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Bluegrass & Traveling Trivia
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Of course we woke up to rain. Mammoth Cave Campground is a nice campground in an interesting place so we aren’t in much of a hurry to get moving. A male northern cardinal started tapping on our windshield presumably looking for seeds caught in the windshield wipers driving Dora crazy.
We return the Visitors Center which is much less crowded. Jeanne comes to a stop at the Women at Mammoth and History of the Woman Ranger Uniform temporary exhibits, while Tim prowls the geology.
“Check out this fossil— it’s a scaled pre-tree.”
“OMG! In the 70s women rangers were forced to wear yellow miniskirts and gogo boots. Their uniforms were designed by fashion designers in DC. They had to go to court to be able to wear the men’s uniforms.”
“How do they map the different levels in a 2D map? Can you use a compass underground? How do you indicate depth?"
“A woman on a caving expedition in the Flint Ridge Cave system found the connector to Mammoth, making it the longest cave. She was the only one small enough to squeeze through a crack and saw a tourist trail.”
Mammoth Cave is a National Park and it is obligatory for the Visitor Center to have a movie about the park. This interior designer had some fun with the movie room. The movie projector is attached to the backpack of a mannequin of a caver who is rappelling down through a hole in the ceiling.
We drag ourselves away from Mammoth (where it is starting to rain) and leisurely retrace our steps through Kentucky. We get back Blue Ridge Parkway to Lexington KY. “Is this where the Kentucky Derby is run?” The co-pilot’s duties include answering the idle curiosity of the driver. “No, this is Kneeland race track.”
Kneeland is acres of perfectly manicured grass on artistically rolling hills crossed with immaculate white fences. It is decorated with a castle.
“What’s the capital of West Virginia? I see a gold dome.” The copilot is busy petting the poodle. “Well, it must be Charleston. I fail at State Capitols for 400.”
We finally head into West Virginia with a destination of New River National Recreation Area. Jeanne finds a likely boondocking spot at a ballfield in Fayetteville. There are road closures for flooding and bridges repair, so Google Maps sends us on thin winding roads.
The speed limit is 55mph, but Jeanne doesn’t dare go over 35 around the tight curves. She pulls over often to allow the annoyed locals to zoom by — even around switchbacks steeply descending down a river gorge. WV 16 is a fabulous scenic drive (picture the NH Kancamagus with no tourists or amenities like signs or pullovers). You just have to wrench your eyes from the road to catch a glimpse of waterfalls and gorges.
We pull up at Fayetteville Huse Memorial Park where local school baseball games draw a small crowd of parents. Finally the field lights go out. The local sheriff patrols by but doesn’t bother us.
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Mammoth Cave National Park
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
It’s pouring rain as we wake up. It has now rained every day of this trip —11 days so far. As we cross the Tennessee River, we compare weather apps to see where we can go with good weather. No luck. Any place with good weather will have rain by the time we can get there. Oh well. We had great weather when we really needed it yesterday.
Jeanne was scrolling maps looking for ideas when she spotted Mammoth Cave National Park. It’s a couple hours away, and we could get in our daily steps without getting drenched. Perfect!! We set Google Maps for Mammoth Cave.
This is not an original idea. We grab the last spot in the campground. We luck out and get the volunteer host site which has power and water. None of the rest of the sites have power. We head over to the Visitor Center to check out the cave tours. The parking lot was packed with cars and RVs. The rain is torrential and the entrance sidewalks are blocked with large puddles. We buy tickets for the self-guided tour and walk down a steep trail toward the historic cave entrance.
The entrance is framed by a waterfall.
We turn in our tickets to the waterproofed ranger at the cave mouth, receive the safety talk from the next ranger who is trying for a career in standup. “If you are bitten by a bat, once you stop screaming, see a ranger who will calm you down with stacks of government paperwork on the dangers of rabies.”
Charmed, we head into the Twilight Zone of animals that live near the entrances to caves.
This is not like Carlsbad Caverns. There are no delicate cave formations. In the tourist area, anything delicate was removed in the 1800s.
