Done with lawyers and landscapers

We are at the Snake Creek State Recreation Area, west of Platte, South Dakota, right on the Missouri River at Lake Francis Case (map).  With our SD State Park annual pass, campsites here are just $18 with electricity ($14 without), and even though we did not need the power or other park amenities, there are not a lot of other stopping options along this stretch of SD-44.

Wednesday we had a very nice drive up US-75 from Nebraska City through Omaha to Sioux City, Iowa, before re-joining I-29 for the last leg into Sioux Falls.  US-75 as an alternative to I-29 for that stretch was one of the reasons we had crossed the Missouri into Nebraska Tuesday night in the first place.  The route took us through the Omaha (U-Mo'n-Ho'n) and Winebago reservations; at the former we stopped at a nice overlook of the Missouri with a small interpretive exhibit in the form of an earthlodge.

In Sioux Falls we headed straight for a familiar Walmart for the night (map), and walked next door to Chevy's for dinner.  This Walmart is the closest option to our attorney's office, and we had a short ten-minute drive yesterday morning to make our 10am appointment.  Going over and then signing all our estate documents took a full two hours, and it was after noon when we finally wrapped up at the office.  We had a quick lunch in the bus before heading south out of town on I-29.  An unexpected bonus of our visit with the attorney was that they had obtained copies of our new deed from the courthouse -- the first we'd seen it.

The estate planning firm we used was Thompson Law in Sioux Falls. The company was recommended on the Escapees forum as being full-timer-friendly, and we worked with attorney Evan Anema after taking advantage of a free consultation. We found him easy to work with and quite competent. The office building has parking along the south side driveway that is easy to get a large rig into.

By 1pm we were at our new property in Lennox.  The landscaper, whom we were scheduled to meet at 1:30, was already there.  We worked out the arrangements for him to keep an eye on things, and keep the grass mowed to within legal limits.  I spent a little time walking around the whole property -- the largest single lot I have ever personally owned, at just about a quarter acre.  We also ended up meeting one of our neighbors before we finally rolled out of town at 2pm.

South Dakota 44, which passes through Lennox, brought us all the way here to the river, almost in a straight line.  The route passed through only two more towns between Lennox and here.  Fortunately, this park is ideally situated, and happens to be a very nice park.  There are perhaps 120 sites but only about a dozen are occupied, so we have the place nearly to ourselves. In the section of the park across the highway to our north, a concessionaire operates a marina with a store and a restaurant, but they are closed this week for renovations, so instead we dined lakeside on a picnic table.

Today we will continue west on SD-44, which will merge with US-18 in Winner, on the Rosebud Reservation.  We will continue west (and a little south) on US-18 until just east of Wounded Knee (yes, that Wounded Knee) on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where we will turn south on SD-391/NE-27 to Gordon, Nebraska, where we will pick up US-20 west.  We will end our day somewhere in the northwest corner of Nebraska.

Cheesemageddon

We are at Huntington Beach State Park, near Murells Inlet, South Carolina (map). This is now a very familiar stop for us, so much so that we had no concerns arriving after dark last night, a rarity for us. That had not been our plan, but it's the way things developed. This place is spendy, by our standards, at over $31 per night for just 30 amps of power. But it's still the best deal on the strand, so we were happy to snag a spot.

The late arrival was partly due to a late departure from Wilmington. That was intentional -- we had a good free WiFi connection there, and without being able to scope out our pre-assigned space here, there was a good chance we would not get on line. As it turned out, our space is in the open rather than under the trees, and we had no problem getting on line once we were parked.

Mostly, though, the lateness was due to the fuel stop. For starters, we had to fight our way through the high-season traffic into Myrtle Beach, rather than bypassing it on the highway. Next, the gas station that was reported to have $3.399 diesel in fact had $3.599 diesel, one of the problems with user-reported pricing sites. So after jockeying around to get into the tiny station in the first place, we had to head right back out for a backup choice a couple of miles away -- in the wrong direction -- with $3.459 diesel.

That station turned out to be much easier to access, and we had the place mostly to ourselves. Which was good, because we were there a looooong time. Even when things go perfectly, it often takes half an hour to 45 minutes to dispense 200 gallons from an automobile-sized dispenser. That's if you can pump it in one sitting, but almost no gas station will allow a single transaction of $750. So the first delay was the cashier calling her manager off site to ask how to run the card. She informed me that she'd have to split it into $350 transactions.

No problem, but by fiddling around with the register to figure this out, Discover shut my card off as a fraud prevention measure. So five minutes go by while I get the card turned back on. She runs the $350 and we're off to the races. This turns out to be among the slower automotive dispensers, and it takes over 20 minutes to put 80 gallons in. Right at 80.00 gallons, the dispenser shuts down, and will not restart. Now mind you, she's already charged my card $350, but the pump has shut off at $276.72. More phone calls to the manager, and eventually they figure out that their system has a built-in cut-off at 80 gallons, presumably for safety reasons, that they can not override.

Back to the register to refund $73.28, then charge another $276 for the next round. 20 minutes later and we can run the last $195, for a total of 216 gallons of fuel, enough to bring our tank up to 7/8 full. This is the cheapest fuel we will see for quite a while, and we wanted to take full advantage of it. But the end result was that we were at the gas station for well over an hour, and between that and the extra stop we were a full hour behind our original plan.

That put us through Myrtle Beach and the gauntlet of cheese-ball tourist attractions right at dinner hour; a couple of traffic lights changed three times before we made it through. It was nearly 7pm by the time we hit Murrells Inlet, and we ended up stopping for dinner before heading to the park. At that hour, we did not want to have to get set up and pull a scooter out to go back for dinner, nor did we feel like cooking after a long gnarly day. The dinner stop finally put us into the park just after dark.

It's a lovely park, as I have written in the past. But we haven't left the bus since we arrived, and in just four minutes it will be checkout time and we will need to continue south to Charleston.

Photo by catchesthelight, used under a Creative Commons license.

Rocket City

We are at the Monte Sano State Park, east of Huntsville, Alabama (map). We've been here before, and remembered it as being very pleasant. This was the first decent place along our route east from Joe Wheeler State Park with power, and we called right before we left there to see if they might have a spot. To my surprise, they told me they had plenty, and, in fact, the park is nearly deserted. I guess folks from Huntsville all went to Wheeler Lake for the holiday instead.

We were relieved to find that Site 2 was available, the same spot in which we stayed on our last visit after scoping out the entire park for satellite access. This might well be the only spot in the park where we can get online. That's good, because neither of us even has cell coverage here. It's a tricky back-in, but once we got positioned we got on-line right away, and even the DirecTV is working. This time, we are prepared to repel boarders.

