Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2024 Year End Review

As 2024 comes to a close, we get to celebrate being on the road as full timers for eight and a half years. We stuck to the eastern side of the country this year and in fact stayed within a couple hundred miles of the Atlantic Ocean the full year. I suppose the most significant aspect of this year’s travels was our decision to purchase an RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). And to a large extent, this purchase was our reason for staying in the east instead of heading back out west. We started the year finishing up a monthlong stay at TGO having rented a different site trying to determine if we liked this place. We found a site we really liked that fit our needs and closed on the property in mid January while we were exploring other parts of Florida during the rest of the winter.

There were a few factors that told us we should have some sort of place we call home but instead of repeating the details of that thought process here, I will simply refer to the blog post from late December 2023 (Xmas at The Great Outdoors) which goes into the decision. One update to that blog post relates to the ongoing cost of ownership - HOA fees and property taxes. In that post, I had used historical data from the rental office regarding the possible income from renting out our site when we are not in Titusville. I had estimated that if we were here for the 6 months during the “high season” but had our lot in the rental pool the other 6 months, our site would cost us $23 per day. I don’t have what our income is yet from our lot being rented during the month of October before we came back. But based on the income for the first three quarters of the year, I suspect we will come in below my initial estimate. For the time being, the daily cost I have used in my spreadsheet for keeping track of camping expenses has been $25 per day so my stats I talk about later in this post should be fairly accurate or just a little high.

The first 3 months of the year found us bopping around Florida. It was a mixture of private campgrounds, state parks, Elks Lodges and a Habitat for Humanity build in Vero Beach. We had planned and booked all but two weeks well before we knew we were going to buy a site at TGO so we only came back to our site for those two weeks at the end of February. By early April, we had completed all our original plans so we could return to TGO for 3 weeks before starting our journey north to New England for the bulk of the summer and early fall.

The map below shows the route we traveled this past year. While there was some overlap on the route we took north in the spring and south in the fall, we tended not to duplicate the actual camping stops in order to allow us to see slightly different places. Just below the map is a link that will open the actual Google Map which permits you to zoom in and pan around to better see our stops. Each red pin represents a place we spent at least one night at and by clicking on a pin, a new window will pop up with the name of the place we stayed as well as the links to the blog posts associated with that particular stop.

Click HERE to open Google Map

We spent about 5 weeks working our way from Florida to Vermont and then had two different monthlong stops near the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There were also a couple weeks spent in the Adirondacks and a few more weeks in Burlington and northern Vermont. We wrapped up our New England journey by spending nearly all of September exploring some of the interior of Maine. We wrapped up the journey with another 5 weeks to make it from Maine back to Titusville Florida.

It was definitely an action packed year. The hiking in the mountains of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine was outstanding and we even found some excellent bike trails along the way. We also fit in a couple of train rides and a few boat rides over the course of the year. We managed to stay at 19 different Elks Lodges during 2023 - the majority of them ones we had never visited before. And with these additions, we have now surpassed the one hundred mark of how many different lodges we have camped at in the last 8.5 years bring our total number of nights spent at lodges to 407!

I have a few different “heat maps” that show where we have camped. Each state we have stayed at is shaded in red. The darker the red, the more nights we stayed in that state. The first map is just for 2024. You can see that we stayed in 14 different states this year. Florida came in the top spot at 179 nights. Vermont was in second place with 79 nights. We managed to add one new state to the list - Rhode Island. The second map shows our stops for the full 8.5 years, now up to 45 states instead of 44 from last year. The only states not colored in are Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Delaware. Technically, we have camped in all of these states other than Hawaii but those camping trips occurred prior to going full time. I am also including a version of second heat map but this one is divided into the counties within each state to get a better view of where we stayed in the state.