The cave was mined for gypsum by enslaved people to make gunpowder for the War of 1812 and beyond.
This cave system is capped by sandstone which prevents the slow percolation of water that builds stalagmites, so there are few formations. It has 5 layers cave rooms as mapped that have been carved by different levels of water before entering the Green River.
Jeanne asks a bored ranger where all the bats are. He says that 90% of the bats have died of white nose syndrome but points out one on the wall. They are 1.5 inches long, and look more like a caterpillar.
We carefully walk the path past WW1 memorial stones and rock formations into a huge oval room that was carved by a river of water.
We stop by the remains of the saltpeter works where gypsum was processed in the 1860’s and sold to DuPont. The sign said it was mixed with turnip and ox blood. Highly dubious, Tim asked the ranger who clarifies it was mostly tree ash. He called it “guide lore” where a good story takes on a history of its own.
The Visitor Center was still crowded, so we headed back to the campstore for showers. Much refreshed, we headed back to the campsite, plugged into power and decided to take advantage of the abundant electrons to cook several days of meals.
After dinner we headed out for what we thought would be a quick stroll around the campground, but stumbled onto a hiking trail where Dora could run. After a day in the rain, an hour’s walk under heavily overcast skies was a treat.
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Eclipse Day
Monday, April 8, 2024
Eclipse day dawned with early rain and heavy fog. The birds had been singing enthusiastically since 3:00am. So much for birds being quiet when it is dark.
Tim comes back from the casino with news that the weather reports are looking good. We hang out in the parking lot with the other RV owners, drink coffee, admire each other’s RVs, and discuss the best place to watch.
We head to a small parking lot for a fishing boat access to the river next to the casino and make food for Dora.
Backpacks full of eclipse-watching equipment, we climb up the grassy levee with chairs and a folding table. We settle in and watch the river roll by.
Andy announces he sees the first bite out of the sun. We hastily unpack the eclipse gear, don our eclipse glasses and start taking photos.
As we approach totality, Andy Jr. — Tim’s nephew from Kansas and his wife Shante arrive. Andy Sr had been vectoring them in. They had been caught in traffic, but arrived just as it was starting to get cold.
While we are waiting on the levee, the transportation industry carries on around us.
On one side of the levee, two huge barges approached each other from opposite directions.
On the other side, a freight train passes below us.
We get ready for totality as the sun shrinks to a sliver.
The lights come on in the casino parking lot.
Totality! The Diamond Ring! We had never seen it before — the last sliver of sun shining between the mountains on the moon. It only lasts a second. We didn’t try to take a picture, but Andy took a fabulous shot with superior equipment than a smartphone.
“What’s that orange dot? Do you see it?” We all did. Jeanne grabbed her hand monocular and said “I think it’s a solar flare!” Actually, it was a prominence, but close enough. Flares disconnect from the sun and some head toward earth causing auroras and problems with the electric grid. Prominences are giant spouts of plasma that shoot out from the sun like loopy filaments, but stay connected.
The sun has an 11 year cycle of activity and this year is the peak of its cycle. During the 2017 eclipse, the sun was still in the low activity part of its cycle so we didn’t see any activity.
The night lights in the casino parking lot turn on. Swarms of midges swirl around Tim. The sky is twilight dark.
Andy Jr has brought a white sheet to spread on the ground that now has shimmering bands of light that appear to squirm like snacks in a moire pattern. Because the light from the sun is down to a single point, it has strange properties of parallel lines of light.
Suddenly, the we see the diamond ring again — the first bit of sunlight as the moon shadow depart. I hastily aim my camera upriver and catch the last bit of the moon shadow departing, heading northeast. I wish good viewing my friends up north. It is suddenly bright out and there are golden sunrise colors over the Mississippi River.
Most of the people on the levee leave with the moon “show’s over”, but we linger. The three families don’t see each other often and we are all so excited and awestruck. Finally we pack up and head down to the parking lot. We all have different plans and places to go.