It was incredibly quiet here last night -- we could barely make out the sounds of fireworks in the distance over Huntsville -- they are banned outright here in the park. All we could hear was our own air conditioner. The rate here was just $21.09 with tax, for 30 amps of power and a water spigot. That's enough for us to run two air conditioners full time, plus everything else we need, so we have been quite comfortable.

This morning I walked down to the office and paid up for a second night. The heat has us trapped inside, so we're not really enjoying much of the park, but at least it's a good deal cooler here up on the mountain than it is down in Huntsville itself.

Tomorrow we will get rolling again, with our sights set on the Choo Choo garage in Chattanooga. It's more or less directly on our way to the Research Triangle, NC area, and I'd like them to look at the air compressor they installed last year, as it already appears to be leaking oil, and maybe check on the overall health of the engine after the other work they did back then. It will also be nice to visit the folks there, and besides, we know a good massage place nearby.

We are due in the Research Triangle area on the 11th to visit with our niece. She's doing the whirlwind tour of potential colleges, and she'll be visiting Duke and UNC Chapel Hill over the following two days; we'll find a time to have dinner with them while they are there. I remember visiting Chapel Hill myself three decades ago under similar circumstances -- I had a fellowship offer from UNC to do my doctorate there -- and I have fond memories of the place.

After our visit we will be continuing east to the coast, where we will look at some more boats. All of which presumes that we don't get called to a disaster between now and then. We're on the alert list this month, and leadership is already stretched pretty thin between the Colorado fires, TS Debby in Florida, the midwest floods, and the heat wave and power outage in the mid-Atlantic states.

OMG it's hot

We are at the Murphysboro Lake State Park, just west of Murphysboro, Illinois (map). This park was just three miles off our planned route, and offers 50-amp power for just $20 per night. We needed that power, as it was 105° when we pulled up around 4pm, and it's already in the mid-90s this morning. Today's high is forecast to be 108°.

From what we can see, it's a lovely park. I walked around a bit yesterday evening, after temperatures had dropped into the low 90s. It's under heavy tree cover, so we are only online courtesy of a tiny gap in the trees and judicious selection of site -- this was the second one we tried. We are on a little peninsula surrounded by lake, but swimming is prohibited here, no matter how inviting it looks in the heat.

For in-route camping, three miles is actually further from our route than we normally deviate. But inexpensive power outlets are few and far between in this part of the state, and this was really the best we could do. We just figure the site cost us five bucks or so more -- still a bargain when we need the power. Yesterday's route brought us out of East Saint Louis on Illinois 15, and Illinois 13 brought us all the way to Murphysboro, west of Carbondale.

In a few minutes we will get back underway, so we are not driving in the hottest part of the day. Our engine alternator, enormous as it is, can only run two air conditioners at a time -- the one in the cockpit, plus one upstairs. Our reserved campsite at Barkley Lake also supplies 50 amps, so we should be comfortable all day. Plus, that site is a short walk from the swimming beach, and I am betting the lake will feel very refreshing. We do need to make one quick stop along the way, to replenish supplies.

Home sweet home

We are at Lake Herman State Park, immediately west of our new "home town" of Madison, South Dakota (map). It's a lovely park, and virtually empty right now. Our 30-amp site was $18 per night, and we also bought a $28 annual South Dakota parks pass to cover our two days of park admission, which is not included in camping fees. The front office struggled to get both of our names on the receipt, which we'll need for the DMV.

While we were checking in, reader Glenn came by the office to say hello; he and his wife are just a few camp sites down from us, and are here for their quinquennial driver license renewal. Lots of full-timers use this same mail service here in town, "My Dakota Address," including many of our readers and friends. We will be stopping by the office this afternoon to pick up our mail and meet proprietor Teri Lund, with whom we've already had occasion to speak on the phone this morning, regarding some vehicle registration issues.

When we started to gather our documents we discovered we had neither proof of prior sales tax paid for any of our vehicles, nor documentation of Odyssey's weight. Ironically, the scooter titles list their weights, which are not important. South Dakota assesses RV registration fees by weight, so we will need to come up with something to make them happy. Teri assured us that we would not need proof of tax payment since we've had all three vehicles for more than a year, but we might need to get an official weigh ticket on the coach.

In the meantime I combed through my back documents and found an old brochure for the American version of the Spaceliner, which does not list the unladen weight, but gives a GVWR of 48,500 pounds. That's pretty close to what we weigh fully loaded, and perhaps the DMV will just accept it. The manufacturer's rating plate was long gone by the time we got the bus. Getting a weigh ticket unladen now would be difficult, especially since we just took on 1,200 pounds of diesel fuel a few miles west of here when we spotted it for $3.579 per gallon, the lowest in the state.

We learned that the DMV here is not open on Monday, so we'll be heading in first thing tomorrow to start the process. If we need to submit further documentation later to finish the coach registration, Teri can handle it for us remotely. Our Washington bus registration is already paid up through next April, so we have some breathing room on Odyssey; the scooters should not be a problem, which is fortuitous, since Louise's registration just expired a few days ago.

We paid for two nights here, but we may add a third night if it looks like we'll be at the DMV longer than a couple of hours. We have an appointment Wednesday morning in Sioux Falls with an attorney, to start moving our estate plan documents over to South Dakota. We spent the morning updating our wills, and now we're scrambling to find health insurance.

We did not get far

Angel in better days

We are at Henderson Beach State Park in Destin, Florida (map), a mere ten miles or so from the Fort Walton Beach Elks lodge. While we'd not stayed here previously, the park was familiar to us because this is where we came to dump our tanks in the middle of our Elks stay last year. Back then, one of the beach parking lots here was occupied by emergency management as part of the oil spill cleanup.

We're here because it is just three miles from the vet's office. Actually, the vet is less than a mile from our spot here, but it's a full mile in the other direction to get back to the park entrance -- not only the vet, but a handful of shops and restaurants are tantalizingly close, with no way to get to them other than the two-mile round trip.

We spent Sunday afternoon in the parking lot at the Petsmart. Angel had a 2:30 appointment, and by 3:30 or so they decided to keep her for the afternoon to run a battery of tests. Realizing it would be dark by the time she was released, I called the park to check on site availability. Good thing I did, because the gate closes at 4:45, and I needed to get a gate code and site assignment from them.

The vet kept Angel till 5:30, and one of the things they decided to do was administer barium for a follow-up x-ray Monday afternoon, to ensure there was no blockage in the digestive tract. It was past 6 by the time we walked out of the Petsmart, and we decided to just walk across the parking lot to Olive Garden for dinner before heading to the park.

