Nothing could be finer, than to be in CAROLINA!!!

Carolina Scotties

HE SAID:  We went through the Carolina's last year on our way home from Florida to Toronto in the RV.  We didn't have a chance to enjoy it, so we made it a plan to visit the two states this year and take our time.

I'm glad we did. Our first stop after Brunswick George was Charleston South Carolina. We had so many other RV'ers tell us that this stop was a must. 

Pat found us a great RV park very close to the centre of the city.  James Island county park was beautiful. It even had a fantastic off leash dog walk that was so close to the RV.  The park closed down after sundown, but they gave us a code to get in. What was strange though is that after dark, we could only walk the dogs in the RV area of the park.    

We seemed to have arrived at the beginning of the numerous spring breaks here in the USA, so the RV park was really full and they wouldn't allow us to extend our stay.

Folly Beach

We were happy that we are still very close to the east coast beaches. Folly Beach was even nicer then Georgia and certainly fuller with tourists.











We made sure that we took a hop on hop off tour of the city. Getting someone to tell us what we were looking at makes all the difference. Charleston is another southern charm city, but had a major roll in the civil war.   I know the next picture is hard to see,

 but that little piece of land in the middle of the picture is Fort Sumter. It is where the Civil war actually began. Big cost to visit the island, so didn't go any closer. 

  The old homes were amazing. Didn't realize that they used so much iron on the outside of their homes.

Many of the downtown streets still have cobletsone. 

One of our favourites places in the city was this market. It is a totally covered market and goes for blocks. Loved all the shops especially all the Sweet Grass basket vendors.  Definition : Made in Charleston from indigenous bulrush, a strong yet supple grass that thrives in the sandy soil of the coastal region, sweetgrass baskets are now among the nation’s most prized cultural souvenirs.    The baskets were amazing and beautiful, but wow they were expensive.

After touring the market, we enjoyed a great lunch at the Charleston Crab house (just beside the market).  We were told to try She Crab soup. "She-crab soup is a rich soup, similar to bisque, made of milk or heavy cream, crab or fish stock, Atlantic blue crab meat, and crab roe, and a small amount of dry sherry added"  

This was one of the best tasting soups I have ever tried. 

 On another day in Charleston we visited this amazing air craft carrier called the USS Yorkton. I have always wanted to visit this type of ship. The Yorkton is decommissioned and is big tourist attraction here. 

Inside the USS Yorktown

Pat wasn't too excited about this visit, but she didn't complain. I couldn't believe how tight the quarters were. I would have had major cluster phobia  if I had to be a sailor on one of these ships. 

Got a good groupon deal, and took advantage of taking the water taxi around the Charleston harbour. It was fun, and the best part is that dogs could come with us. Both girls had never been on a boat before and it was fun watching their reaction.

It was a fun week but time to move on. Our next stop was Surf City North Carolina. Got a great price for our RV park. We had a fantastic view 

from our front window of the intercostal seaway, but the RV park itself was nothing to write home about. It needed lots of repairs, there were too many full timers that never leave, no cable and no internet. It was a big park and we were close to the garbage bins, which we're always overflowing. 

I couldn't complain again about being right on the coast. The beaches at surf city were also amazing. 

Even though it was spring break time we were far enough north that the beaches here were not very busy. Allowed us to let dogs run off leash.  Still having issues with the load of sand in our RV.  We did take some side trips to towns close by, but nothing exciting except Le Jeune Marine corp base, where my son in law Josh had been stationed. Best place to be was Wilmington NC.  

We also took a hop on hop off tour of the city. It was unforutnate our tour guide was awful. He sounded like he really didn't care for the job and that he had said the same thing so many times, he wasn't sure what he was saying anymore. 

Loved this

church on the Tour. It is the 

1. First Presbyterian Church with a rooster on top. This was a very busy church in the civil war, and it is said the rooster on top helps distinquish the church from being a catholic church.  Go figure.
   
