Category: Places

19th May to 22nd May 2023

Our continuing cruise up the very pleasant US-17 took us into North Carolina. Our next big ‘destination’ was to be The Outer Banks, a long thin set of sandy barrier islands that sit off the mainland, but we had a few stops along the way to get there.

First stop was a small beach town very grandly called Surf City. This was also on a barrier island called Topsail Island but we were booked into a park on the other side of the bridge that connected it to the mainland. The park was massive, tired, shabby and inexplicably expensive for what it offered. Most sites were occupied by long term RVs obviously being used as holiday homes with only a few spaces given over to journeymen like us. It had been raining heavily and our grassy site was half underwater as we set up. Squelching around in our flip-flops spirits were a little low but as soon as we were established, the food shopping was unpacked, the awning was out and the stuff inside was all set up for living again, things didn’t seem as bad. In fact we had a really nice view of the marshes out of back window and no near neighbours. The sun then came out and soon the standing water all drained away leaving us with quite a nice little pitch. We had a great impromptu chat with two North Carolinan chaps who were long term buddies and both had holiday homes here. They and their families had been coming here for decades and they spent their time either fishing (the park did have its own boat ramp) or hanging out together in a golf cart, cruising the park roads, drinking beers. They were mighty jolly and seemed to have life sorted.

We had stopped here due its proximity to ‘The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue Centre’. It was set up by Jean Beasley and named in memory of her late daughter, Karen who died of cancer and who insisted that her life insurance payout was used to fund the project. The centre does guided tours to help fund its work and the volunteer docents were really knowledgeable. Part of the work is protecting the turtle nesting sites on the seaward side of Topsail Island and the other part is rehabilitating injured or ‘cold shocked’ turtles. The predominant turtles on this coast are Loggerheads and this area is on the northerly edge of their range. The sex of each embryo is not predetermined when it is laid but is dependant on the ambient temperature in the nest as it develops. Cooler temperatures create more male embryos, warmer temperatures more females. To that end, the cooler temperatures of this more northerly area means it is important in supplying males for the species. The organisation has volunteers that patrol the beach early every morning to mark, cordon off and document new nest sites. A single egg is removed from each nest to send for DNA analysis and further research and when it is time for the eggs to hatch the volunteers dig a shallow trench from the nest towards the ocean to give the hatchlings a clue which way to go. Beach property residents are asked to turn off all porch lights during the nights of breeding season so the baby turtles don’t confuse them with the moonlight, which they need to follow to get to the water.

The hospital side of the operation had turtles recuperating in large aerated containers of water and most go on to be released back into the wild. Snooki was a large turtle that was a longterm resident who had bouyancy control issues. She will never be able to be released back into the wild and is looking for a forever home in a protective facility. It was very interesting and great to see some big turtles so close up.

After seeing the turtles we cycled over the bridge to the town of Surf City to find it abuzz. Again we had happened upon an event by accident: A community fair and concert on the green. ‘The Bridge Jam’. There were lots of market stalls, food trucks and music by a well known North Carolina Beach Music band, The Embers. We obviously were clueless as to their fame but there were a whole heap of folk on lawn chairs who were very excited to see them come onto the stage. We watched for a bit and then headed to the beach which was far more chilled and less developed than the horrors of Myrtle. There was a kids surf competion going on and loads of local looking people knocking about. There were surfers, walkers, runners, sunbathers. There were the amusing groups of teenagers trying to look cool but terribly self conscious of how cool the other insecure teenagers might think they are, or are not. Remember those years?! There were ‘beach cops’ patrolling for illicit drinking, smoking and vaping. There were juice bars, ice cream shops and the obligatory hotdog stand. Nick succumbed to temptation and had a mid afternoon chilli-dog which I might have shared with him. It felt like a relaxed beach town and we liked it a lot.

The next day we headed off. Initially we stayed on US-17 and this took us past the home of the US Marines Corps, Camp Lejeune. This is a 250 sq mile facility, home to 35,000 personel. The camp incorporates lots of beaches to allow for amphibious training and its location between two deep water ports allows for easy deployments. This whole area is saturated with soldier types and as we cruised down the road alongside the base every second business was a barbershop. No hair on the head of any Marine in this town shall touch any collar. Soon we turned off the main drag onto a single lane road that headed out to the end of the land, a promentary called Cedar Island Point. The route took us through beautiful marshlands that were almost deserted save for scatterings of dilapidated homes and sheds. It reminded us a lot of the west coast of Northland NZ for those of you who know what that’s like. Cedar Island point consists of two things: an RV park on the beach and a ferry terminal.

The ferry was our route to the Outer Banks and we were booked on the 7.30am the next morning. Camp was quiet, basic and again, a bit over priced, but staying here meant that our early start in the morning involved a journey of about 50 metres to get to the ferry check-in kiosk. We took a stoll on the deserted beach which was lovely and if it had been warmer might have invited a swim and we watched the last ferries of the day go and come.

In the morning we made tea-to-go, enjoyed a rare sunrise and joined the suprisingly long queue for the first sailing. The nearest civilisation was 45 mins away so most of our fellow travellers had had very early starts. Our crossing was going to take us 2 hours and cost us….brace yourselves….$30. Such a bargain that I cannot feel that the service can cover its costs but it was amazing. A new boat, loads of crew and very efficient service. We arrived on the OuterBanks in a village called Ocracoke, on Ocracoke Island. This seemed like a nice cool little village but we weren’t booked to stay here so we headed north. Eventually the land ran out and there was another ferry to catch to get to the next island, Hatteras. This was an hour’s trip, but mainly because it had to take a massive loop to avoid the shallows. This ferry was a ‘first come-first served’ service and cost a massive…brace yourselves again…..nothing. Nada. Rien. Free. Crazy! It counts as a bit of road, so funded by the state tax dollars. We like.

The islands are all generally very long and thin with the atlantic on one side and the sheltered Pamlico Sound on the other and at some points the land is only about 50-100 metres across. The single road is protected from the seaward aspect by a large sand dune, which is largely manmade in an attempt to protect the islands from the atlantic storms that must thrash them on a regular basis.

Our chosen stop was in a village called Rodanthe, of ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ fame, the 2008 romantic drama starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. The original book was set in Rodanthe and the film shot here too. The homes here are mostly holiday homes or rentals and mostly built atop tall stilts to protect them from tidal surges. There are a few homes built right on the beach with their stilts below the high tide mark. They looked quite battered and I’m sure won’t last too many more seasons of winter storms.

We had high hopes for our stay here and had booked a whole week in which to soak up the sun and the beachy vibe. There really wasn’t any other reason to be here, or much else to do. Unless one is a kite surfer. Unbeknownst to us, this area is one of the top ten destinations world wide for the sport of having to wrestle a massive air sock whilst simultaneously balancing on a small board and then trying to go in the direction that you want whilst the wind is blowing at least 20 knots and trying to remove your arms from their sockets. It looks really hard work but does provide some spectatorial opportunities.

Our site was great, right on the sound with water views out of our back window. The only slight downside was the million watt security light which was situated on a pole right above us. It led to a blurring of daytime and nighttime and slightly messed with our circadian rhythmns.

Unfortunately our week here coincided almost exactly with a week of mostly shonky weather. It was cool and the consistant, strong, northerly wind nearly drove us insane. The bag of warm clothes that sits in the truck was raided for more layers and we piled the blankets back on the bed. It seemed crazy that only a few days ago we were sunbathing by a pool and sitting with a fan blowing on our faces. We did manage a few outings on foot to walk the beach and came back completely sandblasted with grains of sand filling our eyebrows and the fissures of our teeth. We also had a couple of trips out on the bikes. (An exhilerating downwind freewheel and a soul destroying grind upwind) One expedition was to visit the only nearby museum which was an old Lifesaving Station.

From here a team of federaly employed Life Savers formed part of a string of stations up the coast that kept lookout for boats and ships in distress. (A very common occurance given all the sand banks and storms.) When needed they performed rescues by rowing out in small boats or by shooting rescue lines to boats near the shore with explosive charges. The local family name Midgett features very commonly in the role of past lifesavers and pretty much every other local business even now is run by a Midgett. Another of the bike outings included the obligatory evening at a bar for burgers and beer. Our bar tender at ‘The Neptune Dive Bar’ was a very personable woman called Liz who had a Peruvian wife and a very suprising, and un-American, in-depth knowledge of European football and Grand Slam Tennis. She was a delight. She was also lamenting the unseasonal weather and said that it felt more like winter, a season that she and her missus usually escaped by spending a few months in Peru with their extended family.

This ended up being a real down-week for us so it was not a bad week to be ill. Nick was getting over a cold and I was in the thick of it with a hacking cough and feeling ropey. Our last RAST told us that this wasn’t Covid, but who knows. It wasn’t helped by having a two day hangover after our Neptune visit. I only had 3 beers but I think they might have been a bit stronger than I realised. My dwindling alcohol tolerance is very unfair.

The intermittant rain of the week deteriorated into torrential rain on our penultimate day. It lasted 24 hours and created lakes in the park and rivers on the road. It was so heavy that we couldn’t hear the TV – Never a good thing during a lock-in. It also was the deathknell for the mediocre wifi signal. We had to resort to reading our books. Good grief. It eventually stopped and the sun finally came out. Our last evening was glorious and hot and we could understand what we had been missing, finally appreciating the charms of this peculiar place. On our last morning we awoke to a flat calm day. There was not a breath of wind and the water of the Pamlico Sound was like glass. The kite surfers had been replaced by paddleboarders and we jealously watched them cruise about as we packed up and headed off. We navigated a few long swooping bridges that connected different islands on our northerly journey until we got to the bridge that took us back to the mainland. Now we left the ocean and started our long westerly trajectory across country. Bye Bye Atlantic.

16th May to 19th May 2023

Sometimes we search out events, festivals, interesting gatherings and obscure things to witness. Sometimes these things find us by happenchance. Our trip from Charleston to Myrtle Beach initially took us along a quiet back road through the very beautiful and peaceful Francis Marion National Forest and then we rejoined the more coastal highway US-17. It was here that we started to notice the preponderance of motorbikes. Mostly Harleys. All massive. All noisy. Overwhelmingly being riden by well nourished, bandana wearing, sleeveless jerkin clad folk who were either verging on, or well and truely arrived in, the grey hair years. A quick interrogation of the Googs informed us that our stay in Myrtle was coinciding with ‘Myrtle Beach Bike Week’. This was perhaps not a spectacle that we would have actively sought out but we were now committed and realised that it would provide an opportunity to do some mass wildlife viewing that ordinarily we wouldn’t be a party to. Like the migration of the wilderbeast. It also explained why we had found it tricky to find an affordable RV site anywhere near Myrtle Beach and why we found ourselves nearer North Myrtle Beach – not that this really made alot of difference to our experiences over the next 3 days.

