Our Travel Blog

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

That applies to both the weather and myself. We reached 21C during the afternoon, not quite shorts weather but getting close. Did the weekly grocery shopping, well Lyn shopped and I caused havoc pushing the shopping cart.

Today was the grass cutting day, a team of 8 descended on the place and took all day to cut, trim edge and blow away the grass. End result was a good looking campsite but a very noisy day.

The weather promises to get warmer, so we have booked a trip on one of the local shrimp boats for Wednesday evening.

Still cool, low last night was 2.7 outside and 6.7 inside, tonight the heating stays on! Having managed to develop a slight cold, most of the day was spent inside. Temperature went up to 17, but it was quite windy.

A number of people left early this morning, seems this is a stopping off site for Florida as there are only half a dozen or so long term campers.

Would you guys keep your cold weather up there!

According to the local met gurus, Cold Canadian Air is responsible for the current cold snap. 3C overnight rising to 15C during the day. At least we`ve proved that the fire and furnace work.

Spent most of the day playing with the ham radio gear and my new e-Book reader.

Learned one thing about small BBQ’s, their temperature rises exponentially when the wind drops. BBQ was set up for around 300 to do some potatoes, this temperature was steady for about 20 minutes, so didn’t check it again. 20 minutes later went out to do the ribs and the BBQ was up at 600!!! The bottom layer of potatoes were well beyond crispy, cremated may be a better word.

Well, after a wet day yesterday we woke to clear blue skies and COLD, ok it’s all relative but it was only 7C!!

We were on the road by 9AM to got to Savannah about 80 miles North. The plan was to take a Hop On – Hop Off bus tour of the historical part of the city. The tour was fine, but Lyn and I both had a (wrong as it turned out) pre-conceived idea of what we would see. We were expecting large, colourful mansion / plantation houses on 1+ acre lots. In reality there were a lot of mansions, but they were mostly brick and had little or no land. Despite that we had a great tour driver and learned a fair bit about the city.

We went to a riverside seafood place and had a great lunch. The weather remained cool around 15C with blustery winds

Next stop was a River trip on the Savannah River, unfortunately this was not really worth it. Again we were expecting to see mansions and gardens on the river, all we saw were a number of dockyards, silos, container ports and a large pile of saw dust destined for Ikea in Sweden.

Rather than take the tour bus back to our truck we took a walk throught the Old City Market, this was more a series of a street cafes rather than a retail market. All in all it was an interesting (and apaert from the boat tour) worthwhile trip. On the way home Lyn raided JoAnn fabrics and got a lot of stuff she wanted / needed / desired. I paid a trip to Barnes and Noble to pick up a “nook” e-Book reader to replace the one that died recently

The title says it all!

Well the day started off bad, and didn’t improve too much. Due to an annoying cough I had to get up a couple of times during the night.

After breakfast I set about tyring to fix my APAD (like an IPAD) book reader. One of the buttons was misbehaving. I just about had it fixed when it slipped out of my hands and hit the edge of a table, cracking the screen. Well the switch was fixed, the crack hardly showed BUT the touch screen only worked to the right of the crack, which was only an inch or so from the right side of the screen 🙁

Later in the day, I removed a stereo plug from the computer, unfortunately the last 1/8″ or so came off the plug and stayed inside the socket. About an hour later I finally coaxed it out. This time there was no further damage to the computer, unlike the APAD.

Weather was dull and cool (20C), although t-shirt and shorts were still the dress code of the day. We went back to St Simons Island and drove around parts we missed last week-end. There were some VERY large houses up the north end of the island. We went back to the beach where the “Worlds Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” had been held last week-end and it was deserted, we maybe saw about 10 people on a mile of beach.