   
   The neatest part of Wilmington is the fact it is called Hollywood of the east.  (nicknamed Wilmywood). There have been hundreds of movies, and tv shows filmed in this city. It even has its own studio lot. Pat and I took a downtown walking tour...mostly seeing sights of Dawson Creek and One Tree hill.   Picture below is from a downtown market where many movie stars have signed their name. Kind of like a Hollywood walk of fame. 
   

   
   
   
   
   
   One of last tours was of the studio lot where we got to see the actual house used for Secrets and Lies ( a great ABC show Pat and I watch every Sunday). Also was in the cafe for "Under the Dome".  I even touched the seat where Stephen King sits while they are filming the series (end seat at the cafe counter).   The sad part is the State of North Carolina isn't giving their large tax breaks to TV and Movie networks anymore. It is said most of the filming out east will move to Atlanta. Sucks for the city of Wilmington where they already have the studios.

   

   Sleepy Hallow also filmed here.

   
   We were to move on to an area of North Carolina where Kitty Hawk was located. We even had a park reserved. But three days before we were to be there, I got bad news that my brother Chris was being moved to a hospice. Last year he was diagnosed with inoperable Pancreatic cancer and wasn't doing well. After a walk by myself and the dogs, I came in and told Pat we needed to move on to Washington DC the next day incase I had to make a trip back to Canada. The next day (Sunday)  got the news he passed away early in the morning. I was driving the RV and had a good cry. Pat was able to get me good tickets to Calgary three days later.   I was happy Pat was left in a good park in a bigger centre (Pat stayed back to watch the dogs). 
2. Overall we loved the Carolina's and we were glad we saw so much.
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4. SHE SAID:
5. I did enjoy our visit in the Carolina's.  I had lots on my to-do list, but many of them are for another day.  Never did make it to the area where the Andy Griffith Show was filmed - was a bit far from where we were staying.  We did lots and enjoyed the places we stayed.  As we were close to the coast, the ground was sandy and sweeping out the RV kept us both busy.
6. We had a relaxing time, poking around the areas we were located, taking the above noted tours.  John REALLY wanted the USS Yorktown tour, which was interesting.  My favourite part of this was going into the bowels of the carrier, looking at the crew quarters, where prisoners were held, the small canteen and barbershop.  The different areas for officers and crew were typical military where officers certainly get more space/luxury than the enlisted men.  The ceilings were low and pipes were running above us, the halls were narrow and...John is somewhat claustrophobic.  After one of the self guided loops he was done.  I was able to have a bit of fun with him during our walk about ;).
7. I throughly enjoyed our movie set walking tour in Wilmington where we went to areas of town where TV series and movies were filmed.  John included our children in Canada on the tour.  He opened our family chat and sent numerous pictures of Dawson's Creek sites as our girls were huge fans of the show.  Poor Paul was at work, with his phone beeping every few minutes - he was away from his desk for part of the tour - I think his co-workers were driven crazy by the noise of his notifications going off.  It was interesting as there were many TV shows and movies filmed in the area.  The walking tour inspired us to take the movie studio tour.
8. The park we stayed in here was not as nice as many we have been in.  The one saving feature was the beautiful view of the water out our front window.  The evening John got the call from his mother and decided to move on to Washington DC,  I had also come to the same decision and had previewed several places he could fly home from, by the time he had returned from his walk - DC seemed to be the best choice.  We packed up Sunday morning, and hit the road.  It was a long trip, as we learned that early Sunday morning Chris passed away.
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Georgia on our mind!!!

St Simons Island

HE SAID:

This is the second time that I have written about our experiences in Georgia. Not sure what happened the first time,… I guess that I didn’t save it correctly. Here I was blaming Pat for the delay in posting about our time here, but I was the guilty one.

Anyway, we did arrive in Brunswick Georgia as planned on February 21. Pat did an awesome job finding an excellent RV park that we could stay for a full month. (I was really happy to have free cable, especially AMC where we could keep up with the Walking Dead)

I really enjoyed my time here, except for the terrible no see ums that took a liking  to me.  So much so, I had to visit a walk in to get some medication to stop the crazy itching.

Brunswick itself wasn't all that exciting.  All over this area of the country was amazing oak trees. Here is Pat and I having our picture taken in front of the oldest oak tree in town.