Our 2024 Camping Map

Our 8.5 Year Camping Map

8.5 Years at County Level

Like in past reviews, I have a table showing some of the statistics for our full time lifestyle. It includes facts like how many stops we had as well as the number of miles driven in the motorhome and car and the costs associated with our travels. Since we have so many years under our belt at this point, I only show the numbers for the past 6 years. Previous year end reviews will have the data from earlier years.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

There aren’t too many surprises in the table. We camped in a few more places this year compared to last year which brought our average number of nights per stop to under 12 versus over 15 last year. This one is simple to explain. In 2023, we stayed at a  campground in western New York for over 5 months. So even staying for a couple of monthlong stops in New England and a few stops a week or longer, we ended up moving around more often. Even so, it didn’t seem like we were moving at too fast of a pace. Our number of miles driven both in the motorhome and the Jeep were very similar to last years.

In terms of the types of places we have camped, I break it down into one of 4 categories - boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. This year we stayed two thirds of the nights in private campgrounds similar to last year. But we did stay a few more nights at state parks versus Elks Lodges this past year. That is likely just a function of there being fewer Elks Lodges on the eastern side of the country and we spent a fair amount of time out west in 2023 where the lodges have more camping options. For the keen eye observer, the breakdown of style of camping shows 376 nights total versus the expected 366. This is simply to show that we did boondock 10 nights over the course of the year but those nights also happened to be at Elks Lodges. I only show it because we had a new solar and lithium battery system installed in early 2023 and I wanted to prove that we did use it - albeit sparingly. The net result over the course of the year for camping costs came in at just over $30 per night. This is pretty consistent with prior years.

As we sit on our lot at TGO in Titusville Florida this winter, we are finding that having a nice place to stay with a shed to store our bikes and other stuff out of the weather is quite nice. I can do some of the maintenance chores on the motorhome that are more difficult to do in a gravel lot in a state park. Since returning to TGO this November, I have washed and waxed the rig, replaced the return springs on our leveling jacks and even had one of our air conditioners replaced - although I hired that job out to people more skilled at that task. We also did start to get established with a doctor and dentist in the area. This was part of the reason for buying the RV lot - needing to have “shallow roots” so we can take care of ourselves as we get older.

Like we have done in previous year end reviews, we have looked over the 42 stops for the year and tried to identify several of our favorites. Even though I will provide the campground we stayed at in an area, do not look at this as a campground review. We seldom pick a campground based on its amenities. We are more looking for a great location and the campground tends to just be the place the motorhome gets parked for the duration of our visit. In fact, one of the top stops this year was the gravel lot on the side of an Elks Lodge with no RV services. Many campers may consider that too primitive, but we found a lot to do in the area and would love to go back for more in the future. For each of the stops, there is a short description of the stop, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide more details about the stop, and a couple of my favorite pictures from the stop. In chronological order, here is the list for 2024:

• Indian River Habitat for Humanity ReStore Vero Beach Florida - This place isn’t your typical campground. In fact, if you find yourself in Vero Beach, you won’t be able to stay here unless you have signed up for one of the Habitat for Humanity RV Care-A-Vanner builds at this local affiliate well in advance. We were here for a 2 week assignment in early March. Vero Beach is a pretty area with lots of small towns along the coast to visit and quite a few wildlife areas to walk around or go for a bike ride. The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is the oldest NWR in the country and we drove around the Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area but should have visited with our bicycles. I’m sure we could have found plenty more to see and do in the area.

But the true reason this place made our list was being part of a large group of like minded RVers here to help lend a hand from building new homes, refurbishing existing homes or working in the ReStore. This was only the third one of these builds we have been part of, but this affiliate runs their program like a well oiled machine. They can accommodate just about any skill level so you don’t need to have been a general contractor to find a job at the build site. And while swinging a hammer and helping out a good cause is therapeutic in a way, it was the camaraderie of the eight couples that made this a winning stop for us.

Vero Beach Blog Post 

Our RV Care-a-Vanner Crew at Vero Beach

Wall Raising Ceremony

• Collier Seminole State Park Naples Florida - We spent 10 nights at this state park in the southwest corner of the state. There are both state and federal preserves in the area that were wonderful to explore. We spent two days on long bike rides at both Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park and Big Cypress National Preserve basically riding with alligators! There were also lots of less strenuous (or dangerous) things to see and do in the area. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary has a 2 plus mile boardwalk though a very scenic area. And for an even more laid back day, Marco Island was a fun visit.

