Our Travel Blog

Yet another wonderful morning, clear blue skies and warm. Last night was a little different though, very heavy rain, hail and thunder. We got up to the mid 70’s again today, obviously the weather gods know we are about to leave.

The day started off with a bit of a shock, TD Visa phoned me with a couple of questions about transaction on my credit card. Turns out some low life had topped up his/her Starbucks card to the tune of $200, bought a new Fido cell phone for $578 and stayed at a hotel! Luckily the Credit Card company system caught the transactions and somehow determined they were all fraudulent and stopped them; it won’t cost me a thing. The credit card is now in many pieces and a new one is on it’s way.

Once that was sorted we headed out to a road we had seen on our travels called East Fancy Bluffs Road thinking it would lead to some bluffs. It didn’t. We did find many bushes in blossom though.

Once back at the trailer we decided to sort out next years camping. As we are still planning the Alaska trip we were originally planning on only six weeks down south in the winter. That has now increased to 8 weeks! We found out that we can book into our original site in Foley for the month of March, that was the good news, the bad news is that Lyn has to spend January at home. We have booked in here for February and then move across to Foley Alabama. We can then store the trailer there and hopefully get booked in the following year on the start of a trip to the west coast.

After lunch Lyn headed off to the craft group and I finished off cleaning out the barbecue. Next up was wax and polish the rest of the truck; it looks pretty good when all the chrome shines!

Finally, I started sorting out all of my stuff that has to go back with us, we may need buy a bigger truck!

Tomorrow will be clean and pack day so that we can get going early on Thursday. There may or may not be a blog tomorrow, but I will do one more to finish the trip in the next few days.

Yet another warm day in the sunny south, up to the mid 70’s. We are expecting some storms tonight, which appear to be at the tail end of the winter storm up north. Enjoy!

I didn’t get around to writing a proper entry last Monday due to the dreaded cough / cold, so here it is now.

We headed south to the town of Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island in Florida. As it turned out we spent most of the day driving in contravention of  Florida State law, as we were not in possession of an International Driving Licence. Evidently Florida recently introduced the law to ensure that all driving documents would be available in English so the cops could read them. The law has since been put in abeyance as i) nobody knew about it and ii) it is in apparent breach of the Geneva Convention regarding free traffic movement!

Fernandina Beach is an oldy worldy town, and reminded me of many towns in New Zealand. The downtown core was alive with individual stores with no sign of the big conglomerates.

Fenandina Beach Main Street

Fenandina Beach Post Office

We wandered around the town, and along to the water front where we saw some pelicans waiting to catch lunch

Pelicans On Dock

Pelican On Dock

It was now our turn to have lunch, so being near the shore it was time to find a seafood restaurant. Yet another great lunch of shrimp for me and this time lobster for Lyn. The weather was nice enough that we could sit outside, which was a bonus.

After lunch it was off to find the beach to walk off the recently added calories. Again the beach was miles of fine white sand, and almost deserted.

Fenandina Beach umm Beach

Another clear bright sunny day. Again in the upper 70’s by afternoon.

After breakfast it was time to tackle one final part of the trailer cleanup. I looked up at the trailer the other day and one part was still dirty, this was an area above one of the slide-outs that I could not reach to wax and polish, so this morning we put the slide-out in so that I could complete the job.

The truck also got a washing to day, it may even get some waxing before we leave; maybe the extra shine will improve the fuel economy on the way home.

After lunch we headed over to St Simon’s Island to spend some time on the beach. While we were there Lyn wanted to find out where a particular restaurant was as we want to go there for a meal before we leave. Well, we didn’t find the restaurant  but we did happen across a larger outdoor arts and crafts fair, coincidence … I think not. On leaving the fair we did actually find the restaurant, so we’ll try that tomorrow night.

The temperature dropped about 6 degrees going from the camp site to the beach.

We finally made it to the beach, which was crowded compared to our other visits. In particular there was plenty of Frisbee activity going on among students. One game looked suspiciously like ultimate Frisbee with a twist. A plastic cup of beer was carried by all players, not only was possession of the Frisbee to be kept, beer was not to be spilled in the process.

Feeling a lot better today, and the weather continues to improve…. a sure sign we will be leaving soon.

Wake up temperature was around 62°F, climbing to 81°F after lunch.

Lyn spent some of the day working on her last sewing project for the season while I had the less pleasant job of cleaning out the septic system. I was going to do it yesterday, but really wasn’t feeling up to it, but it really had to be done today before the system had an “accident”.

The rest of the morning I spent outside fixing a noisy trim on the front windshield of the truck. Hopefully we can now travel home in peace.

After lunch we headed out for a walk, the last couple of days have been very short walks of a couple of hundred metres or so, but today I was back up for around 1/2 a mile.

We’re up to around 7 Ontario rigs here now, in fact we have 3 in a row where we are located.

Today was the first time we had managed an evening meal outside on the picnic bench this trip… things are definitely improving.

Another great day; warm, clear blue skies and temperatures into the mid 70’s. The good weather may have finally come to stay.

The cough and cold have pretty well gone, but the energy has not yet fully returned.

After lunch we headed out to Wal-Mart in Brunswick to get some stuff we needed to close the trailer down. We also needed to get a couple of large totes to carry stuff back as we are now leaving the trailer down here.

Back at the trailer we sat outside for while enjoying the heat and calm of the day.

It’s getting colder again, down to the low 30’s overnight but at least we still have clear blue skies and sunshine.

I felt a lot better this morning and after breakfast we headed out for our Thursday morning shopping, which this week was a lot less than usual as we are heading out next Thursday.

The good feeling rapidly disappeared after we finished shopping, all the energy I had earlier had disappeared. Back at the trailer it was time to collapse again.

We had a couple of clowns staying next door….. literally. It was a husband / wifeteam who fully dressed the part, and had a car to match!

Clown Car

Also the obligatory shot of our trailer on site

Site 708

A little cooler last night with the furnace coming on just before we got up. It was a nice sunny day with temperatures up in the mid 60’s.

The cough / cold has just about run its course. I have known worse, but being a male of the species I don’t do illness well, just ask Lyn. Actually she probably enjoys the way I deal with it, I just stay in bed and she gets to have a nice peaceful day.

Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be back to my normal annoying self!

A little better to day, it rained so it gave me a good excuse to stay in bed and recover!!

Lyn has been suffering with a cough / cold for the last couple of days and now it’s my turn. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

Blue skies and 61°F at wake up time, which may have been later than usual due to the clocks going forward! By mid afternoon we were up to to 72°F.

After breakfast Lyn headed over to do the laundry, but returned in a couple of minutes because all the machines were in use. I decided to give the truck a once over to make sure all the fluids were present and correct.

Just before lunch Lyn tried a second attempt at the laundry and managed to get a machine. It was ideal weather for lunch outside, the wind had swung round to the south which meant that it was warm and also it didn’t bring the smell of the paper mill with it.

After lunch Lyn headed back to the laundry to move stuff into the dryer and we headed out for our walk. We met another Ontario couple, they live in Kemptville. This is second couple from there that we have met at this campground. We finally broke the 1.5 mile mark today.

After we got back Lyn headed out to pick up the laundry, and I started doing something I had wanted to complete before we left; an inventory of tools, cables and other electronic gizmo’s that reside in the trailer. Hopefully by doing this, and not losing the list like I did last year, I won’t finish up bringing stuff down from home that is already here!

With the change to daylight savings time it was nice to be able to BBQ in daylight, rather than under the lights from the trailer. It wasn’t quite warm enough to eat outside, but hopefully that will change before we leave.