2015 - FLORIDA TO CONNECTICUT

FLORIDA to CONNECTICUT

Friday, May 15, 2015 - Stuart, FL, to St Augustine, FL

After two and a half months back in the UK, I've returned to take the RV out of storage in Florida, where it was left at the end of February, and head back up to Connecticut where it will go right back into storage again.

I had originally thought the final leg of this trip might be a slow month-long meander back to base in Connecticut, but I've been delayed getting back from the UK to the US and events have conspired to make this a fairly short and deliberate 1500 mile delivery trip north, though I plan to try to visit a few old and new places on the way.

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Arrived back at the RV last night at 9:30pm after an 8-hour trans-Atlantic flight to Charlotte, SC, then a connecting flight to West Palm Beach, and finally a 45 minute cab ride to the marina.

All seemed to be fine with the RV - still shiny from my waxing prior to storage - though it was hot and stuffy inside until the air conditioning had been run for 20 minutes. The propane system needed some encouragement to get the gas flowing again after the 3-month shut-down, but cranking over the genset a few times until it fired up seemed to resolve this.

Up at dawn, while there was still a hint of coolness in the air.

The previously fairly empty marina has changed since I was last here at the end of February, with boats now being stacked up ashore for summer storage.

Prepared the RV to hit the road - bike back on the rack, water tank filled, trickle-charger set-up disassembled.

First stop Publix in Stuart for a week's worth of groceries, followed by a coffee stop at the Starbucks conveniently opposite.

Then on to Interstate 95 North which, if followed all the way to Connecticut, could literally takemedoor to door. But I'll make a couple of detours at least, starting today as I peel off after a little over 200 miles on I-95 to visit St Augustine, a city where I've stopped a number of times on boat trips up and down the east coast.

Parked in the designated bus/RV parking area conveniently close to the historic part of town and strolled down to the fort on the waterfront... only to be greeted by surprising numbers of tourists and multiple busloads of school kids in matching t-shirts - both of which, combined with an entry fee to the fort and cloudy skies (bad for photos) quite put me off walking around the inside.

So it was a fairly brief wander around the outer walls before heading back to the main tourist street, at the head of which is what claims to be the oldest wooden schoolhouse in America, just as St Augustine claims to be the oldest city - founded in 1565 and celebrating its 450th anniversary this year.

The main tourist street seemed longer and more crowded with tourist tat than I recall, so I walked fairly swiftly down to Flagler College, only to be disappointed there by finding the wonderful architecture of the building covered in scaffolding.

Strolled a little further south, beyond the tourist area and through a few older and more interesting streets - marginally redeeming the value of taking this detour to St Augustine, though the experience has rather tarnished the rosy memories I had of previous visits here when passing through on various boats.

Finally headed north along the waterfront, past the marina and back to the RV.

A short run out of town back to I-95 has brought me conveniently to a Cracker Barrel store that seems happy to have me stay overnight - which is just as well as I'm feeling fairly pooped with jet-lag and will be crashing out soon. Not entirely sure where I've found the energy to write up this log, in fact, other than knowing from past experience that it pays to get it done at the end of a day and not put off.

Saturday, May 16, 2015 - St Augustine, FL, to Charleston, SC

Awake and up at 6:00am after a reasonable night behind the friendly Cracker Barrel store and on the road an hour later, heading north on I-95, with 275 miles ahead ofmeto Charleston.

Made a brief stop for fuel after a couple of hours, and eventually found a Starbucks another couple of hours later. Allowed myself an hour of coffee and Internet time to chase up a few things.

Pulled over for a lunch stop outside Charleston then drove the final 20 miles into town, parking in the same spot as I had done 6 months ago, in the shade of trees on an access road into Hampton Park, a mile north of downtown.

Launched the bike, slung the camera over my shoulder and rode down to Tradd Street, probably the most quaint of the downtown streets, locking up the bike there and then heading off on a couple of hours zigzagging walk, taking in familiar streets and sights and a couple of new ones - no matter how often I've walked the historic downtown area of Charleston I always seem to discover another street and picturesque buildings I've not come across before.

