galeckiadventure.com

Tag: #GA

  • Feb 24 and 25: Good by Skidaway Georgia and Hello Sesquicentennial State Park in South Carolina

    February 24 is another great morning in Georgia. This park has been so enjoyable. Lexie and I took a walk around the Big Ferry Trail and this walk included a side trip to an observation tower. I was excited about the tower, Lexie was indifferent. But she did make it up the stairs.

    morning walk: observation tower on Big Ferry trail
    a view from observation tower
    another view from observation tower
    yet another view from observation tower
    Lexie doesn’t care about the view from observation tower

    We left the park with only a minor black water incident. And the trip to Sesquicentennial State Park near Columbia South Carolina was uneventful. We stopped at a rest area/welcome center in South Carolina and at a Love’s closer to Columbia.

    Our original camp site was occupied but the park rangers got us another site that we liked even more: very much into the woods! One advantage of coming in on a Monday is that all the weekend people have left, and the park has many vacant sites. The park is very nice, not as nice as Skidaway but we made do. We had another campfire and Vicki played her guitar in the evening. We sang songs both with the guitar and acapello.

    Sesquicentennial SP camping site head on view
    Sesquicentennial SP camping site driver side view
    Sesquicentennial SP evening camping

    February 25 was cool, the morning temperature was 37F. But Lexie and I went out for a 4.4 mile walk around the big outside loop of the park. I thought a walk of that length would tire Lexie for the rest of the day, and it was close. She still wanted a few more walks, but she was satisfied with shorter walks.

    Sesquicentennial SP morning walk with Lexie around outside loop
    Sesquicenteninial SP morning walk with Lexie

    In the afternoon Vicki and I biked around the park. We biked to the park entrance, but the final hill was a little much for Vicki. We also biked around the lake on an old asphalt trail. The trail was challenging. There were tree roots, broken asphalt, sand, and narrow bridges with people on them. But we made it around the lake without incident. The map from Map-my-ride is incorrect, we did not bike across the lake. I turned off the app at one point and realized about one mile later that I had not turned it on yet.

    Sesquicentinial SP bike ride (Vicki is ready)
    Sesquicentennial SP bike ride (missing a segment)
    Sesquicentennial SP bike ride overlooking the lake
    entrance to Sesquicentennial SP from bike ride

    We made another, small campfire in the evening. Sorry, no pictures….

  • Feb 23 2025: A day in Savannah

    Another morning, another dog walk in the wild at Skidaway State Park. The trails here are great, you see a variety of different ecosystems. Marshes, tidal marshes, forested areas. Today Lexie and I walked about 2.7 miles, covering some of the area that I biked on yesterday and some of the trail we walked along yesterday.

    Skidaway SP morning walk onto Big Ferry trail
    Skidaway SP morning walk: Connector trail from Big Ferry
    Skidaway SP morning walk: Lexie thinks she has a choice

    The remainder of the day was spent in Savannah! An Uber picked us up at the park’s visitor center.

    Skidaway SP Vicki at the visitor center

    The Uber driver was very nice and gave us a brief overview of Savannah. We bought tickets for Savannah’s Old Town Trolley and rode around the town for 90 minutes. While there were hop-off/hop-on privileges, we stayed on to get the entire tour.

    After the tour we were hungry. The visitor center at the trolley stop recommended Crystal Beer Parlor for food, and we walked on over. On the way over we stopped at the earthworks of the Battle of Savannah historical site (no National Park stamp for this site.)

    1779 Battle of Savannah

    Crystal Beer is a popular place, especially on a Sunday at 1pm. Rather than wait 30 to 40 minutes, we ordered our food to go, and ate the food at the waiting area/picnic benches outside the restaurant. The person taking our ‘to-go’ order even brought the food out to us! So the service was exceptional. And the food was great: crab soup, shrimp and grits, and peach cobbler.

    Savannah: outside of Crystal Beer
    Savannah: outside waiting and dining area at Crystal Beer
    crab soup at Crystal Beer
    shrimp and grits at Crystal Beer

    After lunch we walked through the historic part of the city, enjoying the different squares that make up the old part of Savannah.

    one of Savannah’s squares
    relaxing at one of Savannah’s squares

    An Uber took us back to Skidaway State Park. We enjoyed another, smaller campfire that evening.