We had only paid for a single night, and with a 1pm checkout we packed up, emptied the tanks, and relocated to the beach parking lot to await our 3:30 follow-up appointment. In hindsight, we should have just paid for two or three nights up front, because it was naturally dark again by the time we were finished Monday and we came right back here. I called them again just before the office closed and they put us right back in this same site, a pull-through with 50 amps and a clear shot to our satellite.

One of the blood samples they took on Sunday was sent to an outside lab for a hyperthyroidism test, and the earliest they expected the results was yesterday, so when I rolled down to the gate to pay I extended one more night to today, reasoning the test would not be ready by checkout time. As it is, we still have not heard the results and it is already 11am on Wednesday. We want to stay nearby until the results are in, in case the test is positive and she needs to go back in for additional treatment. In the meantime, we are continuing to give subcutaneous fluids, and are having to force-feed her with a medicine dropper.

When it rains it pours, and in addition to all the drama with the cat, our week and a half of relaxation came to an abrupt end with several things breaking since our arrival in Destin. It started with the printer, which crapped out right in the middle of shipping all the items we sold on eBay over the last few days. It printed several labels just fine, and then all of a sudden the black ink (but not the color) started getting unreadable. Changing to two different spare black ink tanks had no effect, and it turns out to be the print head which bit the dust.

It's a shame, because I had just replaced a broken gear on the drive mechanism about two weeks ago, and with the printer working better than ever, I stocked up on ink tanks. The drive gear cost me $10, way cheaper than replacing the printer, but a new print head for this model is a whopping $78 -- more than many brand new printers. Reluctantly, I bit the bullet and dropped $50 on a whizzy new Brother all-in-one model that copies, prints, scans, and faxes (should we ever have a land telephone line). Of course, it's three times as large as the diminutive Canon "travel" model which broke, and I had to rearrange the entire equipment rack to fit it in. On the plus side, it is networked, so we can now print right from our chairs rather than having to set up the little travel model and hard-wire it to a computer each time we need to print.

On Monday, after relocating to the beach parking lot with no issue, the bus refused to start when we got ready to leave for our afternoon vet appointment. It took me less than five minutes to trace the problem to the fuel pressure switch that disables the starter once the engine is running, and I was able to start it by jury-rigging around the switch, so we were on-time for our appointment. Yesterday I ordered a replacement switch at the O'Reilly's in town, which was supposed to arrive 7:30 this morning. Of course it was not there when I went to pick it up, so I wasted a ten-mile round trip (and very cold) scooter ride.

After our Monday afternoon appointment it was again dark and we walked across the street to Miller's Ale House for dinner before returning to the park. When we came back to the bus, one of the smoke detectors had lost its mind and was making a low-volume, high-pitched squeal (much higher than the actual alarm sound). Turns out both smoke detectors were made in October of 2001, and they have a ten year life, so it was off to Home Depot yesterday for a pair of replacements. I'm hoping nothing else breaks between now and when we finally leave Destin.

In a short while we will clear out of the campground and head to the beach lot until we get the thyroid results. I am hoping that they will come in early enough for us to clear out of town and continue on our merry way, with any needed follow-up care at a different Petsmart in another town.

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.

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.

Assault by Battery

We are at the Myrtle Beach State Park, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (map). Wow, is it ever crowded here. The last few times we've been in this area, it has been off-season. Right now we're in the middle of high tourist season, although, oddly, signage at the park does not indicate the bag limit. With things so crowded, we actually made a reservation, uncharacteristic for us. The best I could do on short notice was two nights, and so we will be checking out tomorrow, unless another space opens up.

I had some, uh, reservations about this, since the very first time we came by here, we had barely pulled into the entrance from the road when we stopped short, thinking the trees were too low. Indeed, at that time of the year, there may have been some low-hanging growth that made it look like that, but, in any case, we were too nervous about it to forge ahead, and so we backed out onto the highway and headed south to Huntington Beach, near Murrell's Inlet. We've avoided this place ever since.

In hindsight, that was our very first pass around the country and only our fourth month of living aboard, and we'd already had several problems with low trees in the generally RV-unfriendly east. We did not have nearly the experience we have today with judging tree height or the relative damage potential of low-hanging foliage, and certainly not nearly the experience I have now in backing Odyssey out of bad situations -- we did not want to get a quarter mile down the road only to be stopped in our tracks. Nowadays, backing up a thousand feet just doesn't seem like that big a deal.

I did check the park's web site, and asked around on the boards about low trees. I even called the park, and the ranger who answered said she had never heard anything about low tree problems, and that they got tractor-trailer deliveries all the time. As it turned out, we had no trouble at all, and nothing we passed even seemed low enough to cause us to break a sweat. What a difference nearly seven years makes.


Five of our old batteries out.

We pulled in rather late because we did not leave the parking lot of Carolina Energy, the battery distributor, until almost 7pm. We arrived there shortly after I posted here, between 10:30 and 11:00. I had figured it would take me an hour or so to disconnect all the cables and remove the hold-down brackets, and it would take someone from their warehouse and myself maybe half an hour to get them all out an onto a pallet. Maybe another half hour or so to load the new ones into place, and a couple hours to hook it all back up, so I had figured to be there perhaps four hours or so.

Ha. I should know better by now. For starters, the tie-downs did not come quietly. The nuts are so close to the walls that neither a socket nor even a box-end wrench would fit them, and it took forever to loosen them with an open-end, one sixth of a turn at a time. Then I discovered that two of the cables were attached to a pair of terminals that I simply could not reach with all the batteries in place, so they would have to come out in stages.


Some of the cables and tie-down hardware. Yes, that's my foot sticking out of the tunnel.

The biggest issue, though, was that two of the batteries had to be lifted in place about an inch, then rotated, in order to remove them from behind the inverter. Now, these puppies weigh 167 pounds each, and the only access is crouching in the tunnel, over the steering box and between the wheel wells, that leads from the driver compartment to the motorcycle bay. There's barely room to get your hands onto the batteries, let alone lift something that awkward and heavy from that kneeling position. Ultimately I had to lever them up using my Gorilla Bar, then cram large sockets from my socket driver set underneath them.

Eventually I was able to get all eight batteries loose, and Tony, the warehouse manager and lone employee on duty at the shop was kind enough to come out and help me four separate times to remove them. On top of the other issues, the nylon rope handles kept getting caught on the tie-down uprights. One of the handles had to be cut off to get the last battery out.


The inimitable Tony, hauling off an old battery and taking a call at the same time. Some of the trim that had to be removed is on the left.

