Our Travel Blog

Another clear blue sky day, once Lyn had managed to sort out her lost paypal password, we were good to go. The destination was the Jacksonville Zoo about 60 miles to the south. The quickest way would have been I95, but we decided to stay off the freeway and go the back routes. Most of the towns we passed through, and there weren’t many, had a population of around 1000. Dotted along the roads were either what appeared to be high end gated communities or not so desirable trailer parks with not much in between.

We got to the zoo and the parking lot was not overly busy, which was good. We also arrived at the same time as two busloads of kids, not so good.

The parking was free, unlike the zoo at the centre of the universe, and the admission was $14 which wasn’t too bad. The zoo didn’t appear to have a very large foot print , but was well laid out usng all the space available. I covered primarily Asia, Africa and Australia. Overall well worth a visit.

Not much happening today other than one of the bearings on one of the chairs dying. The beating itself is a metal wheel with a ball bearing centre that is housed in a small (1″ x 1″ x 1″) plastic box and sits between the wooden base of the chair and a heavy plastic ring that sits on the floor. There are 5 bearings per chair. Contacted the RV dealer who in turn contacted the manufacturer. Turns out that they can’t supply just the bearing block, the will have to supply the complete wooden base. The base is a circle of wood about 1.25″ thick and a diameter of  around 30″. The bearing blocks just push fit into the wood…. go figure!!

Global warming you say, it’s 3C outside and dropping…. I didn’t sign up for this! especially when the temperature back home is 1.5 degrees WARMER!

Good news is that the hydro is free so we can crank up the heating, and that daytime temperatures make it up into the 20’s. Another stay at home lazy day, some computing, reading and walking….. life’s tough

The week-end has arrived……. no different from any other days really (sorry workers!)

For those computer types among you I am trying out Linux instead of Windows 7, so far it is reasonably impressive, far better than it was when I last used it 20 odd years ago!

Finally got back to the task of cleaning the trailer, I am please to report that in just over 3 weeks I have managed to wash the truck and about 60% of the trailer!

This afternoon we went out to Blythe Island, a Regional park about 10k from here. It is on the banks of the Brunswick river and has a manatee habitat there, although it still appeared to be under construction. Unfortunately the manatee head south from here at the end of October so none were seen. The park had a nicely shaded campground with nearly all the requisites for an easy life bar one: no internet! Both Lyn and I agree that an internet connection is a necessity for long stays. The park also had some walking trails which gave us our daily exercise.

Today was one of those days where it was just too much like hard work to decide what to do, so we did nothing!

Figuring that something had to be done about the waste tank situation, it was time to grab the toolbox and go under the trailer. One advantage of working under this beast is that there is plenty of room It didn’t take too long to discover that the problem was not too serious. A metal extension rod between the valve and the handle had broken. I was able to remove the broken parts, and modify the longest part to operate the valve until we can get a replacement.

In the late afternoon we went down to “Spanky’s” a sea food restaurant and bar where a shrimp boat operator give short tours to show how the shrimp are caught. The trip was excellent, far better than our previous nautical foray at Savannah.

We left the dock and after about 15 minutes the net was lowered into the water for about 15 minutes, it was then retrieved and the contents dumped onto a sorting table. As well as numerous shrimps there were horseshoe crabs (evidently not a crab at all, but a member of the spider family), stingray, puffer fish, sea bass, flounder, dungeness crab, calamari, turtle, anchovy, trumpet fish and more.

STINGRAY

PUFFER FISH

The net was lowered 2 more times on the cruise. The shrimp that were caught were “processed” on board, this involved placing the flat of the thumb at the junction of the head and tail and squeezing, tail remains in the hand, head pops off! The deckhands could do this without looking, both hands at once collecting about 10 tails in their hands before dumping them in the bucket. Evidently there is no machine to do this, even on the large commercial boats.

On the way back, we got to eat some freshly caught shrimp whilst being treated to a beautiful sunset

There a three holding tanks on the trailer, 2 grey water ones for sink / shower water and a black water one for…… well the other stuff. I went to open the valve ton the black water tank today and the handle snapped off! So at the moment the valve is stuck closed. Guess we had better go on a toilet usage reduction! Hopefully I only need to unscrew the broken piece of metal from the valve and not have to replace the valve!

The warm weather has returned, up into the low 20’s, so it’s back to shorts and T shirts rather than jeans and sweaters.  To celebrate we took lunch down to the local beach where we discovered a large ghost crab.

I have also added a couple of pictures to the Savannah blog