#44 - Coveys Great Adventure – April 2018 – Florida to Virginia

April 2018 – Florida to Virginia      

April turned out to be one of the busiest travel periods that we can remember. Nine campgrounds across five states was way too fast. The places started to blend together after awhile. We (I) felt like we “only” had two months to make our planned rendezvous with Charlie and Mollie at Casa Kendrick in June, so we (I) pushed harder than we really needed to. Still, we had fun and saw lots of new places, we just didn’t spend enough time in any of them.

Settled in at Clearwater RV Resort

 Returning to Clearwater RV Resort felt familiar because we stayed there for a couple of weeks on our 2016 trip. The warm feelings evaporated, though, when the coach wouldn't start after we pulled into the park. The engine wouldn't even turn over. About an hour later something I tried finally worked and it started. My blood pressure slowly returned to normal, but cocktails came early that afternoon. The park is located several miles north of St. Petersburg and just south of Dunedin and Tarpon Springs. On our last trip we visited many of the top attractions in St. Pete like the Chihuly Experience glass exhibition and the Dali Museum.

Excellent! Southern Fresh in Safety Harbor

This trip we planned around people. Spending time with Kayeanne’s

brother Grant is always fun. He knows St. Petersburg like a native and is an excellent guide. He was packing up and getting ready to sell his condo. He also just bought a turbo charged Honda Civic R pocket-rocket that he let me drive: zowee!

Busbouy

Ed Woznicki arrived in Dunedin in January and spent three months exploring the coast from Clearwater to Tarpon Springs. He delayed his departure to meet up with us. By the time we arrived he was ready to give us in-depth guided tours. With his newfound local knowledge it was easy to see why he is so enthused about that stretch of coast. It is always great to spend time with Ed. Occasionally we even get to see Christine, too, but unfortunately not this time. We miss you, Christine!

Sharky's on Venice beach

Kayeanne’s aunt Garnet and cousin Corby recently moved from Ohio to Venice, Florida. I’d never met Corby and couldn’t remember meeting Garnet about 25 years ago. Kayeanne hadn’t seen them in many years, so one day we picked up Grant in St. Pete and headed down the coast to meet them for lunch. Corby suggested going to Sharky’s On The Pier, right on the beach in Venice and we had a great time exchanging stories. They are hoping to plan an RV trip to Alaska, so we may see them again in the West, soon.

Before heading north we wanted to make one more visit. We had enjoyed meeting Kayeanne’s cousin Tracy (Corby’s brother) and his wife Shelley on our last trip and looked forward to another visit. They live on Marco Island, about 200 miles south of Clearwater so we moved south to Collier-Seminole State Park for a few days. The park is a few miles inland of Marco Island on the edge of the Everglades.

As you may recall, south Florida was hammered by Hurricane Irma last year. Several months later, the worst of the damage has been repaired, but there are still many buildings on Marco Island with blue tarps on roofs waiting repair. The trees throughout the area look like a giant hedge trimmer cut them all off about 30 feet above the ground. Luckily their house escaped serious damage. Tracy and Shelley are gracious hosts and fun folks that we hope to see again, soon.

We passed through the Everglades on the way to the Keys on our last trip, but didn’t really spend any time looking around. This year we did. Collier-Seminole proved to be an ideal base to visit Everglades City, Chokoloskee and Shark Valley.

The small one-room Museum of the Everglades was a real find. The history of the Everglades and the larger-than-life figure of Barron Collier was quite interesting. At one point he owned over one million acres in southwestern Florida, making him the largest private land owner in the state. Among many other accomplishments, he is credited with constructing most of the Tamiami Trail. Building a road across the Everglades was considered impossible by most engineers at the time. The pictures showing what they encountered and the conditions they worked in are impressive. The museum building was damaged during the hurricane last year but the staff moved the exhibits to safety.

Original walking dredge used to build the Tamiami Trail

The next day we took a guided boat tour of a very small section of the Ten Thousand Islands located along the coast where the Everglades meets the ocean. The tour left Smallwood Store Museum at the tip of Chokoloskee Island, a local landmark that has been in the same place, run by the same family since 1906. The museum proved to be a fascinating window into a way of life totally isolated from the rest of the country. Fortunately the store is built on high stilts, because Irma’s storm surge actually came right to floor level, the highest ever. Our guide was the great, great granddaughter of Mr. Smallwood, the store’s founder. We really enjoyed watching the flocks of birds and listening to her stories. We didn’t see any manatees, but the dolphins showed up and gave us a rousing welcome.

Shark Valley is formally known as The Valley of the Shark River, one of the major out flows from the Everglades. And, yes, there are no sharks, but there are tens of thousands of alligators, millions of turtles and snakes, and zillions of birds. We saw many of them during our visit and tour. The Everglades is a significant ecological asset that we are just now understanding. We’ve come perilously close to destroying it by decades of irresponsible development. It will take many, many years to restore what's

left. It was a great tour, well worth the time and cost.

