Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 22

Wednesday, August 27

And so we were off again, this time to Sherando Lake Recreation Area. It appeared to be a National Forest Campground (Washington Forest, I believe). We were discussing on the way over what it was and that was our answer.

It was very nice, although a little too far off the route for a one-nighter. It would be ideal for a two or three-nighter, and in summer we could even take our kayak out on the lake. There are two lakes—one, near our campsite, is the upper lake which you can walk around on a little trail, and the other is down past the day use area. The lower lake which is big enough to have a beach area and lots of picnic areas. The beach was pretty much deserted at the time we were there—I saw one woman sitting by the water and one man walking over to it.  But then, it’s only about 70 degrees right now and the overnight low is supposed to be 48.  It’s not exactly swimming weather.

  

Our bear box

But perfect for sitting outside. Inside, of course, Ed has the air conditioner cranked down and the motorhome is weird about air conditioning. Whenever it’s sitting in full sun, even with lots of clouds, it seems to eat heat. Ed is having to wear a jacket inside. Whatever—I’m outside.

Our lake 

Steps down to our lake 

 

The other lake, with "beach" 

After our walk around the lake, I took Molly and my aching foot for a short jog down to the beach area. No dogs allowed, of course. I found a little trail that seems to parallel the campgrounds, or at least the ones on the left side of the road, and it was a pleasant place to jog/walk. Squirrels, a chipmunk, goldfinches. Not much exciting in the way of bird life, but still nice.

 

REVIEW: Sherando Lake Campground   site C2

Plan on staying a few days, it’s nice

We were there on Wednesday near the end of August, when school had already started. So the park was not crowded at all, maybe 1/10 full. And it was quiet and pleasant. We were only doing a one-nighter, but it would be a great place to stay longer—trails; a big lake and a little one; mountains all around. It’s a little too far off the Interstate for just a one night stay.

 Our site C2 was roomy, but the road coming into the campground was narrow. It was asphalt and in pretty good repair, but I’m not sure you’d want to bring a big rig into this campground.  In fact, I shudder to think what would happen if two big RVs met on the road in.

Our 35’ Class A and toad fit nicely into our spot.  The site didn’t look unlevel but our front tires ended up off the ground by a couple of inches.  That may have been because we were parked at the very front of the site with the Jeep hooked up behind the motorhome.  If the motorhome had been at the back, it might have been more level.

The campsite surface was pea-sized gravel, very clean. We had our very own bear box!   The hookups were 30-amp electric; no water.  But there was a well-marked water fill station easily accessible on the way in. I’d heard that the water fill location was hard to access, but there were no cars parked in the lot when we were there so I don’t know if it would have been hard to fill up at more crowded times of the year. We already had a full fresh water tank so I can’t advise on pressure.

Check-in was easy and efficient. We reserved our spot online a couple of months earlier, so I don’t know how hard it would be if you tried a same-day reservation or a walk in.

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 21

Tuesday August 26

Today I found the coolest thing! But first—

Ed and I walked Molly down to the canoe launch and this time, I got a chance to look at it carefully. It’s a rather long walk down from the parking area. If you had a kayak on wheels, like Bob’s, it would be excellent. For two people carrying a full-sized canoe, it would be easy going down but a bad return trip. Still nice, and the actual “chute” is designed for a disabled person to use. Which is cool.

The launch is into an estuary—a shallow place of brackish water that changes salinity with the tides. A very productive area that provides an excellent migration stop-over for those birds that migrate along the coast. Serene and beautiful…and a good bit stinky.   Oh well, it’s supposed to be.

 

After that we headed back to Jamestowne to take in the glass blowers. Apparently glassmaking was a short-lived enterprise at the settlement. I suspect they quit because no one had any money with which to purchase the expensive glassware., or else because all the skilled glass blowers died out in the starving winter.