The landscape and the character of this section of coastline is very American. There is an endlessly long beautiful white sandy beach, then there is a wall of highrise hotels and appartment buildings built right on the waterfront in order to take full advantage of the view at the expense of all others. There were no beachside cafes or prommenades or cycle trails. Then there are a few blocks of low rise vacation rental homes, then there is a busy four lane highway lined with strip malls, petrol stations, restaurants, massive ‘beach gear’ sales emporiums, mini golf courses and other businesses. Our camp was just on the inland side of this highway and so a half mile or so from the beach. It was also right next door to a big commercial development of shops and eateries that was also home to a regional theatre, a marina on the inland waterway AND one of the hubs for the Bike Week.

There were big spluttering Harleys everywhere. These bikes, as many of you I am sure are aware, are often specifically modified to be extra noisy. They leave the factory with a patented ‘potato-potato’ sound adhering to the 80 db noise restriction but many do not stay that way. A quick change-out to a straight exhaust sans baffles converts their characteristic throaty tones into brain-liquefying, internal organ rearranging din. Apparently the adage ‘Loud Pipes Save Lives’ works on the theory that if you can hear them coming then you look out for them, therefore they are safer. To be honest, given the fact that about 99% of the riders did not wear helmets, I think that the basic ‘motorcycle survival strategies’ employed by the Harley community are a bit mis-informed. They must all be deaf as posts as well.

The main activity during a motorcycle rally is cruising around in large groups of your fellow tribe members. It is blisteringly sunny and you shrug on your minimal sun protecting sleeveless Harley apparel (and short shorts if you are a female pillion rider) and omit the suncream – the tattoos look better on a red background. You don your protective bandanna and wrap around sunglasses. (A fly in the eye is bad news- safety first.) Your pillion rider loads her iced drink into the obligatory cup-holder and the miniture yorkshire terrier into its custom pannier and off you thunder, rattling the windows of the buildings and the souls of your fellow road users as you pass by. Where are you going? Sometimes nowhere. Sometimes to a park-up zone. The local Harley dealer will always host one of these. You arrive, you park up, you walk around. In loud voices you compare Yorshire terriers, brands of aftersun and hearing aids and then drive on. You might stop at an expo zone at a hub like the one next to our camp. There will be countless stalls set up selling merchandise, more Harley apparel and custom parts and there will be huge mobile workshops housed in eighteen-wheeler trucks where you can get your bike mods done.

All the while you are checking out every one elses bikes. Some are standard issue and handsome. Some are achingly beautiful custom designs with curves and swoops of their farings and gleaming, glowing paint jobs. Some riders will be towing a coffin on a trailer with a manequin in it which he says is his ex-wife. Some riders have moved onto trikes which make all the same noises, give the same ‘wind in the hair’ experience, but stay upright when you let go of them and are a bit more forgiving to older bones and wobbly legs.

Some riders will turn up on bicycles, feeling like they’ve brought a knife to a gunfight and then wander around feeling a bit out of place but enjoying the short term immersion in an alien world. These bicycle riders will be on their way back from a trip to check out the beach. They will have decided that the coast here has been a bit ruined by all the development and wonder why they came in the first place. They will wonder why Yorkshire terriers seem to be so popular. They will marvel at the array of denim clothing.

A some point in their short stay here the bicycle riders will find a good place to have a beer and a burger- an important travelling superpower- and they will have a round of mini golf. One of them (M52) will win and be irritatingly gleeful. The other (F51) will remind the winner that she was far more dignfied in victory after their last round. The course in question was the site of the 2023 Pro Masters Tournament. Fancy.

The weather will break, the temperture will fall and the rain will come. They will have to put socks on. They will leave Myrtle Beach a bit bemused by the place and with no plans to rush back. Thank heavens for the Harleys. They were the highlight of the visit.

10th May – 16th May 2023

Before we go any further I would just like to say that I think South Carolina has the coolest state flag by a country mile.

It is not very far (just over 100 miles) from Savannah to Charleston, another place on our ‘Definitely-Must- Go-There’ list, but we still had a two night stop along the way. The main reason for this was to line up our city bookings with the weekends so that Greg & Gigi had a couple of options for visiting us. Our stop was in a lovely wooded camp in a place called Yemassee, known nowadays mainly for its proximity to the I-95 highway and its role as a service centre. Back in the day it had something to do with a war with the local native tribe, the Yemassee, and then something to do with the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and a train depot here was the last stop for new recruits heading to Parris Island, the nearby Marine Corps training base for most of the 19th and 20th centuries

This was a fab park with an on-site bar and pizza oven, a nice pool and a walking trail around a nearby lake that contained alligators. (The blighters are everywhere.) Here we met Jason, a brave soul who was four days into a 4000 mile solo cycle trip from North Carolina to Oregan via Florida. We bought him a medicinal beer or two and vowed to keep in touch as his route may coincide with ours down the line.

Our journey up into southern South Carolina took us within ten miles or so of a place that has been in my sphere of consciousness for the past two years. I manage my insomnia by listening to podcasts and one that had completely gripped me since 2021 is called ‘The Murdaugh Murders Podcast’. This has investigated and reported the case of the fraudulent 4th generation South Carolinan lawyer, Alex Murdaugh who stole millions of dollars from his clients and hundreds of thousands from his own law firm, manipulated justice using his family influence, is associated either directly or indirectly with the deaths of three people then murdered his son and wife to deflect attention away from his crimes before faking an apparent murder attempt on his own life to deflect attention from his potential involvements in his family’s deaths. It was bizarre to be driving through the area where this case played out and it felt weird to be seeing such familiar place names on sign posts.

On our way to Charleston we finally found a car wash which was tall enough to fit us in. Big Dave and Tin Can were still covered in a layer of dust courtesy of a couple of hurricaines that went over Orlando whilst they were in storage and the dust had since been joined by a layer of dead Floridian flies. It was a snug fit in the bay but we managed to reach most of the dirt. As we were washing another truck camper pulled up in the next door bay. He had seen us as he went past so knew he would fit too. These rigs are rare in this part of the country, so it was worth a photo.

Our camp in Charleston was not IN Charleston, and indeed this was a much harder city to camp anywhere near. The best we could do was a place 18 miles from the city centre, with no real public transport options. We were resigned to relying on Ubers to get backwards and forwards. The camp itself was quite nice with a scenic fishing lake and a small pool. There was enough to do in Charleston to warrant having two days in the city and Nick came up with a plan to reduce the money and time spent in Ubers…Spend it on a night in a cheap-ish hotel in town instead! A ‘night on dry land’ is always a treat and given how hot it was, it would be great to have a base so we could freshen up and change for the evening after a day sightseeing. A fine establishment was booked: a double, ensuite room in a hostel. Called the Not So Hostel, we were optomistic that this meant that it was of a better calibre than the usual youth hostel offering. We were left with a day to kill in camp and whilst floating around in the pool we met one our fellow campers, Erica. A Washington state native, Erica has been on the road full-time for four years, living in modest sized trailer that she towed behind an aging Toyota truck. She had spent the past month here and had decided to buy herself a brand new truck which she had just collected that day. Exciting times! When she found out that we were going to get an Uber to the city the next day she very kindly offered to give us a lift, a gesture mostly rooted in her spontaneous generosity of spirit, but I think also a little bit motivated by wanting to share the joy of her new purchase. I can totally understand that and I’m glad that we could be there to help.

In the morning our shiny Toyota Tundra Taxi scooped us up and wafted us into the city. It was a very impressive toy and made Big Dave look quite shabby and outdated. (Shhhh, he didn’t hear that.). She dropped us at the Not So Hostel and headed off to the indoor market. The hostel was a detatched, weatherboard-clad town house and definitely had a ‘student digs’ flavour. We had the electronic door code to get into the communal area, which was a small lounge/kitchen, and we let ourselves in to leave our overnight bag here for the day. The place was deserted save for a robo-mop diligently cleaning the floor. Our room had an external entrance for which the door code wouldn’t work until check in at 2pm, but there was an internal door that opened onto the communal area and it was wide open. It looked more than satisfactory for the sub-$100 price tag, even having its own small kitchenette area. The only slightly worrying feature – packets of free ear plugs on the bedside tables. Never a good sign! Bag abandoned in our wardrobe we headed off towards the centre of the city. Like Savannah, Charleston has a free shuttle bus system that offers transport around several different loops of the historic distric. The hostel was on one of these routes but we set off on foot for our first explore.

The focus of today’s tourist activities was going to start with a nautical theme. Across the river lies the USS Yorktown, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that is now a museum. The 873 ft CV-10 carrier was commisissioned in 1943 and it was named in honour of its namesake Yorktown CV-5 that was sunk at the battle of Midway in 1942. She saw significant action in the Pacific during WW2 and in the Vietnam war and in 1968 was the retrieval ship for the Apollo 8 Capsule and astronauts. Decommissioned in 1970 she was sited here in 1975 and now you can go aboard and explore lots of her nooks and crannies in self guided tours. There was a watertaxi service to get across the river to the Yorktown site and after a quick lunch (because who can do history on an empty stomach?) we went aboard. It was very impressive.

There were several plane and helicopter exhibits up on the flight deck and it wasn’t hard to imagine the carrier in full working mode with jets screaming off along the deck and hurling themselves off into the air. The hanger deck below was also enormous. It too contained many aircraft exhibits, a movie theatre and the obligatory snack bar and there was still tons of empty space. We took a less travelled self-tour to accomodation, galley and medical areas and although there were plenty of other people around on the ship, it was deserted. We even found the rabbit warren self-tour of the engine room, containing 4 steam turbines. We had it to ourselves which was odd and it felt like we were somewhere we shouldn’t be.

Once we were saturated with nautical history we took the watertaxi back across the river to the downtown area and started a slow stroll back up towards our hostel. Charleston seemed to have a lot of positive attributes as a city. It is small enough to be accessible but large enough to have an energy, amenities and inward investment. It felt like a youthful city and as the local university, the College of Charleston, has a 1:2 ratio of men to women, it had quite a feminine vibe. Although it lacked the massive quantity of mature trees groaning under the weight of tons of Spanish Moss of Savannah it had endless examples of well preserved and restored historic homes, sympathetically designed modern buildings, well maintained waterfront parks and many lovely nearby beaches. The people really do have a Southern charm and are friendly, welcoming and polite and no-one seems to be in any great rush to be anywhere else. There were many independant shops and businesses, a liberal dusting of designer stores, horse drawn carriage tours, and, the main reason that this has become a tourist favourite, lots and lots and lots of good places to eat and drink really well.

