Palm Trees in southern Florida

Sunday, November 27, 2016

I got married!

The first of this month I got married, her name is Karen and I'm really happy!
I gave some thought about bringing my personal life into this blog, it's a good place for it.  Marrying Karen is one of the best things I've done in my life and my blog is a good place to mention it!



We went traveling....

Tybee Island Georgia was our first stop. We parked in the yard of the brother of a friend of Karen's, I cannot say enough about the hospitality shown by Clark & Nancy!
The Tybee Is house we stayed at

Parked in front

Tybee is was a nice place, the recovery from hurricane Matthew was still going on but the place was intact.
The collected debris 

Dolphins 


We played tourist in Savannah  for a couple of days. A pleasant city where tourism was just a side show, a view of the old south through it's architecture & the stories in the museums & other tours. Spent one night at the American Legion on Tybee Is (great people there!) & another at the Savannah visitor center parking lot

American Legion building on Tybee Is

A fountain at one of the many Savannah squares 

A house off a square

Standing in front of a fountain 


We were tourists in St Augustine Florida. The oldest city in America, Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth? This was the place!
It's a picturesque town but I got the feeling that tourism is the major player in the town.  There is a lot of history to be seen & touched. We Walmart parked for several nights.
The gates to the walled city of St Augustine


Savannah was a city that had tourist stuff to do & St Augustine is a city that had lot's & lot's of tourist stuff. A nice beach too!


We went camping, there is going to be a lot of camping in our future...

At Ft Clinch state park in Florida


Ft Clinch State Park in Florida was a fine place to spend a couple of days.
We stayed at the river camp, nice sites & great showers! Not really happy about the cost but it's a state park, almost everything was already reserved but we lucked out and did get a spot for two nights.
Walking on the beach we found sea shells, a brown snake ... a really fast brown snake and a around that last bend a fort! The fort was a great place to wander around and read the signs.
From what I've seen Florida parks need to be reserved well ahead of time if that's where you want to stay.

Coast Guard at Ft Clinch


A "fast" brown colored snake
Sea shells on the Ft Clinch beach



Ocean Pond National Forest campground  was a great place to spend a couple of days. It's not too far from Lake City Florida & I-10. The drinking water was good, a lot of the sites were a real good size & level.
The showers at the bath house were great, in my book great campground showers are a thing of joy!  These were a good size, unmetered hot water, four hooks and a bench. These were good showers!

This whole thing was our Ocean Pond camp site

Sunset over ocean pond


This is a national forest camp so if you have an America The Beautiful pass  (The "old farts pass" it's $10 & good for life if you're 62 years or older) the site rates are 1/2 price.  19 sites had electricity if that's important to you.

After that were visited some SE GTG vandwellers at Cobb Camp  not too far from Ocean Pond, this is a no service dispersed camping kind of place... that means it's free!
It was good seeing Cuzzen Dick, Mimi, Dave & Ken again (I'd met them at the spring se gtg).

A few days at Cobb Camp. Good food, good friends, good talks around the campfire & it was time to move on, we had obligations for Thanksgiving.

Cobb camp


I do have an observation... solar on your camper is a good thing, a really good thing... it's magic! So much of what we did was powered after dark with electricity harvested from the sun, it just worked.


We plan on heading to Quartzsite after Christmas.... Like Barney (The Old Fat Man) & so many other bloggers say,  "Don't wait. Do it now."