Then we went over to Jamestown Settlement, a recreation of the original settlement with costumed workers manning the various stations.  There were very few visitors (first week of school) and so we could have had the demonstrator people pretty all to our ourselves--except that we weren’t feeling all that curious and didn’t have too many questions. There was a huge museum, too, but we didn’t stop in it.  We just used it as an air-conditioned route out to the outdoor exhibits. 

The ship reproductions were interesting to me, but they came before the time period I was familiar with. I’d read all of the books comprising the Hornblower Saga--my field of knowledge leans more toward big sailing ships of the 1750’s or later.  So these weren’t as riveting as they might have been.

 

 

Huts occupied by the natives 

 

 

 

 

By the time we’d had enough, it was after 1 pm and I was eager to return to my dog. So back we went for Molly’s big walk of the day. It was still very hot in the sunshine, so Molly and I took a trail that wound around a meadow and then went through the big trees near the river. It was a lovely, lovely trail. Every thing about this park so far is lovely. (hold that thought)

 Near the end of the trail, where it joined back into the canoe launch road, we passed this huge tulip polar enclosed in a wooden fence. There were no signs or information, but it was totally spooky.

Big tulip poplar

And then we went back, stopping to look at the signs in the soybean field in the middle of the park—Warning! Pesticides!  But how is that sensible? The park has a big pollinator garden, several in fact, but I didn’t see hardly any pollinators. Were those soybeans the kind they spray with the pesticide that makes the whole plant poisonous, so that any caterpillar that eats it will die instantly? If so, what’s the point of having a pollinator garden?

Human beings are so stupid. When will we ever learn?

We did Bubba’s Shrimp Shack again for dinner, this time as carry out. Again very yummy.

 

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 20

Monday, August 25

I hadn’t planned exactly where to go or what to do in Jamestown/Williamsburg, but one thing that everyone agreed on was to see the Jamestowne National Park Archaeological Site. We busted our butts to get out of the motorhome and make it there for the ranger talk at ten o’clock, only to find out it wasn’t happening. It being a Monday on the first day of school, they didn’t expect many visitors and sure enough didn’t get many.

But the archaeology tour at eleven was still going to happen, so we watched their little park movie and then wandered around the museum until time to see the digs.

 

 

 

It was fascinating!  Conducted by an archaeologist who was working on site and took turns with other archaeologists in doing the lecture and walk-thru. She was very enthusiastic about her occupation, and of course, very knowledgeable.  And she was a good talker--I could have listened to her all day.

 

We got to see some of the known grave sites they’d marked; one of them would eventually be excavated. We also got to see them digging out one of the 10x10 plots that they used to look for possible graves over by the river. They were trying to determine the extent of the burial ground and those plots,  while not contiguous to the others, were on land that was planned for a walkway someday. So it was just as good to get them checked out up before construction started.

First they removed the topsoil, about a foot and a half deep. The land had been used to grow tobacco after the grave locations were forgotten, and possibly the old state capital house had stood there too. I got a little confused about what buildings had been where, exactly.

The grave. Somewhere.

In any event, they removed all the topsoil from the 10x10 plot and then you could see the clay subsoil. If a grave had been dug and filled in, you could tell it because the subsoil would be all different colors in the shape of the grave—when the burial people shoved the soil back in, the different layers of soil would be all mixed together. You could easily see where the graves had been in some of the plots, but there weren’t any obvious ones in the area being excavated. Not yet, anyway. I don’t think the archaeologists had dug as far down as they planned to go, because two of them were still working at the plots with flat-bladed shovels.

Fascinating stuff, and we also heard about their discovery of strong evidence for one incident of  cannibalism during The Starving Time—the winter of 1609-10 check this.  I read the article in Smithsonian—they found the skull and  some bones of a 14-year old English girl in the trash pit, with marks indicating  deliberate butchery. The theory is that she died and some of the parts of her were eaten, such as the brain, because it decays rapidly. That seems a little weird to me, but I don’t have all the evidence to support that theory so I cannot argue with it.

