North Carolina Hurricane Irene relief

A local ARRL fellow took this photo of me hard at work in North Carolina. Our headquarters was a childcare facility in its previous life. The entire room is painted this lurid lime green. At least my desk is away from the incredibly amateur paintings of clowns, balloons and super heroes in the back hallway.

No complaints, though. We have running water, mostly working air conditioning, and lockable room to store our equipment. That's about as good as it gets for distaster relief work.

Riders on the storm

We are parked at Red Cross headquarters in Wilson, North Carolina. I arrived with Odyssey yesterday morning, after an hour's drive from the interim headquarters location in Raleigh. Louise followed much later in our Red Cross rental car, which turns out to be a hybrid, a Toyota Prius, as she first had cell phones to deliver all over the eastern part of the state.

I have time to update the blog today, uncharacteristic for this stage of the operation, because the worst part of the storm is hitting us now, and everyone is sheltering in place. For most of the headquarters staff, that would be the pair of hotels they are occupying across town from here. For us, it is Odyssey, and so we are the sole Red Crossers here at HQ.

I'll catch up by filling in the blanks from my last post, which I dashed off before we hurriedly hit the road. I left off on Wednesday by saying that we were in a frustrating waiting game, while the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) in DC figured out where we'd be needed, if anywhere, for hurricane Irene. Folks at the DOC were already pretty frazzled trying to play the chasing-Irene guessing game, and it did not help any that they were all still rattled from their very own magnitude 5.8 earthquake on Tuesday. We were probably not helping by pressing them for answers, sitting as we were in a truck stop with no power.

Shortly after I posted, we resigned ourselves to waiting another day to hear anything, and made the decision to pack up and head over to Crooked River State Park. That was just a dozen miles from the truck stop, and had plenty of RV spaces with electric power for $33, which starts to look very attractive when it costs $45-$50 per day to run the air conditioning with the generator.

We were just about ready to leave when my phone rang. It was staff deployment, telling me I had been assigned as Technology Chief to the Richmond, Virginia operation. Since I'd heard that a Chief had already been assigned to that operation, I asked deployment about it and they informed me that I was closer, and the other individual, who lives in Texas, would be held in reserve for Tropical Depression 10, which at the time looked like it might develop into a threat to interests in the gulf (it has since turned to sea and will not make a U.S. landfall). Fine by me, because we really needed some kind of deployment orders to get back on the road.

Before we left, I called the DOC to let them know that I had been reassigned to Richmond, and the Technology folks seemed at least a little surprised by that. And, of course, they confirmed that Louise would not be able to take a Technology assignment in Richmond if I deployed there as Chief. When they learned that we were really much closer to Raleigh anyway and that we'd rather work together in Technology on the same operation, we were both reassigned to North Carolina, with the original individual going to Richmond.

While I would have enjoyed going back to Richmond, since we set the "hot site" there up ourselves a year ago, and previously worked an operation there shortly after we started with the Red Cross, North Carolina was really a better choice. But it was nearly 4pm by the time this was all sorted out and we hit the road, and Raleigh is a seven hour drive from where we were parked.

Once we were on the road we called long-time friend and the assigned Technology Manager in Raleigh, David, to let him know our status and work out an arrival time. We settled on sometime Thursday morning. Based on that, we had our sights set on a fuel stop in Florence, where we would also overnight -- a choice of four Pilot/FlyingJ locations. We stopped for dinner in Walterboro, where the GPS said there was a Ruby Tuesday but where we also found a pair of local establishments, and chose to eat at the Glass House Restaurant, which was passable but a little rough around the edges.

The idea had been to break up the evening's drive a bit with a dinner stop in the middle, but after a frustrating day, a late start, and a hunk of prime rib settling in my tummy, I started running out of steam as night fell. We ended up pulling off the highway an hour shy of the fuel stop, at a TA truck stop in Manning, SC. We got parked and settled in for the night and called David to work out a specific arrival time.

The outcome of that discussion was that we'd need to be there before noon if at all possible, which led us to conclude we'd either need to leave by 7am, or continue on to our originally planned stop before turning in for the night. With the amount of time it takes to fuel being something of a wildcard -- some pumps are three or four times faster than others -- we decided it would be best to get the fueling behind us before the night was out, and so we headed back out onto the road, after nearly an hour stop.