Getting the new ones in also proved something of a challenge, although it was actually a bit easier since they redesigned the handles. However, this was the part where I really needed the help -- there is just no way one person can boost a battery that heavy up on top of the wheel well while crouched in the tunnel. It took both of us, working from opposite sides, to push each battery up onto the shelf. I sent Tony away between each pair so I could spend some time wiggling them into position, and also getting the impossible-to-reach cables on the back ones. Again, he came out at least four more times to help me get them in.


How I spent my day. Tony is kneeling in the scooter bay behind me.

When I was removing the old batteries, I found another stud terminal post that had pulled right out of the lead. I had this happen when we were at Choo-Choo Garage a couple weeks ago, and so it was no longer all that surprising, but this clearly happened sometime in the last year or so, and we have no idea, really, how long that battery has been "disconnected." Tony tested all the batteries for me, and this one actually tested "good" and at 77% charged, about the same as the other good ones, so the stud was probably touching enough for the battery to be helping at least a little, but with two of these terminals having been damaged, I was now very nervous about tightening the new terminals, especially after Tony told me the number one issue that leads to terminal failure like this is under-tightening the nuts.

Tony had a booklet with the torque specifications. They listed "120 lb/in" or "162 N•m". Now, I don't know what "lb/in" means in regards to torque (it turns out to be a misprint), but 162 netwon-meters is 120 foot-pounds, and I took out my torque wrench an dutifully dialed that number in. Somewhere in the middle of tightening the very first terminal I realized there was no way this could be right -- that's a lot of torque, and I remembered the stud that came right off in my hand when I overtightened it just a little. I stopped and went inside to ask Tony.

After we both scratched our heads for a while he called Trojan, and Stacy the tech rep there said the correct torque was actually 120-180 inch-pounds, which is 10-15 foot-pounds. Quite a difference. She quickly admitted that the metric numbers in the booklet were simply wrong; whoever published them did the conversion from foot-pounds instead of inch-pounds. It does not look like I damaged the terminal, as I realized it pretty early on. But if that stud pops out in the next two months, I'm going to ask Trojan to warranty the battery; I put the rep on notice when we spoke, and she agreed that, yes, Trojan had incorrectly specified the torque in their own published materials.

My torque wrench doesn't actually work at values that low, so I had to hand-tighten everything by feel. I'll be looking for a small wrench that reads in inch-pounds in the next couple weeks so I can re-torque them to spec at some point. In the meantime, I am going to inspect all the terminals every month or so for a while, until I am comfortable that none is going to pull out.

Once all the batteries were back in place, I set about putting on the rest of the cables. Two of the sixteen terminals have three cables each, while most terminals have just two and two of the terminals get only one. When I went to install the two groups of three, which are the penultimate connections to be made in the whole process, I discovered that the studs on these new batteries are just a couple millimeters shorter than the old ones. I simply could not get the flange nuts to engage even a single thread of the studs. I know on the old batteries that they not only engaged, but that the stud post was flush with the top of the nut when it was tightened.


Upside-down flange nut. I had to tighten it with channel-locks.

We could not really get under way until I had all the cables connected and the batteries back on-line, and by this time the shop was closed. That's when I realized that the very part which could help, the stud-adapter clamp for the automotive post, which I had installed during the stud failure at Choo-Choo, was still clamped to the old battery, now locked in the shop. Ultimately I was able to jury-rig the system by flipping two of the flange nuts upside down, which allowed at least a couple of threads to engage. Today I ran out to Wal-Mart and bought a pair of stud adapters, and in the morning I should be able to finish the job correctly.

We're happy to have a working set of batteries again. In addition to Larry from Carolina Energy coming through with a decent price on these, at just $450 a battery plus tax and fees, or 10% off their original quote, Tony was the star of the show. This company does not do drive-up service or installation, and Tony could have just told me to take the batteries over to Camping World or wherever to get help with them. But he went well above and beyond the bounds of good customer service to help me with these, and I could not have done it without him. Today I dropped by the office with a restaurant gift card and a bottle of his favorite beverage as a thank-you.

I mentioned that Tony tested the old batteries for me. He had to fake out the tester, as it did not really have a setting for 8D-AGM, but he found a setting that worked. The tester unsurprisingly found four batteries to be bad and need replacement, numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5. More surprisingly, it found the other four to be "good," three passing as-is and one needing charge. One of the passing batteries was number 6, the one with the broken-off negative stud. I suspect these batteries were actually marginal, but in the end it's irrelevant, because four bad ones meant the whole bank needed replacing -- you don't want to mix brand new batteries with half-used, four-year-old ones. Oddly, there was no rhyme or reason to which ones were bad and which good, although three of the four were in the lower half of the bank.


Odyssey's battery layout.

By the time I got the last cable on and the inverter fired back up, we had been at the shop around eight hours. We ran the generator for most of that time, with a jury-rig bypass in place to keep two of the air conditioners running the whole time. I crammed all the dress panels and the rest of my tools into the tunnel, we loaded up the scooter that had to come out for access, and headed off to the park, arriving here just after 7.

It was all we could do to unload the scooters and go to dinner. Louise found a nice Italian place fairly close by, Angelo's Steaks and Pasta. And then yours truly, Mr. always-up-to-the-wee-hours, fell face down in the bed at 10pm. This morning I was so sore from crouching in the tunnel all day I could hardly move. I made the one trip to Wal-Mart today and otherwise have been inside in the air conditioning licking my wounds -- those batteries kicked my butt. I'll try to finish the project in the morning when it is a bit cooler, and in a few minutes we'll ride over to the beach and jump in the ocean.

Alone at last

We are at Lee State Park (or State Natural Area, depending upon which map you consult) near Bishopville, South Carolina (map), about a half hour west of Florence. While each site has a spigot and a 30-amp pedestal, the campground is otherwise rather rustic, in a stand of tall conifers with dirt roads and dirt parking pads. We are the only ones here.

There is one other rig a half dozen sites down, but no one is in it and it has been vacant since we arrived yesterday afternoon. There was also a large fiver here when we arrived, but they must have pulled out early this morning. A number of reservation tags on the posts suggest a few sites were occupied over the weekend. I suspect this park rarely fills up.

The park is listed as suitable for rigs up to 36', but Odyssey had no trouble making it around the loop (twice) and would fit in almost any site. Our biggest challenge was finding a site with a tiny gap through the trees in the right direction to get the satellite on line; we're far enough from anything here that our cell phones have no data access, and even voice coverage is spotty. We had no shot from the first site we tried, necessitating the second trip around the loop. Here in Site 13 we have probably the only shot there is to our bird, at 83W.

The campground has a whole separate loop for equestrian use, but signs at the park say it is closed due to an unsafe electrical issue. The barricades look permanent and old; we'd guess the loop has been closed for years. They moved some horse corrals close to this end of the main loop for equestrian use.

