Dang RV

Everybody told me I had to see Charleston while in South Carolina so I gave in and went to a Passport America Park there, Lake Aire RV Park. The sites are large pull-thrus on grass and fairly level. It has a laundry room and free wifi though I used my aircard instead. The pool is tiny. Again, this place is more about location. It is very close to Charleston and all the best beaches.

I drove into the Visitor’s Center in Charleston to get the lay of the land. One thing you should know about Charleston is you have have to pay big bucks for parking everywhere unless you have a handicapped parking tag. For handicapped, you write your name, tag number, and tag state on the back of the parking stub and they let you park free everywhere. From the Visitor’s Center, you can catch a bus tour of the city which is quite extensive and I am sure very good. However, the buses are enclosed with tinted windows so if you are a shutterbug like me, the open horse carriage tour while less extensive is a better choice. And hey, I love a horse carriage ride!

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah my second visit to Myrtle Beach. This time I got to stay at the Briarcliff RV Resort. Tell anyone you are going to Myrtle Beach, and they always seem to ask if you are staying at the Briarcliff. It is very popular and a C2C park as well as Passport America. It is a very very nice place to stay in North Myrtle Beach. The pads are all concrete and the streets paved. Free cable TV is provided and the aircard signal is just fine. After a lot of more rustic camping, I was ready for some pampered city camping and no ants. The clubhouse seems to be well used and the pool is large. The bathhouse and laundry facilities are excellent. There is access to Barefoot Landing shopping and dining next door if you are up for a good long walk. I got a kick out of the storm sewer action nearby, particularly at high tide. The water shoots up through the drain and you can hear the waves (I’m easily amused obviously). I did have to ask someone how to get in and out as this is a protected gated community. You come in through one minor gate when registering but normal in-out is through massive gates with a security card. I would love to go back there again.

I went back to Broadway at the Beach in hopes of finding a second set of lights for my awning to match the first set I bought there previously at Tiki Jims. No luck. I did however discover The General Store with lots of great tropical, island lifestyle decorations for my trailer. I got a metal sculpture of sailing boats, a life preserver welcome aboard, several plaster and wood tropical birds, and a message in a bottle lamp for the picnic tables. I made use of the rocking chairs on their porch as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in Spotsylvania in the Wilderness Resort again to try and finish up touring the Smithsonian. I saw all the memorials, etc. last time but had no time to see the Smithsonian museums. I wasn’t all that crazy about staying at the Wilderness Resort last time due to issues with a neighbor and a poor site. This time, I got a much better site in a different section down by the lake. It was level, well defined, good utilities in the RIGHT places, and nicer neighbors around me. I had to stop at the local Walmart on the way to kill some time before check-in time but I needed to get groceries anyway.

I was somewhat shocked when a guard at the gate recognized me and asked how the trip up North was. He was the one I called numerous times last time on the bad neighbor. A big problem with membership parks is members and full-timers that live in them tend to be a bit snooty and see you as an invader. Many also think they can act like they do at home with no consideration that RV walls are very thin and let all noises in (or out). This time there was also a neighbor problem though it was not as in my face this time. One of the owners in the next glen allows her grandkids to come to the park and use her RV without her there which is against the rules but apparently not enforced. They party loudly long into the night. Guards are called on them constantly but management does absolutely nothing to stop it. Some of the nearby site owners no longer use their sites but are stuck paying for them. They don’t want to come here to be tortured by the jerks. It’s a sad situation that will only be resolved in a court.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is it! The last east coast state on my map is now conquered. I just couldn’t bear to leave a hole in my map so I had to come. I had 2 choices on getting here from New Jersey. I could either go way around the waterway which would have taken an additional 30-60 minutes plus the cost of gas and tolls, or I could bite the bullet and pay an outrageous fare to cross the waterway at Cape May by ferry. At $55, to me that is an awful lot of money to cross compared to $35 for the long crossing across Lake Champlain in New York. I decided to opt for the ferry anyway to save time and enjoy the adventure of crossing my trailer over again.

When we arrived at the terminal, I had my internet reservation in hand, You save a couple bucks booking online. I put the cat in the trailer when we parked in the ferry lane since it was cooler than the car, I had cooled it down special before I left the campground just for this. They offered to let me depart immediately on a ferry that still had room but I chose to wait until my appointed time so I could check out the ferry terminal and because leaving earlier would have dropped me into the next resort too soon prior to their check-in time. I have to say the Cape May ferry is a real class act. It is ultra comfortable inside the lounge areas which have comfy seating and TVs everywhere. It has a nice gift shop, arcade, food, and restrooms on board. After touring the entire ship, I went back down to the car deck, opened my trailer door, closed the screen door, popped a soda, and kicked back on my couch with the dang cat. Now that’s the way to travel! We both enjoyed it very much and I could see the folks in the motorhome behind me doing the same thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Had to see the Jersey shore. I got tired of hearing about how great it is in movies and TV so I had to check it out for myself. I can now report that it is everything they say it is and more!