 Brunswick is know for it being a major import port for European and Asian cars, ie. Mercedes, BMW's etc. The size of ships the cars arrive on we huge.

Brunswick though is right beside two major tourist attractions,. Jekyll and St. Simon's Island. 

Jekyll Island was close to our RV park, so we spent a lot of time here. It had miles of beautiful sandy beaches where we often walked the dogs (just had to put up with a lot of sand in the RV). This island had a very famous winter resort where the rich and famous visited from the north. Unfortunately after the WW2 Florida became more popular and this resort had to shut it down. It was saved by the state and is used now as a historical site.

The Jekyll Island Turtle sanctuary was very interesting. 

Here they save sea turtles from all over the eastern USA. Above is the "Turtle" doc helping out this little guy.


We took a really good tour of St Simons Island.  There were quite a few plantations here where they grew cotton and rice. The summers where so hot though, the plantation owners would leave this area and go to Brunswick. However they left the slaves alone where many died.

The tour we took of this Island was very interesting. St Simons also played a big part in the civil war due to its strategic location.

My favourite tourist stop in Georgia was our visits to Savannah. I have always wanted to visit this area, ever since watching and reading the Prince of Tides. This was an amazing place. The scenery was fantastic.

Besides being the location of many films, including where they filmed Forest Gump, 

it was also the a spot for famous painters (Norman Rockwell's market scene) location.

Savannah was the location of one of the original 13 colonies and believe or not has the second largest St Patrick's day celebration in the USA (after NYC). We did our tour of the city the day after, and you could tell the city was well decorated. Even when I ordered a lemonade at Chick Fil-A it was green.

We both thought we might of left Florida a little too early. Even though where we were was really close to the state line, the weather was very cool and often wet.  Took advantage of the cool days and did some RV reorganization. When you live in a 30 by 10 foot home, everything must be kept organized.   Next stop ...the Carolina's. 

She said...Georgia was a lovely place to spend some time.  It was green, clean and the place we stayed was very nice.  There is so much history in this area, as a history buff I really enjoyed the tours that we took.  I loved St. Simons Island.  We went on a trolley tour around this island, which was presented very well.  Our guide was well versed in history and local customs.  We learned a lot about some of the freed slave culture as he tended to discuss this as we drove around the island.  His point about a church with blue stained glass windows being a predominantly black congregation was something I had never heard of.  As well, painting the roof of a porch sky blue will help keep bugs away.  After that I notice a lot of sky blue porch roofs - I do wonder if it works.  

Georgia was also very cool and wet during our visit.  On the days it did warm up the noseeums were a nightmare.  I am glad John was with me during walks, as they prefer his taste to mine and he diverted their attention from me.  John ended up with red itchy marks that looked very trashy, as well as being very itchy...poor guy, but it is better than the illnesses that he had last year during our trip.

We went on a number of walks on off leash dog parks with Libby and Kiri.  They enjoyed it...rubbing their beards in the coarse sand, having their skirts drag along the coarse sand...you're getting the drift, I know.  They liked to get their feet and belly wet, then absorb as much sand as they could to bring back into the car and finally to the motorhome.  Ick!  I swear we are still finding sand in corners from the Georgia beaches.

We met a few interesting people here - when we were at the Kissing Oak - picture above - a fellow actually pulled over to take our picture.  His family has lived in the area for about 150 years.  I think he may have circled block a couple of times to watch our selfie attempts and finally felt sorry for us.  In the park I chatted quite a bit with an older gentleman from the Ottawa area.  He had a beautiful German Shepard, who the girls got along with very well and we had long talks about dog health in an RV and internet reception.  We bumped into a couple from Edmonton who had a Westie and a Scottish Terrier - they could empathize about skirted dogs and the beach.  On an evening walk we started talking with a couple from Quebec who steered us to an RV Park that was in Jersey City, with a view of the Statue of Liberty, for our adventures in New York coming at the end of April.  It was a bonus for me as I was trying to figure out where to park the giant vehicle in the giant city.  Time went quickly and it was time to move on...which we will post about soon :)