We take a last group photo to memorialize the day. Andy calls us the “Umbraphiles” — shadow lovers. Andy, Andy, and Shante head for a BBQ restaurant to charge their truck. We head east for a town with better cell service because Tim has a Zoom meeting.
The traffic was light leaving Cape Girardeau north into Illinois. Our arrival time in Paducah, KY was 5:22. As we approached the Ohio River crossing, the time went up and up. Google Maps algorithm did its trick of packing the side roads. Jeanne fell for the shortcut. We were stuck on a side road a half mile from the bridge for over 2 hours.
Tim cooked dinner, then started his Zoom call. We arrived in Paducah at 7:53. The parking lot at the Paducah Cracker Barrel was crowded with RVs, but still had spaces in the RV parking area. We gratefully settled for the night.
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Sun & Shadow
Eclipse Day April 8, 2024
There were so many fun photos to show that we had to split up the posts. Here are the best sun photos that Jeanne took with her smartphone, a solar filter, and the Solar Snap app.
Note: the sun was always the same blinding white. My app was changing the amount of light it let in so I could get a good focus, and that changed the color.
First bite…
30 minutes in…
10 minutes to showtime…
Look at the solar prominences in the lower right quadrant at edge of the sun. They are a flare of plasma ejected from the sun. They were visible to the naked eye as an orange dot we all saw. Absolutely incredible!!
Moon departs…
Last bite as the moon heads northeast.
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Mississippi River
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Dora and Tim have a great time playing in the wet morning grass outside the Paducah Cracker Barrel. There are smells beneath every shrub. Then we load up and head out toward Missouri.
As we get closer to the Mississippi River we see more levees, including this bridge that looked like the steel overhead could be lowered to protect the town.
We drove through Cairo (pronounced Karo like the syrup) at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. It is the only town protected by levees on all four sides.
It was depressing to see what the change to overland trucking has wrought to what used to be a prosperous river city. The town was full of disintegrating abandoned homes, factories, and businesses.
We cross the Ohio River into Illinois and parallel the Mississippi through very rural roads. Much more interesting than the interstates.
We finally cross the Mississippi River into Missouri at Cape Girardeau ("jir-AR-doh"). Beautiful bridge into a much larger city than Jeanne expected. According to the city website, they had 15,000 visitors for the 2017 eclipse and are expecting 20,000 this year.
Compared to the two other eclipses we have seen, they don’t seem prepared. There are no signs for places to camp or park.
To our horror, we have no cell service. It must be all the visitors saturating the cell towers. We can’t look up information or addresses with any reliability. Phone calls don’t go through. Text messages are hit or miss.
We stop at the local sports field where there are a number of youth games on the multiple fields. We look for an official to ask where RV parking is. Two friendly Parks & Rec men say they don’t know, we can’t stay here and here’s the name of a good BBQ place.
After they leave, a Black woman named Bertha comes over and tells us that we can camp at a vacant lot near her house, and that we should also try the casino. The casino was on our list of places to try, so we thanked her and went there.
Did I mention that it was raining again? This is so depressing for eclipse watching. It’s less than 24 hours to totality and the weather is miserable.
To our surprise, the casino was not charging for overnight parking. They were very gracious and friendly. We had a Zoom call at 3:30, so we went into the casino to mooch wifi.
The casino had a spot set up to take selfies, so we took advantage. The manager helpfully took it for us. Notice the raincoats.
The casino had a display of a DeLorean sports car. To our surprise, someone got in and drove it out the revolving door. It barely fit, so they were very careful.
We went back to the casino every couple hours to check the weather. Not good. We make plans to leave in the morning, but where?
Tim’s brother Andy arrives and parks next to us in the parking lot. Andy says he has been ODing on cloud coverage sites. Us, too. If you ever want a list, we have a half-dozen bookmarked, and Andy even has more.
We have dinner together on in our RV and make more plans. Bertha stopped by to make sure we were ok. Amazingly considerate.
The Mississippi is close so we take Dora for a long walk on and around the levees. This is the same bridge from the shore.
