Our Travel Blog

For the first time on this trip we went 24 hours without any heating in the trailer. We woke up to sunshine and 20°C. Last night we decided it was time for a road trip, so we planned to head north about 40 miles to the Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge. We also planned to do some geocaching on the way.

After breakfast we packed up some drinks and lunch and headed out. We initially headed up the interstate to by pass the town of Brunswick. Once clear of the town we left the interstate and picked up the local road. We drove through the town of Darien, where we had a great shrimp lunch a couple of years ago. One of the caches in the town was called “Tabby Walls”, we had no idea what a tabby wall was at the time,but we do now. They are concrete walls that were quite common in the South East at the end of the 19th century. What differentiates them from other concrete walls is the concentration of sea-shells in the mix. The ones below are the remains of warehouses on the water front.Heading out of Darien we came across a herd of Buffalo in the fields, unfortunately they weren’t wild, but were being raised on a farm. Further up the road we came across the smallest Church in America. This was built in 1949 by the local grocer as a non-denominational church for travelers on the highway.

The Church may be small (8 seats) but it is still in use, and has a number of stained glass windows.

We now turned to the east and headed to Harris Neck. We HAD to make one more cache stop as it was at an air strip! Just before got to Harris Neck we spotted an armadillo on the side of the road, unfortunately it was lying on its back and lifeless after an unscheduled encounter with a passing vehicle.

We made it to the refuge where we stopped for our lunch. The refuge was on an old Army Air Force base, although all that was left were the overgrown runways. Unfortunately there was not a geat deal of wild life visible. The alligators were no where to be seen, we did see some Kingfishers and woodpeckers as well as a number of turkey vultures.

Walking around one of the ponds we saw a number of groups of turtles

The drive around the refuge was through lots of live oaks covered in Spanish moss.

After we finished the tour around the refuge we headed back to the trailer via some small country roads where we  found a few more caches, I think we found 9 or so caches on the trip. I avoided talking too much about the caches for fear of boring you! For us the caching has really allowed us to see more of the countryside than we normally would. For instance, today’s trip. Normally we would just drive to our destination, look around and then drive back taking at the most 2½ hours. Today we were out for around 5 hours and walked more than 2 miles looking for caches.

It stayed warm enough to BBQ and eat our evening meal outside.

Another warm morning, although it was very foggy for a while, about 15°C when we woke up.

After breakfast I started looking at our furnace air distribution issues that I mentioned a week or so ago. This time I got all hi-tech and stuck the digital camera into the ductwork and took some pictures. What I saw explained the problem we were having, unfortunately it appears to have been engineered(???) that way. I guess in a way it makes more sense to send more hot air to the living area than the bedroom / bathroom, but it would have been nice if some sort of control was available to allow a choice.

After the I had cleared up from working on the ductwork Lyn headed over to the laundry and I played around with some electronic stuff. After lunch we decided it was time to get back into our walking We walked out of the resort and wandered around the local sub-division. Most of houses in this particular area were reasonably small. Very few of them had any landscaping in their yards. I am not sure whether this is through choice, or whether the climate down here makes it impracticable to keep the garden in good shape. There are plenty of trees in the area, it seems the don’t clear-cut the area before building, rather they just remove enough trees to build the houses. Talking of trees, there are a lot of “live oaks” in the area (they are the ones that host the Spanish moss), I often wondered where the name came from. It turns out that the live oak is an evergreen, it doesn’t go dormant so it is always live! Almost 2 miles later we were back at the trailer.

The weather was pretty warm by now, up to around 26°C so we sat outside for a while, Lyn reading and me trying to fix a persistent drip coming from one of the drain taps under the trailer.

Tomorrow is forecast to be an even warmer day, so we are going to head north to a wildlife area, hopefully with some geocahing on the way.

Woke up to a warm trailer and a healthy Lyn! The furnace didn’t come on at all last night so things are really looking up. Early morning temperature was 15°C and rising.

After breakfast Lyn carried on with her sewing projects for a while, and I went over to the local school with the helicopter. This time I stayed clear of the “beginners” mode, and went with the intermediate setting. All in all it went pretty well, a couple of heavy landings until I got used to the throttle response. Biggest problem I had was telling the front from the back. The back of the machine has a large LED light on it which shows the state of the beast. In my mind big lights are placed at the front of aircraft. This resulted in the helicopter get further away from me than I had planned a couple of times.