It was the right choice, because we got not only slow pumps, but also ones that would not pre-authorize very much fuel. As I posted on Thursday, we ended up authorizing two pumps (one on each side of the bus) three times each. In hindsight, I should have taken the cards in to the fuel desk to have them do it, but sometimes that process can take longer than just dealing with the robot a couple of times in a row. It was also disappointing that we could not get any water, given how tight the schedule had become. After fueling we settled in for the night -- again.

We got an early start Thursday, after a quick update here, and figured to be in Raleigh by 11:30. We decided to hold off on water until after our arrival, so we had no stops except for bathroom breaks -- I definitely do not have a three-hour bladder. When I went to start the bus, however, I got a lot of clicking before it cranked fully, as if the start batteries were low.

Now, this has been happening for the last few days, getting a bit worse each time, and I've been compensating as needed by bridging the house batteries in. It's a bit alarming that the start batteries are having so much trouble, considering we just replaced them a couple months ago, but I was guessing maybe just a bad connection at the batteries or one of the connection posts, and I figured to look at it when I got the time. But this time, even bridging the house batteries in did not fix it right away, and the big Detroit struggled mightily before lighting off.

By this time I am thinking there is some extra resistance in the cable between the batteries and alternator, which not only carries the charge current to the batteries, but also the starting current to the starter. Fixing that is going to be a major project, involving removing the hatch under the bed, and we're on our way to a disaster, so we just press on. We'll only need to start the engine a few more times before we're settled, after all.

About half way to Raleigh we stopped at a rest area on I-95 so that Mr. Micro-Bladder can use the rest room. When we got back to the bus, the starter did not work at all -- not even a click. Uh-oh. Bridging the house batteries did not help, and a quick check of all the gauges and computer read-out did not reveal any likely culprits.

Louise started the process of calling Coach-Net, our towing service, to either get a mobile mechanic or a tow truck out to us, while I crawled under the engine with the voltmeter and a two-way radio. A few minutes of diagnosis revealed that the start solenoid was not closing to provide current to the starter, and in my pre-disaster, get-there-now fog, I concluded that the brand new starter solenoid that the starter shop put on the starter when we were at Choo-Choo must have failed.

When Coach-Net finally recommended a tow as the best option, a gargantuan nail-biting undertaking with this bus even for the five miles to the nearest shop, I decided to jury-rig a solution while they are arranging the truck. If I can at least get it started once, we can avoid the towing hassle and get to the shop under our own power.

It's impossible to reach the lugs on the solenoid by hand without removing lots of stuff bolted to the engine, or near it. But I can see it from the engine bay door, and I ended up building a bolt-on-a-stick arrangement with a length of PVC pipe and some nuts and bolts from the parts box, intending to short the lugs by threading the stick through the various bits that are in the way. Of course, this has to be done without shorting the hot lug to the nearby ground, and it was vaguely reminiscent of that children's game popular in my youth, "Operation."

After spending ten minutes digging out and collecting the parts, drilling the holes in the pipe, and putting in the bolt and nuts, I was ready to thread the "forceps" between the patient's, umm, parts. That's when I noticed the loose wire hanging down in front of the fan belt, as I was carefully scoping out how to avoid said belt while the engine started.

That loose wire was previously affixed to a pressure switch in the fuel line. This switch cuts off the starter circuit whenever fuel pressure is above a certain point (5 psi, I think). The idea is to prevent an attempt to start an already-running engine, as well as to cut off the starter after the engine catches, even if the start button is still activated. With the wire disconnected, the starter can not engage at all.

The end nut on the threaded post on the switch was gone, so apparently, the nut rattled off some time ago, and the ring terminal has been slowly working its way off, causing the increasing struggling during starting, until one time it finally came off altogether. The switch was replaced when Choo-Choo put the engine back, since it had been bent during the removal, and perhaps the nut was not properly torqued.

Our most loyal long-time readers will detect a pattern here. Apparently we can not drive hundreds of miles to a relief operation without some kind of mechanical problem befalling the bus en route. Like the time we wore a tire down to the belts and had to have it replaced, chipping the windshield the same day. Or when the power steering pump blew its seal and dumped gallons of steering fluid into the engine oil sump.

In any case, I am glad I did not have to finish my game of Operation, and getting the coach started was just a natter of reattaching the starter safety switch wire. Nevertheless, we were at the rest area for over an hour, on what was to be a three-minute potty stop. We called David several times throughout the ordeal, second only to Coach-Net. We waved off the tow truck before leaving the rest area, or course.

