Our first couple stops on the trip north were short, quiet, and uneventful, so I figured I'd combine them in one post. We had one last stop in Florida at Cary State Forest - a favorite of ours! This time we stayed at the one 'inside' site on the loop (there's a driving loop, all but one of the campsites are on the outside of the loop). We had eyed this one critically in the past, thinking it had much less privacy, but it was the only one available by the time I went to book something. While we were in the campsite we could still barely see the other campers, so our privacy concerns were kind of silly (and we should have known, when every site has an acre or so of space around it...).
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| Our 'less private' campsite - ha! |
Looking at the photo above, do you notice anything odd? I'll wait....
Did you find it? So, normally when I post these pictures, you see the front of the RV. This is because almost every campsite is set up as a 'back-in' site (well, unless it's pull-through, but we don't get many of those because they're usually more expensive). This one was set up as a drive-in site! We didn't even notice until we had backed in, but after parking Aaron immediately noticed that the utilities were on the wrong side! Also the front steps led off into the underbrush. So we had to drive out and do a three point turn to get ourselves in the site the right way.
Unfortunately while we were here the bugs were HORRIBLE. There are always some bugs here, but for whatever reason (we're blaming excessive rain recently) the biting midges were swarming EVERYWHERE while we were here. Normally we enjoy strolling along the long walking trails here, but this time the bugs made being outside miserable, and the aforementioned rain left most trails waterlogged anyway. This was quite disappointing, but it was still nice to just sit inside the RV and look out the windows at the scenery.
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| The view from the window on 'my' side of the living room |
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| This is our bug catcher (a strip of wide sticky tape) - the bugs here are what flew in the RV while we had the door open for a few minutes in the morning. Ick! |
Our next stop was much more pleasant bug-wise - our first visit to Laura S. Walker State Park in Georgia. This was a short just-over-an-hour drive from Cary State Forest along Aaron's favorite kind of road - two lanes each direction with a median through a flat remote area with little traffic. This park was cute with two hiking trails and a lake. The campground did NOT offer much privacy though - this time our site on the inside of the loop had NO privacy. If we had booked early enough to get a waterfront site or an outside loop site we would have had a nicer experience, but again, this was what was available by the time we decided when we were camping here. Still, the campground and park were well-maintained with free wifi, good restrooms, and one of the best-draining dump stations I've ever seen. The comfort station even had a washer and dryer - $1 to wash and only $0.75 to dry!! The cheapest I've ever seen! I almost did laundry on principle, but since we'll be at my parents' house with unlimited free laundry by the end of the week I resisted the urge. The lake was lovely with a nice gazebo nearby. The park was very dog friendly, with dog poop stations (bags & trash cans) and small and large dog parks!
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| Our campsite at Laura S. Walker State Park - what you can't quite see is that the white truck is parked in front of a trailer whose campfire area stares directly at our campfire area |
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| This dock was in the main park area |
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| Crossing the bridge on the lake trail |
One interesting tidbit of history here - on our hike we saw lots of trees with large strips of bark removed. Apparently they did a lot of gum harvesting in this area to produce rosin, and this strange scar is what the tree looks like years later.
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| A gum harvesting scar - the sign nearby claims these are called 'catfaces' because you can make out whiskers and also ears at the top of the scar |
Next up: more of Georgia!
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