Travel time

We left Friday morning and we should have re-thought that. It's spring break down in Florida and on any given Friday this time of year, you're going to have spring breakers heading home. And they will all be on I-95 and all headed north. It was a parking lot! It was three full lanes of stop and go, fast then slow, wrecks, road construction and at one point "all three travel lanes closed, drive on the shoulder!" Who came up with that one? We saw one car that had probably rolled and the driver's door had been cut off. They were just cleaning up the wreck. Think it had happened some time before as there were no ambulances or victims. Fortunately there were no active accidents that slowed us down, but it was a mess. We pulled into a rest area for lunch and when we left, the traffic was crawling past the rest area. Stop and go as those who had stopped were merging in with the nearly stopped traffic on the interstate. I have to say I have never driven in traffic like that. It was not fun, but fortunately, most drivers appeared to be alert and nobody gave me any grief.

We actually drove out of Florida to Brunswick, Georgia, and stayed at a new park, Coastal Georgia RV Resort. It was a very nice park and we scored the last campsite they had. They had a nice pool and very nice shower houses, nice landscaping and paved roads and sites. The area we were backed up to had a fence row of bottle brush trees. They are gorgeous this time of year. Brandon has one in his yard and he didn't know what it was! But the line of red flowers on the trees behind our rig was very pretty.

After we got our rig set up, we headed off to the Hofwyl-Broadfield plantation. This is a farm that had been held by the same family for five generations. The family started out as rice farmers and over the years other enterprises, such as a dairy, were tried. It is an interesting story. The last family member died in 1973 and left the farm to the state. It wasn't what I would have called a plantation, as the house was not a grand plantation house as others we have toured. But it was a large farm and slave labor was used to farm the rice prior to the Civil War. We have always wondered about this place when we see the signs on I-95. It was worth a stop.

We have friends, Ron and Linda, who volunteer at The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge which was about an hour's drive from our camp. We haven't seen these friends for several years as our paths had not crossed. They read about my driving ordeal and said they would drive the hour to where we were and we could have dinner together! It was their day off and they were glad to do that rather than have us drive more after our day. So we met them at Zachary's Seafood and Steak at the exit where we were camped, exit 29. It was really quite good. I had the blackened flounder and it was done to perfection. We sat and talked over our dinner and dessert. It was great to see them both again and we were glad they had made the drive up to see us. Thanks, Ron and Linda!

Yesterday we started out about 9 and the traffic was better. Still worse than normal, but passable. . . that is till we hit road construction. . . then it was just like before. But we hit that with about 7 miles more to go on the interstate before we jumped off, so we weren't in it for a long time. We ran 321 up through Georgia which is a route we have taken several times before. Except for some rough road at one point, it was pretty easy going. There are some little towns to go through, but it was not a bad drive. The only problem that we ran into was when Terry called to make our reservations for the next two nights, the park where we wanted to stay was 100% occupied. Bummer. So we had to find another park. That's a big problem around Columbia, South Carolina. We ended up in the Woodsmoke Family Campground. It is a pit with a capital "P." We got here, got in, and stayed two days. Today we drove across the dam on Murray Lake. There are actually two dams here because they determined back in the 90's that reinforcing was a good idea so they built another dam in front of the first. There are four lanes of traffic and those travelers going north actually drive down between the two dams. It's really different. We drove on and visited two different flea markets. Didn't buy much but enjoyed getting out and walking.

Tomorrow we roll and hopefully will be able to camp in Concord, North Carolina. We will stay two nights there. They have some beautiful campgrounds there and hopefully we will be able to snag a spot. We are anxious to get to Charlottesville, Virginia, to see our daughter and family. Our plans are to arrive there on Wednesday.

Till next time. . .

Dale