Such a varied collection of grand and modest, prominent and tucked away, boulevards and lanes, pastels and strong colors...

After meandering back to the bike, I rode back to the RV through the college campus area and drove out of Charleston just a few miles up Route 17 to the Cracker Barrel in Mount Pleasant, conveniently next to a Harris Teeter grocery store - a Charleston classic in my mind from my days of provisioning when passing through Charleston on boats, and source of a tasty sushi dinner for this evening.

Sunday, May 17, 2015 - Charleston, SC, to Morehead City, NC

Up early to catch what there was of pre-dawn coolness in the air for a morning run, but I was still a dripping mess by the time I got back to the RV.

After pausing to cool off, and taking a cooling shower, I headed off a mile back down the road towards Charleston to stop at IHOP for my substitute UK-Sunday-morning-post-run routine of omelet, bacon and toast. Got in before the crowds, food served promptly (scrambled egg, bacon, hash browns, toast, OJ, coffee) and so I was on my way north again by 8:45am, beating the roadside vendors still setting up their stands of produce, sweetgrass baskets, boiled peanuts...

It's strange how often my evening-before route planning gets thrown for a loop once I start on the day, and today it was due to belatedly noticing that the town of Georgetown was on the route to Beaufort, prompting memories of a previous visit and a slight detour to the waterfront there.

Once I arrived, however, I realized that although it wasn't the town I thought it was, I had actually been there a couple of times previously.

So I took a nostalgic stroll along the waterfront boardwalk, with its imposing steel mill back-drop at the end of the channel to the northwest (picture right).

This particular "industrial" view from the boardwalk is mostly excluded from beauty shots on the various Georgetown websites extolling the attractions of the town - for quite understandable reasons, even though it is a dominant part of the landscape from any viewpoint along the boardwalk.

But at night even this industrial setting can look quite romantic...

...as can be seen in this picture of the steel mill that I took from my anchored boat when passing through in 2005.

(A rather small digital image, unfortunately, as they were back then.)

The main street of town (Front Street) is where the beauty shots are taken and promoted on the town websites...

...and where I matched an evening shot from my earlier visit (left) with a shot taken today (right) as I strolled back to the RV in the increasing heat of the morning.

Then it was on north up Route 17, the Sunday traffic building with people heading for the coast and beaches asIpass through the resort town of Myrtle Beach.

My detour to Southport - close to the entrance to the Cape Fear River and opposite Hilton Head Island - was not quite so rewarding.

My memories of Southport are of a fairly sleepy town, with old homes under shady oaks along waterfront streets and a couple of bars overlooking the small anchorage lined with slips filled with fishing boats.

The older homes are mostly still there but the waterfront seems to have been overrun with new buildings and tourist tackiness.

The old, dilapidated - but characterful - American Fish Company building has now been largely replaced by a waterfront bar and a clutch of three-story condos incongruously plonked down beside it, one featuring a tasteless "donk" car, as these sedans with aftermarket oversized bling wheels are known.

All rather distressing... so Southport became an unexpectedly short stop before getting back on the road to Beaufort, NC, one of my favorite small towns where I frequently stopped during my east coast yacht cruising days.

And I'm glad to report that Beaufort has hardly changed at all - the Scuttlebutt store still on the high street, with its good selection of serious seafaring books amongst the high-end tourist trinkets, the marina docks (now modern floating docks rather than the pilings and fixed docks of my visits) half-full with yachts, the marina dockhouse unchanged (even the dockmaster the same guy), flags stretched out in the breeze on the steel flagpole, the open areas of the dockside restaurant busy with happy hour revelers...

And just a few steps away, the waterfront streets of town still picturesque and quiet, and my early-morning-pre-departure coffee shop still in business.

So with a sigh of satisfaction, it was back along the road out of town to nearby Morehead City and a Walmart parking lot for the night.