But I noticed that the Smithsonian article has information that the archeologist didn’t mention (probably due to lack of time)—there was written evidence from the period indicating that such gruesome deeds may have occurred.

Anyway, it was great. We didn’t get to see everything I wanted to see, but it was pretty overwhelming just with what we did see.

I kept wondering if these big trees were old enough to have seen the fort in the 1600s, but probably not. The magnolia or the bad cypress, maybe, but not these oaks. 

But Molly was waiting at the motorhome, so after the one-hour tour and a short walk around, we headed back. Unfortunately the campground was about 40 minutes away from the attraction,so we wasted a lot of time in traffic.

After we returned Molly and I got in a long jog around the campground, but it was beastly hot.  I don’t think the “long” jog lasted more than 45 minutes, but I don’t have a record to prove it one way or the other.

We ate dinner at Bubba’s Shrimp Shack. I had boiled shrimp with some spicy stuff on them—delicious! And fried fish. And baked beans with way too much bacon, hushpuppies and cole slaw. Very good all.

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 19

 Sunday, August 24

Happily leaving Delaware Seashore, we crossed into New Jersey and drove through Ocean City. The driving was slow and tedious, but Ocean City seemed to be a really nice little beach town. There was lots of shopping and tons of mini golf—ever street corner, it seemed, had a mini golf course.

Fyi, I hereby deem New Jersey to be “The Right Turn State.”

But finally we were out of it, driving on Route 13 down to Chesapeake Bay. New Jersey is very flat here, with lots of country estates, immaculately mowed grass, and tall pine trees. Also fields of soybeans. And I noticed a good bit of Crepe Myrtle in bloom but with no leaves. Lovely, but odd looking.

And we had the excitement of crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel(s). I’d researched this carefully to make sure our motorhome could go through it. But all the toll attendant did at the gate was ask if we had our LP turned off, which we did, and she waved us on.

This is supposedly a 17-mile engineering marvel of bridges and tunnels. I’d thought it was 17 miles of tunnels, but no—it was probably only a mile or two of actual tunnels. We’d be trucking along on a bridge and all of a sudden the road would duck down and the sky would vanish and there’d be a ceiling overhead…

And whoop!  You were out.  Cool, but not as scary as I expected. Of course, Ed, who was driving disagreed—he said it was scary as heck.

Eventually we arrived at Machicomoco State Park. See review for details.

The place had a surprising number of Blue Grosbeaks. First one was “chupping” at the top of a tree, and I got a good look at him. And then later, one was singing—it was a lot like an Indigo Bunting song but calmer.

 

REVIEW: Machicomoco SP in Viriginia, site 3, $44

Small and new and lovely!

There aren’t a lot of RV sites, but what they have are very long and spaced way apart.  It was like camping in your own private half-acre back yard. Our site 3 was right by the tent camping area, but there was only one tent site occupied and it was way over in another loop. I can’t imagine this place ever feeling crowded.

We had a pull-thru site, water and 50-amp electric. No sewer, but there’s a dump station across from the entrance to the camping loop. Our site had an asphalt pad and a big graveled space with a picnic table and firepit and room enough for a tent if we wanted. The RV site itself is out in the sun, but there are huge trees on the sides making it shady.

The trees were also, incidentally, causing outages in our starlink connection. It didn’t work on the RV roof at all. On the grass beside the motorhome, it was reporting frequent outages (but a very high transmission speed), however, the outages were of short duration and we noticed no problems with streaming movies.

The lady at the office was extremely nice. We had to check in and get a car tag; we couldn’t tell that from the signage but there were probably procedures for after hours check-in if you need it. There was a host at the first site in the loop, but we didn’t have occasion to meet him/them.

The bathhouse is in the middle of the loop and has six private showers—lovely. Note that the water stays cold for about 2-3 minutes, but according to the sign that’s because they have tankless water heaters and it takes a few minute to warm up. Sure enough, eventually it did—lovely hot showers!  (If your water heater is functional you won’t care to read this, but it made us very happy.)