Despite the plethora of quality drinking establishments I am slightly embarrassed to admit, however, that our first alcoholic drink in this town was a ‘Booze Pop’, partaken at a bus stop. In our defence it was roasting hot, we were very thirsty and there was nothing else immediately available. We decided that we had walked enough and stopped at one of the bus stops to get the free shuttle the last mile ‘home’. There was a van parked nearby that looked like it would sell us a can of cold coke or similar. Nick was dispatched to procure said refreshing fluids and returned with the very adult version of ice pops. 200mls of 7% ABV, they were a frozen party in a tube. Just what our mildly dehydrated and overheated bodies needed at 4 0’clock in the afternoon! They disappeared fast and happily the bus arrived soon after to whisk us uptown, now reasonably merry.

At the hostel it was still deserted. If anyone else was here, they were hiding quietly in their room not hanging out noisily in the common area. We were hoping it was going to stay that way, and to be fair, it did. It felt like a private house just for us. We rested, rehydrated, washed, changed and headed out again. The free bus took us back downtown and we headed to a rooftop bar that we had identified earlier in the day. This had amazing 360 º views of the city under jaunty red canopies and umbrellas and we installed ourselves at the bar. The temperature had cooled slightly to that wonderful sweet spot where you are neither too warm or too cool and there was a soft warm breeze. Perfect! So why do they have to spoil perfection by serving good quality, healthily priced drinks in fricking plastic cups??????????????? Insanity. (I promise I will not hurl my empties over the parapet into the streets below…) Unfortunately any drinking venue that is deemed to be ‘outside’ is cursed with the same restrictions. It is a shame.

We had made a dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant but decided to cancel this to offset the increased expense of the night’s accomodation. Our plan was to have a more mid-range meal somewhere more relaxed. Now those of you who know my husband well will know that he has a man-crush on the late, great chef/travel journalist/tortured soul Anthony Bourdain. We have spent countless hours watching his various food travel shows, and following in his footsteps, visiting places he has eaten along the way has been one of the ways that we direct our own travelling. So a stroll to the nearby restaurant called Husk was in order. Tony had been there.

We knew that we couldn’t get into the main dining room but we also knew it had a bar next door where you could eat too. We secured a valuable spot at the bar and had a most excellent (but definitely NOT mid-range) meal and evening of drinking. Totally worth it. We wearily embarked on our walk back to the hostel (as the free buses had long since stopped for the evening) when halfway home we happened across a rank of waiting bicycle rickshaws. It was too tempting and a very personable business studies student called Jessica pedalled us home, chatting the whole way. With tip the 10 minute ride cost us more than half of what an Uber back to the RV park would have. You can see that our money saving ideas work in theory, but we are having trouble actioning them!

The earplugs, we discovered, were not for the noise of the people in the hostel, nor for the noise of the traffic outside the hostel. (Neither made a peep.) They were to muffle the din of the massive air conditioning unit that supplied the whole building which was situated on the veranda right outside our room. They mostly worked.

Day two of the Charleston adventure started with breakfast in a diner which did a good job of making us feel human again. Eggs and coffee (even the decaf kind) are like medicine. Then we walked around some more, looking at old buildings, streets, parks, tourist information signs.

We sat on benches and looked at views, soaking up the city and its waterfront from various vantage points. Time was filled, rather than killed, before our day’s only planned engagement: a boat trip out to Fort Sumpter. This is a fort on a small island out in the mouth of Charleston harbour. It holds the infamous honour of being the site where the first shot was fired in the Civil War. The fort, built by the government to protect the Union from foreign attack was mainly fortified on the seaward side and much weaker on the side facing the shore. The Union troops were occupying the fort as tensions were rising and they were trying to stop the Confederate forces using Charleston port to stock and supply their army, and shipping out commodities like cotton to pay for it. In April 1861 there was a standoff, push came to shove, a barrage of cannon shots were fired by the Confederates from the land at the fort’s vunerable rear flank and after 34 hours it was defeated. The Union troops surrendered, packed up their flag and were evacuated. Only five Union troops had been injured. No-one had died. If only the rest of the war could have been settled with so little bloodshed. It was to be four years later before the Union flag was hoisted back above the fort.

There was a 30 minute boat trip over to the island and its fort, which nowadays looks very different to its original design. We shared our tour with a school group of about sixty 10-11 year olds. There is a noise level associated with this number of humans of that age all together in the same place whilst hopped up on their post prandial sugar rush. Luckily the captain of the boat made them very aware how he felt about their din and made an announcement to this effect doing a much better job of shutting them up than the teachers did. Aye, Aye Cap’n!

We had about an hour on the island and there was an informative ranger talk on the fort’s history and more specifically, the flag. The boat ride home was a bit longer, taking in a loop of the harbour and giving us more facts and figures on the sights. A very pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Back on dry land we called an Uber, called in at the hostel to pick up our bag and headed home. By now we were both exhausted and Nick was coming down with a cold. I nipped round to Erica’s trailer to say thank you again and we said our goodbyes. We were all heading off in the morning but her day was going to start much earlier than ours. Our slow boat sails late.

We loved Charleston and wouldn’t hesitate to return if the opportunity arose. I think it would also be a great place to live for ten months of the year. Spring was a lovely time to be here but I can imagine it is a bit sweaty in summer.

6th May – 10th May 2023

A visit to the alluring southern city of Savannah has always been high on our list of things to do during our travels around the USA. In general we try and avoid big cities as many of them are very car-centric, road-dominated, commercialised jungles with a preponderance of strip malls and no real historic downtown; no real individualised flavour. Then there are the logistics of finding an RV park close enough to a city centre and being able to use either our feet, our bikes, public transport or short Uber trips to complete our journey. Mostly it is visiting the tiny cities and small towns of America that fullfills these criteria and thus gives us the most joy. There have been a few noteable exceptions to these rather sweeping statements, however: like New Orleans which had an RV park on the edge of the French Quarter so we could walk to the action; like Chicago that has an enormous truck park that accepted RVs only a few miles Uber ride from downtown; like Sam’s Town Casino RV park in Las Vegas that has a free shuttle to The Strip; like Austin, Texas which was just across the river from the CBD. Savannah joined these ranks. We found a charming, underdeveloped, wooded, family run park called Biltmore, which was only about four miles from the historic downtown. Our transport solutions were to be a combination a bus ride to get into town and Ubers to get home.

I feel that I must insert some fun facts about Savannah before we go any further:

• Founded in 1733 it is said to be America’s first planned city, with its streets and public squares arranged in a grid pattern. This is standard today but was cutting edge design in its time. Of the 24 original squares, 22 still exist today. Full of mature trees laden with the ubiquitous spanish moss and a variety of statues, monuments and fountains thay are a massive part of Savannah’s charm.
• It is the USA’s fourth busiest shipping port and many of Savannah’s surviving original cobbled and stone streets are constructed from the ballast stones transported here from all over the world in otherwise empty ships. These were unloaded and exchanged for cargo. Reuse and recycle is not a new thing people.
• In 1819 a house in Savannah was the first in the USA to be fitted with indoor plumbing.
• The movie Forrest Gump was filmed here.
• Lastly, and not fun at all: In March of 1857, Savannah had the largest sale of human beings in the history of the USA. The auction of enslaved people lasted two whole days and took place at a racetrack in the city. During those days it was said to be pouring rain the whole time because the heavens were so sad. and so was named The Weeping Time’. For all its beauty, its wealth and success was built at the expense of many lives.
• There is a statue down on the riverfront immortalising Florence Martus, a Savannahian that lived from 1868 to 1943. The unmarried daughter and sister of lighthouse keepers she spent much of her life living with her family in lonely lighthouse outposts. She dedicated 44 years of her life waving farewells and welcomes to all the passing ships that used the port, using a hankerchief in the day and a lantern at night. Legend tells that she did this as she was searching for a lost love and likely waved at over 50,000 ships, many of which would reply to her using their horns.

As previously mentioned, we were going to be sharing our Savannah experience with our good friends Greg and Gigi who were flying in from New York. They were coming in on Sunday afternoon and staying two nights at a hotel in town, very keen to help us soak up the delights of this laconic and charming city. (When I say ‘delights’ I obviously mean mostly cocktails and southern cuisine.) We arrived at the RV park the day before, on the Saturday and checked in with our hosts, an older married couple who had inherited the site from her father. The reception office for the park was co-located in the on-site Antiques and Collectibles shop. This was a veritable warehouse sized establishment filled with an array of dusty and esoteric items and seemingly no customers at all. Our site was massive and shaded by some lovely old trees. It did not feel like we were in a city.

On Sunday afternoon, dressed for a classy evening of eating and drinking in town, we headed to the nearest bus stop which was conveniently located just outside the RV park. We were armed with all the relevant information on bus times, routes and stops and we had, as I had discovered necessary, the cash in correct change for our journey of 25 minutes – a whole $1.50 each. To say that we looked slightly out of place standing in our glad rags at a bus stop on a grass verge next to a barbed wire topped chain link fence alongside a busy four lane main road that runs through a depressed suburb of Savannah waiting for the Number 17 would probably be a reasonable understatement. It arrived on time, was new and clean and even had a display informing us of our stops. No complaints at all. It would be truthful to say that we travelled through some of the less salubrious and photogenic areas of the outskirts of Savannah to get to the historic district but we soon arrived at our stop in town. From there it was only a short stroll down some leafy streets lined with handsome town houses until we got to Forsyth Park. We were a bit early to meet Greg & Gigi at their hotel, which was on the other side of this park, one of the jewels in Savannah’s crown, so we looked for somewhere to grab a cold can and watch the world go by for a bit to kill time.

It soon became apparent that there ‘was something going on’ in the park. Something dogggy. Now the British minds can drag themselves out of the gutter straight away: I am being litteral here. It was a Doggy Carnival day. There were dogs everywhere. Dogs of all shapes and sizes and fur varietals. Dogs in clothes, dogs in strollers, dogs being carried, dogs in boots, dogs with fur paint motifs, some dogs were just normal looking. There were dog treat stalls, dog play areas, dog paraphernalia stalls, dog painting stalls. What I did not see was one single unpicked-up poop, or any impressive dog fights. Amazing. We plonked ourself on a wall to soak up the spectacle and automatically started a game of ‘Cool Dog, Fool’s Dog‘. Now this is a bit judgy and is from the same playbook as our airport departure lounge (or any other good people watching venue) game ‘Hit or Miss‘ in which we comment (quietly to each other – not out loud so as to cause tears or fights) purely on how people are dressed. Purile and very entertaining. Anyway. ‘Cool Dog, Fool’s Dog‘ comes from a place of a love of dogs and the starting position that ALL DOGS ARE CUTE. The game is more a commentary of an owner’s decision making when chosing a dog and how they present it to the world. So some examples of basic ‘Fools Dog’ criteria would be: Dog clothes when unecessary for extreme cold, keeping full/double coated dogs in hot climates, spending crazy money to buy puppies of breeds with significant health issues from overbreeding thus perpetuating the problem, dog body modifications, use of a fierce looking dog to make you look like a gangster, dogs so tiny that they can’t keep up with the slow walking pace of a human, massive or high energy working dogs kept in RVs or small appartments that never get to stretch their legs. You get the drift. You may not agree with our game, but it is our game. We had just picked out a rare ‘cool dog’ when it’s owner coincidentally approached us and asked if we could dog-sit his very lovely pooch for a few minutes whilst he popped into a cafe to use the loo. We were very happy to and here is Molly, a lovely therapy dog who visits the elderly and sick for her job. What a good girl!