We watch barges and their tugboats.
We speculate on the sign on the bridge and then zoom in to see that it marks the clearance under the bridge.
The sky is stormy-looking, but not actively raining. We decide to check the forecasts in the casino in the morning (still no cell service) and decide then.
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West Virginia to Kentucky
Saturday, April 6, 2024
We decided to do a long driving day so we could arrive at Cape Girardeau, Missouri on Sunday morning and scout it before the eclipse. Tim’s brother Andy is going to meet us there. The weather looks good two days out from the eclipse, but who knows?
We get on I-68 into West Virginia. It is snowing. Not very hard, and only a dusting of accumulation, but still. Snowing, on a trip where it has rained every day. Ominous.
West Virginia is beautiful but the weather is not.
After several hours we drop down into Kentucky where it is spring and beautiful.
We stop at a rest area where a historic mansion from the 1860s has been converted into a rest area building. Fortunately, the bathrooms were modern. Dora played on the lawns.
We pass a park with a sizable backup to get into the horse race or horse show. We are behind a trailer labeled Show Horses. We quickly leave it behind because we don’t need the left turn lanes.
The Bluegrass Parkway in Kentucky is a fabulous drive. It’s a divided limited access highway with beautiful lawns, houses, flowering trees and the famous Kentucky Bluegrass.
We stayed at the Cracker Barrel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
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Back to Sideling Hill
Friday, April 5, 2024
We were tempted to stay another day at Assateague, but when we looked at the Google Maps driving estimate, we realized we needed to leave today. Missouri is looking still better, so we will go in that direction and not Maine. But first, we need to charge the battery in the RV, so that means we need to buy breakfast. Ocean City and the Bayside Skillet -- a fabulous breakfast place on the water with gluten-free crepes. The seafood crepe is to die for.
90 minutes at a laundromat, and we are ready to go. Jeanne strikes up a conversation with a grandmother and her 3 year old granddaughter. We show them the RV, but the granddaughter is mostly interested in Dora.
We stop for lunch at Sailwind Park on the Maryland Coast. The huge shade sail is visible from the highway. There is a large playground with three buses of children playing.
Tim and Dora go for a walk on the beach. Jeanne takes pictures of the sail.
Trees are blooming and the weather is lovely, until we get inland, when of course, it starts raining again.
We retrace our route across Maryland, hoping to cross West Virginia tomorrow. Sideling Hill is still a great place to stop for the night.
We arrive at Sideling Hill again around sunset. It is misting, but at least we can see the rock formation this time.
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Assateague Continues
Thursday, April 4, 2024
It's a sunny day and reasonably warm morning in the high 50s. We move to a spacious new campsite with a water view. It has a small pond (flooding) but there is plenty of room for Dora to run. It even has cactus growing. After a cautious sniff, Dora avoids the cactus.
After a few hours of basking in the sun, the clouds start to roll in. Of course they do.
We grab our raincoats and go for a walk. First down to our private beach, which is flooded.
Then across the road to the ocean side of the island where we play squeaker on the beach and watch the birds and the waves.
The weather continues to look better in the middle of the eclipse route. If we watch the eclipse in Missouri, we can meet up with Tim's brother Andy and maybe some other friends. If we go to Maine, which still has the best weather, then we don't see anyone and end up with a shorter vacation in part of the country that we often visit. Tomorrow is decision day.
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Escape to Assateague
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Dora goes for her morning constitutional in the rain. Even with her coat, she is annoyed by the wet. Normally, she resists going back inside. Not today. A towel removes most of the water, but she hunkers down in the bed to finish drying off and warming up.
We push off east down Sideling Hill toward the coast. It is a short day's drive. We break it up with grocery shopping and Dora walks. The last couple of hours are familiar, and welcoming and rain free.
We arrive after the campground office has closed for the day. The office has listed which sites are unclaimed. We drive the campsite loops to take our pick. To say it has rained here recently would be an understatement. The picnic table in the campsite across from ours has a moat all the way around it, and a Mallard couple is enjoying paddling around in it.