First Naples Blog Post

One of Dozens of Gators to Bike Past

Royal Terns on Marco Island

• Green Mountain Family Campground Middlebury Vermont - We spent the whole month of June at this place in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont. The hiking was excellent but challenging at times. This stop gave us one of our favorite hikes from our eighth year review - Mount Abraham. But there was more to see and do in the area than just hike. We spent a day each at both Shelburne Museum and Shelburne Farms and really enjoyed them. We also learned all about the granite industry in this part of the state. I wrote 8 blog posts about our stay so it is tough to summarize another than to tell you to check out this part of Vermont.

First Green Mountains Post

Chris Enjoys View at Buck Mountain

At the Granite Quarry

• Moose River Campground St Johnsbury Vermont - While we technically were camping at this place in Vermont for the month of August, we were here because of its proximity to the White Mountains of New Hampshire just a a few miles away from camp. The hiking here was excellent as well although it seems like the White Mountains are a bit more popular with hikers so we ran into more crowds on the trails. The two places we went back to multiple times were Franconia Notch and Crawford Notch. I suspect we could move to this area and spend the rest of our lives hiking and never need to repeat a hike if we didn’t want to. We also found several excellent rail trails that we spent multiple days exploring 20 to 30 miles at a time by bicycle. Lamoille Valley Trail may have been our favorite but the Ammonoosuc River and the Presidential Range Trails were quite nice as well. And then there were the two train rides. One to the top of Mount Washington via the cog railway and the scenic train ride out of Conway New Hampshire.

First White Mountains Blog

Our Ride to the Top of Mount Washington

Covered Bridge Over Ammonoosuc River in Bath NH

• Katahdin Shadows Campground Medway Maine - We only managed to fit in a week here around the second week of September. The main draw for us to this out of the way spot in central Maine was Baxter State Park. It’s a pristine wilderness area that has very limited services to help keep it that way. There are excellent hiking opportunities and for the really hardcore hikers, this is the location where the Appalachian Trail starts/ends. But we found other things in the region including a lumbermen’s museum and possibly one of the nicest biking areas at the Penobscot River Trails. Had we known how much we were going to like this place, we likely would have tried to book a spot for a month or longer.

Medway Maine Blog

Mount Katahdin from Penobscot River Trails

Keep Maine Beautiful

• Wareham - New Bedford Elks Lodge Wareham Massachusetts - This lodge does not have any RV services like electric, water or dump station. But they do have a fairly large and level gravel lot next to the main paved parking lot and we had decent sun exposure for our solar system to help charge our batteries while boondocking here. This place is in southeastern Massachusetts and it worked out well for visiting Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. It would also have worked to take in Nantucket had we only been able to stay another day or two, but now we know that staying just 4 nights wasn’t long enough. We spent a very long day taking the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, walking 10 miles around the island and trying to fit in as many sites as we could manage in a single day and then returning to the mainland. We also got in a nearly 25 miles bike ride along the Shining Sea Bikeway. The drive onto Cape Cod was nice but there was to much to see along the drive that we weren’t able to get all the way to the tip of the cape.

First Wareham Blog

Ned's Point Lighthouse

Sunset on Ferry From Martha's Vineyard

Below is a map showing all 386 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

So what does 2025 hold for us? Originally we had reserved some state park campgrounds down in the Florida Keys and the Everglades for most of January and the first half of February, but we are reassessing those plans as I try to get past a couple of health concerns our newfound doctor has identified. We figure it makes more sense to stay in the Titusville area to deal with tests and appointments until I get the all clear. We also haven’t put any thought into where we might spend the warmer months but will eventually figure it out.

Myrtle Beach and Savannah

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

With 8 more nights before we plan on being back at our site in Titusville Florida, we head out from Morehead City North Carolina Elks Lodge further down the coast to Myrtle Beach South Carolina. We had stopped last October at the state park for a full week, so this time we only plan on spending 2 nights in town. Since one of the nights would be a Friday, we knew there weren’t any campsites available in the state park so we decided to try out the Elks Lodge in town. We haven’t stayed at this one yet, but understood it had a 20 amp outlet at the rear of the parking lot. The big advantage of this lodge is its location - just a few blocks from the beach pretty much in the heart of town.