Anyway, I digress. Having begrudgingly surrendered Molly back to her owner we went to find Greg and Gigi at their hotel and unsuprisingly located them at the bar. Here commenced the agenda for the next two days of incessent chatting, eating and drinking. A couple of drinks at the bar was followed by an unexpected free ‘glass’ (plastic cup) of fizz in the hotel lobby, a congenial freebie offered to guests between 5 and 6pm each day. We pretended we were staying too, obviously, and had two each. Then we slowly strolled towards the downtown area, visiting various establishments along the way. These had been previously identified by Nick as cool places to go and had been thus marked on a map. Our crawl included a brewery, a bar that served us some very satisfactory food and a speakeasy style basement bar that did some mean cocktails. At the end of the evening we made plans to return in the morning for brunch and took an Uber home.

Our bus back to town in the morning was at 9.30am, which felt very, very early given our mildly sore heads when the alarm went off at 8.30am. It was going to be a long, hot day so we packed a bag with swim suits (for our ongoing deception of being hotel guests where Greg & Gigi were staying) and fresh clothes to go out to dinner in. At the hotel we exchanged our bag for our friends and headed out to brunch, catching one of the free downtown city buses to get there. Fed and watered we commenced a slow, sweaty walking tour of the historic district. We took in squares, cemeteries, town houses, old buildings and the river walk. We even did a couple of laps of the free river shuttle just to have a sit down, get some breeze and see the town from the water. Another establishment that had been marked on ‘the map’ was a well known icecream shop. Our afternoon snack was far more ice cream than any of us really needed, eaten on a bench in a square. This wasn’t the actual Forrest Gump ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ bench, or even the same square, but in our minds it was.

We shuffled slowly back to the hotel via a church or two then decamped to the pool area. We had a couple of hours of much needed R&R with cooling dips in the water. There may have been some napping. Our pool time fortuitously overlapped with ‘free fizz for guests in the lobby’ time. Hoorah! The genuine hotel guests were kind enough to let us use their shower facilities and once we were all clean and changed we set off back to town of the free bus. After sunset drinks in a hotel rooftop bar we went for dinner in a riverfront restaurant that did not impress us much. Nick had done a lot of research on where to eat and it had good reviews but unfortunately it managed to overpromise and underdeliver on all fronts. A bit of a shame, but we had fun with the almost ‘Faulty Towers’ type experience.

A bit less booze was imbibed on this second evening so getting up to catch the 9.30am bus back to town again wasn’t so cruel. A second brunch was had in a great diner-style establishment called Little Duck. They served their brunch cocktails with a little yellow rubber duck floating in them. Cute, but not cute enough to get us drinking again at 11am. We’re not animals.

After brunch we spent another few hot hours stolling the sultry streets again. This place is beautiful but must be unbearable in peak summer. Having cruised across town to visit the renowned Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum and Gallery we were quite dismayed to find out it was open every day except on a Tuesday. Today. Rats. By now our bodies were in need of cool refreshment and we found a great air conditioned bar to have a last cocktail before it was time to head back to Greg & Gigi’s hotel to say our farewells. They headed back to the airport and we went ‘home’ were we did NOTHING for the rest of the day. The combination of heat, walking, socialising and moderate excess had broken us.

Savannah was gorgeous and aside from one mediocre eating experience, it had not disappointed. We loved sharing it with friends and really appretiate the effort they make in coming to find us on our travels. The next day, much rested, we continued north, crossing the Savannah river and enterered South Carolina.

2nd May – 6th May 2023

Some of our travelling is going places. Some of our travelling is visiting places of note and repute. But sometimes our travelling is killing time and finding somewhere to stop and just exist whilst a bit of time passes. This was the situation for the next four days. We had a booking for Savannah on the next weekend, a long held bucket list destination for us and an experience that we were going to be sharing with our good friends from Conneticut, Greg & Gigi, who were flying in to see us.

Our pitstop was ‘Walkabout Camp’, an RV park with an Australian flavour by virtue of the husband of the couple that owned it being from Melbourne originally. Apart from its name, some shade sails around the pool area and the bathrooms being labelled ‘Blokes’ and ‘Sheilas’, it didn’t feel particularly Australian. It did deliver on the requirements for a good pitstop however:

1. Good bathrooms, laundry and wifi. Non negotiable.
2. Somewhere to walk – there was a nice maintained trail that meandered through the wooded land next to the park. It was only about a mile long but very pretty. No-one else seemed to either know about it or be interested in walking it so we had it to ourselves.
3. A nice pool area – this was also barely used by the other inhabitants, so practically a private pool as well for the Hampsons. Nice.
4. Somewhere to bike – The local town, Kingsland, was about 3 miles away and a safe and easy cycle. It was a town of two halves. The new part was close to the highway, was busy with lots of traffic, new construction, tons of eateries, businesses, petrol stations supermarkets and acted like a massive service centre for the highway. We didn’t go there. Instead we cruised into the ‘historic district’. This was very different with almost no business or eateries, dilapidated old homes, abandoned buildings and much quieter.
5. A quirky place to eat – the purpose of our journey a’bike to Kingsland was to have brunch at ‘Steffen’s Diner’, pretty much the only restaurant in town. It’s been run by the same family since 1948 and serving up Southern delights and classics continually since then. I had ‘The Benedict’ which was ham and poached eggs on muffins smothered with sausage gravy in lieu of hollandaise sauce. Perfection! We realised why this part of town was so quiet. Pretty much everyone had congregated here. It had been a good idea to come for brunch rather than lunch as there was quite a queue by the time we left.
6. A petting zoo – I’m not sure why there was a collection of (mostly pint-sized) animals here, but they added a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the ambience of the park. The early morning dawn chorus was the bleating of goats rather than birdsong and the flock of about ten chickens free-ranged amongst the rvs and trucks, having no respect for personal space and dashing towards the rustle of any packet of crisps or crackers at drink’o’clock. There was a depressed looking miniture pony called ‘Hulk’, an equally depressed looking miniture cow called ‘Brutus’, a couple of piggies who did nothing but sleep (so maybe also had low moods) and four goats who looked quite happy. There was also a whole bunch of squirrels to offer us entertainment and amusement. It’s difficult to ascertain the mood of a squirrel but I think that they all generally feel quite upbeat due to their very cool ability to climb trees and perform death defying leaps between branches.

So that was that. A few days of chilling out and then we were back on the (short) road to Savannah.

27th April – 2nd May 2023

Housekeeping:

Before I start blathering on, it seems that those people that subscribe to the site are not getting the photos included with the post when it is sent by email. This is likely a glitch at my end and I shall try and fix it. In the meantime you can go directly to the site at tincantravels.net, or copy and paste the link at the end of the email.

The Blather:

We headed north and crossed into southeast Georgia. Destination Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a 630 square mile area that includes 90% of the world renowned Okefenokee Swamp. So you’ve all heard of it, right??! It is another small slice of this massive country that is ecologically hugely significant and mostly unknown to all but locals and those in the business. In fact it is so important that is has been designated a Wetland of International Importance and is on the tentative US list for World Heritage Status. So there, now you have all heard of it!

Okefenokee is a vast bog that sits inside a huge saucer shaped depression that was once a shallow ocean floor. It gives rise to two rivers that flow out of it in opposite directions and its waters are inky black, stained by the tanins from the rotting vegetation.It’s name translates to “Land of the Trembling Earth” and the massive wetland is home to a myriad of species of plants, trees, insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. Its the whole shabang of an ecosystem.

There is a park in the swamp called Stephen C Foster State Park, oddly named for a 19th century composer, and we were here for five nights. We love these parks. They are usually off the beaten track, in wooded areas with large secluded pitches, firepits, great simple facilities and a give a sense that we are really ‘camping’. The down sides are usually a lack of wifi, and bugs. We knew that coming to a state park in a swamp was going to be ‘bug heavy’ so we had stocked up on 40% DEET – you know, the stuff that makes your skin smoke when you apply it: that’s one of the ways that it repells insects. There were many miles of long, straight, quiet, pine tree bordered backroads to get us there and we really felt like we were heading into the wilderness. Depite being nicknamed ‘The Peach State’, Georgia actually earns 40% of its GDP from forestry. We were right in the middle of it.

The park offers opportunities for fishing, boat tours, motor boat, canoe or kayak hire and a few walking trails. It is also a designated Dark Sky Area for star gazing if one is inclined to sit outside at night and be monstered by mosquitos. The waterways in the swamp are signposted and mapped and the more adventurous can do multi day trips with designated camping facilities throughout the area. There is lots of wildlife to see but the most impressive, and I would argue most plentiful creatures, were the alligators. Hundreds of the blimin’ things! They ranged in size from 1ft babies all the way up to 12ft big’uns. They seemed completely unfazed by the presence of humans and a couple of large ones were even resident in the small marina basin, floating near the boats and boat ramp and basking in the sun near the canoe rack. Although there have been no reports here of an attack on a human since 1937 we were warned not to attempt to get close or try and take selfies with them. This seemed like common sense to us but we spent some time chatting to a ranger who had seen plenty of humans behave with a bizzare lack of self preservation skills. It did also feel at times like a squirrel safari park. These were also very numerous, unbothered by our presence and very entertaining.

We did some walks around the park and our land-based wildlife exposure was mainly insect based, heavy on the mosquitos, despite the 40% toxo-spray. There were some amazing dragonflies and shimmering flying beetles. One huge flying something followed us closely for about 200m, like some sort of tiny, airbourne, well trained, black labrador.

Our internet access was limited. A short cycle with laptops took us to the office/gift shop at the basin which had a insect-proof, screened porch area with rocking chairs where we could get the satellite based wifi connection and here we sat for an hour or so each morning. It’s important to stay abreast of the complete dearth of news, the lack of emails from our solicitor about the sale of our house, checking weather forecasts that blatantly lie and the inanity of the rest of the internet offerings.

