Cumberland Island

When you enter Georgia from Florida on the I-95 at exit 1 there is the town of St-Marys, we stopped and camped there from the 29 of november to the 3rd of december before driving north to get home. We visited the region and it is quite interesting, first the little coastal towns of St-Marys in Georgia. and Fernandina Beach in Florida each side of the estuary of the St-Mary river have a charm of their own and are nice to visit. Also due to the presence of the Kingsland Navy Base and it's nuclear submarines there is a submarine museum in St-Marys. There is also Cumberland Island National Seashore that is a protected island that can only be visited with the park boat (reservations are necessary), on this island there is a population of wild horses and ruins of a castle owned and occupied in the late 1800 by the Carnegies. Also on the Florida side there is an old civil war era fort, Fort Clinch that can be visited, the 3 miles road to the fort is like driving trough a tunel of live oaks with their spanish moss. It gave us a chance to rest before heading home.

The Beach at Fort Clinch

Returning to St-Marys fron Cumberland Island

Key West

After being sea sick on my tuesday dive and since wednesday the waves were even bigger my dive was cancelled so we decided to spend the day in Key West doing the tourist thing. So we parked the car and used the troley to get around always a good choice when you can get on and off as you wish. So we did the Hemingway house, the butterfly conservatory and had lunch on the Duval beach. The town is nice and full of history, the food is good and there is lots to see and I plan to come back again.

SCUBA Training

One of the things I wanted to do for a long time is to go SCUBA diving, so I
decided that now it was time for it. From home I did a little research and found
that there was a dive center that is in between the two locations I am camping at
in the keys. So I enrolled in the open water certification class at Tilden Dive
Center in Marathon Florida, uppon registration they gave me a kit including a
book to study, so I got down to it and passed 2 days studying. Then we got to the
pool part of the program and I got to meet my instructor, his name is Hayes and I
am is only student so I get one on one instruction, He's a great instructor
always ready with a tip and a pep talk when needed. The theory part of the
program goes as well as it can go. In my case the hard part is the physical
portion first I need to swim 50m under water without equipement it took me 3
tries, then 200m on the surface any style you want, good thing the people around
the pool don't have those scorecards like at the olympics, when I finished this
portion I was so dizzy I had to sit in the stairs of the pool for 10 minutes to
regain my balance. The third part was the deadman float for 10 minutes, for some
reason this exercise was unsetling for me. Today I went for my first ocean dive,
so I got up at 6h00 and drove one hour to the dive center and had a good
breakfast buritos and coffee at McDonald. When we got to the dive site it was
quite an agiteted sea at least for my comfort zone I felt a little nauseaus. I
got my gear on and took the step into the ocean, we dove got buyant with some
difficulty and did a few excercises before the nausea started again. As the need
to vomit came uppon me I was confronted with a problem that I did not know the
answer for, so I managed to resist the urge to barf and signaled my instructor
that I had to surface good thing that he held me down on the ascent because I was
going up a bit fast since that to ad insult to injury my weight belt was falling
off and I had to hold it with one hand. Leaning on the side of the boat the
fishes below were in a frenzy as I was serving them a Hot McDonald Breakfast.
So on that whole trip my total divetime was 9 minutes and I spent the remainder
of the trip between the side of the boat and lying down. Tomorow was supposed to
be my next trip but I just got a call that the ocean will be even rougher tomorow
and that we are going to try for wednesday instead.

Long Key State Park

AKA Camper's Paradise.
from Monday the 15 to Saturday the 20th of November:
I haven't posted all week because we were without internet, so here it is with a little delay. The place is fantatastic we are in the keys about 65 miles from Key West, the campsite is on the beach and the ocean is shallow, you can walk half a mile in the ocean before you are waist deep. Needless to say the sunrise is at your door every morning. It is opened to all type of campers quite a few of them camping in small tents.When I arrived I setup a tripod that I pegged to the groung and left it there for the duration of my stay. Here are two pictures I took from this position, the first one right after the setup and the other at night a 19 minutes exposure that reaveling the star movement in the form of a trail.

