sound of a calliope coming from somewhere. This is a pretty funky place so I kinda thought that the weird guy next door was playing a little Casio piano or something. We muted the TV and shut off the AC to listen. It sounded like an ice cream truck or something. We looked out the window and....sure enough....it was the ice cream man!!!! Leftover Chinese, a couple beers and a soft-serve ice cream cone for dessert! Perfect! Things are definitely looking up.

I'm hoping to do a quick 250 mile run into one of the 2 state parks close to Savannah, GA tomorrow. Savannah's weather forecast calls for 88 degrees and partly cloudy tomorrow and absolutely clear on Monday. NO RAIN!!!! Let's keep our fingers crossed!!!

Day 14 - Punta Gorda to Key West

Here we are 2 weeks into our trip. I've never been away from friends and family for that long in my entire life. It's a weird thought because some people go away every year for 2 or 3 weeks. I think about 10 days has been my max.

Here are some random observations as I sit here in my Motel 6 room waiting for my son to get up and get ready for the day.

Of all the states we've been through so far, everyone faithfully drives the speed limit except for Californians and Floridians. Though we've met a few nice people, most everyone else is grumpy and rude and look at us like we're some kind of circus side-show act. We have said "hello" and waved to EVERYONE we meet. We have been super nice to people and except for the wonderful lady at the ice cream parlor in Branson, MO, the nice couple from Illinois that we met at Lake of the Ozarks, the two hot chicks working at McD's in Panama City and the very nice old lady in Bumfuck, FL who sold us some fried p-nuts, gator jerky and Dylan's Florida knife, everyone has been quite introverted. I've also noticed that a $40 a night Motel 6 is pure heaven after tent camping for two weeks. What is "fog smoke"? It's obviously a problem on some Florida freeways. I also need to report that my son had never showered in a shower with a curtain on it. He didn't know that the curtain is supposed to go INSIDE the tub rather than hanging nicely on the outside. He flooded the bathroom in New Orleans. Another observation is that KFC's have an all you can eat buffet in all their restaurants east of the Rockie Mountains. Gross. There are Subways, McDonalds and Sonic Drive-in's EVERYWHERE you can imagine. Surprisingly, Starbucks have been relatively difficult to find.

We've tried to limit our consumption of fast food but sometimes, on the road, that's all you can get in a hurry. We have treated ourselves to a few restaurant meals and nothing has compared to the food that we had in New Orleans. Usually we have a bagel, cream cheese and lox for breakfast with our coffee. Lunch is either a sandwich on the road or fast food. Dinner is usually something like sirloin hamburgers or spaghetti with sausages eaten right at our campsite. We've been pretty good about always having either strawberries or grapes available to us in the cooler at all times. Last night, we inhaled that pizza along with two boxes of bread sticks that they delivered to make up for the wrong pizza.

We've arrived at our hotel in Key West. We immediately checked in and hopped on our bike for the 4 mile ride into "old town" and all the shops and stuff. The ride was enjoyable and quite easy considering that the entire town is completely flat. We rode out to the southernmost point in the US and took a few pictures with all the other tourists. We actually walked "behind" them which made US the southernmost tourists!! We spent some time riding up and down Duval St. and decided to stop at Rick's Bar for a beer where we could sit outside and watch the world go by. As soon as we sat down, it started pouring down rain. I'm kinda done with the rain. Granted, it's not as bad as the Pacific Northwest where it's a cold rain but it's still wet and annoying. While we were there, Dylan's sunburn started hurting him really bad....you know that pinching, pulling feeling you get when a bad sunburn starts to heal a bit. That's what he was dealing with and it was killing him. We made a beeline back to the hotel and stopped at a CVS on the way to buy some aloe for him. Poor kid. All he needed to do was put on some sunblock. Maybe now he'll be a little more responsible about it. He's a good kid, though. He's been telling me that I should just go back out to old town without him. I won't do it....it's OUR road trip...not just mine. Maybe we'll stay another day and explore the town together tomorrow.

Key West is not exactly what I was expecting. I suppose I was expecting more of a laid back kind of town like Lahaina in Maui (there is a Wyland art gallery!) or maybe La Jolla or something. It's much more commercialized with Home Depots, TGI Friday's, CVS Pharmacy's and fast food places everywhere. The old part of town IS really nice what with all the old homes and the quaint little shops and bars but I guess it's just not what I expected. I suppose I thought that Jimmy Buffet was going to be sitting on a beach under a palm tree drinking margaritas watching bikini babes walking by while sailboats sailed towards the setting sun. Dylan wanted me to ask one of the local guys where a good beach was with all the hot local girls. He said that there wasn't any such thing and any beach you find will be filled with tourists. Oh well. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about tomorrow. I may just pay the big bucks to stay here another night. I don't like doing that but I really would like to see a bit more of the city especially considering our time was cut a little short by Dylan's nasty sunburn. I'm going to check the weather forecast and if it calls for more than 50% rain, I think we'll just bail and head back north to find cheaper lodging. There were a lot of little beachside motels on the Overseas Hwy so maybe we'll find something a little more reasonable right on the beach somewhere. We'll see. Camping is out until we can get somewhere drier. Our tent is soaked and will need at least half a day to dry out. Based on the weather forecasts I've seen, it doesn't look like we'll get out of the rain until about North Carolina or maybe Virginia. I think we're going to stay on the Interstates until we get out of Florida. Before this trip, Florida was about the only state in the Union that I had a burning desire to visit....now I can't wait to leave!