It’s around 170 miles between the two lodges and when we arrived, there were only a few cars in the parking lot so we were able to get situated in the likely parking spot. We head into the lodge and check in at the bar. While having a beer, the bartender mentioned that they were having some large Halloween event that evening and asked if we could park in the field just off the pavement to leave plenty of parking spots for the guests they were expecting. After finishing our beers, we repositioned the rig and got hooked up to the electric. That evening the parking lot did get pretty full but it wasn’t a rowdy crowd and the party didn’t last to long into the evening hours.

The next day we plan on taking advantage of the prime spot near the beach and simply walk around town. When we were in town a year ago, we had explored many sites in the area but hadn’t actually made it to the downtown and beach area. Since we could just walk from the lodge, our commute would be nonexistent. Just a block from the lodge is a very large field which apparently used to be the site of a large shopping mall from the 1970’s but was demolished about 20 years ago. This weekend it is the site of the Myrtle Beach Jeep Jam which helped to explain why there were so very many Jeeps driving around. It looked like things were just opening up as we wandered

Myrtle Beach is definitely a tourist trap with all sorts of shops, restaurants and other attractions for visitors. It kind of reminds us of places like Niagara Falls or Gatlinburg. In general we aren’t drawn to this type of environment, but obviously it attracts enough people to make business sense. The miniature golf course was one of the more elaborate ones we have ever seen.

Putt-putt on Steroids

We first headed over to the ocean, took off our shoes and walked the nice sand beach. It was a reasonably nice day for late October so there were a fair number of people out walking, a few sunbathing and even fewer venturing into the water.

At the Beach

Pier 14

The SkyWheel is a prominent feature of the beach. Rising nearly 190 feet into the air, the 40 gondola cars likely give an excellent view of the area. There were some people taking a ride, but it didn’t look too busy as we walked by.

SkyWheel

After walking about two and a half miles, we made it to 2nd Avenue Pier. There were a lot of people fishing from the pier and while it looked like it might give us a different perspective of the beach, we knew we had a couple miles of walking back up to the restaurant we had picked out for lunch so we passed on paying to walk out on it.

2nd Avenue Pier

We head up from the beach and put the shoes back on to walk up the Boardwalk and Promenade that parallels the shore. It was stating to get a bit more crowded and many of the shops, bars and restaurants along the way were getting busy. It appears that the city is already starting to put up some of the Christmas decorations. There are numerous photo-op stops along the way to commemorate your visit to Myrtle Beach. We got in about 4.5 miles in before lunch.

Decoration Along Boardwalk

Photo Op

Our lunch stop served 2 purposes. The most obvious reason was to get a good lunch but the secondary reason and also the one that helped us choose River City Cafe over the hundred other choices, was the fact that there is a geocache hidden in the restaurant. We have done a few caches that are hidden in an establishment like this but there aren’t a ton of them. This cache has a couple hundred favorite points so we knew it was fun and the reviews of the food were good as well.

The description of the cache was simple enough - locate a particular license plate hanging up in the restaurant and the cache will be nearby. Sounds easy enough until we get seated and realize that every square inch of wall space is covered with thousands of license plates. Even the ceiling is covered with them. As we waited for our food to be served, we started to look around our immediate area which was also near the bar. We had to use some logic to eliminate the ones on the ceiling since they would be out of reach. We also hoped that it wasn’t one on the wall next to one of the many booths that were packed with other patrons. We checked the bathrooms and wandered around as much as we could without feeling too uncomfortable. I finally asked one of the waitstaff to at least narrow it down from the portion of the restaurant inside versus outside on the deck where another dozen tables - all full with diners. I was told which half of the building it was located and if I required more help, he would be happy to help out. With the location narrowed down to half the restaurant, I was able to locate the proper license plate after a few more minutes of searching. It was hard to tell how many people wondered what I was doing or if it simply felt like everybody was watching me look suspicious. Now I know why this one has so many favorite points.