Monday, May 18, 2015 - Morehead City, NC, to Williamsburg, VA

And here's another day not quite going to plan, though the plan was rather loose...

A couple of hours first thing to get some admin done and e-mails sent, courtesy of the WiFi signal from the adjacent Lowes store, then off up Route 17 towards Norfolk, VA - largely open and rural countryside, plenty of trailer homes, plenty of churches, widespread farming.

Our first unplanned detour of the day was to Elizabeth City, NC, a place where I had stopped overnight in November 1998 on my extended winter cruise south to the Caribbean, having gone down the Dismal Swamp Canal route from Norfolk, VA.

The docks now look a little smarter than I recall back then... but it's quite hard to remember the detail from sixteen and a half years ago, though I do clearly recall that it rained pretty much all day after I had docked.

The Rose Buddies monument (click here to learn about the "Rose Buddies") is certainly new, though.

After 30 minutes back on the road I suddenly came across the Dismal Swamp Canal Visitor Center (click here to learn about the Dismal Swamp Canal, originally surveyed by none other than George Washington)...

...and of course I couldn't resist pulling over to see how things looked at the spot I had stopped for lunch when heading down the canal so many years ago.

The canal looks the same, the docks looks the same, the Visitor Center looks the same, but a bridge has been built (from where this picture was taken, on a particularly windless day) to take car and pedestrian traffic to the Dismal Swamp Sate Park on the other side of the canal.

Back on the road, a long run north - passing to the west of Norfolk and through the I-664 tunnel - brought me to Yorktown, where a few pristine period buildings sit overlooking the York River and the lower part of Chesapeake Bay.

Having missed an afternoon ice-cream in Beaufort yesterday, I unexpectedly found a Ben & Jerrys store in Yorktown - quite a treat, though the ice-cream had to be eaten quickly in the shade of the store with temperatures by now in the high 80s, with threatening afternoon thunderclouds off on the horizon.

From Yorktown it was a short drive down the Colonial National Historic Parkway to Williamsburg, which initially seemed to be a major tourist trap, with every conceivable shopping opportunity - though very tastefully done in a low-key manner - surrounded by vast numbers of parking lots.

But I did finally stumble on the restored Williamsburg proper - most impressive, and vast. It would clearly take a whole day to walk around, being accosted at regular intervals by costumed period characters, but as I was there so late everything was shutting up promptly at 5:00pm, preceded it seemed, by a parade through town, so it was the outside of buildings only that I could see.

After rather too long there, now weary in the now 90-degree heat and high humidity, I headed on to Jamestown only to find it pretty much shut down for the day.

So I back-tracked rather than going on towards Richmond, which had been Plan A, and pulled over in a Cracker Barrel parking lot in Williamsburg for the night.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - Williamsburg, VA, to Chambersburg, PA

Very quiet night, and reasonably comfortable after running the genset and A/C for 45 minutes to bring the inside temperature down and also lower the humidity.

Heavy showers in the early hours reduced outside temperatures but not the humidity and it was damp and a little misty as I set off at 7:00am on a wonderful early morning drive along scenic Route 5 all the way into Richmond.

Richmond was disappointing, however, the few remaining historical buildings surrounded by ugly modern Federal buildings, ancillary services, car parks, bus stations, the VCU campus, a sprawling medical center, bustle and noise.

And when I eventually found it, the original Virginia Capitol Building was really not at all inspiring architecturally.

After wandering around trying unsuccessfully to find something uplifting, I was rather glad to be on my way to Fredericksburg which, by contrast, was wonderfully attractive and atmospheric in the large area of historic downtown that is still an active part of the town and not just a stage-managed presentation like Williamsburg.

After picking up a map and some guidance at the Visitor Center, I walked for miles up and down the streets, the day getting oppressively hot and humid, even with the sun becoming increasingly hidden behind clouds.

I was frustrated in my search for an ice-cream reward for so much walking in the heat and humidity - probably adding another mile of pavement-pounding just in my vain search for this treat.