There is a phrase that starts,."When in Rome..." Well, we are in Maryland, which is known for its crabs, so for us it is crab cake time. Jeanne even bought Old Bay seasoning at the supermarket. We wind up with more crab cakes than we should eat, but the rain has stopped, and the ponies are glad we are here, so we gobble down every crumb.
After sundown, Tim joins his weekly Zoom call at a table outside. The ponies stop by to see if they can get any tips via Tim's laptop.
Then it is off to bed to enjoy a rain-free night, the first in days.
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Fleeing the storm
April 2, 2024
We woke to clouds and drizzle and lots of discussion among family and friends of a 3-day storm in the northeast. Niagara Falls is supposed to get snow. So much for our plan of hanging out around Buffalo until the eclipse. The RV is very good in snow, but it is very small to be stuck inside for 3 days.
Where to go? We leave Niagara Falls heading west through Buffalo and turn south toward Pennsylvania .
We drive through the Allegheny National Forest in heavy rain, but no snow. The weather maps show this storm as huge — it stretches from Virginia to Maine and it’s coming from the west. We head for West Virginia in the hopes that it will be intermittent rain instead of constant rain.
Pennsylvania has the Zippo factory. Jeanne’s dad had a Zippo.
No luck. We stop at another favorite rest area — Sideling Hill in MD on I-68. The fog was so thick that visibility was difficult and it was still pouring. Sideling Hill has a beautiful road cut with fossil-bearing rocks that you can reach by a trail from the Welcome Center.
Dora does NOT want to leave the RV. We pick her up, put on her raincoat, and put her down outside. We are clearly crazy, so she makes the best of it.
The trail is closed, so we walk across the bridge over I-68 and admire the water pouring off the cliff.
Back at the RV, we study weather maps and try to make plans. Bad weather for days everywhere but the coast. Ok, if the only decent weather is at the coast, then let’s go to the coast.
Meanwhile, the eclipse weather forecast is changing. Texas is improving, but still bad. Missouri and Illinois are better and might be ok. If we go somewhere mid-eclipse-route, it’s reasonable to meet Tim’s brother and nephew and maybe go visit friends in Colorado after the eclipse. If we go to Maine, we won’t do that. Decisions, decisions.
We decide to hang out in the mid-Atlantics and decide on Friday.
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Niagara not-Falls
Monday April 1, 2024
April Fools. Jeanne had a rare win at pinch-punch. (Or PPFDOTMNR, as Tim’s siblings call it).
We head west on 90 toward Buffalo, because we have a vague idea about driving near the eclipse route. Buffalo, Vermont, and Maine look great for the eclipse — who would have guessed? But the eclipse is 8 days away and much can change. We are in no hurry to go anywhere, so we stop at Niagara, NY. The clouds had cleared into a mostly sunny day.
Instead of going to the Falls, we headed to the other side of town downstream of the Falls to look at the Niagara Whirlpool.
I can’t believe we have never gone here. There are two state parks along the Niagara Gorge, Devils Hole and Whirlpool State Park. We park at Devils Hole SP and walk along the rim of the Gorge upstream to the Whirlpool.
Looking back is a large generating station.
The rapids in the river look pretty, but from this height, the waves are probably 7-10 feet high.
At one point old stone stairs switchback down the cliff. We can see tiny dots of people down by the water. Looking at a topo map, the cliffs are over 300 feet high, but it seems much more than that.
The whirlpool is caused by the Niagara river taking a sharp turn right where these is an underlying fault in the rock that erodes faster and so the river has scooped out a circular “jacuzzi” in the gorge.
A large tree is trapped at the center of the whirlpool at the top center of the still below.
What we thought was going to be a quick stroll so Dora could pee turned into a gorgeous 3-mile hike.
We parked for a peaceful night in Seneca Niagara casino parking lot.
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Mohawk Valley
Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024
We got a leisurely start because we aren’t planning to go very far. The 10-day weather forecasts for the eclipse are disappointing. Texas is going to probably have rain. All the scientists we follow have had reservations in Texas for months if not years. We hope it gets better for their sakes, but Texas is out for us.