One day we took a guided boat trip with a very genuine and helpful young chap called Alex. He lacked any iota of sarcasm, irony or cynicism. It’s dificult to know how to interact with people like this. We slowly motored out onto the swamp and he was very knowledgeable about the fauna and flora and the history and ecology of the area. He called me Ma’am a lot and this made me feel quite old. There were loads of alligators both in the water and hauled out on logs, basking in the sun. They are quite magnificent creatures, unchanged genetically for millions of years. Its as if they evolved initially into an animal perfectly suited to their life and then nature just brushed off it’s hands and said ‘Done. No improvements needed. No natural selection necessary. Finito’. There are only 2 species of alligator worldwide. This, the American allicator, and the Chinese alligator.

The next day we risked believing the weather forecast and got up early – well 8am – to rent a watercraft. It was sunny, and more importantly due to be only light winds for a few hours. We broke our 3rd rule for a long and happy marriage¹ and shared a double canoe. There was an option for a 4hp motor boat, but it was a beautiful calm morning and we didn’t want to disturb our own serenity.

With disclaimer signed, money paid, lifejackets donned and paddles and seat cushions in hand we dragged our big aluminium canadian canoe to the water’s edge and managed to board it and float ourselves without incident. I sat in the front seat and was happy to be the lucky recipient of a very helpful and constant stream of instructions on what I was doing wrong with my paddling technique, how to steer properly, and how I should pay more attention to what direction the boat was going in. I accepted my lessons calmy and quietly with grace and gratitude, of course, and it did nothing but enhance our swamp cruising experience …. (The rules¹ are there for a reason, Folks…) Despite all that we had an amazing trip. We saw no-one else out there until we were heading home and it was so beautiful. There were alligators up the ying-yang.

The ones on logs and on the banks were as still as statues and the ones floating in the water would just slowly sink below the surface as we approached. I’m glad that the water was so dark because I think it would have been very unnerving to be able to see them swimming underwater around us. There were acres of waterlilies and the waterways were boarderd with Cypress and Black Gum trees drapped in the all pervasive Spanish Moss (which, interestingly is related more closely to bromeliads and pineapple plants than to other mosses).

Naturally occuring wildfires caused by lightening strikes are a normal part of the ecology of the swamp. They aid the propogation of some important species of tree but this area experienced a massive wildfire nicknamed the Bugaboo Fire in 2007 and the landscape still shows evidence of this with large areas lacking larger trees. The fire started in the Okefenokee when a tree fell onto a power line in high winds, this joined with another caused by a lightening strike on Bugaboo Island in the swamp. The hot and dry conditions caused the fire to and burn for over two months from April to June. Having merged with other fires and spreading into northern Florida it became the largest fire recorded in the history of both states, having burned over half a million acres and the smoke spread as far north as Atlanta, Alabama, Mississippi to the west and down south to Fort Lauderdale.

We did have several thunderstorms whilst we were here but happily without any nearby lightening strikes or scary fires. The mosquito situation was better than expected on the whole and, except for a busier couple of days over the weekend, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It had been incredibly peaceful and a relative partial tech detox. Any period of relative wilderness living is best followed by a spell in more civilised suroundings and our next stop was to take us up further north and back towards the coast in Georgia. We bid a fond farewell to the swamp and its prehistoric inhabitants and headed back the way we had come.

¹The Hampson Rules for a Long and Happy Marriage:

Rule 1: Do your own ironing. (This rule was abandonned early. Now Nick does it all)

Rule 2: Close the door for number 2s

Rule 3: Never share a double kayak or canoe

20th April – 27th April 2023

We were happy campers to be back on the road proper. The sun was a’shining. Big Dave and TinCan were reunited. Indicators were functioning and left turns were again possible without compunction. The 35-45 mph wobble had resolved and although the traffic through North Orlando to get to Highway 95 was hideous it couldn’t dampen our spirits.  We eventually hit the open road and headed north-west up towards the Atlantic coast. We were off to the beach!

The state of Florida is filling up fast. Many folk are looking for one, or a combination of, its warmer winters, lower taxes and less liberal politics. The Snow Birds come for the winter season. Lots of people are coming to live full-time and choose to endure the hot and humid summers. Homes are being built at a frantic rate, prices are going up and its the only place in the US where we have experienced the traffic as bad as LA.  However the crowds seem to congregate in southern Florida and the further north we drove the more relaxed it all felt.

After a busy week of doing naff all we had decided that were going to have a week of relaxation on the coast near a town called St Augustine. This is the oldest city in the USA having been settled by the Spanish in the real olden days of 1565. It was the capital of Spanish Florida for about 200 years then was the designated capital of British East Florida in 1763. It returned to the Spanish in 1783 who ceded Florida to the United States in 1819 when it was the Floridian capital again from 1821 to 1824 when the title was transfered to Tallahassee. It has some beautiful old buildings, churches and a fort and a definite Spanish flavour. It also boasts the first catholic mission on US soil from 1565, Mission Nombre de Dios, and the site is commemorated with a 204ft metal cross.

Our camp was only a few streets back from the beach, less than half a mile from the supermarket and several bars and restaurants and was an ‘easy’ 8 mile cycle to town.  (I put ‘easy’ into inverted commas as there was a dedicated cycle lane all the way there with only a very slight elevation change, but we haven’t cycled for a while and the ol’ undercarriages have tenderised since last summer. We were to suffer some saddle soreness). The camp was an ‘RV resort’. This generally means that the place has great facilities, a pool and but is priced accordingly. We were going to have to pay Florida holiday prices if we wanted to behave like we were on holiday in Florida. Which we did. We spent time by the pool every day, further converting our skin from the shade ‘English Winter Alabaster’ to a well recognised Northern European shade- ‘A-bit-red-now-but-will-be-Light-Brown-in-the-morning’.

Depite the temperature ranging from hot to very hot there was a lovely on-shore sea breeze and we tried to combine a visit to the beach with a power walk most mornings that we didn’t cycle. Some exercise was well overdue! The Atlantic itself didn’t look that inviting yet – cold and messy conditions – so most people were either walking, cycling, fishing or sitting and gazing with only a few hardy souls paddling. Even the multitude of dogs didn’t really want to go in.

Our first full day here was a sorting day. At one point it looked like we were having a fire sale with bags, tools, boxes, electonics, leads, chairs, bikes, BBQ, and all sorts of other guff spilled out all over our concrete pad. We unpacked our bags, repacked our warm stuf and put it away. I packed away the duvet – won’t be needing that for a while. We re-aquainted ourselves with all the things that we own here, which is a suprising amount of stuff. There are lots of half-used bottles and tubes of stuff, tools and equipment that remind us of all the repairs and maintanance that we have done along our travels. Like the tyre iron that we bought in Arizona after one of our rear wheels came loose and nearly fell off in the desert. Fun times, happy memories…. Eventually we made some sense of the place and all was tidied away again, with a satisfying bag of rubbish to be disposed of.

Our first foray to town was by an intriguing ride-share/on-demand trolley bus. I had found the number on a flyer pinned up by the toilets (One has to be careful in these circumstance as to what one is getting into, so to speak). The RV resort reception staff denied all knowledge of the service and when I called the number I was given the direct dial number for the driver of the bus. I was to call him for a pick up after 4pm. It all seemed quite unusual. At 4pm I got through to Lloyd, the driver, who due to a combination of background noise, my accent and trying to navigate a big bus through traffic, took a while to understand my request for a pick up. We got there in the end though and a time was set: 6pm. Were we going to The Amphitheatre? No, Historic Down Town, I said. Would he show?? At 5.45pm we headed to the pick up area at the resort entrance, all washed and dressed and there he was, waiting in old noisy bus disguised as a trolley. We settled into the uncomfortable wooden seating, another couple jumped on the bus on a whim and we were off! On the way we picked up a few more couples from a hotel and it transpired that there was a big concert on at the Ampitheatre, a 4000 seater local concert venue. The performer for the next three nights was ‘Billy Strings’ (no-us neither), but next week it was hosting Billy Idol and Pat Benatar (on consecutive nights, not in a bizzare fantasy genre chimera duet performance). He dropped them off there and us to town. “Just call when you want picking up’, Lloyd said as we disembarked, “but it will have to be at 9pm at the latest so that I can drop you off home before the concert finishes”. This seemed a bit vague so we asked him to pick us up where we were getting off at 9pm. A firm plan without needing a phone call seemed a better option. He agreed. But what do they say about the best laid plans…..

We had a lovely few hours in town. We wandered through the town square lined with tall trees draped in Spanish moss, through the old narrow historic streets, past the grand churches, the clock tower, and old Spanish colonial hotel building that is now a university (none of which we took any photos of) and then after a much needed cold beer in a local microbrewery we had dinner in a great restaurant called The Floridian. It was off the touristy beaten track but good enough to have a constant queue of people waiting for a table. The food was great, the service excellent, the drinks cold. What more could we ask for? Well I’ll tell you… ‘people watching’ opportunities. We had managed to score one of the best seats in the house on the veranda giving us a prime vantage point to observe the natives. It really was a perfect restaurant experience.

We walked back to the pick up point for the bus in plenty of time but by 9.10pm he still hadn’t turned up. We called him multiple times and after not answering the first few calls he eventually picked up and said he wasn’t coming. He was now on the wrong side of the bridge and it was now too late to fetch us before the concert ended. We were stuck 8 miles from home with no public transport and 4000 people leaving a concert in 30 minutes time. Time to pray to the Gods of Uber…. 2 minutes later our angel in a Honda Accord arrived. She was not the most joyful individual in the firmament. During the entirety of our ride she drove with one hand whilst the other shovelled a constant supply of nuts into her mouth whilst complaining about her lack of rides that evening, bills she had to pay and the fact she couldn’t afford to eat. (She was quite a large lady so I think that the lack of food situation must have been fairly recent.) We tried to cheer her up and engage her in conversation between mouthfuls, but to no avail. As she dropped us off we reassured her that her night was going to get better very fast if she hung around the Amphitheatre and she went on her sullen way. Not all angels wear smiles.

The next day was undercarriage ruination day. On a Saturday morning the Amphitheatre hosts a weekly Farmers Market and although we had no desire to buy armfuls of vegetables or useless arty knick knacks we knew that there would be a food truck or two that could serve us something tasty for brunch. It was 30 minutes to the market along the old beach boulevard with the aforementioned cycle lane. Very civilised. We called in at the lighthouse to take a picture as it was very handsome with its fresh black and white paint job, and arrived at the market with a healthy hunger and the beginnings of ‘seat fatigue’. This was forgotten with a wander around the stalls, a remarkably good cup of coffee and a very tasty, albeit very slowly prepared, breakfast sandwich. Whilst waiting for our sandwich to be readied a lady of a certain age and demenour walked up to the hatch the food truck and said this verbatim: “Is there onion in the egg salad? No, good. I’ll have the egg salad sandwich but without the bread”. So she was really after a bowl of egg mayonaise… We ate our sandwiches whilst listening to a local country/bluegrass band play some tunes and sing some songs. They were mostly ok but a lady took vocals for one track and nearly made our ears bleed.