Headquarters in Raleigh was a hotel near the airport, and we simply parked around back for the night. It was cool enough to leave the A/C off while we were in the office for the day, and we ended up only running the genny for a few hours so we could have some cool and dry air while we slept.

By the end of the day the facilities folks had secured a headquarters in Wilson. The original thinking had been Greenville, but after looking at the forecasts, it was decided that perhaps that was too close to be safe. At least here we are an hour closer to the coast than in Raleigh, yet far enough inland that we did not have to worry about assets being inundated by surge.

As with so many Red Cross headquarters, this one is a vacant retail store. It is in a shopping center with other stores, so we don't have free reign over the parking situation, but we worked it out with the landlord and security to park Odyssey in an area where the dumpsters are located for a cluster of stores. In addition to having direct access to the back door to headquarters and its main electric feed, the area is walled on three sides and provided us a nice lee from the worst winds of the storm. We managed to run a 20-amp extension cord out to the bus before we settled in for the night.

This morning we had to load up the Prius with some equipment needed by the operation while they bunkered down in the hotel today, and when we got back we worked on whatever wiring and cleanup we could do in HQ with no network access, as winds were already too high to deploy the satellite truck. The small crew that came with us had to return to the hotel by 2pm, when the shelter-in-place order from operation management became mandatory.

Just before that time I was able to hard-wire my 10-gauge cord into one of the electrical panels, and we now have 30 amps going into the inverter, and another 20 amps available for the water heater or a second air conditioner if needed. The regular 20-amp extension cord is running the air compressor, so we are pretty well set for power. We had filled our water tanks at the hotel in Raleigh, but there is also a spigot here if we need it.

In another hour or two, the bulk of the storm will have passed, and tomorrow we will be back in full swing. The satellite truck will be here at 7am to get on-line, and there is an all-hands meeting at 8. I expect we will find out then what the full scope of the operation will look like.

Photo by bass_nroll, used under a Creative Commons license.

Irene micro-update

We are at the Pilot truck stop in Florence, SC (map). They had the cheapest fuel we'll see, at $3.659, and we put in 140 gallons last night when we arrived, in a very frustrating experience that involved swiping three different credit cards six times at two pumps. Nevertheless, we are now fueled and have what we need for whatever Irene throws at us. No water here, though, so we'll have to fill our tank at a later stop.

We had new deployment orders by late yesterday afternoon, and we are now heading for Raleigh, North Carolina. We are due there before noon today. That's all the update I have time to write, at the moment.

Hurry up and wait

We are in Kingsland, Georgia, at a Petro truck stop just off I-95 (map). We made it less than 200 miles yesterday before Red Cross staff deployment called to tell us NOT to continue to Columbia, SC. Between 4 or so when the official deployment orders came through, and 6:30 or so when they called back, the NHC released its 5pm forecast update, adjusting speed, intensity, and track to more or less take South Carolina out of the danger zone.

We knew this could happen, and, frankly, we were somewhat surprised they had even deployed us yesterday. We had figured (and previously been advised) that deployment decisions were likely to be made on Wednesday, which is one reason we felt confident making boat plans for Tuesday and Wednesday. No matter; we understand the dynamics in DC and their anxiety to get assets into position ahead of time, before storm-induced travel disruptions make it difficult.

So it was really not a surprise to be waved off, but by this time, we'd been driving all out and were already in Jacksonville. Unfortunately, we had already passed the point where it would have been convenient to make our way to the Orange Park Elks, where we had stayed on our way south and where we could have had 50 amps of power. The deployment center was clear that they were putting the travel on hold, but that I am still on standby, making it likely we will have to continue even further north, so it also did not make any sense to backtrack.

We stopped at an Olive Garden north of town to have dinner and assess our options. With the Elks in the wrong direction, and the Wal-Mart next door to the Olive Garden posted No Overnight Parking, we determined that the next legal parking along any sensible route was here in Kingsland, right across the state line. We checked at the Wal-Mart first, but it, too, is posted no parking, and ended up here with the truckers.

Given that the outside temperature and humidity is still driving our need for air conditioning, we also looked at several RV parks along the way, and even the state park down the road from here. The least expensive of those options is the state park, at $33 per night, plus another dozen or so miles of driving for another $10. At $4.50 an hour, we can get nearly ten hours of generator run time for that kind of money.