With a good couple of hours or more taken up with my tour, it was time to head on out to make some progress northward, stopping in a convenient Starbucks just before getting onto I-95 for a late lunch and some destination planning... though clearly this was not as thorough as it might have been, as I realized while driving and seeing passing directional signs that I could have cut onto The Skyline Drive about half-way along without too big a diversion, and thus enjoyed at least half of the mountain scenery the drive has to offer.

The distant Appalachians teased me with this oversight, but with today's high humidity the views from the many overlooks on The Skyline Drive would not have been nearly as crisp as they had been when heading south last fall.

I did have one reward for the afternoon's fairly solid driving, though, with a surprise stop late in the day for the ice-cream I had so desired earlier - at Yummy's Frozen Treats, which suddenly popped up beside the highway. And it must have been the biggest "single scoop" I have ever seen packed into a waffle cone - so clearly I should be careful what I wish for!

Turned off Interstate 81 some 14 miles into Pennsylvania for our Cracker Barrel spot for the night, though the Interstate is very close by and the wind blowing the traffic noise directly my way, so it won't be nearly as peaceful as last night.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015 - Chambersburg, PA, to Fishkill, NY

It was indeed a noisy night, not just due to traffic on the Interstate but the wind picking up in the early hours and rattling the fabric cover above the bed slideout.

And it was cool, with temperatures down in the low 50s when I went out for an early run along nearby back roads that were not quite as devoid of traffic as I thought they might be and which were pretty hilly, too. Not long slopes, but short rollercoaster ups and downs.

On the road around 8:45am, our downwind and steady-speed run on I-84 rewarding me with more than 18mpg.

Stopped a little after 10:00am for fuel and an early coffee accompanied by a breakfast sandwich reward for my run (though not quite the size of the "Hambigger" shown on the roadside billboards).

The continuing downwind Interstate drive - passing signs for Scotland, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Belfast - finally took me over the Delaware River where I pulled over for a late bite of lunch at the Kittatinny Point Visitor Center.

From there I took the narrow, winding and scenic Old Mine Road, largely following the course of the Delaware River.

I had been trying to find this route on the drive down in the fall but hadn't been able to locate it, so now this was even more rewarding.

Old Mine Road turns out to be slow and twisting, with a terrible surface and deep potholes in places, but undeniably scenic with the dappled afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees.

Deserted roads and empty countryside for much of the drive, but I did come across a small cluster of deserted red barns to stop and photograph.

A final hour on the Interstate, pulling over at a friendly Cracker Barrel store in Fishkill, NY, just before 6:00pm.

Thursday, May 21, 2015 - Fishkill, NY, to Westbrook, CT

A little chilly yesterday evening, overnight and this morning, so the propane heating was brought into use for the first time since early January. The weather feels to be a sudden contrast from just a couple of days ago when temperatures stayed over 70 degrees through the night.

A little tidying of odds and ends in the RV before setting off on a relatively short drive to the first stop just over the Connecticut border at the Danbury Visitor Center, where the grey and black water tanks were dumped.

Then on into Danbury itself on a reconnaissance mission to the RV storage location I'll be heading to in a couple of days time, tucked away down rather a lot of winding local roads as the GPS didn't take the smartest route.

Back on I-84 for a while, then across country to Essex to drop off the bike at Pedal Power (where I had bought it last September) for cleaning and tune-up.

And then just a few miles further down familiar roads I'm back on the Connecticut shoreline, being welcomed back to my "home town" of Westbrook.

I drive past the green in the town center and out along Route 1 over the "singing bridge"...

...and suddenly, almost without realizing I'm there, as the route is so intimately familiar, having been driven hundreds - or probably thousands - of times...

...I'm turning off Route 1 into Pilots Point North Marina, officially crossing the tracks from my departure in early October 2014.

Many places visited, a wonderful mixture of old and new, many old friends seen again, and 12,000 miles covered with no major mishaps.

Got to call that a success...

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