We continued our journey to town, over the bridge which had a scary metal grate in the middle drawbridge bit, and tied up the bikes on the waterfront. By now it was a’sizzling and Mr Hampson needed a new shady hat. First stop: the Panama Hat Co. shop. Here there were walls and walls of multiple types of hat and a multitude of hot sweaty tourists trying to buy them. We joined the throngs. He found a very fine hat, offered in a size sufficient to accommodate his gargantuan intellect which was happily not an original Panama. The difference in price was equivalent to our spends in the Floridian the previous evening. Suitably attired we spent an hour or so wandering around the streets, looking at the fort from the outside and then walked back along the waterfront to the bikes. The ride home was hot and painful. Them seat bones…..

The next day we gingerly cycled the short distance up to a nearby mini golf course for the first round of the highly competitive ‘2023 Tour’. Despite Nick’s early glory with a hole-in-one on the first hole, and much to his dismay, I won by one stroke. He had the yips on the back 9.

A day’s rest out of the saddle saw our nethers recovered enough for a ride out up to Anastasia State Park. This is a small park in the same area as the Ampitheatre with a campsite (sadly fully booked otherwise we would have stayed here) and a large swathe of protected beach. We packed a picnic lunch and cruised on up there. We ate our sandwiches on the beach, gazing at the sea which was still pretty rough and unfriendly looking. Beautiful though.

We met one interesting chap in camp. A chatty Irish man in his mid 50s who had moved here at 20 years old. He had a peculiar Southern drawl with irish inflections. Within 5 minutes of talking to him he had divulged that he had been a bounty hunter and then a power linesman until he suffered a high tension electric shock that had nearly killed him. He had shown us his burn scars that went up the back of both legs and the scar across his mid-chest that he had covered with a tattoo of an image of …his own heart…He had told us about his 12 heart attacks and that he had recently had a big heart operation where the heart was taken out of his chest for some service and repairs whilst he was on a bypass machine and that the surgeon had carefully stitched his chest wound up so that his heart tattoo was lined up again. Now he was a dog trainer and lived full time in his trailer on the park with his wife, who was also a dog trainer, and a very handsome German Shepherd called Zeus, who was, predictably, very well trained. We heard about his kids and grandkids, his lack of family in Ireland, his family in UK and the fact that he had duel citizenship of both countries so that if he wanted to get American citizenship he would have to renounce one of them. Five minutes, I tell you. He barely drew breath. Nice bloke though.

We had a few more beach walks over the last few days and on our last evening we strolled to a very close local bar for a beer and our first burger. (My father thinks that this is ALL we do when we are here-Not true, Dad!). The evening was warm, there was a light breeze, fairly decent live music playing on the deck, good beer, a good burger and a nice couple that we got chatting to at the bar. A great finale to our first stop on our route.

The next morning we packed up and headed to our next stop. A swamp in Georgia.

12th April – 20th April 2023

A whole year has passed since we put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in a storage unit in Orlando, Florida and returned to the UK. It has been a year of catching up with friends and family, a year of living a reasonably conventional life in a house, and a year of wondering what our short-to-medium term future looked like. After a month of tent camping in France in the Summer of 2022 we realised that our future is definitely on the road, but not under canvas. We are committed to one last big trip in the USA and have decided to become full-time nomads in Europe and the UK for a few years after that. To that end we are selling our house, have packed our possessions into a storage container, have sold our car, have put a deposit on a motorhome to be ready later in the year and we are now back Stateside.

This trip, like most of the previous ones, started with a degree of uncertainty. What state would Big Dave and Tin Can be in after 12 months idle? This was the first time we had stored them ‘under cover’ rather than inside and we knew that at least two hurricaines had passed over Orlando in the time we had been away. Last time Big Dave wouldn’t start and we had begun that trip with a low-loader ride to the garage, a 3 week delay and many thousands of dollars in repair bills. Nervous times ahead.

We headed to the storage unit in an Uber after a night in a hotel in Orlando. Mid- April is already hot,hot, hot here. We had left behind an unseasonably cool UK Spring and it was lovely to feel the heat again. The lilly white flesh would need some rays to tone down the glare.

First impressions revealed them to be filthy, covered in dust from the past storms but in one piece. Big Dave started first time without a cough or a splutter, the trickle charger having done its job. We opened up Tin Can and apart from most of the pictures having fallen off their 3M fixings with the heat, all seemed well inside too. So far, so good! The first few days of our trip were to be visiting friends in Sarasota so we unpacked and repacked our bags for that and embarked on our first ‘off-load’ of Tin Can. He was staying here as the start of our trip proper would bring us back this way and we had another week left on our storage rental. Big Dave needed an oil change – a very easy task without TC, tricky with him due to his height.

We headed off, procured an oil change – which was nearly a transmission fluid change due to an error by our mechanic that was caught just in time – and drove to Sarasota. The 2 hour journey took 4 hours, which seemed to be purely due to the weight of traffic. En route we realised that Big Dave’s left indicator lights weren’t working. This was going to need attention.

Our hosts in Sarasota were Ed & Karee, the couple that we had met on the ranch in Arizona during our last trip. Karee was away so Ed was hosting us solo. It started in true Ed fashion… He has a regular weekly date with a group of buddies at a local establishment for drinks and an early dinner and we were invited. The venue? ‘Hooters‘, of course! We had a 5 minute turn around after arriving and within fifteen minutes had beers in hand, delivered by a very perky lil’ thing clad in small T-shirt and even smaller orange hot pants. Up until now we had not frequented a Hooters on our travels and I think both of us thought that it would be a bit seedy and frequented purely by groups of lecherous men. That may be the case for many franchises, but this one was delightful! The clientèle was very diverse including grandparents and grandkids and the girls were all lovely, especially to the women. The company -Ed’s friends Ron & Mario- was good, the food was tasty, the service attentive and the beer cold. What’s not to love?!

We had only planned to stay in Sarasota for a long weekend, but Big Dave’s indicators needed fixing. Ed knew a guy who ran a garage and he fitted us in the next day to look at the problem. The indicators required a new relay which needed ordering. There was also a light fitting that needed replacing on one of the flared rear wheel arches. In the end we were with Ed for a week as the truck took longer to fix than planned (due to a part being wrong when it arrived so needing to be re-ordered.) It was a very pleasant week of maroonment after the craziness of the past month. We were happy and well behaved house guests. We cooked a few meals in, had a few meals out – including an evening over at Ed’s mum’s with take away fried chicken – started to do some onward bookings for our trip and spent some very happy hours by the pool. We even did some wildlife rescue of a red eared turtle out of the deep end. It wasn’t entirely happy about being scooped out in a leaf net, but I’m sure felt better in the nearby pond than the salt chlorinated water of the pool.

At the weekend, when Ed wasn’t working, we had a couple of outings. For the first, on Saturday afternoon, we drove the 1 hour up to St Petersberg, near Tampa, to accompany Ed to an LSU ( Louisianna State University) Alumni Crawfish Boil. Ed is an LSU alumni, a big fan of of all things LSU and a massive fan of a boil up. We met his friends, Lou and Barrie, but really it was all about the crawfish. This was served as a massive tray of the bugs, boiled in a delicious red spicy sauce that gets round your face, all over your hands, down your arms and everywhere else besides. Our verdict after this our second boil up? Very tasty, a lot of work for minimal food reward and I shouldn’t have worn white trousers.

Our other noteable outing was on Sunday afternoon to watch a waterskiing show. I thought this sort of thing had been lost to the past, but no! A club called Ski-A-Rees (No idea why it’s called this. Google had no info either) stage a weekly free show to show off their skills. They put on bigger shows once a month or so and compete nationwide too. It was good old fashioned fun with the crowds sitting on aluminium bleachers, a compère giving us a run down of the performers and a steady parade of club members of all ages doing jetty starts on fat skis, twirling on one leg, going backwards and forwards, riding on each others shoulders, doing acrobatics, doing jumps and yes, doing that thing only every seen in retro posters of 50s waterskiing…building a waterskier pyramid! It was fantastic. I would have failed to even do a jetty start, so I was very impressed. The ‘free’ show ended with the donations bucket being passed around, but it was definitly worth the cash we threw in.

Finally the car was ready and before the next Hooter’s rendezvous came around, we were off back to Orlando. The indicatiors all worked now and we could finally turn left without fear. We arrived, we reloaded TC and set off North up the coast to our first camping destination.

5th April – 13th April 2022

Our next journey took us out of the Florida panhandle and sadly away from the delights of the Forgotten Coast. A three and a half hour drive along some very lovely quiet roads through some beautiful Floridian forests brought us to Ozello Key, a small, end of the line sort of place on the West coast of the main Florida pennisula. The area was filled with multiple modest waterfront homes on a haphazard canal complex giving nearly all the properties water access to the marshlands and the Gulf beyond. Our small camp was co-located with a small marina and as the three days here was going to be the last of the touring part of our trip and we were looking forward to being able arrange a fan boat trip out on the water. As usual we had no plans to drive anywhere once we had arrived so we made sure we rocked up with plenty of provisions and our research told us that there was a good restaurant bar an easy walk away.

The marina had spaces for 3 RVs, right on the canal-side, and our host informed us that no-one else was booked into either for the other sites for the entirity of our stay. We were to have a private camp. Perfect! That meant that the little bathroom block and laundry were all ours too. The laundry was even free. How much better could it get?? Well, TV reception and WIfi might have been good, but the location made up for it, sort of….

It was stinking hot and windy when we arrived so after we had set up we did nothing except sit outside in a shady spot with our books and watch the world go by. The world, however, wasn’t going anywhere. Except for the wind in the trees it was deathly quiet, with the only action being provided bay the odd lizard and shore bird. Unfortunately, because of the wind, all the fan boat charters had been cancelled for the next 24 hours and the forecast was not looking good beyond that. It looked like we might not get out after all. Bummer. The heat continued for the whole three days and we put the air con on for the first time and even had to sleep with a fan for a couple of nights. It didn’t seem that long ago that we were sleeping under 5 blankets and a duvet with a hot water bottle and the heating on all night. Warms up early down here.

A couple of fishing charter boats did make it out and we did get to know a young captain of of one of the small boats that tied up just alongside where we were camped. He was called Teddy, was about 25 years old and was a part-time radiographer, part-time fishing charter captain. He worked 7 days a week when he could and seemed to have his life sorted. Quite a work ethic. It was exhausting just talking to him!

So with no TV and no wifi, what was there to do?? Free blimin’ laudry, that’s what! I washed everything and I washed it good. Got to get our money’s worth somehow.