I'm pleased to report that the new batteries held their own, running a single roof air from when we parked just before 8pm until perhaps 3am when the generator started. And that's despite me having bumped the low-battery cut-out up nearly a full volt just as a precaution. The generator ran for less than three hours, and we ran it again for half an hour this morning to cool things down after airing the bus out in the coolest outside air we'll have all day.

Now it is a waiting game. Since I am on standby, they can call at any minute and tell me to proceed to Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, or New York. Leadership teams are already in place in North Carolina and Virginia, having been mobilized at the same time we got the call for South Carolina. And New England is too far for us to be able to reach in reasonable time and mileage.

The alternate possibility, much less appealing to us for a variety of reasons, is that they can call me today or tomorrow and take me off standby altogether. At that point, it would become a matter of waiting until post-landfall to see if we are needed and thus recruited by whichever of the operations actually becomes a going concern and can use our help. The biggest issue with this is that we have no authorization to move until we are recruited, and post-landfall, if they recruit us for, say, Raleigh North Carolina, it will be a mad scramble for us to drive all the way there at the last minute so we can be there when we are needed.

The waiting game can be frustrating, indeed. This will not be the first time we spent the day in a Petro truck stop waiting for deployment orders. And while the batteries are adequate to run air conditioning overnight, when it is relatively cool outside, as the day heats up we are going to either have to run the generator full time, or find someplace to go with a power outlet. Officially un-deployed, neither is reimbursable. Even getting our mileage reimbursed for yesterday's scramble will be a challenge if they take me off standby.

The snake in today's photo was lounging behind the bus both times I walked the dog last night.

Carolina bound

Just a very quick update here because we are under the gun. The Red Cross called this morning and we are being deployed to South Carolina for a possible landfall there of Hurricane Irene.

I've just spent the last fifteen minutes contacting various people and waving off all the plans we'd made for the next couple of days, including three boat viewing appointments and tonight's cruise out of Fort Pierce with our friends. Instead we are buttoning up the bus and getting ready to head north. Our destination is Columbia, although it is not unheard of for that to change even while we are under way.

From this point forward we will be very busy, and it's unlikely I will be able to post much on the blog until things settle down, unless the storm misses us entirely. We will both try to tweet as we are able, and my Twitter feed cross-posts to Facebook, so you can keep up with us on either of those sites.

For anyone who is expecting to hear from us over the next few days, you likely will not, at least until we get some time off.

I Dream of Jeannie

We are in Cocoa Beach, Florida. No map link today, in consideration of the privacy of our host. Suffice it to say that we are within walking distance of the beach and perhaps a dozen restaurants, and, in addition to 50 amps of power, we also have access to a pool and hot tub. We've been enjoying our stay very much, and it is very generous of our friend here to provide us with this spot.

We arrived Sunday afternoon, met our host, blog reader Dave, and settled in. Dave runs a business here in town and so we have not seen much of him since that first afternoon, but we have plans for dinner together tomorrow night. After settling in we walked to a nearby Italian place for dinner, and oddly enough we walked to yet a different Italian place on Monday night as well -- I guess we were making up for having to miss the one in St. Augustine. Both restaurants were excellent, and the prices were actually quite reasonable.

We've been swimming in either the pool or the ocean every day. The surf here is bigger than many other parts of the Florida coast, owing I assume to the relatively flat sand here resulting from the impact of Cape Canaveral on the littoral flow. So splashing around in the ocean has been a bit more of a challenge than we've had up till now. It also makes Cocoa Beach the surfing capital of Florida, which is similar to saying that Great Gorge is the skiing capital of New Jersey -- to a California transplant it's, "Eh, big deal." Nevertheless there is an endless string of surf shops along the main drag, including an enormous Ron Jon that is open 24/7 (not, as many assume, the original, which is in Ship Bottom, New Jersey -- really).

We did have dinner one night at Coconuts on the Beach, sort of the quintessential beachfront dining experience here, and one of the few spots near the beach with free motorcycle parking. Cocoa Beach has metered every parking space within two blocks of the beach, at a quarter for ten minutes. They charge to park at the pier, and even the beachfront city park charges $5 for the day. If you want to visit the beach, park instead at the Brevard County park just another couple blocks south, accessed via "I Dream of Jeannie Lane" in homage to the TV series set (but not filmed) here in the 60s.

