Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 11

Saturday, February 21

In the morning I made these notes: It's so beautiful here I could stay for weeks. Last night I had to cut our walk short because it was spitting rain on us and it sermed to be getting worse. But it stopped shortly after.

Today its balmy, just like yesterday. However, Ed got up worried because the power was off. I checked with the camper across the road, and his was off too. We hadn’t noticed until the fan ran the house battery down low enough that it stopped; Ed had to turn the engine on to get the generator to start. It will use the house batteries if they have sufficient power, otherwise it needs the engine boost to use the auto batteries.

Mockingbirds think it’s spring! There were swallows in swarms and I think there were swifts, too. The piers by the boat dock hae been occupied in sequence by gulls, then cormorants, and today a pelican (brown) and a blackbird. They’re popular perches!

Our drive took us to Crooked River State Park, on the southern border of Georgia about six miles from Florida. And the ocean. It is a good bit different from the other Georgia state parks in that it’s new amd very developed. But despite all the fancy-ness, the sites are gravel—large, hunky gravel—and there are no sewer hookups. At least not for us. Possibly some of the other sites have them, but these in the main loop don’t.

As far as camping goes, I wasn’t loving this place like I did the last one. It’s too crowded and too open. The only option I have for walking Molly is right past other people’s campsites out to the street. And that’s what I’ll do in a little while. Hope I don’t get eaten by an alligator.

But it has some redeeming points:

I saw a Wood Stork in the pond at the entrance!!!! LIFER!  And a couple of alligators, some egrets and a grebe of some sort. 

In my evening walk I made the excited observation: There’s bats out here!  And mosquitos. Lovely. 

We ate at Local's Dockside in St. Mary’s. It was okay, although to beat the crowd we decided to eat at 5 o’clock which is awfully early for me. I actually wasn’t hungry, for once, haven eaten a small lunch at about 1:30.  In the time between lunch and dinner, I spent at least an hour and a half walking with Molly. We got sort of lost on the trails by trying to take a shortcut back to the dump station. Which didn’t work. But we found it eventually.

The restaurant was fine, but I walked away still hungry. I had fried oysters (9 of them), sweet potato waffle fries, and a bowl of green peas. The oysters were very good but not filling, the sweet potatoes light and crunchy and not at all filling—there were probably no more than 1/3 of a potato cut thinly and lightly battered. The peas were tasty but boring. And none of it was filling or in any way satisfying like a bowl of beans and rice would have been, or even a big green salad with cabbage and other crunchy things.

So I came home hungry and snacked on nuts, dried fruit, and dark chocolate before bedtime. I can NOT make a habit of that.

 

 

REVIEW: Crooked River SP

Pines and palmettos, mosquitos and bats, and lots of golf carts

It’s a really nice place and hard  to find fault with. Except the lack of sewer hookups—that kind of sucks considering how new and fancy this campground is. The roads are immaculate, well-marked and easy to follow. There are trails all around although without a trail map it’s easy to get hopelessly turned around and have to rely on GPS to get back to home base. And it seems very well-managed—the workers at the entrance station were on the ball and quite helpful.

Our site was #25, back-in, and very, very long. It was big and well-spaced out, but completely open to the neighbors on all sites. The surface was gray, chunky gravel. Not pleasant to walk on but not likely to come inside on your shoes, either. The picnic table was old wood but in good condition and rather long. We had a fire pit, too. Funny, I didn’t see firewood for sale, but I may have just missed it. There were a handful of fires here and there after the sun went down.

Due to all the lovely, tall pine trees, we had trouble positioning our Starlink to get an uninterrupted connection. But it worked okay, sitting on the ground on its short stand.

We were there on a Saturday in mid-February and the campground was pretty much full. The signage indicated that it was completely full. It was a little noisy but not in an objectionable way—just kids playing, golf cars zipping around, and a few bumps and bangs as people set up their stuff. 

As mentioned in the headline, there were a good number of mosquitos at sundown. I don’t fault the campground for that—what else would you expect for the location and time of year? But you might want to bring repellent of some sort.

There were lots of nice trails, but for the dog’s nighttime walk there was nowhere good to go, just round and around the campground with people’s lights glaring in my eyes.

We ate at Local's Dockside in St. Mary’s. It was okay, but I walked away still hungry. I had fried oysters (9 of them), sweet potato waffle fries, and a bowl of green peas. The oysters were very good but not filling, the sweet potatoes light and crunchy but a small serving. The peas were tasty but boring. I’d go again but order something else.

 

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 10

Friday, February 20

On our morning walk, Molly paid for her upkeep. She saw two raccoons by the boat ramp, way up in a tree where I never would have noticed them. I suspect she heard them, somehow, because she’s not in the habit of looking up over her head.

There were three Pelicans (Brown) in the bay.  Swallows were back in abundance, staying very high so I couldn’t tell what kind they were. Swallows are difficult for me.

It was breezy and very warm, almost short-sleeve weather. And the agenda for the day was to go walk through Bonadventure Cemetery and then climb up Tybee Lighthouse. Getting there took a lot longer than I’d hoped for, mostly because of traffic and the route required to get there. Google took us around the city to the southeast to get to the cemetery, and I liked that. But on the way back we seemed to barrel right through residential neighborhoods, pretty old ones, too. I didn’t like that.