Some of the Hundreds of License Plates at River City Cafe

By now it was nearly 2 o’clock so there wasn’t time to head back to camp and drive somewhere else so we decide to walk past the Jeep Jam and see what it looked like now that it was midafternoon. This was the 5th year the event has been held here and it was expected to draw over 30,000 people and several thousand Jeeps. We could tell that the place was packed with people and the parking lot was equally full of Jeeps - mainly Wranglers with the majority of them being heavily modified for even more serious off-roading. Being the weekend before Halloween, many of the Jeeps were also decorated to the max with all sorts of skeletons, spiders and ghosts. We likely would have wandered round inside the gates, but there was an admission fee and most of the venders had items geared for Wranglers not our Grand Cherokee. One section of the field was also converted into an obstacle course with large hills and ditches created by heavy equipment. There was a long line of people patiently waiting for their turn at the course.

Jeep Jam

Tricked Out Jeep

Halloween is Coming

Obstacle Course

 Next we headed to a place called Broadway at the Beach about 2/3 mile to the northwest. There are several dozen more shops and restaurants on a one mile loop around a manmade pond. Good thing we were full since there were lots of other things we may have been tempted to try out. This was a popular spot for visitors although it was clear that we were here in the low season and many of the attractions had very little business. One corner of the place has all sort of amusement rides including another Ferris wheel.

Merry-Go-Round

Shiny Tortoise

Second Ferris Wheel of the Day!

One of the other attractions was the high speed jet boat ride on the pond. We only saw one group head out during the whole time we were here but they do definitely get moving pretty fast on such a small body of water. The fish are definitely trained to come to the bridge when they spot people looking over. A vendor was selling fish food and the fish definitely expected everyone to feed them. We finished the loop and headed back to the Elks lodge having gotten in a little over 8 miles of walking.

Upside Down Building

Hungry Fish

Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville

The lodge was much less busy our last night here and it worked out quite well as a stop over in Myrtle Beach. The next morning we start the drive down to Savannah Georgia. This drive was much longer than our typical max of 200 miles coming in at 245. Our destination was Skidaway Island State Park. We have camped there previously having spent 8 nights back in early November 2018. We had really enjoyed the area and the park so it made sense to make a return visit.

It was a long and tiring drive to the campground but we made it without incident. It’s been 8 nights in Elks lodges without a dump station, so our first stop was to take care of that. Coming in on a Saturday afternoon pretty much guaranteed that the dump wouldn’t be crowded.

Some of the sites in Skidaway Island are pull through spots but these are parallel to the park road so you need to approach from the proper direction in order to have the utilities positioned on the proper side of the rig. The park staff drew on the map our required route so we head over to find our site. We must have camped in a different section of the campground the last time because I didn’t remember how narrow and tree lined the road through the campground is. To make matters worse, the trees close to the road have roots pushing up the road nearly a foot in spots. It was a nerve racking drive with a rig our size attempting not to clip a low hanging branch or a tree too close to the road. It was definitely a one lane road but since there are sites on either side of it, the road is two way without any room for even a small passenger vehicle to squeeze by, let alone another RV. We made it to our site only to discover the person checking us in gave us the wrong directions to our site and we should have been coming the other direction. So we get to drive more narrow park road, turn around and try again. Let’s just say after a very long drive here, this was not the best way to end our day but we finally got into our site.

We took it easy on Sunday but headed out on Monday to explore more of the area. Wormsloe State Historic Site is only an out a mile or so as the crow flies but it is a bit further to drive there. English colonists settled this part of the Isle of Hope in the 1730’s. It was farmed and used to raise cattle. Eight generations of the family lived here over the years. In the 1970’s, it was transferred to the state and developed into the historic site as it is today.

Wormsloe Visitor Center

The admission fee gets us access to some of the old buildings or ruins in some cases. There is also a shuttle that can be taken to go from the visitors center the 1.5 miles to the main location where most of the interesting things are. The road has a very fancy front gate (that we can get to afterwards) and is lined with 400 live oak trees planted back in 1891. It would have been a rather impressive approach to visitors in the past.