For the most part, we've been able to walk right in anyplace we've gone, and the town has been relatively empty this week, even now as the weekend is upon us. I can only imagine what it is like here when it's busy. It's been great, because we are not in anyone's way here, and the gawkers have been relatively few. And this is a great time to be here, when the ocean feels refreshing, and the sea breeze makes the evenings pleasant enough to sit outside. We set up the deck and have been enjoying the sunset the last few evenings, and we can see a slice of ocean from here as well.

I've gotten a few things done around the house, and we replaced the speedometer cable on Louise's scooter, which broke a month or two ago -- the replacement just came in the mail package we had sent to us here. But mostly I've been at the keyboard, among catching up on email, trying to line up boat appointments, being a little behind on my technical articles for the magazine, and helping our friends at Technomadia design their new electrical system.

Between driving the bus and driving the computer, my neck and shoulders have gotten progressively stiffer over the last few weeks, notwithstanding the fact that we both had massages at a local massage school when we were in Jacksonville. So today I rode down to one of the massage places here in town to get them worked on. The technician was skilled and the price quite reasonable, and I may go back for another session before we leave.

In the course of lining up boat visits and contacting friends in the area, we managed to land an invitation for an evening cruise out of Fort Pierce on Tuesday evening. This is a night piloting skills development session for the local Power Squadron; the instructors are friends of ours and a couple of the students bailed out at the last minute. They're also doing a shake-down cruise on a different boat Wednesday morning and have invited us along on that as well.

Those invitations more or less set our schedule, and we will leave here Tuesday morning. I've lined up an appointment to look at a boat in Vero Beach on our way down, and we'll land in Fort Pierce shortly before our evening cruise. I'm hoping we'll just be able to spend the night at the marina, but if not, there is a KOA a few blocks away.

I'm also trying to line up appointments to look at two more boats, in Stuart, Wednesday afternoon. It's possible that we'll have to push one or both of those off till Thursday, but that puts them in jeopardy of being preempted by what is now Investigation Area 97L, but will by Wednesday no doubt be Tropical Depression 9, and soon thereafter Tropical Storm Irene. It's too early to tell if the U.S. will be threatened, but at least some of the models as of this morning were showing a projected track right over Florida.

In the meantime we are going to relax and rest up while we can, and enjoy our last three days here in Cocoa Beach.

Photo by spatlan, used under a Creative Commons license.

Approaching the coast

We are at the Elks lodge in St. Augustine, Florida (map). We've been here several times before, but this is the emptiest it has been, with only a single other rig in the lot. There are perhaps ten hookups here, for $15 per night.

We did not feel the need to visit St. Augustine, but this was the only reasonable parking with power between Jacksonville and Cocoa Beach. There is a nice state park on the coast, but it was full for the weekend. Two other state parks had plenty of space, but they are in hardwood hammocks and have length and height restrictions. We might fit, but we were unwilling to take that risk with no backup plan (they are south of here).

Once we got parked, Louise found a nice Italian place for dinner. However, by the time we were ready, the heavens had opened and we were deluged by a thunderstorm. Rather than even take the scooters out, we walked over to the covered Tiki Bar here at the lodge and had burgers for dinner. The lodge also does a nice Sunday breakfast spread, so we had two meals in a row there. The scooters are still in the bay.

Shortly we will be rolling to Cocoa Beach.

Photo by minds-eye, used under a Creative Commons license.

Endless suburbia

We are parked at the Elks Lodge in the Orange Park neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida (map). Having already made the decision to head towards the middle of Florida's east coast, Jacksonville is a natural stop, and this lodge has 50-amp power for $15 per night. We also have an affiliate club in Jacksonville, and we needed a stop in suburbia after two weeks on the Georgia coast, devoid of big-box stores.

And suburbia it is, an endless array of the aforementioned big-box stores, chain restaurants, strip malls, real malls, and the like all the way from here to downtown Jacksonville a dozen or so miles away. All things considered, a single night here would have been fine to get our errands done before moving back to the coast where it is more scenic, and a tad cooler.

Now that we are in Florida, this is no longer high season -- that's winter time here. So many state parks, for example, have plenty of vacancy. The coast is the exception, though, with oceanfront parks filling to capacity on weekends as locals try to beat the heat. So we will be in Elks lodges at least until Sunday, and this one was as good as any for a few nights, especially with the new 50-amp pedestals (our guide listed it as only 30).