The local restaurant bar was visited for dinner one evening. We walked the half mile there as slowly as we could to avoid getting too hot and sweaty, but without success. We just looked like suspicious loiterers and then arrived with more than a seemly glow and sheen upon our brows. Luckily there was a spot on the lovely breezy over-water terrace and we cooled down with a cold beer or several. The seafood offerings were more than satisfactory and we had a lovely evening.

The few quiet days at Ozello were good to prepare us for our next stop: A long weekend of fun in Sarasota staying with our new friends Ed and Karee. For those whose memories from which this might have slipped, we met this very fun couple at Rancho De La Osa, Arizona on my birthday weekend at the start of January. Once we found out that they lived in mid-Florida we had cheekily invited ourselves to stay with them at the end of our trip as we were booked to fly out of Orlando, a mere 2.5 hour drive away from their place. They kindly agreed and now we were on our way there.

A couple of hours drive from Ozello brought us to the Florida that we had managed to avoid so far, the busy part. There was more and more traffic on the highway the further south we travelled and as we approached Tampa an accident necessitated a diversion off the highway into the burbs. These roads were equally busy. We limped along, finally arriving in Sarasota and after a quick pitstop to purchase booze as our contribution to the weekend’s supplies, we headed to Ed and Karee’s.

Happily (to all four of us) we still got on like a house on fire. There was none of the awkwardness that is always possible when you follow up a fun holiday friendship with actually meeting up again, rather than just emptily but very enthusiastically promising it when you say your goodbyes. Especially when that involves parking up your not-inconsiderably sized camper on their driveway and requesting to borrow a long extension lead and to plug it into the mains to keep the fridge cold, then being four day house-guests. Even when for the last of those four days you actully spend the whole day and evening out with other friends and just come back to sleep (more on that later) and then before you leave on the last morning you are equally demanding and annoying and create more chaos by giving the aforementioned camper a pre-storage washdown on the aforementioned driveway. None of this phased Ed and Karee one jot and they were magnificent hosts. It is their superpower.

We started our stay with some light afternoon drinking whilst we caught up on the past three months since we had seen them on the ranch and than had an early dinner before heading out to catch sunset at the beach. We started at the roof-top bar of the Westin initially but the cool view was overshadowed by the chilly breeze and we relocated to the shelter of the gound-level terrace of the bar at the nearby Ritz for second cocktails. How swanky was this?! Quite a fancy sort of sundowner compared to our usual beer-straight-from-the-can-around-the-campfire affair. We had returned to civilisation! The rest of the evening was spent back at their house, sitting around the outside fireplace and much rubbish was talked into the wee small hours.

The next day we slowly emerged and a plan for the day was formed. Our conventional tourist activity was to be a visit to the Ringling Circus Museum. Sarasota was the HQ and winter quarters of the imensively impressive Ringling travelling circus. The Ringling Circus was run by five of seven brothers and in its various incarnations ran for nearly 150 years, closing only in 2017. In its hey days of the forties and fifties it travelled around the country on extended tours, running two mile-long trains transporting the three thousand performers and personel and eight hundred animals including many, many elephants. The circus mostly only visited each town for one day and in that time the team would errect its enormous big top, all the tents and enclosures for the animals, all the tents for the kitchen, canteen, costumes and accommodation, all the tents for hairdressers, blacksmiths, doctors and other services for the staff and all the tents for the candy, popcorn and merchendise sellers. They would usually put on two performances of the show, take the whole lot down again, load it all back on the train and then travel to the next town. It was an amgalmation of a town, a zoo, a business and a show on the move each day, every day. No wonder they needed a winter base in sunny Florida for a nice rest. It all sounds very exhausting. The musuem was set in the grounds of the scenic Ringling estate on the shores of Sarasota Bay. Several of the brothers built rather impressive homes on the estate which are now available to tour or rent for events. We wandered around and then it was time for another meal! We met Ed and Karee’s daughter, Emily, son-in-law, Casey and one year old grandaughter, Leila, in town and had a very relaxed late lunch in the sun whilst all trying not to get sunburnt.

An afternoon lull at home took us back up to sundowner-time again and Emily organised us all to drive up to the beach for cocktails at the Ritz-Carlton Beachclub. This sounds more glamorous than it was. The beach bar was quite literally a sand-between-your-toes sort of place on the beautiful white sandy beach. Unfortunately it got really windy and quite cool and an not insignificant amount of that sand was trying to get into our ears, eyballs and teeth. The beach bar was also only selling its hideously overpriced cocktails in crappy plastic cups and stopped serving ’30 minuites prior to sunset’. What??? At a beach bar whose chief quality is it’s sunset view?? Oh, and whilst the men were buying the drinks (a three-man job apparently), they left us unchaperoned ladies alone long enough for a sleezy chap to come over and chance his arm on a pick up. Well at least I think that was what his intention was. He had a few irresistable lines, like “Do I detect an accent?” and “I like your sweater, is that from England?” What a temptation he was… Anyway after a lovely sunset, no prospect of a second drink and borderline hypothermia we decamped back to the house and ate pizza.

The next day the swank was amped up to level 3 and we found ourselves being taken to watch a game of polo at the Sarasota Polo Club. It was an afternoon of fabulous Ra-Ra, Florida style. (As neither of us have ever been to the polo before, this is now our only frame of reference) Our spectators’ pitch was set up on the sidelines with several gazebos, many lawn chairs, a picnic table or several and a healthy amount of food and fizz. (Of note: most of the food was fried chicken, which incidentally is a perfect accompaniment to a glass of chilled bubbles, or is it the other way around. I digress). Prior to the whistle/kick off we were treated to a guided tour of the ‘backstage area’ by a local polo groupie. She was very enthusiastic and effervesent and happy to have a reason to be hanging out with all the players, grooms and ponies as they were getting ready. I think she was also quite knowledgeable, but again, no prior frame of reference. The match itself was a bit incidental to the day as we were enjoying the chitchat, the sun, the bubbles and the fried chicken, but it did provide a rather lovely backdrop to the day.

On our final day in Sarasota we managed to catch up with our friends Greg and Gigi (and two of their three kids) who were visiting Florida from Conneticut. Greg and Nick are friends from school when Nick spent a year here on an exchange after A levels. We had tried to meet them on our trip around the Gulf Coast, but it just hadn’t worked out. Very fortuitously Greg’s mum lives only about 6 miles from Ed and Karee, and they were visiting her for Spring Break, so we had arranged to spend the day with them. This involved a lot of chat, an afternoon on the beach (the fabulous Siesta Key beach, voted one of the USA’s favorite beaches with silica sand so fine and white and cool on the feet even when the sun is blazing), more chat, lunch on the beach, drinks, chat and a seafood dinner before they delivered us back to Ed and Keree’s. It was great to see them but sad to only have this limited time together. We consoled ourselves with the fact that there is a very good chance that we will see them in France over the summer.

The next day we bade our farewells to Ed and Karee and Sarasota, but not before giving Big Dave and Tin Can their final washdown on the driveway. We had planned to do this at at commercial place en route to storage, but bizarrely for a state full of people with RVs we couldn’t find a tall carwash. We headed towards Orlando and stopped at a place called Davenport, about an hour southwest of the city. We had one night here to do our final clean, laundry and prep to put the team into storage the next day. It was hot, hot, hot but there was no rest for the usually idle and we worked up a sweat doing all our chores. Happily we are now a well oiled machine and know exactly what needs to be done. This storage is below the ‘freeze-zone’ so there was even no need to worry about winterizing the pipes with anti-freeze. We were so organised that we even managed to fit in a swim and a short spell sitting in the sun by the pool before our ‘last supper’ of the usual interesting meal created from the fridge scrapings.

Our last day dawned, still hot as hell, and we cruised to our storage unit which was a short 20 minutes drive from Orlando airport. The bags were packed, the laundry was done and everything was ship shape. We put Big Dave and Tin Can to bed in their outdoor, covered unit, plugged in to a trickle charger. Despite the 30 degC temp we had to change into our travel clothes of jeans and boots before wheeling our bags up to reception to grab and Uber to the airport. When will we stop sweating??! (Soon. We are off back to a UK Spring via Iceland.)

Another trip is over. This has been a five month journey from the Northwest corner nearly to the furthest Southeast of this vast country. A journey which started with the lows of an enormous mechanic’s bill and some terrible wet and cold weather and the many, many highs including fabulous landscapes, interesting people and places, great food and new friends. Coronovirus was the constant backdrop to our travels, but at no point directly affected us or significantly altered what we did. We were very happy to have ‘braved’ this trip and finally got back on the road again. Our happy place.

So as I write the last few lines of this final Tin Can Travels post it is with great relief that, after procrastinating its writing for two whole months, I can finally say…..It’s a wrap!

18th Mar – 5th Apr 2022

Think Florida? Think Disney, Everglades, Keys, retirement communities, suburban sprawl, traffic, developed beach resorts. The Forgotten Coast bucks all these norms, mainly because it has been just that: forgotten. As the crowds have poured into Southern Florida, to live and holiday in the tropical winterless climate, the slightly cooler coast of the Florida panhandle remains a gorgeous gem that seems to have become lodged in the years somewhere between 1950 and 1985. The long term locals and holiday-makers of yore would lament that it too has been a victim of progress and that development has altered its charm, but to our eyes, it was a complete retro delight.

Our day of out-running the storm brought us through Pensacola, Panama City, Mexico City and Port St Joe, with each conurbation getting progressively smaller and less developed. Mexico City and Port St Joe had had their own weather nemesis in the form of hurricaine Michael in 2018, but the rebuild efforts looked mostly complete. Our journey took us beyond civilisation to, quite literally, the end of the road and a small settlement called Indian Pass. Here a quiet 3 mile stretch road ran down a narrow penninsula with a swampy inland lagoon on one side and a long white sandy beach on the other. There are a variety of well spaced out beach houses that are mostly vacation homes but with a scattering of full time residents. At the top of the road is a small grocery store and ‘raw bar’, the only businesses within 12 miles and at the end of the road was a boat ramp, a turnaround and our camp. This was truely ‘getting away from it all’.

Camp was a real ‘sand between your toes’ sort of place that looked like it hadn’t seen any real maintenance for several decades. None of the sandy pitches were very level or had any sort of hardstanding and they were all higgledy-piggledy, slotted between the large old trees. The power and water hookups were placed in random locations, often on the wrong side of the sites, so that it was difficult to get hoses and leads to reach their plug ins. There were no sewer hook-ups and the single dump station for the whole camp was situated in the main thoroughfare. It was also located on the brow of a small hillock so that any tank discharge had to navigate a moderate contra-gravity route. (Physics need not apply here.) There was also no TV reception, no Wifi and the bathroom block, situated in a portacabin, was tired and dated. It was perfect.

