travel Archives - Page 2 of 6 -

Coral Castle

December 12, 2014 Drew

We stopped at the Coral Castle, as we continue to head down to the Florida Keys. Overall impression… Meh. We also had a bit of an incident at Walmart!

The Coral Castle is located right off highway 1, and is the first “attraction” we’ve been to in South Florida. At $15 each, the entrance fee to this place is steep – especially given the lack of anything to actually look at besides a few rocks here and there.

Don’t get me wrong, the little Latvian American dude name Ed who built this crazy little place did some good work… but just not $15 dollars good. In fact, he actually knew what his work was worth, and charged people 10¢ to check it out.

I’m no math expert, but everyone knows that 10 cents in the 40’s to $15 today is about a 7.5% annual rate of inflation – sounds like someone got a little greedy over the years!

So after being ripped off at the Coral Castle, we headed over to spend the night at Walmart. Everything looked good when we arrived around 4PM. A couple other rigs were already there, and we settled in nicely.

Bam! All of a sudden something rocked the camper hard. Noelle and I ran out as fast as we could. We were both worried it might be a hit and run situation. Outside, we saw a car wedged up against the spare tire on the back of the camper. The lady inside was kind of leaning over and shaking.

I’m freaking out – Noelle calls 911, I try to knock on the window to see if the lady will wake up. I could see that she was breathing, but she wouldn’t respond. Meanwhile, her car was still running, and was scratching further along the tire.

The police arrived, the lady eventually woke up, and they took her to the hospital. They said she might have had a diabetic seizure. The camper appears undamaged except for a torn tire cover – whew! If she had hit any other part of the camper, there would have been damage – if we hadn’t been there, she might have driven out onto the street or hit somebody.

After all that excitement, we decided to skip the whole Walmart thing and headed to a campground for the night. Another exciting day on the road!

Florida, Road Trip

Orion Launch!

December 5, 2014 Drew

We’re staying at a great campground this week situated right across from the Canaveral AFB. We saw the launch of the first Orion space vehicle, and it was awesome!

We got up at the crack of dawn on Thursday to watch the launch. You could just barely see the big Delta IV Heavy rocket across the lagoon – we set up our chairs and settled in for the view. The lagoon area is beautiful; the sunrise was amazing. While we waited, we saw a bunch of dolphins swim by, I saw a manatee or two, and the pelicans were fishing for the mullet that would periodically jump out of the water.

First we heard that a boat was delaying the launch… then the wind put it on hold again. The sun continued to rise, and we continued to wait. We heard that a valve issue was causing problems. At this point, I’m thinking how hard can this be? I mean, I got a 50 year old VW bus running with no valve issues… it’s not like this is rocket science… OK maybe it is.

They scrubbed the launch for Thursday morning, but we were back Friday. At 7:05AM, a bright light and a big cloud of smoke appeared. The rocket almost just sat there for a second, then accelerated up into the sky. It disappeared into the low hanging clouds within seconds – Noelle and I kind of glanced at each other with the same thought… that was it? We waited around two days to see a little bit of light take three seconds to disappear from view?

Then the sound hit us. It started as a low rumble, and crescendoed into a full blown roar. We couldn’t see the rocket anymore, but we felt that rumble all the way through our feet for what seemed like a long time. It slowly faded, the vibrations eased, and silenced ensued.

Well it wasn’t really silence because the nice lady with that lovely harsh, grating voice kept asking the little kid that was with her if he could hear the rocket. I’m sure if the kid was old enough to talk he would have said something like “Yes lady, I hear the damn rocket! It’s shaking my little boots off, now shut the hell up and just enjoy the experience!”

Here are my feeble attempts to take pictures – my lens is too small, my iso is too high, my skills are non-exsistent…

The launch was cool, and I’m really glad we were here to see it. I also broke out my fishing pole for the first time. I went to a bait shop just down the road, and got some great advice from the lady running the place. She got me some frozen mullet as bait, some hooks, and some 20lb line. I was honestly a little scared to catch some monster that my little cheap push button rod and reel couldn’t handle, but it all worked out. I caught a few big catfish, and some sea trout – success! Now I just need to graduate up to cleaning and eating them!

Florida, Road Trip

Daytona Beach

November 24, 2014 Drew

We made it to the beach! Honestly, there is a part of me that thinks this whole plan to quit my job and travel around was just a big elaborate excuse to go to the beach – well today we have officially achieved that goal – success!

The weather is finally warming up a bit (although they say it will cool down again in a couple days). To get the most out of the fleeting warm temps, we spent two great days hanging out at Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach.

The beaches were really pretty nice – not to crowded, nice and sandy, decent surf. We spent the $5 and drove out onto the beach at Daytona to park. At Ormond Beach, we decided to park for free at the Andy Romano beachfront park – they had a decent food stand there too.

Noelle and I both love the water – I want to eventually try surfing, she wants to eventually try scuba diving. Well we started with buying this sweet boogie board. I’m obviously writing this post after the fact, but we had a great time attempting to ride the waves with that thing – granted it is also already broken into two pieces, but hey it still works!

We hit up Joe’s Crab Shack for a really nice (and really expensive) seafood lunch – yumm!!!

One of the guys caught a huge fish right after I took this pic – his wife brought it up in a net, and he just smiled and walked the length of the jetty like a boss before putting it in his cooler – the other fisherpeople were so jealous.

At one point in the day, Noelle and I just looked at each other and said something like “Yep… this is what we are supposed to be doing.” We had a nice couple of days!

Florida, Road Trip

Flying J

November 22, 2014 Drew

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)!

Road Trip, South Carolina

Congaree

November 17, 2014 Drew

The first stop on our route south is Congaree National Park. This place is beautiful, and adds another unexpected and awesome location to the list of great travel experiences that we are slowly but surely accruing.

We also survived our first thunderstorm in the camper! Coming from the Midwest, I am definitely no stranger to some decent severe weather. While this storm really wasn’t all that severe, it was interesting to feel the thunderclaps rumble through the whole camper. We got boatloads of rain, and thankfully only one leak in the corner of one of the windows. I think I see where it is coming in, so I’ll be caulking that asap.

After the rain subsided, we headed out for Congaree. This National Park is the largest “old growth” cypress and hardwood forest in the US. The visitor center was closed today, and we didn’t see another person the entire time we wandered the boardwalk trail.

The trees are among the tallest in the world, and the park has a nice little self-guided tour that provides some information and context. The pictures don’t really do this place justice. Noelle and I were both left feeling a little bit in awe of nature after doing the 2 mile loop through the dense forest.

She is such a creep!

They say the polar vortex is coming and it is supposed to get freezing cold – hope we make it!