Back at the trailer I wanted to tackle a problem with a meter I have to help set up the dish alignment. It hadn’t been working and I thought the problem was that its batteries needed charging, unfortunately fully charged batteries didn’t solve the problem. I took it outside and connected it to the dish with a short length of cable; it then worked. Back inside and reconnected it to a longer cable I had coming from the dish… nothing. Putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat, obvious deduction was a bad cable. Replacing one of the connectors solved the problem. This episode got me to thinking about last years trip where we couldn’t get the satellite receiver to work, I now believe that the problem was caused by this cable. I have four cables I can use, but only need to connect two of them. I remember last year checking the cables and they all seemed OK when tested with a meter, but in this case the problem was that the centre wire was just a little too short to make a good connection. You live and learn.

After lunch we headed out to get reacquainted with geocaching. Again we chose 4 sites to go to and again we managed to find all 4 caches. One of the sites had a small natural well bubbling water to surface making for a soggy trek. Another site was at a bar-pit, which I had never heard of. Turns out it is a local expression for a gravel pit. Any way we managed to get our first decent walk in since Monday, which is a good thing as our weight loss has slowed right down. By mid afternoon the temperature had risen to the low 20’s and humidity was making it’s presence felt.

A week or so ago I asked if any one knew what the metal machine was that was in one of the pictures

This response from Charlie solves the mystery:

“The large iron  objects are fixed position gun placements from the Civil war era.  The muzzle loading gun is missing. The front end is fixed and the back end has the two wheels to move the gun to point in the right direction.”

Thanks Charlie.

Last night Lyn was suffering from a headache and cold -like symptoms, this morning she was no better so she just lounged around and impersonated me when I get sick!

The weather had warmed up nicely, and we hit about 15°C by mid-afternoon. Around that time Lyn was feeling a lot better, so we took a short walk over to the office and back. It was nice to wander round without a jacket on, and no cold (all relative) wind.

With the onset of both warmer weather and the week-end the resort began to fill up, it had really emptied out over the last few days.

Lyn continues to recover, so we may get to go out for a short while tomorrow.

Well despite the doom and gloom spread around yesterday, we survived overnight and woke up to another cool morning. The temperature didn’t rise above 4°C all day, so it was another day in the trailer. Lyn started a wood-burning project that she has had for sometime. I actually started doing some income tax work on the computer, hopefully another rebate will be in order.

After lunch we decided we’d had enough of being in the trailer, so we rustled up a quick shopping list and headed out to the great metropolis of Brunswick. Other than that, another boring blog I’m afraid. Tomorrow the temperature should be up in the 60’s, so we can probably get back outside again.

Woke up to rain and cold this morning with the temperature around freezing point. We decided it was a day to hibernate, the forecast showed a high of 2°C with a rain / ice pellet mix. Lyn has plenty of sewing projects and as usual I have plenty of computer and electronic projects to keep me out of trouble.

By mid afternoon the rain had stopped, but the temperature hadn’t changed much. We decided to get a little exercise in and take a walk over to the office. When we got there the conversation immediately went to the weather. It turns out that the area was in a state of chaos due to the weather. Schools were closed, outdoor workers were not working and a number of cities in Florida, Georgia and Alabama were virtually closed down by freezing rain or snow. On the way back from the office there was even a brief snow flurry.

Unfortunately Georgia’s only snowplow was not up to the job of keeping the streets clear.

After chatting for a while at the office we headed back to the trailer. I checked the two propane tanks, and one had just emptied so I headed back over to the office to arrange to have it filled ……. just in case!

Woke up to a damp drizzly morning, but it was mild at 14.5°C. That wasn’t going to last. After breakfast we got ready to head out and do the weekly grocery shopping. The temperature had dropped to 12°C. Back at the trailer, all the groceries were unpacked and stored. With careful packing Lyn (I wouldn’t stand a chance) can get a whole weeks worth of supplies in the fridge / freezer. By now the temperature was down to 10°C.

In Alabama at our other site the temperature was -2°C, with freezing rain. In fact a look at the US map shows a winter storm warning active from the Texas / Mexico border right up to the Great Lakes.  Tonight’s forecast is for temperatures around freezing and ice pellets. Regardless it is still warmer here than at home and we haven’t gone through a cylinder of propane…. yet.

After lunch Lyn headed over to the crafts group and I rekindled the war with the sewing machine I was trying to repair. After a few hours I was able to declare a victory, the machine now works as advertised. I must admit I didn’t fully realise how much of a precision machine those beasts are.

Time to crank up the heating and watch TV.

Another warm night followed by a warm morning leading into a hot day. The laundry load was high this week so Lyn headed over to the laundry after breakfast to finish the job. It was warm enough to head out and finish washing the trailer. This was probably a record, only 3 sessions to clean the trailer.

The temperatures climbed up to 22°C after lunch so that was a good time to make sure that the air conditioner still worked… it did.

We had a quick session of ordering from e-bay / amazon. Lyn got a couple of craft books and I got some radio stuff. On line buying is so much cheaper down here. Although the cost of the product is the same, 95% of the time the shipping is free and there is no 13% sales tax.