    Skidaway SP campfire

  • Feb 22 2025: Skidaway State Park in Georgia

    The campsite was easy to set up. Lots of space around the campsite and good hook-ups for electricity, water and sewer. The weather was cool so we didn’t set the awning out. But we did get some outside time.

    Skidaway SP campsite
    Skidaway SP campsite view
    Skidaway SP campsite
    Skidaway SP campsite

    Lexie got a lot of walking today. We took a 1.5mile hike in the morning to the entrance of the park.

    Lexie at Skidaway SP entrance

    But that wasn’t enough for her, she got another 3 mile hike along the interior nature trails later in the morning.

    Skidaway SP Avian Loop walking trails
    Skidaway SP Sandpiper walking trails
    Skidaway SP Avian walking trails
    Lexie at Skidaway Narrows

    Lexie was mostly quiet for the rest of the day. But she did appear to have some separation anxiety when Vicki and I left to go to a park event.

    Vicki in Skidaway SP

    The park and the girl scouts had arranged to sell girl scout cookies at the park while the park had a firepit going to roast marshmallows. So Vicki and I bought a couple of boxes and put roasted marshmallows on a few. Then we went back to our campsite to have dinner.

    I did get a bike ride in today. There was a 3 mile trail inside the park that consisted mostly of tree roots. I then biked a couple of miles outside the park on some multi-purpose trails intended to be shared with pedestrians, bicycles and golf-carts.

    Skidaway SP bike ride

    We also had a campfire tonight, our first campfire during this trip.

    Skidaway SP campfire

  • Feb 20 and 21: Last days at Port Orange and travel to Savannah

    Thursday Feb 20 was a relaxing day as we prepared to leave Port Orange and start our trip back north. I took Lexie on another hike to Spruce Creek Preserve, where I had to take another landscape picture:

    Spruce Creek Preserve pines and palms

    We took advantage of having a car for eating out one more time at La Catina. We split the malcajate which was so huge we have leftovers for lunch as we return back to Cleveland:

    Malcajate from La Cantina

    On Friday Feb 21 we said good-bye to Rose Bay resort. Vicki returned the rental car and I picked her up in the RV. I was worried about the winds on the RV as we drove along the Florida coast. Wind gusts were forecast up to 30mph. But the RV handled fine, just keeping me alert and making many steering adjustments. We did stop at a Buc-ees south of Jacksonville. It was my first stop at a Buc-ees, and we dashed in to buy a brisket sandwich and then dashed out. I didn’t like where I was parked, I think there may have been truck and RV parking somewhere that was not marked. But the store itself was amazing: a huge variety of freshly prepared foods, and a feeling more of a tourist/department store than a usual truck stop.

    Buc-ee south of Jacksonville
    Lexie wants to drive

    The trip north of Jacksonville included crossing a huge bridge where I focussed on the road and let Vicki look at the view. We stopped for gas about 90 minutes away from our final destination. We skirted south of Savannah to get to Skidaway state park. The final drive to the park was smooth, traffic moved quickly in the direction we were heading. The park is great, the campsites are very large. There will be more about the park and campsite in the next blog.

    onto Skidaway Island

  • Jan 29 2025: Traveling to Devil’s Den (258 miles)

    I learned today that it is not a good decision to take Lexie for a walk near a freeway. Lexie and I went for our early morning walk, which ended up being about 40 yards from I-75. A noisy I-75. Lexie went into a kinda shock, trying to get away from the freeway every chance she had. And she stopped listening to me. When she finally started listening again (because the freeway was far enough away), she wouldn’t look at me. She remained skittish until we had been driving again for about an hour.

    Today’s morning routine now included removing the water hose from the campground faucet. So far there have been no major problems while traveling. Lots of small problems though. The most bothersome problem is having the doors open (example: the refrigerator door) while we are traveling. We haven’t had anything fall out yet, but it is a matter of time. Our shopping list now includes tension rods that we can use to keep the doors closed as they push the door against the other side of the RV.

    We stopped at two rest areas today. There was no need for gas!

    The first rest area was in Georgia, and there was a large wooded area in the back that I walked Lexie in. Vicki and I had lunch in the RV: ham/turkey sandwiches and pasta salad.

