Back on the Road - Lake Wateree State Park

We're back on the road in the RV!  We left West Virginia in early October, it turns out just a few days before the first freeze of the season - just in time!  

We followed a typical path down south - stopping at a Cracker Barrel north of Charlotte overnight and ending our trip to Florida with a stay at the Thousand Trails Oaks at Point South - but we switched things up just a little bit in the middle, stopping by Lake Wateree State Park just a little north of Columbia, South Carolina.  One of my friends at Duke had recommended this to me when we first started our journey, so I was excited to finally try it out!

Our campsite at Lake Wateree

View of the lake from the front of the RV!

Although we weren't lakeside per se, we did have a campsite on the inner side of the road that had a relatively unobstructed view of the lake!  We enjoyed watching the water from our campsite and several hard-to-access beachy areas around the park.

Aaron 'swimming' in Lake Wateree - this was a beach across
from our campsite

We enjoyed dinner from the campfire and found an adorable frog while we were out hiking.  We were promised views of a beaver dam on the hike but couldn't identify it anywhere along the route - the cute frog made up for it somewhat!

Building a fire

Fireside dinner!

Can you see the frog?

The most fun part about this park was the over-the-top Halloween decorations throughout the park.  We only took pictures of a few decorations, and I won't bore you with even all of those, but it was just really cool how much effort the state park put into making everything festive!  Based on one banner we saw we think they may actually host some sort of Halloween event at some point.

A skeleton family's campsite near the road

Skeleton fishermen!

If you're into fishing, there was a large boat ramp at the main office and then places to tie your boat up near the campground, so it looked excellent for that.  We're not into fishing, but we thoroughly enjoyed the serenity of the place and of course all the decorations!  I'm glad we finally checked this place out!

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!

Migrating South for the Winter!

We just stayed at a couple parks on our way south for the winter.  Last year our experiences in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas convinced us that Florida is the ONLY place to be during December/January/February...everywhere else is just too cold!  At least when you have flexibility to be just about wherever you want to be :-).  We've been in Arizona over the winter before and it's quite nice as well but farther away than Aaron wants to drive right now...so Florida it is!

Now I'm sure you're thinking...it's not December yet!  Well, the other half of this is that my sister is all set up in St. Augustine now, so we figured we'd spend some time in northern Florida (which is also not quite warm enough ;-)) before heading back to the Orlando area.  So, time to head south!

Our first stop was Lake Myers RV Resort in Mocksville, North Carolina.  This is a Thousand Trails resort, just a little out of our way south, but since it's 'free' (with our paid membership), we thought it was worth checking out.  I have to say, this is the most atypical Thousand Trails resort we've visited.  Most Thousand Trails resorts are roughly RV parking lots, with varying degrees of vegetation between relatively close, uniform, level, and parallel sites set out in a grid.  This 'campground' was spread out over a series of winding one-way roads, with sites of varying size spread throughout.  Most sites were unlevel and it took us 30 minutes to figure out how to park the RV to get it level - and even then we had to use wooden blocks under the wheels.  Most (90%?) of the sites were occupied by permanent residents.  We were lucky to get one of the very few 50amp sites.  Most of the pictures you can find online of this resort are out of date...it looks like it was quite the vacation spot 10 years ago, with fancy water slides through the woods, extensive boat rentals, a grill, and multiple pools open to the public (with paid admission).  Now the amenities are only available to campers, and the water slides are cracked and full of leaves, and they've ripped away the boat docks (only one lonely paddleboat remains).  The pools and grill still look great, but again are only available to campers/residents.  Overall a very odd place, and due to the distance from I-77, winding roads, and unlevel campsites, we probably won't be back.

Our campsite at Lake Myers - very close to the neighbors and
not level at all!

Walking in the leaf-filled former water slides in the woods

While we were there, we took the opportunity to visit nearby Fort Dobbs, which was pretty cool!  The fort dates back to the days when western North Carolina was on the frontier of the country, and it played a small part in the French and Indian War.  They recently (last few years) finished the reconstruction of the fort itself, and with the 45 minute guided tour you can really learn a lot of history about this site and the area.  I learned what a 'mess' was (a group of soldiers that bunked and cooked together) and finally understood how a flintlock worked in addition to all the unique stuff specific to the fort.  We thoroughly enjoyed it!  

Outside the reconstructed fort

Our tour guide demonstrating the use
of a flintlock.

Our next stop on the way south was at the Oaks at Point South, another Thousand Trails park that we've visited a few times in the past, in Yemassee, South Carolina.  This is a standard Thousand Trails park of typical layout, right off the interstate, and we enjoyed our convenient stay as always.  The only downside is that they only had ONE working dryer in the laundry room, so when I tried to do some laundry (in one of four working washing machines) I had to bring it back to the RV to dry...

Nice level site at the Oaks at Point South

Next stop, Florida!

Heading North - South Carolina Edition

We spent the last of our RV days at The Oaks at Point South in South Carolina.  We stayed here once before on our way down to Florida.  We quite enjoy this Thousand Trails park with its wooded campground and nice lake-side walking trail.

Unfortunately Aaron's phone absolutely died and we lost a few pictures so all I have to share are the few that I took.  We took lots of walks around the adjacent lake and saw lots of turtles and a few alligators.  This was the first time I've seen alligators in South Carolina!

Alligator #1

One of MANY turtles

Alligator #2

With the Coronavirus, social distancing, stay at home directives, and massive closures, we didn't even try to explore the area.  We stayed put in our RV or hiked the trails we could walk to.

When we left this campsite we made the LONG haul the rest of the way (we were on the road 7.5 hours) to my family's farm to park the RV and follow the rest of the world in staying at home and not traveling.  This was the longest and farthest we had driven the RV in one day - longer than each leg of our 3-day mad rush from Greenville, SC to Clearwater, FL when we first bought the RV, the previous record holders.  We were smarter about it this time than that mad rush, stopping for a break at every rest stop (with thorough handwashing of course!) and napping as needed (this is why it took 7.5 hours).

Now that we're settled for the duration of the pandemic, this blog will shift from our traveling adventures to our repair adventures...we have a long list of things Aaron wants to work on while we're parked, and I'll post updates on what he's doing.