It's lovely here, if a bit hot, and a few bucks cheaper than some of the other parks in the system (and certainly the ones on the coast). I was thinking of staying another night if the batteries are not going to be ready, but we were just notified that our mail has arrived in Murrell's Inlet, so we will likely move along to the coast today so we can catch up with it. I have an email in to the battery distributor to see if we can nail down the delivery date.

Photo of a yellow rat snake in the Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve by Hunter-Desportes, used under a Creative Commons license.

Park hopping

We are at Sesqui-Centennial State Park, in Columbia, South Carolina (map). Once again we have a pedestal with both 30 and 20-amp outlets, more than enough to run two air conditioners as needed and keep us cool. Last night we rode the scooters the 12 miles into town to have dinner at the Capital City Club. With the heat index still over 100, it felt like a much longer ride.

As we have moved further into the flatlands, the heat index has increased. Our goal now is to get to the coast, where things are just a tad cooler. We could make it all the way there today, but we are always nervous arriving at a tourist area in high season on the weekend, even Sunday, as we might have difficulty finding a suitable parking spot.

Instead we are aiming for yet another state park, just west of Florence, for tonight. Tomorrow morning I will check in with the battery dealer to see when they expect the batteries to arrive in Myrtle Beach, and we'll plan our next stop from there. With any luck, they will have them on Tuesday, and we'd shoot to be on their doorstep Monday night.

On our way out of town this afternoon, we've arranged to meet up with some friends for lunch, just a mile or so from the park. With the batteries fully charged we should be able to run the A/C long enough to keep the pets cool while we eat.

Photo by ,zenera used under a Creative Commons license.

Relaxing on the Clinch

We are at the Norris Dam State Park (map), at the eponymous dam on the Clinch River, about 20 miles or so from Knoxville, Tennessee. The dam itself is actually owned by the TVA, the very first dam in the system and one of the first projects of Roosevelt's New Deal. The state park occupies the upstream shoreline of the lake for miles on either side.

We are in the smaller East Campground, closer to the dam. Power pedestals here sport a 30-amp and 20-amp receptacle, which have been keeping us quite cool and comfortable. Yesterday we rode over to the larger West Campground, quite a ways away, where we noticed the sites had additionally a 50-amp receptacle. That area is also more wooded and we would have had more jockeying to do to get the satellite dish on-line. All sites also have water spigots and are $20 per night, which is a bargain for power in this weather.

We finally wrapped up at the Choo Choo Garage Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday we were actually able to move the bus, and we looped around the parking lot to pull it into the bay and over the pit, so the coolant could be changed and everything inspected from underneath. We discovered a power steering leak, which turned out to be a bad hose. Everything was back in place by the end of the day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning we went for a road test.

We just did a quick dozen miles or so on the freeway, climbing a moderate grade in both directions. Everything worked well, and an initial seat-of-the-pants assessment of the cooling system suggested a significant improvement. I noticed steering fluid dripping at a check stop, but that turned out to be from a small pool of it trapped on a motor mount. Another old problem was also back with us, namely that the compressor unloads every half minute or so. When we got back to the shop we pulled back over the pit.

Joel spent several hours Wednesday diagnosing the air problem, which ultimately turned out to be a combination of a bad check valve and and undersized air line. He was able to clean the valve, and the shop had the proper line in stock, so the problem was fixed for good by mid-afternoon. In the meantime, all the air dumping and filling had caused the perennial leak in the left front leveling check valve to return, a problem I had just dealt with the day we left Mississippi. No better time to deal with it than over the pit, and Joel was able to find me a used check valve lying around the shop that we were able to adapt, using bits and pieces he had in his little pile of parts, plus two fittings and some tube I bought at the hardware store down the street. With luck, that will be the end of having to crawl into the wheel well to rebuild that valve.

That took us nearly to the end of the day, so we spent Wednesday night outside the shop, in the wash rack. Louise and I spent a couple hours Thursday morning with the pressure washer trying to get the bus clean. The back was so covered with grease from the oil leak, however, that we ruined the scrub brush. Don and Joel rescued us with chemicals, products called "Dun EZ" and "Purple Power," which not only got the grease off the back, but also cleaned up the brush. The wash rack also houses the dump, in typical bus-garage style, so we were able to empty our tanks before we left.

Louise had made arrangements to meet her brother and sister-in-law and their daughter as they made their way from Roan Mountain, near Smoky Mountain park, back to Houston. Their route took them past Chattanooga, but we were eager to move on, so arranged to meet instead in Knoxville for lunch on Friday. That gave us a chance to have dinner Thursday night at our club there, but the only decent parking option was the Elks lodge a few miles away, which had no power. So we lingered at the shop, where we still had 20 amps, until we had just enough time to fuel and make a quick stop at Camping World on the way to Knoxville.

Fuel was $3.69 a gallon at the Mapco station between the shop and the freeway. The dispenser was incredibly slow, though, and would only let me buy $100 at a shot, so we quit at $200. Camping world was just across the highway, and our stop was necessitated by having to purchase a new 30-amp-to-50-amp "dogbone" adapter. The one we'd been using came with the bus, and was at least 20 years old. Still, it was working OK until we arrived at the shop.

Unfortunately, the shop had only 20-amp duplex outlets, and Mike lent us an adapter that converts a duplex receptacle into a 30-amp trailer outlet. In hindsight, I should have just used my 15-to-30 adapter, because the orientation of the duplex receptacles meant the adapter was "upside down." This meant that, instead of hanging straight down, our 30-amp adapter had to dress upwards from the outlet, then hang down to the side. We tried to secure it in that position somehow, but it ended up with the weight of the cord on the tangs. After three weeks of non-stop 20-amp draw in near-100 temperatures, the hot tangs melted through the old rubber, and the plug was not a pretty sight when I removed it. I suggested to Mike that he flip the receptacle over, and gave him the melted plug for show-and-tell.



We made it to Knoxville just in time to take the scooters out and make our dinner reservation. The Elks lodge was pleasant enough, and downtown Knoxville was very interesting -- we'd like to return in cooler weather and spend a few days. At least it was cool enough by the time we arrived that we could go off to dinner without leaving the A/C running, and we were also able to spend Friday morning as well as go off to lunch without it. It was too humid for sleeping, though, and we had to run one unit overnight on low. In better days, our batteries would have easily handled that task, but they are now so bad that the generator auto-started four times overnight, running for just an hour each time.

