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.