So where will we go? Let’s start with the Mohawk Valley Welcome Center on I-90 in NY. It’s a great place for Dora to run and play, it’s free, there are nice bathrooms, and it’s right off the highway about 3.5 hours from home.
Ok, that’s a no-brainer. Let’s go.
The welcome center is sited at Erie Canal Lock 13. When we get there, we find the lock is, um, open? Closed? What's the word for a lock where the dam has been retracted for the winter to prevent ice jams? At any rate, the water is flowing freely through the canal. At points on the canal, the banks remind us of a stony seashore at low tide.
Dora is happy to chase squeakers on the huge grass lawn below the lock.
On every trip, mechanical challenges come out to meet us, and this one is no different.
First, a pin broke on the sensor that tells us if the sliding side door is ajar. It chimes a warning now every time we shift to drive, but the driver can see from the side mirror whether the door is okay or not, so it's just a minor annoyance.
Second, the furnace is acting up. It starts to turn on, sputters a few seconds, and turns off again. Lather, rinse, repeat on about a 15-second cycle. We put insulation on every window, add a third blanket to the bed, turn the furnace off for the night, and hope it won't get too cold inside.
Spoiler alert: we lived through the night. It was so cold by 4:00 am that we couldn't sleep. We turned the furnace back on, and it started right away, warmed the cabin right up, and we got to go back to sleep until sunrise.
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Hatteras Island to Virginia
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
We start the morning with a long walk on the beach.
The wind has made striking patterns on the sand.
Another historic lighthouse in the distance. I think it is the Bodie Island Lighthouse, but we never got close enough to see the signs.
We watch the birds. I had a hard time picking the one video per entry that Tumblr allows, but finally settled on the brown pelican soaring. (The videos of Dora running on the beach were really cute too.)
We pack up and head for Virginia over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It's a long flat bridge over the water with two tunnels under the shipping channels and an arching bridge at the Virginia end.
We camp at a rest area at end of the bridge. It's a quiet area at this time of year. There are nature trails out of the truck parking area, so we go for a walk down to the marsh.
There is a historic WW2 cannon aimed out at the bay. The four-lane highway goes over it. The approach is an interesting photo with the shell at the end of the circle. But as I walked around the cannon, it was huge! Keep in mind, this is an obscure rest area on a not very traveled, not divided highway. No signs, nothing. It was fabulous.
There is a long staircase up to a lookout on a steep ridge with sweeping views of the marshes out to Chesapeake Bay.
Wednesday we got up early and headed for home. We made it -- it was the usual NJ, NY, CT, MA run, so I'm not writing it up.
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Ocracoke to Hattaras Island
Monday, March 11, 2024
We slept late and had a leisurely breakfast. We found an open restaurant with a GF menu and got delicious takeout for lunch. We overhear people at the restaurant talking that the ferry from the mainland was cancelled due to wind. We only have 2 hour drive to out next campsite and 1 hour of that ride is another ferry, so we saunter up the island to the Hatarras ferry.
There is a lot of flooding on the side of the road.
As we approach the narrow causeway we signs of a breakthrough of the ocean. The body-sized beige sandbags on the ocean side of the road are broken and the sand is spread across the road. There is a temporary "High Water" sign.
Then we see the front end loaders and earthmovers ahead of us. There are portable traffic lights that clearly get a lot of use controlling alternating use of one open lane while the heavy equipment clears the other lane.
We arrive at the ferry and are #2 in line. The 1:30 ferry doesn't show. The next ferry isn't until 3:30, but we hear that the ferries haven't been running all day but maybe the 3:30 will, so we decide to wait. A large line builds up behind us after word gets out that the 2:00 left Hatteras heading our way.
But there is no traffic getting off the ferry, so we play ball with Dora in the middle of NC Rt 12. Why not?
You can see where fairly recent storms took out the previous ferry landing.
The 3:30 ferry arrived.