After saying good-bye to Louise's family, who were trying to make it back to Houston in just two days, we spent the next hour or so looking for someplace nearby with a power outlet. We knew we could be comfortable without it if we got high enough into the hills, but here in the vicinity of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we reasoned that most of the campgrounds, even the fairly primitive ones, would be full up for the weekend now that it is high season. Louise started looking at state parks, and this one, closest to Knoxville, is far enough in the opposite direction that they seldom fill up. At just $20 per day, it is cheaper than running the generator.

We paid for two nights, last night being the second. But with no concrete plans to go anywhere else, we're going to purchase another night when the ranger rolls around. We have our eyes on Investigation Area 98 off the east coast of Florida, so we certainly don't want to go any further north or west just yet. There is a public pool over on the west side of the park, so perhaps we will go for a swim later today. In the meantime, I am still cleaning up the project bits and pieces leftover from the shop visit. Today I should have all the hatches dogged down, so we can stow the rest of our gear.

Attacked by pirates!

We are at the Monte Sano State Park, in the hills just east of Huntsville, Alabama (map). As we had surmised, by the time we arrived just before 2pm, the park had cleared out, and we had our pick of spaces; the person at the check-in desk was kind enough to let us drive around the campground until we could find a space where we could get on-line.

The park is lovely, and part of the reason is that it is in a stand of tall mixed hardwood. We drove around both loops, and we found this space with a narrow gap in the direction of the satellite. It may well be the only such spot in the whole park, and it is certainly the only one that was empty when we arrived. It's also one of the cheaper spaces, at $18 per night on weekdays for 30-amp power and water. As we drove around under the tree canopy, we pretty much decided that if the only space we could find to get on-line was a more expensive full hookup, or still more expensive pull-through site, we'd just take it.

Once we had the dish pointed and were certain we could get on-line, we pulled the scooters out and rode back to the office to pay. After all that effort we decided to stay at least three nights. That made it worthwhile to set up the hot tub, and we're pretty well settled in this spot. I spent the afternoon getting some projects done, and grilled a nice flat iron steak for dinner. Afterward, as we were catching up on email and news and planning out our stay, I got a pop-up telling us we had exceeded our bandwidth allowance, and we've been "turned off" for 24 hours, so now we have no Internet access until 9pm tonight.

I knew neither one of us had used that much bandwidth, and when I checked the router, the guy across the street had his laptop and two iPhones on our network. Somewhere around 5pm they downloaded over 200 megabytes of stuff, and I was hopping mad. To make matters worse, they are Escapees, who should know better. Mostly, I was mad at myself for not locking down the network as soon as we arrived.

Long-time readers may know that, once upon a time, we deliberately left our wireless network open so that other RVers could use our signal for checking email and doing moderate web surfing. We made a lot of friends this way, and it really was helpful on our Mexico caravan. It was not really a burden for us, as our own laptops are already secure, and we've been using open signals from other WiFi networks for years, so this was just maintaining the balance of cosmic karma.

Then one day, HughesNet changed the way they penalize users for going over quota under their "Fair Access Policy" (FAP). Previously, if you accidentally went over your usage allowance, you merely had to stop or limit your usage for an hour or two before you could return to full-speed browsing, and then keep an eye on usage until your "bucket" refilled. The new policy is still a "leaky bucket" algorithm, but the instant you go over your daily limit, you are throttled back for a full 24 hours, no ifs, ands, or buts. HughesNet users call this "getting FAPped."

The first time this happened to us unwittingly, due to neighbors using our signal, we locked down the network. In pained me to do it, but with no warning mechanism, and no way to tell the neighbors to limit their usage, we really had no choice. Our router is now carefully configured to permit access only to those devices we've pre-approved. We still provide network access for friends and traveling companions, but it requires specific configuration ahead of time and I can monitor the usage. This allows us to explain how the limit works and to ask folks to limit their use to email and normal web surfing, and not to download large video clips, audio streams, or software updates.

All well and good, but regular readers will also know that we are having problems with our satellite equipment, and I've spent dozens of hours on the phone with customer support over the last month or so trying to resolve it. We've already swapped out several components of the satellite dish itself as well as the modem, but somewhere in the troubleshooting the suggestion was made that the problem might be our WiFi router. So I swapped in a spare router temporarily for testing purposes, one that does not have the full configuration to implement our security scheme. No big deal for test purposes, and until yesterday, it has not been an issue.

In a classic case of locking the barn door after the horses are out, as soon as I realized we'd been FAPped by pirates, I yanked the open router and put our secure one back in place. I'm sure old Earl there is wondering what happened to his network connection. Even though his big download was at 5pm, we did not go over the daily allowance until after 8, and so we are shut down now until 9 tonight. "Shut down" means that we still have access, but our throughput is limited to about half that of a dial-up connection. We can load pretty much any all-text page, and send or receive text emails. I'll be able to post this blog, but without any graphics.

There is a "free window" in the middle of every night, where usage does not count toward the allowance, and where full speed is restored to FAPped stations. So at 1am I was able to get back on and pre-load some information I'll need today, as well as generate my shipping labels for the eBay items I need to mail today. We'll spend the rest of today out and about running errands.

While we're in Huntsville we'd like to see the space center, and there is some sort of observatory and planetarium right here in the park. I also need to pick up an air filter and some oil for the bus, and we're going to try to find someplace nice for dinner tonight. Probably using my Blackberry, since even searching for restaurants while FAPped is nearly impossible.

Photo by Dunechaser, used under a Creative Commons license.

Change of plans

We are at the Columbus-Belmont State Park, in Coumbus, Kentucky (map), overlooking the Mississippi. We have a "premium" site with a river view and 50 amps for a princely sum north of $25, but we needed the power, and once here figured we might as well go for the high-zoot digs. How we ended up here is something of a story, with a happy ending but much drama in the middle.

Tuesday evening, after checking the hurricane forecast (still blank) and the nationwide heat-index charts (grim), we decided to abandon our lazy amble down the river, with its concomitant daily hunt for power outlets, in favor of picking a destination along the gulf coast and heading there more or less directly. After looking at weather, driving distances, and tarball forecasts, we chose Fort Walton Beach, Florida, at the western end of the panhandle. Not only is that more or less equidistant from both ends of the gulf coast, but it is also striking distance from the eastern seaboard hurricane belt, is somewhat cooler than anything further west, and has an Elks lodge right on the beach with a 30-amp power outlet.

Having made the decision to head expeditiously to the coast, we then faced a choice of perhaps three or four sensible routes, all about the same length. Ultimately we made the decision based on maximizing the number of associate clubs we'd pass along the way, as our membership gets us a free meal at each club we visit. The route we settled on hits clubs in Nashville, Huntsville, Birmingham, and Montgomery before landing us on the beach.

