Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

Since our internet access has been a bit sporadic, we still have a collection of photos from earlier phases of our journey that we hadn’t yet gotten around to posting. So if you will, return with us now to early December, and Michigan…

Near Bear Lake, Michigan (northwestern side of the lower peninsula), we hiked a trail back to this beautiful spot overlooking Lake Michigan.

Since it was hunting season, we all had to wear ORANGE…

…including our very deer-like dog.

A couple of days after our hike, we had a big snowstorm (still in Bear Lake, visiting family). This was the beautiful view we had upon awakening the next day.

On our drive to Michigan’s upper peninsula, we had a slightly nerve-wracking crossing of the Mackinac Bridge, on a very windy day. (Someone was actually blown off the bridge once!)

When we saw this, we knew we were actually in the U.P. – these signs were everywhere! (No, this is not the type of store you think it is – pasties in the U.P. are like meat-filled pies.)

And, here is how we REALLY knew we were in the U.P. – the gorgeous sunset over Lake Michigan.

Now, we’ll skip forward a bit in our trip…

After our stop in Charlotte, NC, we headed south through South Carolina and part of Georgia. We found this amazing sky on our way out of North Carolina.

Ever since seeing the movie “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” I’ve wanted to see Savannah in person. So, of course we had to make a detour into the city. The historic section is absolutely beautiful – lots of little parks, and traffic circles to keep car speeds low. We both agreed that if we had any desire to remain on the east coast, we would have to consider Savannah.

We got a kick out of the sign on the back of this truck, spotted somewhere around the Georgia-Florida border.

Next up, Florida’s Ocala National Forest, which deserves its own entry.

Finally, some real out-there scary-at-night camping! Davenport Landing is a primitive (ie, no facilities) campsite in Ocala N.F., several miles down a forest road from the pavement.

Here’s the “road” into the site, about half a mile from the unpaved Forest Road 77:

This Lushness in the middle of December, especially after a few weeks in beautiful-but-frigid Michigan…ahhhhhhh!

Here’s our “house”:

And a strange bug…at first I thought it was two bugs gettin’ jiggy, but it seems like the back half wraps up over the back:

This slow-moving river was just down a little hill from the campsite:

A very scary looking spider – at first I thought he was being eaten by some sort of beetle, but the carapace is definitely his. I’m glad he’s only about 1cm long

One morning as I made coffee, I noticed Ceili straining at the leash…looked up, and saw this:

So we’ve been a bit remiss in keeping up with the blog…on the 10th, we stopped for a day in Charlotte, NC, to visit a good friend of mine from my high school years. It was great catching up – the second time in this journey that I’ve seen someone for the first time in 20 years and had a blast.

From there, we headed South, stopping again at a KOA in South Carolina which Teri blogged about below. Much nicer than the parking lot vibe of many RV parks, and did much to improve my opinion of KOA in general. It’s nice, and we can get internet access there to work and blog, but still nothing like real camping (some of which is coming up in the next post).

We got to Florida on the 14th, intending to stay in a “primitive” campground in Ocala National Forest (ie, no facilities – REAL camping), but it was late and dark and I hadn’t researched things quite as well as I could have. After an hour of jouncing down unpaved forest roads in the dark, we ended up getting a room at a Quality Inn in Palatka. I paid about a hundred bucks for shoddy planning, and Teri was incredibly tolerant of the whole fiasco.

It was a pleasant respite, and resulted in a few wildlife sightings:

Bat hanging out at the Quality Inn:

Owl irritated by my wee-hours photo mission:

The bridge to Palatka:

Despite the truth in Peter’s previous rant about many KOA campgrounds being more like parking lots, we found a perfectly lovely KOA last night in Point South, South Carolina (just off I-95).

I woke up this morning in a beautiful wooded lot, with the birds chirping and the smell of live trees and vegetation (i.e. not killed off by winter temps). Takes me right back to summer camp days.

If I could post the wonderful scents of fresh air and trees here I would, but instead will have to make do with a photo of our campsite this morning:

The only drawback we found here, was the warning that the alligators in the lake have been known to attack dogs. I can just see Ceili now: “Hello, what kind of strange squirrel are you?” CHOMP!

So we’ve kept her well away from the lake.

Since you haven’t heard from us for a few days, I thought I’d post some visual updates of our journey.

Found this vw bus in a rest stop in Illinois:

Sunset over farmland in southern Indiana:

Peter making breakfast in 20 degree weather in Newport, Tennessee:

Crossing the beautiful Smoky Mountains:

Ceili, patient as ever in the backseat:

And, this evening just before we pulled into our KOA campground in southern South Carolina:

Tomorrow, we’ll head toward Savannah, Georgia and beyond, on our way to Florida and the Ocala National Forest for some real camping.

P.S. It’s supposed to be 75 degrees in Savannah tomorrow…

This was December 9th, near Newport Tennessee