We’ve spent the last few days at a great little RV campground outside Savannah, but it is still getting way to cold. We decided to make a long haul further south into Florida – this included our first dry camping stay at a Flying J – it actually worked out pretty well!
Before we hit the road again, we stopped at the historic Wormsloe Plantation estate. This place has been around since the earliest colonial period in Georgia around 1730, but all that remains of the original homestead is a little bit of decaying fort walls. Honestly, with a $10 entrance fee this place was not really worth it – especially compared to the really cool personalized tours we got for like $5 at the Carl Sandberg Home and Carson House earlier.
The trees were cool though! We drove the rest of the day, making it down the road to a Flying J outside of St. Augustine. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time we’ve slept at a truck stop, but it is the first time with the camper. The place was pretty full, but we found a spot in between two bigger rigs.
I’m a big newb at all of this, but even I know that truck stop etiquette says you don’t deploy your RV slideouts, and you definitely don’t run your generator for more than a few minutes at night. The lovely old couple next to us missed that memo. By midnight, we couldn’t take the rumbling noise and noxious gas fumes so we moved over to a different spot.
Unfortunately 5 minutes later a truck cab pulled up right next to us – which wouldn’t be a big deal except that they never shut that thing down. It just kept rumbling away at idle… for hours… Everything in the camper was vibrating from the cabinets to the light fixtures – I felt like my eyeballs were bouncing out of my head! Ok that’s a little dramatic, but it turns out there is this whole RV’er vs. trucker battle out on the internets. On the RV’ers’ side, peace and quiet; on the truckers’ side, comfort and lower maintenance costs. I’m an RV’er so screw those trucker bastards!
We moved to a third location at about 2 in the morning, nestled between a big boxy 80’s motorhome and a 70’s VW bus. The camper must have felt right at home there, and we got a decent night’s sleep. Overall, we were pretty happy with the Flying J experience. The restrooms were clean, the attached Subway provided dinner, they have donuts in the morning – and you can’t get cheaper than free! We will definitely be adding truck stops to our camping repertoire from now on.
So after a long day of driving and a long night of Flying J’ing, we’ve officially arrived in Florida! Let the sunny good times begin (hopefully)!