Being such a beautiful afternoon we headed back to Jekyll Island for some exercise and geo-caching. This time we chose four caches up the north end of the island. We must be improving as we found all 4 caches.

Below is one of the caches, the first picture shows the “find”, it is an old flashlight covered in camo-tape. Inside the battery compartment is the log book.

This picture shows the  flashlight as we found it in the tree, all that is showing is part of the hook that is connected to the flashlight

As a bargain we picked up a “trackable”. A trackable is an object that some one has left at a cache, with it (or on the web) will be a request as to what the owner wants done with trackable. In this case the intent is to have the trackable travel to as many places as possible, with pictures posted on the geo-caching site of any unusual places visited.

One of the caches was close to an area called Driftwood Beach. We had visited the North end of this beach a couple of years ago, this time we came from the South. The beach is littered with dead trees, but they have been rubbed smooth by the sand and tide action. It looks as the trees were originally growing where they are now, but the land was eroded by the sea causing the trees to die.

Again we managed to get in a good walk on the beach, and along some very small footpaths.

If only this weather would stay, but the cold is on its way south.

Another warm night and morning, we are getting spoiled although it was quite foggy early on. Fog means no wind, no wind means good flying weather. As the morning progressed the fog lifted, so as Lyn busied herself with the laundry, I reluctantly left her and headed out to to the local school and it’s playing fields. Apart from a couple of short hops in a confined area this was to be the first serious flight of the quadcopter in an open space.

I got the machine set up and hit the throttle, up it went just as advertised. I was flying in what is known as safe mode, in this mode it is virtually impossible to crash the machine. If you let go of the controls the ‘copter will just hover where it is. A 15ft radius safe zone is established around the pilot by the helicopter, meaning that it is impossible to fly the ‘copter within 15ft of the pilot, if you try to bring it closer it will just stop. Bit like a force field on Startrek. If you descend too quickly it will slow its rate of descent automatically as it approaches the ground and land softly. The final part of the idiot proofing is Return to Home. If you lose sight of the helicopter, or get disoriented, just flick a switch and it will climb/descent to about 20ft and return to above the point it took off from and then land gently.

Of course, all this computerised control makes for boring flying, but at the same time provides a great training tool. A simple flick of a switch put the machine into stable mode, where the pilot has far more control, but the computer still aids in stability. Flicking another switch removes all computer assistance, and aerobatic flight becomes possible. I started playing around with the second mode for a few minutes before quitting. A good start to the day.

Back at the trailer it was warm enough to wash some more of the trailer, so another 1/3 was completed, no point in rushing these things!

After lunch I dug out an old project I had brought down from home. Lyn has an older sewing machine that was misbehaving, it was one of the earlier computerised models, and was having issues with patterned sewing. Let’s just say the afternoon was an exercise in frustration!

Evidently there was a brief shower early this morning, but I slept through it! The morning was definitely warmer, and blue sky was replacing grey clouds, things were looking up.

After breakfast Lyn settled down to some quilting, and I headed outside to remove the stuff from the storage compartment under the trailer. I was trying to work out why there was so little heat coming into the bedroom and bathroom. The first problem was on the floor of the basement area where there is an air outlet, this is there to keep the area warm and prevent pipes from freezing. The outlet had been broken by my repeatedly pushing a tool box in and out of the compartment; all the hot air was pouring out of the vent. Once this was repaired the air flow in the bedroom and bathroom was noticeably better but not great. The next issue appears to be a design issue which has the duct work going round way too many corners to move the air efficiently. This is a job for another day.

After lunch the temperature had risen to around 16°C so we decided to make use of our pass and head out to Jekyll Island again for some more geo-caching. Today we found all three sites that we were looking for. The more we do this the more we enjoy it. It really is a great way to get out and see areas we would never go to otherwise. Today’s area was at the south end of the island close to the beach. The caches were in an area were there were a lot of small pathways which were not heavily used. The caches themselves were usually 20 – 30ft off the paths, to prevent accidental discovery. Below are some photo’s showing what we were looking for.

A micro container after and before discovery

A small “ammo” container hidden in a split in a tree taken from a distance and close up.

This last one was “interesting” all the clues suggested the sandcastle was on the beach, in fact it was about 125ft from the beach. Once we found it and re-read the clues it became obvious that they were cryptic, but 100% correct. Not only do we get physical exercise, the brain gets a workout too.

While walking around the paths we came across a spring in a small pond, very reminiscent of New Zealand.

Close to one of the caches we found an unusual machine, in fact there were two of them about 50ft apart.

If you have any idea what it is please let me know.

Below are a couple of shots of trees and grass growing on the beach.