Spending the night at: Suwanee River State Park near Live Oak Florida
$26.50, Site 22 on the driver’s side has 50 amp power, water and sewer, and was a piece of cake to back into because there is a huge open area on the passenger side of the road. Sites 22-26 are all like this. (This is for our own camping journal info). Some sketchy cell service-not strong enough to send pictures. Weather- clear and mild: Hi 77, low 47, Humidity Hi 87, low 23 – perfect for sleeping with the windows open.
Saturday we had a looooong day to drive to Macon Georgia. It was about 350 miles, but it seemed like it took forever plus we lost that elusive hour again when we fell back into the Eastern time zone. Getting to civilization out of the forest going south was much shorter, easier, and better roads than getting in from the north was! Before long we were passing Chattanooga, and that meant we were about to plop into Georgia.
Monday morning, I was up at 5:15. 🥱. Our plan was to get to the RV place in Clearwater by 8:00 to get Mr. Nitro and then we’d be on our way. All we needed to do was pack up all the things that we just brought home a few days ago, and turn everything off again so that the homestead is ready to spend the summer without us. We were on the road before 6:30, and long before the sun woke up! This was the view of Tampa Bay as we drove across the Sunshine Bridge. Beautiful!!
Tuesday morning, Sherry and Alan had to head home, so we were on our own for adventures today. I had a scenic drive in mind, but Sherry had mentioned that Tallulah Falls State Park and Gorge was nice, so I checked that out. It looked like a fun place to see, so I figured we could go there first, then maybe continue our drive. It was pretty chilly and breezy, but clear and beautiful. Being a Pacific Northwest girl, and now Florida girl, I can’t get over how little underbrush there is here in the Georgia forests. I’ve lived in three places in my life: Florida, Western Washington, and Alaska. (Alaska was 40 years ago.). The two most recent places have nearly impenetrable undergrowth!
Tuesday: We’ve REALLY been living life in pencil – again! I’ve made several road trip plans, and we’re currently on only a piece of one of the plans, and we truly have no idea where we will be one week from today. 🤷♀️. This is me using my pencil and eraser about equal time on our calendar, pretty much like chopsticks.
When I was planning this trip across the country, I was also thinking about when we could go to Disney. We purchased annual passes in November 2021 when our oldest granddaughter came to visist, and we haven’t used them since. They’ll expire in November, so I was thinking that we should probably use them again before they’re worthless. Halloween/fall is a fun time to go, so why not? We like Fort Wilderness Campground too, so my plan was just to stop there before we go home. Once we’re home, we probably won’t want to go anywhere for a little while. So….. Disney it is!
The drive from the Brewery in Beaumont to the State Park in Mobile Alabama was nearly 400 miles. A very long day, but all on Interstate Freeways 10 & 12, with no BIG cities so it was uninterrupted driving. (I-10 goes down into New Orleans: I-12 is the by-pass, so we took the by-pass.) It was light before 8:00, so we hitched up our wagon and got on the road. Our cities to transit today were Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and Mobile. None of them were congested, just offered more lanes, more traffic and more things to pay attention to compared to the long stretches in-between. We were in four states today… Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It wasn’t far from Beaumont Texas to Louisiana. And guess what?! Those rascally cajuns did not even welcome us! They just told us we were in their state with a State Line sign. 🤨 And here I thought they were friendlies. 💁♀️
3/2/22: With our route all planned out, and camping reservations made for the next week, we knew we weren’t going super far on day one. This was intentional, since we needed to load all the last minute stuff, do the final house check to be gone for several weeks, and get the trailer all hooked up to go. As one of the guys on my favorite off-road TV show (Dirt Every Day) says, “Let’s Peel Out!” And yes, Henry does peel out because he has a zillion pounds of torque, but I give Kenny the “mom look” when he does it. 🤨 I think we pulled out onto the road around 11:00, and even at that, I had to text our neighbor and ask them to please turn our water off. Oops! 🤷♀️. Oh well. If that’s all we forgot, we’re doing good. We’ll be back in a month or so when it’s time to take Island Girl to Fort Lauderdale for her Panama Canal cruise.
Kenny said that Henry is really easy to drive. The Ford 10 speed Super Duty diesel doesn’t downshift every time we go over an overpass or up a slight incline, nor does it get blown around by big trucks like Mr. Lincoln did. Henry is like a sled dog. He likes to go and do his job! (Pipe in sound effects *URR-URR-URR* from Tim the Toolman.)
We had a fun time at the Ft Lauderdale International Boat Show. There were zillions of very expensive boats, and we barely even noticed them! We spent our whole entire time inside looking at STUFF. One of our primary goals was to talk to Cross Chartering Yacht Transport Company about logistics for shipping Island Girl to the Pacific Northwest. We are already booked and have made a deposit with them for April, but the actual date could be anytime in April between the 1st and the 30th. One of my navigational planning questions was, how much lead time will we have? Since we have to get the Girl from the west side of Florida over to the east side (Ft Lauderdale) to be loaded on the ship, there are some logistics and planning to do. Our preferred route is to go through Lake Okeechobee, since it isn’t quite as sensitive to weather and wave conditions compared to crossing the Gulf waters from Ft Myers to the Keys. But one of the locks on the Okeedokee route is going to be out of service from January 1 – March 31! ☹️. So if we have to be in Ft Lauderdale by April 1, we’ll have to go around through the Florida Keys to get there. That isn’t a terrible option, but it will take longer, and IF we have to go that way, we might actually decide to take our time and enjoy our last opportunity EVER to be boating in our own boat in the Keys. So, we talked to the fella that was there, and he said that they should have an idea by February regarding the April timing. It depends on lots of things, including how many boats they have lined up to ship, and if they are loading ships in Ft Lauderdale every four, five, or six weeks. He also said that we could slide our date to March or May if we gave them plenty of notice. Hmmm. OK. This kind of flexibility is really hard on this Type-A Planner Navigator person!! 🤨 I guess I’ll plan both basic routes and then just wait.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 Temp: 82/67, Humidity: 56/90%, Top Wind: all directions, then SE7 mph, Precip: sunny, Miles Traveled: 78
🎉😁🥳😎🎉😁🤗🥳🎉
Today was the OFFICIAL wake crossing day! We knew we had a really long day though, so we were up before the sun to leave Marina Jack’s and get on our way. Today we were headed to Safe Cove Boat Yard in Port Charlotte. This is the yard where we have previously pulled Island Girl out when we have work to do on her. She was there all summer in 2020 for hurricane season. We plan to have her there for at least the next three months. It’s just easier than trying to find a marina these days, if you can believe it! It’s a long ways to get there by water, and with no wake zones it would take us over nine hours total. We even have to go through a lock to travel the last 10 miles in fresh water to the boat yard. The unfortunate thing is that it is shallow water near the lock, and we’ll get there at nearly low tide. 😳 We generally time our transit at the lock at mid tide or higher and the local advice is that you need high tide if your boat draft is five feet or more. We are more like 3’9” so we’ll just tiptoe in and keep our fingers crossed. Tomorrow’s weather is going to be BAD to the BONE with near Gale strength winds and rain, so we really need to get to Safe Cove TODAY.
