Savannah to Jonathan Dickinson State Park

Monday March 1, 2010

Woke up at 7:30 feeling much more human than last night! We were on our way south by 8:30. This was a marginal La Quinta – if we had been paying for it I think I would have complained. It was clean and quiet and the internet and TV worked…that is about all I can say about it. The breakfast was very poor. I got the last bagel for Ben and had a boiled egg and raisin bran myself. The lady maintaining the food area brought out some frozen bread for people to make toast with after I got the last bagel!

We stopped at a truck wash in Brunswick to get two months of East TN grime and salt off the Sprinter. What had been a gray very dirty van became a shiny white vehicle after a good scrubbing and coat of wax. After another cup of coffee we headed on south down 95 and stopped at the FL Welcome Center for our complimentary cup of juice. There were 4 Border Patrol vehicles stationed at the border and various locations around the Welcome Center. It was a beehive of activity with a crowd of people coming and going.

Further down the road near St. Augustine we stopped at a Flying J Truck Stop for gas and I made lunch. The Sprinter got really good gas mileage yesterday and today – 24.8 MPG – very good considering part of this was going over Sam’s Gap! I think the Sprinter wanted to be where it was warm as much as we did!!! Fixing lunch I discovered my first mistake of the trip – and hopefully the last. When I turned on the refrigerator yesterday morning and put in the food – I did not notice it was turned up to highest setting – so everything is frozen! I guess the good side is we could buy seafood and get it home frozen – but the bad side was a few of the items had to be thrown away – the milk, cottage cheese, and a couple other things.

The scenery along I 95 is not really very interesting but the Red Maple trees were beautiful among the green pine trees. Most joyful was seeing the clear bright blue skies – it seems we have had drab gray more than blue at home these past couple months. Often there were white trails from airplanes crisscrossing the sky. From Jacksonville south we had 3G coverage on our phones all the time which was a surprise.

As we exited I 95 at Hobe Sound for our campground about 4:30 the temperature was nearly 70 and the sun very warm. We stopped at a Publix Market for a few items we needed and headed the 5 miles south to Jonathan Dickinson State Park. We were surprised to find our reservation was for a lovely site in a brand new campground. Wide paved level sites with tables. We were near the bathroom that was state of the art! We have power, electricity, are getting 22 HD TV stations with Ben’s homemade antenna. (of course half of them are in Spanish!!)



Our major activity was to unload all the stuff we had thrown in the van in the 30 degree temperature and organize and store everything suitably….it really did not take as long as we had expected. We have brought our bikes with us for this trip so it did take a little shifting around of things. I fixed dinner and we settled in for a couple hours of TV, photo editing, reading, and writing this blog. Maybe I will even will try to PhotoShop a couple photos. Sleep will again come easily! Today and yesterday were both approximately 400 mile days – about the top we like to drive in a day. Tomorrow is much less – about 250 miles to Long Key.