As it turns out, we have a reader who has a private 50-amp site in Cocoa Beach, right on the strip and just yards from the water, and he has offered us parking starting Sunday. It's a very generous offer and we are looking forward to spending a few days in this vibrant beach town, taking in some of the local dining and cooling off in the ocean. Between here and there is one more Elks lodge with power, in St. Augustine, and we'll spend tomorrow night there, thus making this one a three-night stay.

As long as we were here, Louise found us a nice massage school a few miles north with $30 massages (one hour), and yesterday we rode up there mid-day. It was in the 90s when we left, but in the 100s when we returned. The massages were wonderful, but after the hot ride we did not want to again ride nearly 20 miles (the scooter route) into downtown for dinner, so we will do that this evening instead.

Being here in the land of chain restaurants, we took the opportunity to use up some of our discounted restaurant gift cards, and we rode to Carrabba's on Wednesday and Olive Garden last night. We've been buying these at 20% off using Discover Card points, so they are a great deal, and we always know it is only a matter of time before one of these restaurants is a convenient option.

In the meantime, tropical waves have been spinning off the coast of Africa in rapid-fire succession, and we've been keeping an eye on the weather charts. At this writing, only Investigation Area 93L seems to have a chance of reaching the U.S., but not before the end of next week. A lot can happen in that time, and we intend to carry on with our loosely organized plan.

Right now I am trying to line up appointments to look at boats in Vero Beach and Stuart, and those appointments will dictate when we move along from Cocoa Beach. I would guess sometime around Thursday.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf, used under a Creative Commons license.

Jekyll and Hyde

We are at the campground on Jekyll Island, Georgia (map). The campground is owned and operated by the Jekyll Island Authority, a state agency which manages the entire island, technically a state park. We have a 50-amp back-in site for $32, plus tax, and barely working wireless internet -- there are no gaps in the trees to get the satellite on line.

We also paid $5 just to get onto the island -- there is a toll booth at the end of the causeway. But now that we're here, we had no trouble getting everywhere by scooter. When we arrived we thought we might stay three nights, but we've already seen most of the island, and we decided when the office opened today to just pay for two. The office had been closed when we arrived, and the camp host collected only for one night.

We rode over to the closest restaurant last night for dinner, the Driftwood Bistro, on the northeast end of the island. Dinner was tasty and surprisingly inexpensive, including the bottle of wine on special for $10. En route we rode past the enormous Clarion Oceanfront resort, shuttered since January, when the operator bailed. The empty property was being guarded by a pair of State Patrol cars, a side effect of state ownership of the land.

We then rode around the entire northern half of the island. The main road along the eastern shore is closed just north of the main cross-island route, on account of construction on the new convention center. We cut back across to the west side just abreast of the historic Jekyll Island Club Hotel, and briefly rode through the grounds before continuing north to the campground.

This evening we have dinner reservations in the dining room at the hotel. We have low expectations, especially after our relative disappointment at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island under similar circumstances. But the property has such historic interest in its own right that we don't want to miss it. BTW, today's post title stems from the efforts of Henry B. Hyde, who was responsible in large part for the early development of the club property.

This afternoon we plan to try out the Summer Waves Water Park on the island. There is a discounted rate after 3, and the park closes at 6, which gives us just enough time to make our dinner reservation. We'll tour the southern half of the island on our way to the park.

Tomorrow we'll check out by noon and head south to Jacksonville. An Elks lodge there has 30-amp pedestals for $15 per night, and it will give us a chance to eat downtown at our affiliate club. We'll probably spend at least two nights before continuing south.

Photo by Mr. T in DC, used under a Creative Commons license.

Skidaway getaway

We are at Skidaway Island State Park, in Savannah, Georgia (map). We arrived Friday afternoon, and, as promised, they gave us a 25% discount at registration. That was partly offset by the fact that they charged us $5 apiece for gate passes for the scooters -- most states have been willing to count our pair of scooters as a single "car." Still, it was a good deal.

When we rolled into the campground we were astonished at how empty it was. In addition to the four camp host sites, there were perhaps only half a dozen other sites occupied, and we had our pick of the campground. We had a map showing where the 50-amp pedestals were, and drove all of the loops which had them looking for a place to get on-line. We found nothing but very narrow gaps in the trees, and after unsuccessfully attempting one promising 50-amp site, we then drove the two loops which had only 30-amp pedestals.