The most direct route from Sikeston to Nashville cuts across the southern tip of Illinois, but having done that more than once, now, I was looking for an alternative. Besides, while we were still ambling down the river, I was looking forward to passing through New Madrid, famous for being close to the epicenter of a destructive earthquake, and across the river from a piece of Kentucky disconnected from its mother state. From there to Nashville the most direct route crosses the river at the Dorena-Hickman Ferry, which met my objective of avoiding the now-familiar Illinois route.

We have a love-hate relationship with ferries. I love them, and Louise hates them. In part that's because Odyssey's low ground clearance and long front and rear overhangs can make ferry embarkation and disembarkation challenging or sometimes impossible. Many ferries across flat water have been no trouble at all, including the Cape May -- Lewes ferry, all the North Carolina ferries, the Port Aransas Ferry, and, once we got the hang of it, the Cameron Ferry in Louisiana. Other ferries have been less kind, including the Baja Ferries' Topolobampo -- La Paz ferry, which took a chunk out of our bodywork, the Dauphin Island ferry near Mobile, whose ramp was so steep we could not board at all, and our first encounter with the Cameron Ferry where we dropped an air bag before we understood the technique.

Because of the issues, I do as much research as possible before heading towards a ferry, and this one looked OK. However, when we arrived at the landing, in the middle of nowhere, after a long drive down minor state roads, we discovered the ramp at the landing to be steep enough to be of concern. We waited patiently for the ferry to arrive, and when it did, Louise went down to talk to the ferryman about our concerns. On top of everything else, it turned out the ferry had one busted ramp, which meant we'd have to either back on, or back off at the other end.

We opted to back on, and with Louise on deck with a radio, and the rear suspension at full elevation, I carefully backed down the concrete towards the ramp. Due to safety concerns with the loading ramp, they made Louise stand a good 40' away, and so it was that she could not really see that we were about to bottom out on the ramp, and that's exactly what happened. And there we were, front wheels on land, tail skid firmly on the ferry, and the drive wheels completely off the ground. I'm sorry we did not get a photo, but we were both very focused now on how to get unstuck.

(Actually, the left drive wheel was on the ground, and the right one was just barely touching. When the ferry captain asked Sean to pull forward, the right wheel spun, making just enough contact with the concrete to smoke and stink. -Louise)

I won't bore you with the details of the next half hour, other than to say that the now very annoyed people behind us in line got out of their cars in the 95° heat to watch the unfolding drama. The ferry captain was very resistant to my plan, but after trying it his way for half an hour with no success, and, in fact, inching the whole time further onto the ferry and closer to becoming a submarine in the Mississippi, he finally relented. (All the negotiations between the ferry captain in the tow boat cockpit and Sean in the bus cockpit were via two radios: our little FRS walkie-talkies and another radio link between the captain and the bemused deck hand standing next to me on the ferry barge. -L)

I put our two massive rubber chocks under the front wheels and released the brakes, and the ferry backed slowly out from under us. This ultimately destroyed one of the chocks, but it worked, and I was able to drive back up the concrete to the road.

Louise says we are never taking a ferry again. (He can take all the ferries he wants, but I'm not going. -L)

In any case, we then ended up driving north to US-60 and the bridge to Cairo, Illinois. We stopped at the parking lot of the closed Fort Defiance State Park and the still-defunct toll house museum to regroup. This state park in Kentucky would be the closest power option, and we were past done for the day after the ferry experience. Today we will leave the river and the Great River Road behind and head east to Nashville.

Photo by jocelyn.aubert, used under a Creative Commons license. Note: Not the ferry we were on. Because you know, it could have been worse. But I'm still not going on any more ferries.

Just like Bogie and Bacall

We are in the campground at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, on Key Largo (map).

The principal feature of this park is, of course, the coral reef, and the vast majority of the park's acreage is actually submarine. From the marina, just a short walk from our camp site, one can take a glass-bottom boat tour of the reefs, or charter a dive boat. We're holding off, because later this week we will be doing our PADI open-water diver certification with a dive operator nearby, and we expect our four open-water qualifying dives to be in the park anyway.

We're here in the campground for a much more banal reason, namely, that we wanted to spend a few days in the Keys, and this park's campground happened to have three consecutive days available in a space that would fit us. As it turns out, though, we'll only spend two nights, as our dive lessons start first thing Thursday morning, so tomorrow night we will situate ourselves outside the dive shop. This afternoon I scooted over to the gatehouse and had them refund our third night; we need to be out of our site tomorrow at 1pm, but we'll just move to the boat ramp parking for the rest of the day, and perhaps spend a couple hours in the aquarium here. Unfortunately, the aquarium's largest tank is empty for maintenance right now.

This morning we had a nice ride through town, checking out our digs for tomorrow night just to make sure we'd encounter no low trees or other obstacles, and whizzing past the Caribbean Club, where the very small handful of location shots for the movie Key Largo were filmed. We did not stop; I understand the joint is chock-full of Bogart memorabilia nowadays. We did stop at the Winn-Dixie to pick up a few groceries. This evening we rode to dinner at Rib Daddy's, virtually across the street from the park entrance.

The weather has been absolutely perfect, and it is beautiful here. Unfortunately, we've been more or less quarantined inside the bus, because the Keys are full of no-see-ums, an aptly named minuscule gnat (also known as sand fleas) that inflicts a painful sting upon alighting on one's bare skin. They don't seem to have a huge effect on me, but Louise welts up instantly, and the stings become inflamed and sometimes infected in short order. We can't set foot outside the bus without being inundated with them. So cutting our stay here short by one night seems like no sacrifice at all.

Image uploaded by Shannon Coffey, used under a Creative Commons license.

Sling Bay

We are at Bahia Honda State Park, on the eponymous Key in the Lower Florida Keys (map).

This is a beautiful park, even if our particular camp site is a bit humdrum. We arrived yesterday around 2ish, and had to wait a good fifteen minutes or more in a line to check in. Between the check-in ranger being the slowest person in the state park system, and the campers in front of us not knowing such basic information as their vehicle license plate numbers, it was a painful process.

Once we got settled in, we pulled the scooters out and explored the park. The swim beach at the east end seemed inviting, so we went back for our suits and I took a swim, which was, umm, "refreshing" (Louise now knows this as code for "too cold for you, honey"). I did not need to say it, though, as apparently it was written on my face. Once I was completely immersed it was fine. I'm sure it would have felt better at the hottest part of the day.

Since we already had the scooters out, we rode to dinner two Keys over, on Big Pine Key, at the famous (if difficult to find) No Name Pub. (The proprietors were not unimaginative -- No Name Key is just across the channel.) Casual food in a kitschy atmosphere, with enormous portions -- we both got lunch today out of our leftovers.