We make it on the ferry which makes a very circuitous route between and around the sand bars. This used to be a much shorter trip. The ferry engine has a 1 second cavitation rock plus the heavy waves from the still high wind. Jeanne -- who normally has good sea legs -- is starting to feel nauseous by the time we get to land. This section of the Outer Banks is connected to the mainland by bridges, so there are many more stores and gas stations. We buy groceries, fill the fuel tank, and head for the next National Seashore campground.
We check out the historic lighthouse on our way out of town toward the campground.
Tim has a multi hour zoom call. It was a nice evening, but a long time to sit outside in the wind.
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Ocracoke Island, OBX (Outer Banks), NC
Sunday, March 10, 2024
[Note: We got way behind in blogging and didn’t finish before we got home. Sorry for the late entries. ]
We took the back roads from Little Pee Dee into the coast of North Carolina. There is a 4:30 ferry from the mainland out to Ocracoke. This time of year, it is the only afternoon ferry, so we can't miss it.
We stopped for lunch at Moore Creek Battlefield National Park. We assumed it would be Civil War, but no. It was a pivotal Revolutionary War battlefield that decided the fate of North Carolina. About 800 loyalists and Scottish Highlander troops faced about a thousand rebels who had removed the planks on the Moore Creek bridge and smeared the supports with lard so the British couldn't cross the bridge quickly. The Scottish Highlander troops were armed with broadswords. Talk about taking a knife to a gunfight. As their leaders attemped to lead a charge across the bridge, they were picked off by rebel muskets. Leaderless, the British retreated and ended the Revolutionary War in NC. It was also the last broadsword charge of the British Army.
We wanted to hike to the bridge, but fear of being late to the ferry drove us forward. It was a fun place, we should go back.
As we approached the coast, the marshes stretched for miles and as far as the eye could see.
We got to the ferry with 30 minutes to spare. The crossing was windy and cold, so we mostly stayed in car. The crossing was rough, we constant swaying from the rolling seas.
As we approached Ocracoke we were mystified to see the pilot keeping the channel markers with green on the right. "Red - Right - Return" is drilled into both of our navigation knowledge from our childhoods. We never found out why the channel is backwards from out expectation.
We remember Ocracoke as a bustling tourist town, but this early in the year it is quiet with a plethera of "Closed for the Season" signs. We headed out to the National Seashore campground which is mostly closed, but we only need a legal place to park. The bathrooms are open, but there are no showers or hot water. The grass is squishy and footprints quickly fill with water. It hasn't rained for days. What gives?
Many of the campsites are empty and flooded.
Regardless, Dora has a lovely time running on the beach. We decide to make a reservation at the campground on Hattaras Island for tomorrow.
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Little Pee Dee South Carolina
Saturday, March 9, 2024
We head north, slowly heading home. We set the GPS for Little Pee Dee State Park in northeast South Carolina. This seems to be a trend to settle in state parks based around a reservoir lake. They require a two day reservation on weekends, so why not?
It rained intermittently all day Saturday so we read and gamed and walked whenever the rain stopped. Little Pee Dee has loooong pine needles.
Dora had a blast playing with a pinecone in the deserted playground.
Jeanne kept wondering what the hint of yellow flower was high on the trees that we saw in GA and SC. She finally found the vine with flowers at human level.
Sunday dawned sunny and warm but we were itching to visit the Outer Banks. We left our lovely campsite and headed for Ocracoke Island in North Carolina.
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Laura Walker State Park Georgia
March 5-7, 2024
Florida is too hot unless we are on the coast and the coast doesn’t have places to camp and let puppies run. We head for Georgia and cooler weather.
Laura Walker State Park is just outside the Okefenoke Swamp, where we have been several times and loved. We made a reservation at the state park campground for one night. It’s a beautiful day in the high 65-67° and who wants to leave? We extend our reservation, walk Dora on the many hiking trails, read books and play games.
Why not another day? We clearly need to relax and just do nothing. So we do.
Our campsite is right on the lake.
Dora makes sure we go hiking several times a day.
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