Out of Our Rut: Off to Florida

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Now that our week long stay in Washington DC is over, it's time to start heading to Florida to become residents of that state. The original plan was to just head down I-95 stopping at a few places along the way. Those plans were messed up by hurricane Matthew. It no longer made sense to try to stay in Fayetteville NC. Especially since I-95 was closed in that area.

The detour around the closed sections would bring us a little bit west but we were concerned about finding a campground that hadn't suffered flooding issues. So we decided to head well west and go towards Greensboro. Leaving DC on a Sunday morning worked out very well from a traffic standpoint so it wasn't a problem.

A one night stop at a Walmart in Colonial Heights Virginia got us halfway from DC to Greensboro. It was right next to the Appomattox River which had a nice paved walking path. If we had realized the path went right to the Virginia State University campus, we may have walked a little further.

The destination near Greensboro was Hagan Stone Campground in nearby Pleasant Garden NC. It's a nice little county park that had room for us midweek but not thru the weekend. The other reason that brought us here were the thirty or so geocaches along the trails in the park. The leaves were just starting to get their fall colors and the weather was very nice.

Little Chapel at Hagan Stone

One of Several Ponds at Hagan Stone

Old Log Building

Old School House

One End of Campground

Butterfly Scuplture

Turns out the park is a cross country race destination for local schools. Each night we were there, several buses would bring dozens of kids and they would be racing while we were searching for geocaches. We managed to find a disc golf course in nearby Barber Park. They were doing some major construction so 4 of the holes were off limits. Not sure we should brag about having our best scores if we only did 14 of 18 holes! Just down the street from Barber Park is an place called Gateway Gardens. It is a smaller park that has all sorts of interesting artwork with much of it being in a children's garden. Here are some of the pictures from this place.

Another Butterfly

Fountain

Entrance to Children's Garden

An Apple a Day...

Frog Fountain

Big Carrot

As we tried to arrange the rest of the trip to Florida, we ran into problems finding campgrounds for the time we wanted. We made a reservation near Savannah Georgia for the following Saturday and Sunday, only to have the guy call us back on Thursday afternoon and apologize but he would have to refund us our deposit since he overbooked! Fortunately Chris made some calls and found Whispering Pines Campground in Rincon Georgia just outside Savannah had availability.

We stopped in Florence South Carolina at a Walmart. The truck parking here was rather busy. A refrigerator truck was nearby so the unit was running all night long. The drive into Georgia went well with a few stops along the way to break up the day. The damage from the hurricane was evident all along the interstate. Many of the trees that had fallen onto I-95, were only cut back to the edge of the road and were still covering the shoulder.

Whispering Pines would probably be a nice enough place, but the site we were put in was barely wide enough to put all our slides out. Once the travel trailers pulled in on either side of us, there was really no room to enjoy the outdoors. Plus the wi-fi that was available was completely worthless. Good thing we weren't staying here for the campground and it was only for 2 nights.

We spent our first afternoon here going into downtown Savannah and just walking around seeing the interesting sights. There are lots of old and elaborate buildings and many little squares with statues or fountains commemorating all sorts of people.Quite a few building and signs in the area used the term "SCAD" but we weren't sure what it was. With a quick search we discovered it to be Savannah College of Art and Design. While Chris was checking out the Juliet Low birthplace (founder of the Girl Scouts), I noticed several dogs walking by wearing all sorts of costumes. After we continued to see more and more dogs in costumes, we finally asked one owner and were told it was the Wag-O-Ween event.

Church

William Washington Gordon Monument

One of Many SCAD Buildings

Former Savannah Cotton Exchange

Winged Lion Fountain

City Hall with Gold Dome

Cobblestone Streets

Savannah River

Fancy River Boat

Wag-O-Ween Contestant

Another SCAD Building

With only one full day in town, we decided to head to the coast just east of Savannah. We first tried to check out Bonaventure Cemetery. A big old cemetery that was made even more famous by the book (and movie) "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". Neither of us had read the book but it still seemed like a great place to stop at. The only problem was that the place was closed because of all the damage from the hurricane. As we drove around the perimeter, you could see just how many of the trees were either uprooted or had huge limbs snapped off and resting on many of the gravestones. I suspect it will be a long time before the cleanup will be complete and it will not be the same even when it is opened up again.

The next stop was to Tybee Island which is east of Savannah on the Atlantic. There were similar issues here. Lots of debris lining most of the streets waiting to be picked up. Much of it was tree debris but there were also all sorts of households contents that must have been damaged from the rain water and storm surge. The Tybee Lighthouse was still open but we didn't feel like paying $9 each to check it out close up. We headed over to the beach to have out lunch and then walk the beach for a few miles. On our way back from the beach, we stopped to do a walk along the Savannah River on a walking path. Unfortunately the hurricane had nearly obliterated it. We made it about 1/2 mile but decided to just head back.