Carl's First Thousand Trails Campground - Carolina Landing, Fair Play, SC

On our way to Virginia, we decided to stop at a couple of Thousand Trails campgrounds. We have access to a family courtesy card through Dwayne's stepmom, Peggy, and had used it quite a lot while Dwayne and Patti were traveling. I had cautioned Carl that Carolina Landing was one of the campgrounds that we were not super impressed with... but I remembered that it had been raining when we visited and thought that may have "colored" my opinion...

Carl and his family were campers throughout his life, so... he has a lot more experience with campgrounds than I do. Seeing the Thousand Trails system and this campground specifically through his eyes has been interesting!

Unfortunately, it was again rainy weather, and no campground is outstanding when it is raining. This campground is *very* hilly = Carl says, "It has good drainage." He also commented, "We have a creek front site!" (This after the rain caused a stream to start flowing down the campground road in front of our site.) He was rather shocked by the fact that we had no reserved site, and had to go find a site that would fit our rig, would be reasonable to get to, reasonably level, etc. - and that we needed to find and "reserve" our site (by parking the Jeep on it) before the next RV to arrive might take it! Given that this is not high season, there were a number of available sites, so it wasn't horribly difficult, but given the hills in the campground, and Miss Doozie's size, we had to particularly consider whether she could get *to* the site, not just fit into it!

After getting parked, we went out walking in the rain - I had wanted to walk down to the lake, but we got to this point and realized it was a long walk down (and then would be long walk up), so we just took a picture down through the woods toward the lake. There are a number of cabins that I guess can be rented.

This gives you a little impression of the campground - narrow roads, trees right alongside.

RVs on a hillside... Miss Doozie is on the last row going up that hill - third RV up the hill...

There is Miss Doozie up the hill...

Let's just say that the sites are a little "tight"... by the way, the steps going up there on the left of Miss Doozie are to "our" picnic table - even though it is on the level of the RV next to us, and there is a deck out beside us to the right that has the picnic table for the site next to us.

Thursday afternoon, we drove to the Post Office in "town" (Fair Play, SC) (I had letters/forms that I had completed a few days ago and had never gotten to a mailbox)... when we got back to the campground, it was still raining, so we drove down to the lake and were glad to get to see it, though we didn't have the opportunity to walk around.

On the way back to Miss Doozie, we decided to stop at the Activity Center to see what they might have in there...

There was an air-hockey table...

And a foosball table...

We laughed SO much as we tried playing each of the games!!!

Galveston - February 3-10

Yes, this is information from a month ago... but I didn't go through the pictures until now!

For our honeymoon, we considered a lot of options, but decided that we wanted to go somewhere that we could drive to, not need a passport, and could just enjoy being together. Patti's friend, Janell, lives in a condo in The Galvestonian on Galveston Island, and could get us a rental condo in the building, so we gratefully accepted her assistance to get us a place to stay.

We had a wonderful time! It happened to be Restaurant Week, which meant that many of the restaurants were having special offerings, often one of their most popular meals combined together with an appetizer and dessert for a special price. We got to visit several places on the island and were glad that we had a rather laid-back place to go for our first week as a married couple.

The surf conditions were "red flag" during most of the time we were there...

"Heavy Surf - Dangerous Currents - Stay Within Waist Deep Water"

The Galvestonian is on the eastern end of the island and "on the sand", that is, you don't have to cross Seawall Blvd to get to the beach - just a boardwalk over the dunes to get to the beach.

View of the Gulf from the end of the boardwalk.

The Galvestonian from the beach - we were on the 6th floor, near the right (east/north) end of the building.

My Carl!

We walked south/west down the beach past the next tall condo buildings - the Galvestonian looks small next to them.

These buildings were the development just east/north of the Galvestonian.

Another view of the Galvestonian from when we walked further east/north.

View out of our sliding glass window. Unfortunately, they were doing work on the balconies of the unit where we were staying so we weren't allowed to be out on the balcony while we were there.

Hibiscus flower in the garden of The Galvestonian

Grounds of The Galvestonian

They were working right outside our windows...

Such beautiful shapes made by the waves on the sand...

A seagull along our walk

Looking back toward The Galvestonian and the two large buildings beyond it to the south/west.

A marker in the stairs from the lobby down to the parking area marking how high the flood waters got in the building during Hurricane Ike!

One day we decided to take the ferry over to the Bolivar Peninsula.
 

One of the ferry's coming in

Those are the two large buildings just down from The Galvestonian.

Another ferry passing us. There was a lot of shipping traffic as we crossed the Houston Ship Channel.

On the Bolivar Peninsula we visited Fort Travis.

Looking across the channel back toward Galveston Island.

We had been told that it was really beautiful to see the sunset from the ferry - we didn't really plan it, but we ended up returning on the ferry right at sunset!

Lighthouse on Bolivar Peninsula

Carl decided to get closer to the seagulls - I stayed well away!

A panorama of the view of the Gulf in front of The Galvestonian...

We really enjoyed Galveston and would love to return!

Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida

As we headed east from Rainbow Plantation, we went south to the Gulf in Alabama and then on into the panhandle of Florida.

Gulf Islands National Seashore

It was breezy and overcast...

... but beautiful!

We stopped at another place further east...

Miss Doozie and the Jeep in the parking lot...

The waves were so beautiful!

My phone did some "special effects" to the picture just above that seemed to better capture all the shades of blue in the sky and waves!

Carl's camera also captured the colors!

We talked to a lady on the beach and she took a picture for us. She also saved us from getting doused by a wave as we had our backs to the waves and didn't notice them coming closer and closer.

She asked us where we were from - that is a harder question for us to answer now... we've each been used to saying, "we live in that RV but we're originally from 'x'" - but, the 'x' is different for each of us (Northern Illinois for Carl, Dallas area for Patti). So, we just pointed to Miss Doozie and said, "from that bus parked over there". She said that she had recently met some other fulltime RVers, and then shared her story - that she is recently retired, and making a trip from the west coast of Florida around to Houston. She shared that her husband passed away two years ago and this was one of the last places that they were before he passed away...

It reminded us again of how blessed we are to have each other. The tears still come as each of us think of Sue and of Dwayne, and we are thankful that we each understand the sorrow of the other.

Rainbow Plantation

As we were making our way across Louisiana and Mississippi, we were planning on where we might stay in Alabama. Carl said that a number of the Escapees Illinois Chapter folks stay during the winter at the Escapees Rainbow Plantation park outside of Summerdale, AL. I called, and they happened to have a site that could accommodate us for 3 nights, so we stayed Friday-Sunday and left on Monday, March 2.

On Saturday evening, we went with folks from the Illinois chapter to a place called "Parker's" where local talent plays "classic" country music. It is a friendly atmosphere where folks bring a dish to share and contribute $3-5 each for the evening's entertainment.

Then on Sunday evening, we joined folks at the Escapees Clubhouse for ice cream!

A picture of the park as we were leaving (since we had forgotten to take one where we were parked!).

Miss Doozie and the Jeep hooked up and ready to head out!

Many states have the outline of the state for designating state highways - I always think of Mississippi and Alabama as being mirror images of each other (kind of), but had not noticed that Alabama has Mobile Bay which causes a split on that lower appendage of the state's outline.

We had pretty poor internet service in the park, so weren't able to do much online. More pictures from Monday in a later post!