Here we found three or four sites with enough of a clearing to get on. Surprisingly, we also discovered that each site has not one, but two 30-amp receptacles, on opposite legs, in addition to a 20-amp. I have an adapter for just such situations that lets us use both 30-amp outlets simultaneously, and we've been able to comfortably run everything on the coach. Had I known up front, we could have saved an hour of fiddling around in the other loops and started right away with one of the sites with better look angles.



It's a lovely park, and being so empty it feels almost as if we are alone here, just as we like it. Not far from the park entrance is the tony retail enclave of Skidaway Village, here to service The Landings, and we had a nice dinner at the little restaurant there Friday night. There is also an IGA grocery, with the biggest wine department I have ever seen in such a small store. Even though the whole "village" is maybe two dozen store fronts, four of them are banks, and the largest building in the joint, save maybe for the IGA, is Merrill Lynch.

That may say something about Skidaway Island residents, whose homes we could not see because the entire island is behind gates. There are basically two public roads on the whole island, one of which leads here to the state park, and the other to the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. There is no public access to the shoreline, and the nearest beach and boat ramp is on the other side of the bridge across the ICW. I am told that The Landings is the largest gated community in the world.

Saturday evening our friends from Savannah came and picked us up, and we had a great evening with them. They moved to the downtown historic district from Wilmington Island just a month ago, and are still in the process of moving in. But their new townhouse is just steps away from some nice restaurants and bars, and while we were walking around we ran into at least two "ghost tours," including one operator using converted hearses to carry their charges. We're looking forward to visiting them in their new digs in cooler weather, when we can enjoy walking in Savannah's wonderful downtown area all day long.

As nice as it is here in the park, without being able to enjoy the outdoors, Savannah holds little for us at this time of year. Since our friends are mostly busy, between their lives and finishing their move, we will move along. Yesterday over brunch at the Omelette House, just across the causeway, we had a long discussion about where to head next.

Long-time readers will know that even $30 per night, what seems to be the going rate for hookups in state parks here on the coast, is more that we typically like to spend unless we are really enjoying the area or have a very specific objective, such as a visit or a meeting. I once wrote here that the $18 per night we were paying in downtown San Jose was steep, which prompted at least one reader to express surprise. And so it is that we've decided we need to move to an area where there are some less expensive options, or else get out of the heat altogether so we are not needing power every night.

Getting out of the heat, given the current weather map, would be a long drive indeed, and while we'd love to head back to California or the inter-mountain west at this time of year, it is basically incompatible with our commitment to the Red Cross to be available during hurricane season. Regular readers may remember that, at this time last year, we were holed up in Fort Walton Beach with a $10-per-night power outlet, just waiting.

So, counter-intuitive as it may seem, we are heading to Florida. It's warmer there, to be sure, but at least we can find more Elks lodges with relatively inexpensive power outlets. Thus having made the Florida decision, and being as we are on the east coast, our attention has returned to boats.

As it turns out, there are at least three trawlers listed for sale on the east coast of Florida that meet most of our objective criteria. As long as we are in the neighborhood, or at least close, we've decided to go have a look. These will be the very first boats that we've looked at outside the circumscribed confines of a boat show, which really advances our seriousness to the next level. At the moment, I am contacting listing brokers directly for showings, but soon we will need to contract a broker of our own to act as buyers' agent, since some brokers will not show a boat without one.

The boats in question are in Daytona Beach, Vero Beach, and Stuart, and that now defines a plan and destination for us. We are in no rush, and so will head in that direction in our usual leisurely manner. Today we will leave Skidaway Island and head to Jekyll Island, where camping is equally expensive but at least there are a few attractions there. We'll spend perhaps two nights before moving south, if we like the park enough.

Cheapest camping this month

We are at the Camping World store in Pooler, Georgia (map), outside of Savannah. The store here has four 50-amp hookups for customers staying overnight; all four spaces were occupied when we rolled up yesterday afternoon, but within 15 minutes one of them opened up, and another one cleared a half hour later. We went into the store and dropped $18 on some miscellaneous items, making this the cheapest spot yet this month.

We came here yesterday, rather than anyplace more scenic, to see what Tropical Storm Emily had in store for us. By the time we got settled in, though, the National Hurricane Center had already issued its last advisory on the storm, declaring it to be merely a remnant low. With no threat from Emily and nothing else on the radar, we're free to settle in for a few days, so I just made a reservation for the next three nights at nearby Skidaway Island State Park. They have plenty of space, and we could have just rolled in, but the web site suggests there might be a 25% discount in August, and the person who answered the phone at the park said she thought we'd need to have a reservation before they could honor the discount. We'll see how it goes.