There seems to be nothing for kids to do here, but there is plenty of room for them to run and play or ride bikes. There’s no traffic or hills to speak of. The main road of the park is a big loop, and all alongside there is a paved bike trail, about 2 or 3 miles around.  It might be a little hot in the summer, but it’s excellent for early or late runs.

Bubba’s Shrimp shack is a local chain, with the nearest restaurant about 10 minutes away. It’s very, very good!  Fried fish of many kinds, and steamed shrimp that has spices on it and is perfectly cooked. I’m not sure if the shrimp is local or from slave labor in Indonesia, but a lot of the firsh is locally sourced. The fried okra is okay but a little greasy; the baked beans good but have lots of bacon; hush puppies okay; slaw good but not exceptional. 

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 18

 Saturday, August 23

We spent one quick night at Delaware Seashore State Park. And that was more than enough.

It was such a potentially lovely place, and so junked up with people and people and more people. I couldn’t  breathe—couldn’t stretch out my arms without smacking someone in the face. Figuratively, of course. And dogs—when we arrived, all the dogs must have been inside,, but later they seemed all over the place and Molly was reacting like crazy.

It was a nice location for a park, at the edge of a huge highway bridge over the point where the Indian River Inlet cuts across the barrier island into the ocean. There’s a walkway along the river that goes under the bridge and ends up at the jetty-side beach at the other side. The beach was pretty much full of people. Not many of them were swimming, but it was still a “swimming beach” which meant that Molly wasn’t allowed to go there. She got a good walk all the same, along the walkway and back. We probably should have went on and walked out on the jetty, but it looked slippery.  And also, to get to it, we’d have had to walk on the beach.

 Back to the campground. I can’t really express how really awfully badly I hated the campground. There were several bathrooms with great showers, and that’s all the good I can say about it. The sites were really close together and the side of  the park we were on was full. There were a few empty spots in the rows farthest away from the river/office.  If I ever have to stay at a place like this again, I should remember to choose the sites that are farthest away from the attraction—in this case, the river.  Oh well.

A good number of people were fishing in the river, mostly sitting down on the rocks along the canal. I didn’t see anyone catching anything, but there were also a lot of terns out fishing the canal. They were definitely catching something.

After showers, Ed and I went out to eat at a place that is best forgotten and disremembered. Bluecoast Seafood Grill. It was crowded, slow, expensive, noisy, and horrible. Yuck!  Worst. Meal. Ever. 

Later Molly and I walked down the road toward a housing development along the canal. It was a good, long walk, and there appeared to be a lot of rails in the salt grasses. All I saw were Green Heron, but Merlin said there were Clapper Rails. So maybe I can’t tell the difference between the two in the dim light. 

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 17

Friday, August 22

Second day at Country Oaks, with breakfast and a long day trip to Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. Excellent, all! 

Breakfast at Mia’s Café was really good. A little slow, but worth it. I had Huevos Ranchero, which was two fried eggs atop salsa verde and fried potatoes with toasted corn tortillas at the sides. All very good. I also ate a good number of Ed’s leftover fried potatoes.  I could have had double the amount and still enjoyed it, but the amount I had was really just right.

Then back to camp for a short dog walk and on to the NWR.  Such a big, beautiful place with towers and a rather long “wildlife” drive—all of the avian sort—and marshes. Avocets, Glossy Ibis, White Ibis; Dowitchers (don’t ask me which one. I cannot tell a Short-billed Dowitcher from a Long-billed Dowitcher, and never will be able to.)  There were also lots of osprey, sanderlings, herons, egrets, gulls (Laughing, Ring-billed, and Herring) and a couple of big, brownish ducks which I hoped I could identify later.  And a mute swan or two.  And terns, at least three different species. And Black Skimmers. Given time and familiarity, I imagine a person could have seen at least ten other species, maybe more.