Day 13 - St. Andrews St. Pk to Somewhere About 450mi South

God did it rain last night!!!! It was a deluge until about 5AM!!! Our tent was literally floating in all the standing water! Ugh!! I had awakened 3 times during the night to sop up all the water on the inside of the tent....AND....on top of that, I had to piss all 3 times! Damn!! Everything and everybody was wet. Everything! At about 6AM, I finally got Dylan up and said, "let's get the hell outta here!"

Everything was packed up wet and nasty! We made a beeline for the freeway and headed South. We drove 450 miles and found a cheap Motel 6 room in Punta Gorda, FL. $40, free HBO and a laundry available! As we speak, I'm washing all the wet clothes , drinking a few beers, waiting for the pizza guy to deliver a "replacement pizza" for the wrong one he delivered and watching it thunder and lightning and pour rain outside. Ha ha, I'm inside and DRY TONITE!!!

Day 12 - Second Day at St. Andrews State Park, Panama City, FL

Had a decent sleep in spite of the fact that it was, once again, stiflingly hot. Woke up, made coffee and tried to figure out where we were going to go after this. So far, my morning ritual has been to get up before Dylan, make coffee, get the atlas and my glasses and sit down to plot the days course while I drink my coffee. I figure out approximately 300 miles and start looking for parks within that distance on the course that we're going. I usually try to get 3 or so just in case one looks nasty or is completely full. So far, we've been fairly successful with this strategy.

I got Dylan up and we drove into town to the local Walmart giganticenter to stock up on groceries. Things I notice at Walmarts across the nation...and we've been to at least 6 of them for supplies...some food is dirt cheap and some about normal. The generic Walmart brand is every bit as good as the nationwide brand. Their strawberries are from Watsonville, CA and are significantly cheaper than I can get them from Ralph's down the street from my house AND they are better! Seriously, they send the best produce out of California! So...anyways, we stocked up and Dylan bought himself a skimboard for some fun at the beach.

We drove back to the park and went straight out onto the beach. The beach at St. Andrews State Park was rated by Conde Naste Traveler Magazine a few years back as the number 1 beach in the entire world!!! It's fantastic!!! We hung out on the beach for hours. Being the responsible adult I am, I put on sunblock knowing full well that you can still get a bad burn even though it was completely overcast. I even shared my wisdom with my wonderful son who, in his 16 years of life, seems to have much more wisdom than I because he informed me that he wasn't going to burn. Uh huh. What a great time we had until it started raining at about 1PM. We stayed out in the rain and enjoyed the warm Gulf waters. BTW, nobody here refers to it as the ocean....it is the Gulf.

Remember that rain that I mentioned? Well the light rain progressed to somewhat heavy rain by about 5PM. Dylan and I were still dressed in only our swim trunks and were doing fine by this time. During a little respite, we made some dinner and were quite happy. I made a little lean-to off the back of the truck with an extra tarp we had. Dylan and I sat back there with our Citronella candle burning and enjoyed the rain. Well, the rain turned to blithering downpour and we took shelter inside the car. We sat there for about two hours waiting for it to let up. It never did! After dark, we just took our chances and ran for the tent with a couple towels and our brand new battery powered fan that we had just purchased at the Walmart giganticenter.

We were soaked by the time we ran the 35 feet to the tent! Once inside, we found that the great tarp that we had put up could only do so much with the torrential downpour that had been going on for the last 4 hours. There was water pooling at the sides and the corner of the tent, some of bedding had gotten wet and we were in for an uncomfortable night. The noise was deafening from the rain hitting the tarp...there was a consolation prize....we were going to get to sleep with a very enjoyable tent fan!! We couldn't wait to get it set up because, with the humidity at 100%, it was ungodly hot in the tent. Oh, and did I mention that my very wise son had a kick-ass sunburn too? Hehehehe Dylan put together the fan and......it didn't work. At all. Nada. Zilch. Shit!

Happy day. Well, I've been very aware lately about the balance in life and the fact that we had driven across the country to one of the best beaches in the world so a little (LOT) rain wasn't going to ruin my spirits too much.