(Soon after we had arrived I noticed that what looked like pale mud splatters all along the passenger-side of Big Dave was actually paint, still a bit wet, but drying fast. We had no idea when we had picked it up, but it was super-sticky and probably road-marking paint. Removing it was a labour of love and over the following weeks it took many hours, much elbow grease, several pints of rubbing alcohol and considerable swearing to get rid of it. It was mostly removed from the paintwork by the end of our trip but the wheel arches are a lost cause. I will just over-spray these dark grey when he needs a pre-sale tarting up.)

We had booked nine nights, and in order to stay so long at the short notice that we had given, this meant a moving sites again during our stay. Despite all its short comings this was a very popular little campsite and many people have been coming here for decades. Nobody that we spoke to wanted it to change one iota. The beach was only a hop and a skip away from most of the sites and the comings and goings at the boat ramp made us very whistful for our past boat ownership days and our paddleboaords at home.

Just off Indian Pass point there is a largish uninhabited island called St Vincents Island and a deep channel with strong currents separates it from the mainland. This attracts lots of fish which is what brings most people here, for the fishing. It also, for the same reasons, apparently brings a lot of sharks to the channel, making it one of the most shark infested stretches of water in the world, or the USA, or Florida. I can’t quite remember what my source of this information actually said, but it certainly put us off swimming even more than the brisk water temperatures. During our stay we only saw one small shark but there was pod of dolphins that hung about most days, obviously grazing on the all-you-can-eat-fish-buffet. Very scenic.

Having avoided one storm to get here we copped a second one soon after arriving. There was much thunder and lightening; it rained and rained and rained; stopped for a bit, then rained again. With the aide of a large umbrella we managed a brief spell on the beach for a ‘sundowner’ and were unsuprisingly out there by ourselves. All the other sensible people were chased inside by the imminant danger of death-by-lightning-strike and eventually we lost our bottle too. Just in the nick of time as the next strike sounded pretty much overhead.

It rained all night, but cleared up the next day again allowing us to cycle the 3 miles back to the raw bar for a late lunch. This place is brilliant. The ‘raw’ refers to the oysters on the menu and this is essentially a very simple seafood bar. On arrival you are given two pieces of paper: a booze tick-sheet to record the drinks that you take from the ‘honesty fridges’, and the menu tick-sheet to order your food and drop off at the counter. Then you pay at the end. It has been here for donkey’s years in various guises, and although been modestly extended in recent decades, it has been doing the same thing in the same way for a long time. The oysters are all from this area and fresher than a fresh thing from freshville.

I think my face says all you need to know about the glorious pairing of a tray of baked oysters covered in an unexpectedly good melted cheese and topped with toasted breadcrumbs and a tray of stuffed prawns having their last swim in a lake of liquid butter served with a slab of absorbant bread. No other words needed.

The rest of the week was a bit of a blur of hot sunny days, a few more rainy days, long walks on the beach, sitting in the sun, reading, chatting to camping neighbours, having evening fires on the beach and finally feeling like we were ‘on holiday’. I know that sounds a bit rich, as our current existance is mostly one big fat holiday, but this place was something special.

One day we took a shuttle boat over the channel to St Vincents Island with our bikes. The island is uninhabited, has no power or running water and criss-crossed by several rough tracks. The cost of the 90 second transfer was a bit steep, but there was no way that we could leave Indian Pass without a visit. In the 1940s the island, which is about 9 miles long and 4 miles wide was originally a privately owned hunting retreat, stocked with many exotic game species like zebra, sambar deer, eland and black buck. In 1968 the island was bought by the Nature Conservancy who removed all the exotic game except the sambar deer, creating a wildlife refuge. These deer are a type of Asian elk and are enormous, as big as a medium sized horse. The island is now also home to many alligators, wolves, eagles and numerous migratory birds. Our boat shuttle only gave us 2.5 hours on the island and we set off on our bikes down the main track, unlikely to have time to make it to the end of the island before we had to turn around. It was beautiful and deserted but very heavy going due to all the recent rain. The brisk breeze was at our backs initially, then compounded the work of our return trip an we saw none of the alleged wildlife except one very small turtle. It turned out to be quite an expensive bike ride through a forest. Yer live and learn.

During our time here we got to know a colourful local couple called (Mr) Lynn and Barb who owned one of the very few permenant trailers on the camp. They had had it for years, and despite also having a proper home in the nearby town of Port St Joe, they spent most of their time here. King and Queen of the ‘sundowner’, which commenced long before the sun was anywhere near the horizon, they held court every later afternoon outside their pad, spending hours chatting to friends old and new who were either passing by or who sat to join them. There was always a cooler full of beer, always a pile of empties, always a couple of tame squirrels who came to be fed monkey nuts, always an endless supply of interesting tales and always the sound of Lynn’s laughter filling the air. They were priceless. Lynn, a renowned artist specializing in reptiles and flora, became louder as the cooler got emptier and then could always be found round the back of their trailer having a wee in a bush at regular intervals. As our pitch was right next to their trailer we found it impossible to resist drawing up a chair and sharing a drink or two as long as the no-see-ums allowed…..

Which brings me to no-see-ums. Biting gnats. Little tiny, flying jaws of menace. Mercilous, miniture bugs that were the only downside of our time spent on this coast. They are about the size of a UK midge, are very interested in procuring human blood, and stalk their prey at all hours, especially dawn and dusk. On the upside, they can’t fly in windy conditions, on the downside, they are smaller than the mesh on our window screens which consequently offer no protection so we weren’t even safe inside. On the upside, they are repelled by slathering yourself in 40% DEET products. On the downside, you have to slather yourself in 40% DEET products. It was the rough to the Forgotten Coast smooth.

Eventually our extended stay here came to an end, which was very sad. We bade our farewells to Lynn and Barb and continued onwards. Our next stay was a single night stop-gap in a far fancier sort of place, Carabelle Beach RV resort. It was just across the road from a very lovely beach (clue’s in the name) and a whole 45 minute drive away from Indian Pass. Life ‘on the road’ was being spent less and less actually on the road these days. We arrived, checked in and were directed to our site which was one of those fabulous enormous and perfectly flat and level concrete slabs. No wiggling backwards and forwards, left and right to find the flattest spot. No arguing about whether we needed to get the levelling blocks out and how many we needed under which wheels to achieve some semblence of horizontal. (This is not only important for the efficient functioning of the fridge-freezer, but makes sleeping more comfortable-any head up or head down is disconcerting, cooking less sporting- think fluid levels, and means the doors on cupboards and the bathroom don’t fly open or slam shut all the time.) Anyway, we just pulled up and it was perfect. The sandy shabbiness of Indian Pass had been absolutely charming, but you have to love 100 sqm of perfect pad and patio. It was hot and breezy, so no no-see-ums, we sat by the pool, we read, we walked over to the beach, it was all rather civilised.

Our next stop after this was another epic 30 minute drive away. We may be paying more for our campsites the further into Florida we go, but at least our fuel costs have decreased considerably. We were booked for the next eight days into another waterside park called Holiday Campground (another clue in the name)on the Ochlockonee Bay which was near a town called Panacea. In the late 1800s the town was originally called Smithville due to the large number of people of that surname that lived in the town. The town was the site of numerous hot sulphurous mineral springs and as the medical tourism industry started to boom in the country, Smithville confidently renamed itself ‘Smith Springs’ and waited for the tourists to flock in. No-one came. Before the turn of the century the town and its springs were bought by a group of Bostonian property developers, who renamed it Panacea and came up with an inspired marketing campaign. Each different spring was touted as benefiting and healing different ailments. A pavilion complex was built around the springs and suddenly Panacea was a popular destination. Unfortunately the boom didn’t last. A destructive hurricaine in 1928 was followed closely by the Great Depression and then the springs inexplicably dried up. Panacea had had its day. It is still a quiet backwater, attracting mainly tourists who come for the amazing fishing.

Camp was very pictureseque with half the pitches backing onto the beautiful Bay with great views of the water and fantastic sunsets. This offset the slight lack of space between the pitches and no pretence of anything being flat. Out with the levelling blocks again… Luckily our neighbours were quiet and neat which couldn’t be said of everyone. There’s something about being on vacation that turns up the volume on an American voice. That ‘something’ is proabably afternoon drinking, I think.

Panacea itself was about 5 miles down the road and we had no need to go there. Locally to camp was a shop, a couple of restaurants and nearby was a nice beach. Despite this area being apparently a bit down at heel it had been singled out to have an enormous amount of money spent on building cycle paths. $35million allegedly. The process was well underway and we were very happy to take full advantage of this luxury. One path went the 3 miles down to the beach which we visisted a couple of times, one path was in progress to link the town of Panacea with the beach area and then extended a further 10-15 miles inland beyond the town (to where, I don’t know) and then another path followed the tranquil road 10 miles through the forest to the neighbouring town of Sopchoppy.

Sopchoppy gets its name from a native Indian word for ‘long and twisted river’ and is a small settlement of less than 500 people. I’m not quite sure why a lot of money was spent to build a dedicated cycle path alongside a very quiet road to link a very small town to a smaller bayside settlement, but they did, and we took advantage of it. There’s not much in Sopchoppy: a gas station, a hardware store, a grocery store and……a microbrewery! Hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it…Double hoorah! A microbrewery with a cycle trail to it that had a visiting food truck scheduled to be in attendance…Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah!! Of course we had to go. So one sunny afternoon we saddled up and set off. Ten miles is quite a long way to cycle for a beer and dinner, but we are nothing if not committed to supporting local business and very time rich. The calorie burn would also offset the beer and burger fiesta we had planned. Win, win.

It was a delightful hour’s spin through the forest on our almost personal bike path, because you know that there was pretty much no one else using it. We arrived a bit hot and sweaty but nothing that a few cold pints of good beer didn’t sort out pretty quickly.

One important thing that you should know about Sopchoppy is that it is the location for an Annual Worm Grunting Festival. This is a competion to lure the most earthworms out of the ground by creating vibrations made by rubbing a piece of metal along a ribbed wooden stake. This grunting noise apparently sound just like the approach of the arch nemesis of an earthworm – a mole. So they all try and escape to the soil surface, where they are collected to be used for fishing bait. Genius and bonkers. This would usually be exactly the sort of event that we would attend and we were very disappointed to find out that we were only going to miss it bay a week.

After several pints we realised that the plan for a food truck dinner in a few hours was not going to be compatible with retaining the level of sobriety and athletic ability required to make the return 10 mile journey enjoyably. We sensibly decided to head back early and went to one of the seafood restaurants close to camp to continue our evening. This was a good decision.

We managed to fill our time here with walks on the beach, sitting on the beach, lying on the beach, working on removing the paint from Big Dave bit by bit, having camp fires, watching many beautiful sunsets and eating and drinking. You know, the usual. What I obviously wasn’t doing was writing the blog as I sit here back in the UK struggling to finish this penultimate post on the 3rd June, more than two months down the line.