Shuttle

Original Entrance

Looking Down Tree Lined Drive

We wander around the paths to the various sites in Wormsloe. The old tabby house is just a few sections of walls that are still standing so a good imagination is required to “see” what the house looked like. We had several places we needed to explore in order to get answers required to open a geocache we would find at the museum on the grounds.

Historic Sketchings

Old Tabby Ruins

There were no interpretive talks today so we needed to read the displays to better understand what we were seeing at the various stops. We saw there was the Battery Trail that starts near the museum and we planned on walking the 2.5 mile loop. It was a nice trail but the bulk of the trail was closed. Being geocachers, we joke about not needing trails, and there was no obvious trail damage or the noise of work crew so we were really tempted to just venture past the sign, but we behaved and took a bypass trail back.

Fallen Tree

Start of Battery Trail

As Far As We Go

We stopped at the museum to look around the various displays that permitted us to get the remaining answers needed to unlock the geocache that the worker at the museum desk gave us. We needed to take the various answers we found along our tour of Wormsloe and do a bit of math to come up with the combination to open the container. We were baffled when our solution didn’t open the lock. The worker wasn’t willing to give us the correct combination but did ask that we provide the various items we had counted along the way. He informed us that one of our counts was wrong but fortunately it was the one we had just located in this museum rather than further out on the grounds. We headed back to more carefully read our clue and spotted our error and had the cache open to sign in. Our timing was good since the shuttle was at the museum when we came out and were able to get a quick ride back to the visitor. Wormsloe was an interesting stop for an hour or two.

Back at the car, we ate the lunch we had along with us and planned our next stop since it was still early in the afternoon. Even though we have been in the Savannah area previously, we had a county to the south of town that we hadn’t found a geocache in yet. So we set off to explore Cay Creek Wetlands south of Savannah down I-95 near the town of Midway Georgia. The cache was in the parking area but we felt obligated to check out the 3/4 mile long elevated boardwalk.

Cay Creek

Beginning of Trail

We had the place to ourselves and enjoyed the solitude. The trail started out in a more forested area but got progressively wetter as we headed along the boardwalk.

Boardwalk

Swampy

The boardwalk ends at what I presume is Cay Creek. We didn’t see much wildlife along our walk. On the way back to the car, we climbed to the top of the observation tower but the trees nearby limit the view.

Cay Creek

Observation Tower

Skidaway Island State Park has several hiking trails and there was one set of trails that would add up to a little over a 3 mile loop. There was the potential that a bridge was out over a small creek and there was also rain predicted but not until later in the afternoon. So we head out before lunch to try to get a hike in and find the nearly dozen geocaches that have been placed along the trails since our last visit. We start out on the Big Ferry Loop Trail for about 3/4 miles before turning east onto the Connector Trail.

Nice Trail

We were enjoying the hike and were finding the geocaches along the way. There were several other people out enjoying the trails so we sometimes needed to stall and pretend to drink from our water bottles until they were out of sight. We followed the outer section of the Avian Loop Trail and found one bridge over a creek that was in good shape.

Skidaway River

Functioning Bridge Over ...

... This Waterway

This got us onto the Sandpiper Loop Trail which is where the possible damaged bridge was. About 2 miles into the hike, we started to feel some sprinkles but we were optimistic that the heavy rain was still hours away. But by the time we made it to the obvious bridge in question, we were 2.7 miles into the hike and the skies opened up with some serious rain. So now we had a bit of a dilemma. We could turn around and hustle back to the rig but that was nearly 3 miles. Or we could cross the damaged bridge and have less than a half mile back to our dry motorhome.

Damaged Bridge

Technically, the bridge only had a barricade and caution tape on the far side. But the bridge decking was tilted at 30 degrees and now soaking wet. We ever so carefully made our way across the bridge and it seemed more than up to the task of holding our weight but there was a strong possibility of a foot slipping out and into the water and into the muck we would go. We were already completely soaked from the rain, so there was no way we could get any wetter but I suspect the muck would be rather stinky. Thankfully we made it across without any issue and got over the barricade to rush back to the rig like waterlogged hikers. We did mange to find 10 of the 11 geocaches we looked for so that was a positive note.