This morning we walked out onto the remains of the east end of the old Bahia Honda Bridge. This was one of the original bridges on Flagler's overseas railroad; its truss construction presented a challenge when the railroad was converted into a highway. Engineers solved the conundrum by building superstructure above the trusses, and putting the road deck on the top, making for a very weird looking auto bridge. Like many of the original structures, it is slowly crumbling into the sea.

Shortly we will pack up and head back the way we came, landing at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo.

Photo by Kevin Labianco, used under a Creative Commons license.

Warm at last

We are at Huntington Beach State Park near Murrells Inlet, South Carolina (map). It was around 70° when we arrived yesterday afternoon, and about that again this afternoon. We've taken the electric blanket off the bed, I'm back in short sleeves, and we can finally open all the vents and windows and air the bus out fully.

We've been here before, on our very first circuit around the country five years ago. Back then, I was not in the habit of blogging from almost every stop, and I only mentioned the place a few days later; no map links then, either. We only spent one night then, and it was very much off-season although only a month later in the year than this visit.

What I also did not mention back then was that the park was basically the grounds of Atalaya, the summer home of Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington and today a feature of the park, which, together with the adjacent Brookgreen Gardens, the Huntingtons left to the state. I feel distantly connected to Anna Hyatt Huntington, who was a sculptor. One of the several castings of her famous sculpture "The Torch-Bearers" holds a prominent central position on the campus of my alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology; up until my class year, it had been a tradition for the freshman class to paint their class year on the horse's, umm, behind, but the administration put a stop to it as the incessant cleanings were thinning the aluminum too much. It is actually a very moving sculpture, and I often stopped to admire it on my travels around campus.

Since it was still in the high 60s even after sunset, we rode the scooters to Nico's Italian Restaurant, halfway back to Myrtle Beach, for dinner. All the towns along this stretch of coast have a high tourist factor, but this place got good reviews, and Louise found a coupon on Restaurant.com for it. While it's tempting to ride into town again tonight, it's lovely here and I will grill a steak instead.

We really needed the downtime afforded by spending a couple of nights here. I had a deadline to get an article submitted to Bus Conversions Magazine, basically a re-run of the centerfold we did five years ago, and spent the morning getting that done. I also pulled the dip tube out of the fresh water tank, and reseated all the seals on the intake system -- we've been getting air in the lines as the water level drops. And the spare computer printer that my dad palmed off on me when we visited last week sold today on eBay, so I got that packed and labeled for drop-off at UPS tomorrow morning.

All told, a productive day. We could only get this spot for two nights -- the shoulder season is still busy on the weekends here -- so tomorrow I will run the printer into town on the scooter, and we will pack up before the noon checkout. We've made a date to visit our friends in Savannah on Saturday, so I expect we'll land someplace about halfway there tomorrow night. The rest of my project list, including getting the old computers ready for sale, and refurbishing the satellite dish, will have to wait until after the weekend.

Photo by brungrrl, used under a Creative Commons license.

From park to P-town

We are at Nickerson State Park, off Cape Cod Bay between Brewster and Orleans (map). We arrived just before noon yesterday; since the place is mostly empty, the lone agent staffing registration took our money and gave us our choice of spaces on this loop. The park closes for the season at the end of the month, and I think this loop, area 4, is the only one still open.

Getting into the space was a bit dicey -- there are plenty of tree branches on this loop that are lower than our roof -- but we found a spot with enough of a gap in the trees to get on-line. The park is heavily wooded, and mostly still green here, where the fall color is still a couple of weeks away. Once we got settled, we had our lunch and pulled the scooters out.

We noticed that there is a public bus that stops right here at the park and would take us all the way to Provincetown, and we briefly thought about doing that instead. But we wanted to see some of the backroads, and make several stops, and besides, it was a gorgeous day for a ride, with the highest temperatures we've seen in a week.

Our ride took us through the quaint town of Orleans, then to the Cape Cod National Seashore Park Service visitor center at Salt Pond, which has a nice museum of cape area artifacts such as scrimshaw, whalebone kitchen tools, cranberry harvesting equipment, and the inner workings of lighthouses. From there we rode along the Atlantic shore to Nauset Light, where we were forced to return inland.

Not knowing how long some of the side roads would take, we opted to zip directly out to P-town on US-6. Just before the "eastern terminus" of that road (which is actually heading southwest before it ends) we stopped at the "Province Lands" area of the National Seashore, riding out to Race Point and then curving around to Herring Cove. This area is full of sand dunes that the Park Service is scrambling to protect. I remember playing on them some 40 years ago on a family vacation here, though this is no longer allowed.

US-6 ends and MA-6A begins at the Wood End dike, and we continued along 6A to about mid-town or so, just east of the Pilgrim Monument (which we opted not to climb), and then looped back west on Commercial Street. What a fun place -- we could easily spend a few days here, except for the fact that there is absolutely no place to put the bus -- the lone commercial campground in P-town is not really walking distance from most of the town.

I was really too young to remember much of the town from my last visit, but I know it was not the gay mecca then that it is now, notwithstanding the Atlantic House being openly gay-friendly since the 50s. We did pass the area where I think our motel was, which brought back pleasant memories, and a jetty I remember climbing on. This was really the first family vacation that I have conscious memories of.

We continued south on 6A through North Truro all the way to its intersection again with US-6, which we followed for less than a mile before turning off to the west onto a series of back roads through Truro and South Truro, then a section of the National Seashore past the Atwood-Higgins House, and eventually landing us in Wellfleet. That left us time for one more loop out to the Atlantic side on Cahoon Hollow Road and south on Ocean View Drive. When we rejoined US-6 north of the Marconi site we were pretty cold and tired and we headed directly back to the park on the main road.

Shortly after we returned our friends came over from nearby Chatham and took us to dinner at the Lobster Claw in Orleans. We had a wonderful evening catching up over lobster dinners and Boston cream pie. All four of us are Red Cross volunteers, and we compared notes on how inactive the season has been; the last time we saw them was on our last deployment, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Today is another clear and pleasant day, and we will pack up shortly to head off the cape. We arrived here via the northern route on 6A, having come through Barnstable, Yarmouth, and Dennis (the detour from 6A down to Hyannis and back Monday night meant we missed the lone low-clearance railroad bridge on the route, in Barnstable), and so we will leave by the southern route, 28. That will loop us around the Falmouth peninsula, past Woods Hole, and off the island over the Bourne Bridge, whereupon we will again pick up US-6 to take us all the way to Rhode Island.

Photo by wayneandwax, used under a Creative Commons license.