The cemetery was huge beyond huge. We didn’t walk more than a fraction of it. I was surprised to find that they were still burying people there, or at least those who purchased grave sites and only just died in the last ten years or so. I didn’t ask if they were still selling sites.

The gentleman who met us at the Historical Society Building and gave us a map (for a donation, amount of my choosing; I did $20 and he seemed to think that was generous), indicated that in the visitor’s parking lot there were big bathrooms. So we drove all the way across the cemetery to the very back edge where the parking lot was…only to find that, no, there weren’t any bathrooms there. Not even a port-a-potty. So we had to drive back to the entrance to pee, then return to park. No big deal but annoying as heck.

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to meander through a place so old, so huge, and so full of dead people. I’m told it’s not the oldest cemetery in Savannah, but it’s still old enough for me. I’ll consult the guidebook later and get some interesting facts to fill my brain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a short-ish meander, we got back in the Jeep and navigated to Tybee Island Lighthouse, Georgia’s oldest and tallest. Of course it was burned down and rebuilt several times in its history. The oldest tower was build in 1736 but it must have been farther out to sea, because its replacement (built four years later) washed away from shoreline erosion. The one we climbed was built sometimes in the late 1800s.  We were privileged to climb 178 steps until we were about 140 feet up, and there we could look down on the Atlantic Ocean. Again.

News flash: it’s still there.

 

REVIEW: Fort McAllister State Park

Oldie but goodie, very much so

Nestled in a woods of pine, hickory, oak and magnolia, and surrounded more or less by a lovely salt flat, this is a truly perfect campground for people like me. Outdoors and lots of it, hookups for the RV, and a plethora of little trails to get lost on.

We had a pull-thru W/E site. There are about 18 or more full hookup sites, but I suspect they were all booked for my date range (Wed-Fri). We were there in mid-February and the weather was pretty darn perfect. Nights in the fifties, days in the seventies; scattered clouds and an occasional smattering of sunshine. The RV campground wasn’t full—about 75%-- and the tent campgrounds were pretty much empty.

I’m not sure it would be a great place for a really big rig or a huge fifth wheel. Our 35’ Class A and toad fit neatly into our site, but some of the twists and turns of the road through the campground were tight. All very manageable—we didn’t have to unhook—but you had to be pretty careful about winding through trees on both sides. The limbs were kept well trimmed back but we still scraped a few tiny branches on the sides.

Our water and electric worked fine. The picnic table was aged but usable. Site surface was grass and dirt. There were a few graveled sites but most of the ones I saw were grass.

Beautifully quiet this time of year! Although I have to admit that the other campers were mostly older people; I didn’t see any kids or any big parties of young adults. Maybe in the summer it would be more busy since it’s within 40 minutes of Savannah.

There’s a boat ramp and an ancient fishing pier, but at  low tide the  water was mostly shallow mud.

The fort’s museum and reconstructed embankments were very interesting—well worth the price of admission. If you’re a civil war history buff you could spend hours there. We enjoyed about an hour walking around and through the exhibits and the grounds. Cool!

Georgia on my…Magnus? Day 9

 Thursday, February 19

Walking path we took every day: 

Palmettos

 

After the usual late start and early morning walk down to the boat ramp, we left Molly at home and went to see the Owens-Thomas House in Savannah. Finding it was challenging—I felt rushed and got turned around by the city directions, and I couldn’t get my bearings.  I had to ask Ed to navigate.

But the house and the tour was very interesting. Since it had been occupied by several families and remodeled a few times, it really needed the tour guide to explain to us what was new, what was old, and why all that was interesting. He did a great job.

Savannah 

In the house

 

After that I tried to navigate us down the waterfront and the old part of town, but I was having “halos” in my vision due to skipping lunch and not drinking any water. So I couldn’t navigate worth a tootle, and I didn’t want to make Ed wear himself out. If I’d been alone, I’d have stopped for a snack, sat down and gotten my bearings. But it wasn’t to be so. We headed back to City Market (which was a stupid array of small shops, not interesting) and the parking garage, and left. 

 

It was only later that I remembered that a whole part of my lifelong desire to see Savannah was to see the waterfront and the cotton warehouses and the ship landing sites. So all that was missed...another time. Or next time do Charleston which has some of the same sort of history.

            All I saw of the waterfront: 

 

Back at the Fort, Molly and I went for a walk again. We took a careful look at the trail map on the sign at trailhead, and it showed a big loop called The Magnolia Trail. So we went on it, and it started out with “blazes” in the form of yellow diamonds tacked onto trees. On we went, but soon there was a junction and the trail it joined was called something completely different, like Boy Scout trail or some such. A little while later it was called the Conservation trail or something else. And soon we had taken a loop and joined up with the exact same trail we’d taken the previous day when we got lost trying to find our way back to the road. At least at that point we knew where we were.

But there just weren’t any other trails except possibly one that went over to the primitive campground (I saw people back there so I didn’t go that way), and the so-called loop didn’t exist. At least by that name. And the yellow diamonds resumed at some point without rhyme or reason.

Weird. But at least we got a good long walk out of it.