After we arrived yesterday we deployed the dish, only to find the satellite modem dead. Wow, déjà vu all over again -- the last time we stayed here, we were also working on the satellite modem. The inverter had tripped off on our way here, which sometimes happens when one of the A/C compressors starts, and apparently that took out the power supply to the modem. I didn't figure this out until the backup modem I replaced it with had the same symptoms; swapping in the spare power supply fixed it. Oddly, the supply tested good with the voltmeter, so the failure is load-related.

Last night we also noticed that, despite 50 amps, we were pulling power out of the batteries to run the A/C, even though we were not nearly at the incoming limit. It took me a while to figure out that the charger thought the batteries were overcharged. I need to adjust some settings, and possibly move the temperature sensor, which was causing an overcompensation in the reading.

Biker scum

We are at Edisto Beach State Park (map), in the town of that name on the South Carolina Coast, and across the marsh from Edisto Island. If the map is to believed, the barrier island we are on is actually Edings Island, but the state park spans the marsh. We are in the older beachfront campground, but there is also a campground across the marsh under tree cover and appropriately named Live Oak.

While Live Oak has 50-amp pedestals (and more availability), the beach campground has pedestals with one 30-amp and one 20-amp circuit. Today in the high 90s the 30-amp is struggling to keep up, and we are calling on our new batteries occasionally to keep us cool. The air compressor is plugged in to the 20-amp, which helps. Still, it is nice to walk right to the beach, and we'd never get on line under the tree cover at the other campground.

It's a bit pricey here, at around $30 a night with tax, but it's still a lot better than the $48 we paid at James Island. Plus it is right on the beach, and there are a Piggly Wiggly supermarket and three restaurants in walking distance. Nevertheless, we took the scooters out right away, and we had burgers for dinner across the street at McConkey's Jungle Shack Sunday night. We wanted a glass of wine with dinner, but the blue laws got us again; we cooked in yesterday, but, had we known, we would have done it the other way around.

Edisto Beach is much more laid back than either the mega tourist destinations of Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand, or the upscale enclaves of Kiawah Island to our north or Hilton Head to our south. It's a 20-mile trip here from US-17, the main route along the coast, and it is a small island. There is one resort on the island, the Wyndham, which also sports the island's lone "fine dining" restaurant, a term I use loosely here, Grover's. Our plan was to eat there tonight.

Yesterday morning we rode the eight mile loop around the island to check out the sights, and we decided to do a drive-by of the restaurant. No dice: the Wyndham is one of those vacation-ownership affairs operated by a Homeowners' Association, and they ban motorcycles from the property. So with no way to get to Grover's, and also not wishing to reward this sort of discriminatory behavior by spending money, we'll eat instead tonight at one of the half dozen other, more casual, restaurants on the island. Not a one of those is a chain, by the way, unless you want to count the Subway inside the lone gas station on-island.

The Wyndham appears to be the only motorcycle-unfriendly place on the island, and it does not even front the beach or marsh, so Edisto Beach remains in our good graces. The state park is lovely and the relaxed feel of the whole island suits us, so we are likely to return here someday. In marked contrast to, for example, Hilton Head, where it's impossible to go anywhere by either motorcycle or RV, and to which we have sworn never to return.

The beach here is clean and pristine, and we've been swimming in the ocean every day. We wear our river shoes, because there is a continuous line of broken shells along the foreshore, the only obstacle between the luxurious sand of the beach and the smooth sandy bottom starting at the low tide mark. It is said that Edisto Beach is one of the best for shelling in of South Carolina. Because the beach is the nesting ground for loggerhead turtles, lights are banned on or near the beach from May to September, making it also blissfully dark here; even the Piggly Wiggly keeps its sign unlit.

I had originally booked three nights here, to make it worth the 40-mile round trip detour. We like it so much, though, that today I rode over to the office and extended for another night. We have no real plan for where to head next, and we are keeping a wary eye on Tropical Storm Emily, what became of Investigation 91. If the Red Cross does not send us anywhere for Emily, we'll continue to head south from here. We have friends in Savannah and it would be nice to see them if we do not get deployed.