Magnolia Springs State Park

We spent a woefully short time at Magnolia Springs State Park in Georgia.  This was a lovely park with so many things to see and do!  We had a nice campsite that backed up on the woods.  It was a little strange that with all of this room they stuck the concrete picnic table and fire ring behind the RV instead of next to it.  Not all sites were like this, and since we weren't planning on cooking out in our short visit it wasn't a problem, just a little odd.

Our campsite at Magnolia Springs State Park

This park seemed to have a little bit of everything.  Of course it had the eponymous spring, which was lovely and full of yellow bellied slider turtles!

Magnolia Spring; it was interesting that (I think) because it fed a 
pre-existing stream, the surrounding area was not nearly so 
clean looking as the springs we saw recently in Florida - only the
spring itself was the beautiful blue color

So many yellow bellied sliders!!  We counted 26 coming at us - clearly
people feed them from the bridge regularly, as they came 
swarming to us (really moving fast!) as soon as we stopped on the bridge

An alligator just off another bridge :-)

In association with the lake and spring they had a trail along the lake and boat rentals.  There were lots of nice looking cottages, a few of which looked like they had a view of the lake.  

The other really interesting thing about this park is that it is the site of the short-lived Camp Lawton, a prisoner of war camp for captured Union soldiers in the Civil War.  They had a short history trail with signs and a couple of ruins, plus an informative museum about not only this camp but others like it.  I don't remember learning much about the conditions in Civil War prisoner of war camps, but they were pretty brutal!  The pictures of the men leaving the camps at the end of the war reminded me of the prisoners in the concentration camps in Germany.  I guess the thing that makes the Civil War camps slightly better is that they didn't just kill thousands of civilians upon their arrival at the camp - in fact, until President Lincoln put a stop to it, there was a regular prisoner exchange between Union and Confederacy that kept the prison populations low and transient - but still, the circumstances were pretty awful.  It was interesting to learn more about this depressing part of our history.  This camp was designed to alleviate crowding at Andersonville/Camp Sumter, and reports from the prisoners indicated that the circumstances were indeed a little better at Camp Lawton, but it only lasted 3 months as just after it was completed Sherman started marching toward the area, and the confederates were worried he would come and liberate the camp.

One of the three redoubts guarding the camp - the only one
still really visible

One final thing about the park I just have to include is the gopher tortoise just outside the nature center.  We didn't make it to the nature center while it was open, but it was cool that they had the tortoise outside, and it makes me think this nature center might have been nicer than most.

Gopher tortoise!  The state reptile of Georgia

I won't make a separate post because we only stayed one night, but we spent our last night on the road before heading to the farm at Ebenezer Park, a county park in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  We were able to catch up with my friend Roddie (my old boss at Bank of America) while we were there, as he lived not far from the park.  He took us to an awesome restaurant in downtown Rock Hill called Kounter, which had lots of delicious and unique food. 

Our campsite at Ebenezer Park.  It was a bit narrow and not
very level and also suffered from having the fire ring and
picnic table behind the RV instead of next to it (again!), but it offered a
bit of privacy and sewer!

I won't bore you with all the amazing food photos we took, but
here was their version of beef sliders - basically half a pan of
Hawaiian rolls sliced in half and filled with a huge beef patty 
and pulled pork - mmm!!

Dining with Roddie

A fun double-bench swing overlooking Lake Wylie at Ebenezer Park

Next stop: the family farm!  Unfortunately the weather looks a little miserable for our first week there, so we won't get much work on the RV done right away.  In a couple weeks we'll be taking a trip with friends to the Louisville area, stay tuned for that!

Crossing the Florida Georgia Line

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...).

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.

The view from the window on 'my' side of the living room

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!  

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

This dock was in the main park area

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.

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!

Heading North - Georgia Edition

We spent a couple nights at South Newport Campground in Georgia on our way north.  This was a small private campground with a very polite and friendly hostess.  It felt like the most narrow site we've been on due to a tree that forced us right up on our neighbor...it might have been about the same as our site at Orlando Thousand Trails.  We had full hookups and the price and location were right, definitely a good choice if you need an overnight stop on I-95.

Hello Georgia!

Our campsite between two trees

Coronavirus effects followed us here...out of an abundance of caution, our hostess did not come out to greet us, but did call after she saw us park to check in and make sure everything was okay.  She had watched us come in from her window and I had the distinct impression she would have walked on over to greet us in person had the situation been different.  We dropped our payment in a secured drop box so that we didn't have to physically interact with anyone.

We took a short drive to the nearby Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge.  It has a nice drive-through trail, which was excellent because the bugs were unreal in this area.  We attempted one hiking trail and quickly decided we wouldn't attempt any more because of the bugs...we did see a rookery, which was cool, but that was quickly followed by an alligator IN OUR PATH...even though we were about 3/4 complete with the overall trail, we just couldn't stomach walking past his nose (we would have had to pass within about 5 feet of him), and he didn't want to budge even with our presence, so we turned around and headed back the way we came.

Rookery

That grass is the hiking trail...I was too nervous to spend
any more time getting a clear photo!