    Lexi at the Georgia rest area
    Lunch at the Georgia rest area

    The second rest area was at the Florida welcome center, where we got small glasses of Florida orange juice and grapefruit juice. We also got a lot of information about items of (tourist) interest in the places in Florida we were visiting.

    FLA welcome center

    We got to our campground, Devil’s Den, ten minutes before the office closed. God is definitely watching over us, I was not aware that the office closed at 4:30. The route suggested by my RV Life app included some unpaved roads! Unpaved, narrow, bumpy roads. The preferences on the maps app for our next travel day have already been adjusted.

    unpaved road into Devils Den

    The site at Devil’s Den is very pleasant, spacious and quiet (no road noise!) There is no bath house, so we will be really using the RV’s amenities for the next two days. There are also tall trees so close the RV that we can’t open the awning. And we are parked on Florida sand.

    Devils Den campsite
    Vicki relaxing at camp
    relaxing in the evening

    We took out the camp chairs and relaxed in the warm air in the evening. We didn’t need the awning. Lexie was tied to the RV, she spent most of her time laying down near us.

    I briefly met our neighbor. This is their first long road trip with their RV, and they are from Willoughby, OHIO. Hopefully we will talk to them more tomorrow.

    Something to note: my fitbit says that I have been getting over 15000 steps a day while traveling. Most of those steps are from the RV shaking my arm back and forth

    Vicki – This is such a relaxing campground. Lots of shade, pretty quiet and feeling like we’re really in rural FL. We just found out the more civilized route (paved road) actually has stores, etc. LOL. It was lovely to have our appetizers, buffalo chix dip and crackers in this place that really feels like camping/glamping.

  • Jan 28 2025: Into Georgia, around Atlanta (294 miles)

    (Steven) The mattress heating pad on the bed kept us both warm, maybe a little too warm for me. I will adjust its setting to something less. Vicki liked her warm setting. But we were grateful for the heating pad as the RV itself got very chilly. There was frost all around the campsite when I first got up, but the frost was gone by the time we left at 10am.

    Lexi took me for another walk. Thanks to the All Trails app, I found that there was a trail on the Little Tennessee River that Lazy Acres overlooked. We did about 2.5 miles of walking, a great way to start the morning.

    Little Tennessee River trail
    Steve along the Little Tennessee River eastern bank

    This was going to be a longer driving day than the previous two days. The ride was smooth through Tennessee and through Georgia until we came close to Atlanta. Even though we took the bypass, and even though we were traveling in the early afternoon, there were still congested areas.

    Our first stop of the day was as the Georgia Welcome Center, a few miles south of the Tennessee/ Georgia border. This was our first experience of parking in the ‘truck’ area.

    Parking with the big boys

    Our second stop was south of Atlanta where we needed to walk around, and get some gas. Not much to say there except I bought 52 gallons of gas. Tank holds 80 gallons.

    We arrived at the Interstate RV campgrounds in Byron GA around 4:30 and set up the RV. Since we are not expecting any more freezing weather, I de-winterized the RV. An RV pulled into the spot next to us, and as the gentleman was checking out his set-up, I professed inexperience in de-winterizing and RV. He talked me through it, pointing out where the water heater was and where the anode needed to go. I am sure I would have figured it out, eventually. But it was much easier with an experienced person talking me through it. And now the RV is fully functional with working water (hot and cold) and toilet.

    campsite at Interstate RV, Byron GA

    Dinner tonight was another prepared meal from our Cleveland grocery store. But the dishes were washed properly and easily afterwards.

    Vicki-Hooray!!! Now I feel we are truly glamping – in-the-rig running water. Never took it for a luxury but it’s the game-changer. The late night bathroom trips are no problem now, instead of getting fully dressed and winter-coated to go outside to a rest room in below freezing temps in the middle of the night. Even doing the Atlanta bypass, the traffic is torture. On top of the usual heavy mid-day traffic, add to that the aftermath of a very serious car-truck accident and down the road a totally burned out semi cab. We were thankful for the above traffic view and the Jack Reacher audible book as we sat and inched our way along I-285.

    Every day is a new learning adventure. We are thankful for this time together and the nice people we’re meeting along the way. Closed our evening with a game of Azul, then I was up til the wee hours reading.

    Game night with Azul. Vicki outscored me 85 to 45. But I am still smiling.