Un-identifiable ducks

Glossy Ibis

Glossy Ibis

Mute Swan

White Ibis

  I adored the place. My idea of a bucket list dream trip would include going back there with time to walk the whole trail. Maybe repeatedly, at different times of the year. The pamphlet said that Snow Geese congregated there at certain times of the year, too.

But we drove it, so my viewing was tempered by time and the presence of non-birdwatchers (Ed and Molly), both very patient but bored out of their respective skulls.  Heavy sigh. 

On the way back from the refuge, we stopped at Atlantic City just to see a part of our nation’s history. It was old and big-city sort of dirty, but you could tell they’d made an effort at restoring the boardwalk. We didn’t go inside a casino, of course, but we did get stuck in the parking lot of one. We were just trying to get through, but the road routed us to the drop-off parking area where there were oodles of people and valets unloading their luggage. When we finally squeezed out of there, we turned into the first public parking lot we could find and paid $2 for an hour of walking around. 

 

It wasn’t horrible, but no place I’d want to spend any time on.

When we returned to the RV Park, it appeared they were having a party night. Lots of cars were packed into the extra parking; there was a food truck of some sort by the office; and a long line of people arrayed their golf carts to circle around the campground. They were all playing the same radio station (?) on their phones, loudly. 

 

They weren’t rowdy or anything, just having a parade. But since I chose not to join in, I finally was driven indoors to get away from the noise.

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 16

Thursday, August 21

We had a really bad start to the day.  The trucker app couldn’t connect and when it finally did, I didn’t trust its directions and we had to pull over and let me think. And then it started working, but pulling out of the parking lot scraped something underneath the motorhome. Ouch.

Note at the time: Ed is really making the trip harder on himself by going so slowly.  It turns 3 hour drives into 4 hour drives. It may be conserving fuel but not much, and for no good reason.

We ended up at Spacious Skies Campgrounds, Country Oaks. It’s a really pretty, really expensive, family oriented campground in New Jersey. The location isn’t convenient to our normal route to/from Massachusetts, but it was sort of on the way to where we were going. And reasonably close to the Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge—see tomorrow for details.

So after meandering through lots of little roads and towns, we ended up on a road that paralleled the railroad tracks, and then we crossed the tracks and there was our campground. The place seemed huge, but I have to admit I never went over to some of the parts of it. Our site was over by the kid’s bounce cushion and not too far from the dog park. Which was large and shady and completely empty of other dogs the whole two days we were there. Never once did I have to wait for other dogs to leave.

Our site was out in the sun, and we had good reception and all. But the campground was very full—not completely full, but full enough that walking the dog was always hazardous. We mainly walked to and from the dog park or went out onto the street and walked back and forth between our street and the railroad tracks. No trains, though.

And that’s about all I remember for the day…except the dog park had at least six tennis balls in it. Someone must have dumped a whole bag!  Molly loved it.

  

REVIEW: Spacious Skies Country Oaks

Nice, family friendly destination…if you can afford it

I can’t think of a single thing wrong with this campground except that as retired people on a fixed income, we can’t afford $90 a night very often.  The sites could have been a tiny bit farther apart. But otherwise, lovely.

Full hookup, pull-thru sites, and back-in too if you prefer them. Gravel surfaces with lots of green grass in and around. Some sites are in deep woods but ours was in full sun, so we could have satellite service. Also ours was a patio site which had both a picnic table and  a couple of adirondack chairs around a tiny firepit.

For dogs they have a big, fenced park with trash cans, scoopers for cleanup and also pick-up bags. It’s a little dusty and could be muddy in rainy weather because it’s in deep shade.  Which I like, because it’s cooler in the daytime. I  didn’t see anyone else using it in the two days we were there, which is odd.

For kids they have a bounce pad, playground, gameroom with pool table and air hockey, and several other fun things. And for the rest of us, a swimming pool and basketball court. And laundry.

The showers were by the pool and there were about six of them but the water was not hot at all.  Tepid was the best we could say. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue for RVers, but our motorhome shower was broken. They were a little dated but clean and serviceable.