At the Dog Beach

Today we went to Walton Rock Beach in Port St-Lucie 27'20'17.00" N - 80'14'00.83"W it's the only beach that allows dogs in these parts. Although it was not a good beach day whit the high winds, big tides and the ever dangerous riptide currents, it was still nice to be at the beach taking pictures. I took those of a dog that was playing in the water, not my dog that was happy to be in her chair looking at the people and dogs passing on the beach.

In and out of Alabama

Well here it is I'm out of the woods and almost in Florida. For the last few days we were in Desoto State Park in Alabama and there was no internet, we are now in Georgia close to the state line of Florida, we are stopped for the day we have to refill the propane tank and do some groceries. While we were in Alabama we went on a trail with the dog, she likes it a lot but after a while she doesn't want to move anymore, so this time we set her up in the backpack and she was happy. There were some falls to see on these trails but the water level of the river was very low and therefore the falls much less spectacular. Tomorow we will setup somewhere in Florida we are in no rush we still have 5 days to get to Long Key State Park in the keys. Here are some pictures from Alabama, my next post should be from Florida.

Stormfront in the Smokies

It rained hard all night and through the morning, after lunch the sun came up so we decided to take the road trough the park to the North Carolina entrance 30 miles away. It was nice enought but as we got to Newfound Gap at 5500 feet it was windy and close to the freezing point. The road to the dome was closed because what we got as rain in the valley they got as snow at higher altitudes. On the way back the storm was comming in again. We passed trough a little rain driving down on the Tennesse side and it was sunny by the time we got to our camp in Pigeon Forge, unfortunatly we had dammage to the awning of the trailer caused by the wind. Here a picture taken near Newfound Gap around 4:30 PM on our way back.

Roaring Fork

There are remote areas in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that were inhabited in the 30s when the land was aquired by the federal goverment to make the park. Some of the occupants were displaced others were allowed to stay for the rest of their natural life. Some of their homestead were conserved by the Natural Park Service. One of these region is Roaring Fork, it is now accessible by a small winding mountain road and along the way there are places to stop for trails or to visit some of the conserved homesteads, this was the house of Noah Ogle and his family.

After lunch we returned to the Roaring Forks, parked and took the trail that

leads to the Grotto Falls one of many falls in the park. The 2.5 miles trail was

marked as moderate in difficulty, now I know we are not better then moderate in

our physical shape the trail climbs from 3300 feet to 3800 feet but worth every

step.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Well here it is we are in Pigeon Forge at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, so this morning I went out and took some pictures from the top of Clingmans Dome at 6600 feet. The last kilometer is a hike up a steep hill, it reminds you of how many bags of chips you ate while watching TV during the rest of the year. After much huffing and puffing I made it to the top.

I came back to camp for lunch, and we went to Cades Cove, a valley nestled in the mountains. It used to be populated in the 19th century and there are structures that were abandoned. It's a beautifull place to see.

Natural Bridge Virginia

Today the weather was nice and we visited Natural Bridge, first there is the trail along cedar creek that goes down at least 150 steps and it goes right trough the formation. at the bottom of the formation there is the survey marker left by George Washington in the 18th century and the trail goes on past an indian village and ends a mile further a a little water fall. We went back to camp for lunch and returned in the afternoon to visit their caverns. Quite a nice day that I ended with a car ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Tomorow we are heading to Pigeon Forge, Tennesse.

Foamhenge

In the rolling hills of Virginia hidden at the end of a dirt road on top of a hill you can find Foamhenge a full scale replica made of styrofoam of the famous Stonehenge. I had found the spot in Google Earth and entered the coordinates in my GPS, good thing I would never have found it. We are parked in this area for a few days and there is a lot of little gems to discover, more to follow.

Getting ready for the annual november road trip.

With only five days before the departure there is still lots to do. This morning we took care of putting away all the stuff in the backyard and other seasonal chores, has to be done before we leave, when we come back it will be winter. We have 2 or 3 days of work left to do. Last preparations on wednesday and then thursday morning we hit the road.

Here is the travel plan so far, we have to be in the keys from the 15 to the 29 of november, the rest is flexible depending on the weather.