The
last blog of our winter trips is ALWAYS the same - - We're home. The laundry
is done , blah, blah, blah! It's true. The "Home" stuff comes
first. That and H has downloaded the
North Carolina pictures so now I can tell you about North Carolina and our
quick trip home from there!
Myrtle
Beach was fun. It's a busy vibrant
tourist town. Walking the boardwalk was
interesting and seeing all those teens on the frigid beach was just plane silly
since the two of us were all bundled up
in jackets and long pants! But we are
both getting restless and we were ready to move on.
Half
way between Fayetteville and Raleigh North Carolina is a speck on the map
called Jackson Springs. The GPS was
able to locate and direct us to Sycamore Lodge and RV Resort - the last of the
5 campground/resorts where we had "free" night's parking. Our stay in DeFuniak Florida was one of
these also! Sycamore Lodge is at the
end of a long thin thread of road lined with silver skinned Sycamore
Trees. The Lodge itself originally was the hunting facility for a
wealthy lumberman and the unique dark log building has been preserved
impeccably well.
Gracing
the yards are red berry covered holly bushes that have been carefully pruned to
look like a well decorated Christmas Trees!
Stone and brick walkways were everywhere - weaving in and out between
the new camping cabins and leading to the different gardens or terraced RV
parking spots. All of these are
situated on the gentle hillside overlooking the pretty little fish stocked
lake. The regular camping sites were
placed the top of the hillside and just past the playground areas AND Putt Putt Golf Course. H was gloating after
the first round since he beat me by one point.
The tables got turned quickly after the second round when I got TWO hole
in ones and beat him by 3 points!
Our
journey north should have continued on Friday but the weather report for West
Virginia was not too promising.
Thankfully, H spoke with the office and we were allowed to stay one more
day. However, while we stayed out of
the snow, we weren't able to stay out of the cold. When Saturday came, along
with the rising sun, we hooked up and got a early start. Across
NC and then Virginia and finally West Virginia with it's lousy rough
turnpike and detours we pushed. Our
chosen place for the night was to be near Beckley but since we passed thru
there before noon - those plans were quickly changed! We ended up in Parkersburg at the same run down campground that
we had stayed several years ago when we visited Bleinerhasset Island with
B&C. The sad little campground is
even more run down. There was
electricity but no restrooms and NO running water. They pumped several gallons from a large opaque plastic tank into
our freshwater tank but I sure wasn't going to trust it to be clean enough to
drink. Luckily with the 1/2 pitcher of
water and the water bottles in the refrigerator we had enough for coffee in the
morning. Our teeth even got brushed
before we rolled on down the cranky hill and headed for the big bridge that
crossed the wide Ohio River. Up thru
Athens, straight north in Columbus to Rt 23 and we fought strong winds all the
way to Findlay where we finally returned to I75. Most of the vehicles that were coming up behind us from Lima,
Dayton and Cincinnati had snow packed in their front grills. While we arrived home without the danger
of driving in snow, we did rise Monday morning to a yard full of the white
stuff.
So, that's it - 4 months and 5000 miles on the
truck - another winter in Florida is now history.