The weather improved for our last full day here so we head into downtown Savannah. When we were staying in the area back in 2016 and 2018, we had explored parts of the town but there is so much to see that there will be places we haven’t visited. We find a parking garage that would put us in the center of the area and start off for a long walk. Even the view from the upper floors of the garage were pretty good.

Parking Garage View

Our first stop was at the Cathedral Basilica of St John the Baptist. It was first built in the 1870’s, but has suffered several fires and reconstruction over the years. It is a big and beautiful building - rising 214 feet. There wasn’t having a service taking place but was still crowded with several dozen visitors checking it out.

St John the Baptist

Impressive Interior

Huge Mural

Lots of Stained Glass

The interior was what I expected with lots of ornate details every way we turn. Somebody was available to answer questions so we were able to get some more details into the place. The organ looks quite impressive but was not being played so we can only image what it might sound like.

Huge Pipe Organ

Main Altar

This place isn’t quite as gilded with gold as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart we visited on the campus at Notre Dame, but is still very nice stop to start our day in town.

We continue our journey walking around the various squares that are situated every few blocks. Each of them have statues or fountains dedicated to some long lost resident. Since we are only a day from Halloween, many of the beautiful homes were decorated with all sorts of monsters and ghosts and such. I bet this area might be a good place to go trick or treating.

Andrew Low House

Inoperative Fountain

Spooky House

Werewolf of Savannah

We made it out as far as Forsyth Park before we started to meander back towards the heart of downtown and the river. We didn’t keep track of how far we had walked but it was likely 2 miles before we turned around and another 2 back. It was getting close to lunchtime and we needed to scope out a place to eat. There were so many choices that looked good. We settled on the Cafe at City Market and enjoyed eating on the patio where we could people watch too.

Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church

William Jasper Monument

We found lots of unique places to check out after lunch as we headed over to the Riverside District.

Talmadge Memorial Bridge

Unique Chandelier and Guitar Collection

Possibly the best place we found today was the old power plant right on the river. It operated from 1912 until 2005 but has now been transformed into a mixed-use development that has many shops, restaurants and a hotel. The main space still has the huge 45 ton crane that was used in the power plant to move heavy equipment around. Besides the crane, they have a huge brontosaurus skeleton and other things hanging from the roof.

Brontosaurus Overhead

Pterodactyls Too

From here, we walked east along the river walk.

Alice in Wonderland

There were several large ships. One was a 525 foot long oil tanker working its way upriver. Another was a ferry that travels from a dock downtown to Hutchinson Island across the river. The prettiest one was the Georgia Queen which started out as a casino on the Mississippi River back in 1995. It transitioned to become a riverboat cruise ship.

Chem Stellar Tanker

Ferry Boat

The Georgia Queen

After walking about a mile down river and finding a few urban geocaches which we typically don’t even bother trying since we feel so suspicious looking around for a hidden container, we worked our way back away from the river past the old Lucas Theater and finished our day at the beautiful Colonial Park Cemetery.

Lucas Theater

Entrance to Colonial Park Cemetery

Headstone Collection

It’s funny how we spent nearly 6 hours wandering around downtown Savannah and saw lots of places we haven’t seen in prior visits, but we could likely do a similar walk in the future and see all sorts of different places we missed. Maybe only locals are able to really experience all the town has to offer. I’m sure we will be back.

The next day, we pull out and work our way around the narrow park roads to the dump station before heading south. Our destination will be The Great Outdoors where we bought an RV lot earlier in 2024. It’s about a 290 mile drive down I-95 so we will break the trip in half, stopping at the Orange Park Elks Lodge on the southern side of Jacksonville Florida. The lodge has about 9 spots with water and electric plus a dump station. It would make for a nice base to better explore Jacksonville but this time it will simply be an overnight stop.

It felt good to be “home” where we can tackle some of life’s chores that we have been putting off for the past 189 nights since we pulled out in late April.