I planned this trip out very carefully to make sure I didn’t end up driving through New York City with my trailer. That would have been insane. Skirting around it wasn’t that bad at all except for the traffic jam at the Connecticut-New York border. Driving down the Garden State Parkway was very easy except they like to toll you to death every few miles just like lower Maine. Aaargh! They don’t make it easy either since they don’t post the prices anywhere though I did finally see one sign with tiny writing right smack in the middle of the toll lanes and of course with my trailer I had to be in the far right lane. A couple of other things you should be aware of as well. The parkway has numerous arched bridges over it about 13′6″ high and it is best to be in the middle lane while going under them. Gas stations are few and far between off the highway but they do have numerous gas stations and food places on the parkway. To get to them you actually have to be in the left high-speed lane (brilliant planning, huh?). Be prepared to pay a premium price for gas at these but they are still considerably cheaper than gas up north.They may also snooker you with a cheap price shown but that price is only for those who pay cash. People still carry cash?

I stayed at an RPI (Resort Parks International) park in Port Republic which is just outside Atlantic City, NJ. I finally got to try out my RPI membership. I’ll get into the details of that in another post. Chestnut Lakes Resort is a NACO affiliated park. It was nice to have a pull-through site for a change. There’s nothing particularly fancy about it but who cares. With this park, it is entirely about location, location, location. The park was plenty nice enough and I enjoyed it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hallelujah! I started my trek back to civilization and managed to grab a couple states easily for my RV travel map. Rhode Island is easy to drive through with great scenery, good roads, and it is not very big.  It was an easy hop through it to Connecticutt. I stayed at Stateline Camping Resort which really is on the state line between Rhode Island  and Connecticutt. It is a C2C park and very nice. I warn you, as soon as you see the “Welcome to Connecticutt” sign on the right coming east on the 101, look to the left because it is right there! I am told that if you play on their playground, you are actually in Rhode Island though the park in in Connecticutt. LOL. I had a little fun walking back and forth between the two state “Welcome” signs one evening. Hey, I had to exercise anyway.

Stateline has a wonderful looking pool in an unusual design and I liked that they play music from the radio at the pool until closing. The restrooms were okay. It is only the second time in my travels that I have had not full sewer but rather a grey water only hookup which requires a garden hose and special holding tank cap. Better than nothing. Luckily, I picked those up at the last one in Michigan. They have a lake though it is for fishing or row boating only. The sites are poorly signed and my site definitely did not match the map they provided so I had to get them to send someone down to show me how I was supposed to park my rig. Ah well, as a C2C park it was cheap to stay there and close enough to what I wanted to see in Groton, CT.

Read the rest of this entry »

Coming through lower Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts on I95 requires a LOT of change or an EZPass. They absolutely love their toll roads. Thank goodness I had picked up some extra cash before starting the trek down from Maine. I had little of my $30 left when I finally got past the tolls.

I found the coastal area of Massachusetts to be rather expensive for camping and you need reservations far in advance to catch the popular places like Salisbury, Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard. I ended up staying in Wompatuck and Massasoit State Parks below Boston.

Wompatuck used to be a munitions storage facility for the Navy with numerous bunkers built into the forest and hidden. One bunker still stands though you can only see the outside of it and it is well hidden. I only found it because there is a geocache there and in many other places in the park.

The park is very large with lots of camping spaces and something always available for the night. I liked the geocaching there but there are so many trees that you can’t see the sky so it is rather depressing at times. They need to prune it out a bit and the back camping areas are overgrown so driving can be an adventure. The restrooms are also in serious need of repair, You can get a shower but don’t expect a stream. It is more like a dribble from the shower head. Be sure to carry lots of water on board too since they supply electricity but no water at the sites other than a communal fixture here and there. Forget about getting satellite TV there through all those trees but I was getting a couple of local stations through the air. Wompatuck puts you close enough to tour Boston and Plymouth if you have a mind to. I didn’t get around to them due to personal business I had to take care of.

Read the rest of this entry »

After hundreds of years, Salem is still best known for it’s infamous witch trials in the 1600s. Many, many tourists go every year to hear about a time of religious hysteria when hundreds were jailed and 19 were killed having been accused of being witches. Several young girls of the town began it with their weird convulsions, twitching, and accusations of evil sorcery. No one knows why they did it, perhaps not even they. The leader of the girls did eventually stand up in church years later and apologize. In the 1950s, a movement got most of the imprisoned “witches” exonerated. It was not until the 2000s however when the last few names were cleared of all wrong by the governor.

18 were hung including those who dared to stand against the witch trials. 1 was pressed to death under a board upon which were piled boulders to force him to confess since he refused to speak on his own behalf. He knew if he was convicted, all his lands and property would be taken from his family. Better to die before a sham trial that would surely find him guilty as it had all the other innocents. It is said that before his chest was crushed, he cursed the sheriff and ever since then every sheriff has had to leave office due to death by heart attack or issues with their hearts.

Once spectral evidence (testimony of dreams, twitching in court, etc.) was banned, the trials petered out for lack of true evidence.

There is much more to Salem than just witches, however. It was a major seaport in its time with much wealth being made in shipping. The Parker brothers of the gaming company fame grew up in Salem. Author Nathanial Hawthorne wrote several of his books here including “The House of Seven Gables” and “The Scarlett Letter”. He didn’t particularly like living in Salem and left once he got payment for the latter. Perhaps it was still too puritanical then for him.

Read the rest of this entry »