The Gulf Coast 
We left right after we woke up. We decided to try having breakfast at a little diner in the next town. It was a pretty busy place and the food was decent. Their "french fries" were hashbrowns. :) I did sort of wonder why they would server french fries in the morning.
We stopped at St. George Island State Park. You have to drive across a crazy long bridge to get there. We drove the four miles to the end of the park, then biked the 5 miles to the end of the island, mostly staying on the beach. There was a relatively large fish stuck on the beach that was still alive, so I helped get that back in the water. We found a couple very neat shells and there were quite a few jellyfish on the shore. At least on the bay side. Not as many on the gulf side.
We then headed for Panama City and are now sitting in a Walmart parking lot for the night. We probably could have gone to the next forest and found a spot, but it's getting late and we figured we could get more work done here.
-Miranda


Lucy got into the cupboard.

Pickles sleeping with the vacuum.

Jellyfish

A ton of pelicans and gulls on the bay side, just hanging out.

[ add comment ]
Cold!! 
What the heck! It's been cold in the morning. The temperature swings down here are crazy! It's in the 70's or 80's during the day and down in the 30's at night. We just don't want to take the chance of the pipes freezing. Blah.

Anyway, we ended up staying in Osceola National Forest for a total of 3 nights. It got pretty chilly at night there too, but it was very nice during the day. The spiders down here are huge!

We have been getting up early (for us) now, so we ran a number of errands while we were in Tallahassee, including going to a small YMCA. We then headed towards a national forest. It was trashy! There were random places we could have stayed probably, but there was garbage and shotgun shells everywhere. We did end up finding one place that wasn't awful, but we just stayed there the night and left right when we woke up in the morning. We then drove to Tate's Hell State Forest and have had little luck here. The roads are dug out on either side and there is water there, so it basically makes it hard to pull off anywhere. We finally found a large, unused intersection with awesome internet and decided we would just stay here for the night. Hopefully it doesn't freeze...
-Miranda

[ 1533 comments ] ( 4 views )
Little Talbot Island State Park 
We did end up biking a little more the next day at Jekyll Island. We went to the driftwood beach, which was similar to what we saw on Hunter Island, but they were fallen weird directions. Some towards the water, some away, which made for some interesting passageways. We then biked down the beach a bit and ended up doing some body surfing in the ocean. Then, as we were leaving to go back on the bike path, Joe had a flat tire... Yeah.. he doesn't have the best of luck. Fortunately, there were some people outside of their homes and we were debating what to do, a guy mentioned he could bring Joe and the bike to the campground. So, I biked back and he got a ride.

We left the next day and headed for Little Talbot State Park. It's another island on the coast. The campground was tiny. Only 40 spots total and they were really well separated. Forest between them, etc. Very nice. We got a spot next to the marsh. We went for a 3.5 mile walk which went down a trail, then came back on the beach.

We only stayed one night and left this morning. We drove through Jacksonville, stopped to get a new tire on Joe's bike, stopped for lunch and I got my hair cut. I've been getting really sick of dealing with long hair, so I wanted it short. It is now short.

We're currently in Osceola National Forest at a very nice spot where we have not even heard any cars go by on the road that is a bit of a walk away. So, we'll probably stay here at least one night, maybe more depending on how power goes.

-Miranda


A fun path out to a lookout over a marsh.

The driftwood beach on Jekyll Island.

The end of the trail and onto the beach!

Our view from our campsite on Little Talbot State Park.

My new hair.


[ 3 comments ] ( 20 views )
Muggy 
The spot in Sumter National Forest was great. Unfortunately, we were not getting enough sun and it was raining yesterday, so our battery was running extremely low. Before we left we checked out one other road in the forest that looked promising. We didn't find any other spot where we would have been able to park, but we did go for a walk in the forest to a nearby river. Some of the plants and trees around there are very neat.

We left and since we were going to be driving through Columbia, we stopped at a YMCA and also looked for a restaurant that had some good vegetarian food. We ended up going to the Blue Cactus. A little, hole in the wall, Korean restaurant. The food was very good.

Last night it was pouring like crazy. We got to Colleton State Park and stayed there the night. We are probably going to head back north a little bit today since it is pretty toasty and muggy.

-Miranda


This is an old picture, but I hadn't gotten around to getting the photos off my computer. This was at a small state park where there was a natural tunnel in the rock. Since the tunnel was already there, they put the train tracks through it. While we were there, a train just happened to be going by.

A large tree with a vine hanging off it. Joe was hoping to be able to swing on it, but it wasn't strong enough.

Some bamboo.

[ 1 comment ] ( 12 views )
Sumter National Forest 
Finally! We finally found a proper National Forest.
We stayed in the Walmart parking lot for two nights so we could get a bunch of work done. We left yesterday, early afternoon and headed towards Union, SC in search of a YMCA. That one was apparently closed on Sundays. The whole town was really dreary and run down looking. Everything looked closed or out of business. So, we just left and headed towards the Sumter.

We picked a road and drove down it. We parked in a spot for lunch then biked down the road to see if we could find a spot. We ended up finding a small road that branched off the main one, split, and both ends ended. Perfect! Unfortunately, our power is pretty low (it's been cloudy) but it's so nice to finally be somewhere away from people and cities.
-Miranda

[ 3 comments ] ( 8 views )

Back Next