As nice as it had been to see Kayeanne’s family and Ed and southwestern Florida, the time had finally come to head north. We wanted to move quickly to places in North Carolina and Virginia where we wanted to spend some time, so we stayed briefly in:

Buffalo at Payne's Prairie State Park

- Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park, just outside of Gainesville. Originally a large ranch, the park is now a wildlife sanctuary. There is a tall observation tower that gives a panoramic view of the miles of grasslands, forest and, if you are lucky, some of the buffalo that have been introduced to the area.

- Fort McAllister State Park in southern Georgia used to be a family ranch on an island that became a state park in a beautiful setting. The campground really isn’t set up for large RV’s, though, and we had a challenge getting into our site. The Fish Tales bar and restaurant in the local marina is recommended.

- Bass Lake Campground in Dillon South Carolina was a good place to stay, but it was right next to the freeway and very, very noisy. It had excellent dog walking, though.

- Hagen-Stone City Park Campground in Pleasant Garden, North Carolina was a “pleasant” surprise. We needed to visit Greensboro to get some work done on the coach. We picked Hagen-Stone for low cost and proximity to the city. We ended up liking the campground, and Greensboro turned out to be a pleasant place to visit.

Lexington Glass Works

Asheville was one of the places that we bypassed in 2016 and we both wanted to explore this trip. We wanted to tour the Biltmore mansion and explore the city and surrounding countryside. Lake Powhattan NFS campground turned out to be perfect for us. Located south of the city in rolling hills close to a main highway, it is just 20 minutes from the Biltmore. Maybe just as importantly, it is also close to a Trader Joe’s. Clearly, it checked all of our boxes, it even had great dog walking. It is also just up the road from

Discount Shoes, the largest shoe store either of us have ever seen. I’ll bet they have over 100,000 pairs of unique shoes on display. Yes, Kayeanne bought a pair.

The Biltmore is …. unique. It costs $65 a piece just to enter the grounds. That gives you access to the house and gardens, and the privilege of shuffling in line from room to room for a couple of hours with hundreds of other gawkers under the watchful eyes of scores of staff, some of whom do seem to know what they were talking about. The gardens were fabulous, of course, too. The best part of the tour was driving four miles to Antler Hill, a winery, hotel, restaurant, creamery, etc., complex where we enjoyed a glass of good wine in pleasant surroundings.

Unfortunately, you can’t go to Antler Hill without paying the entrance fee.

The best of Biltmore

Thinking about it later, I guess I missed the point of the Biltmore. I'm glad I didn’t miss seeing it, but I certainly won’t go back.
Built carefully at great expense but with no purpose except to impress others it seemed cold, humorless and garish. By contrast, Hearst Castle is exuberant and fun.

One of the high points of our 2016 visit to Charleston, South Carolina, was touring Fort Sumter, where the opening shots of the Civil War were fired. Our next stop this year was James River State Park in Gladstone, Virginia, to visit Appomattox Court House, where the war ended.

McLean House where Grant and Lee met

The National Park Service has done a good job preserving this site, and telling the story of the events leading to the final days of the war and the historic meeting between Grant and Lee that ended it. There are certainly ghosts in those fields.

It says "Bruce & Stiff"!

When planning this stop, I hadn’t given any thought to the town of Appomattox. All of my focus was on the historic events that transpired here 153 years ago. The town turned out to be an attractive, pleasant place. Many 19^th century homes have been kept up or recently renovated. The historic downtown area is small, but worth the time to check out. We were a little ahead of the tourist season and some shops were either not yet open, or only open on weekends.

We are big fans of food truck dining. We’ve discovered some gems and the Taco Wagon in Appomattox was a real find. It was so good that we drove 40 miles round trip to visit it twice. The al pastor (marinated pork and pineapple), and barbacoa (barbecued pork) tacos were outstanding. Kayeanne’s fish tacos were great, too. The next day I had a gringa, a large tortilla stuffed with al pastor and cheese served on a bed of rice: absolutely delicious. My mouth is watering just thinking about this place.

One of Kayeanne’s must-see stops was Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia. I am very glad she insisted that we stop here. History classes 60 years ago made me casually aware of Jefferson’s role in the formative years of our country. Visiting Monticello opened my eyes to just how important his many contributions were. To my mind, he is the creator of most of the core values that we aspire to as Americans, today. Monticello is a fraction of the size of Biltmore, but is so much more impressive in every way.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation has done a great job preserving and restoring the buildings and grounds, and presenting a balanced and thoughtful story of this truly fascinating man.

Charlottesville also marked a small first for us: the first time in four years and over 200 campgrounds that we stayed in a KOA campground. Those who don’t camp won’t understand, but to have been traveling as long as we have without setting foot in a KOA is pretty surprising. Anyway, the Charlottesville KOA was a slightly expensive but pleasant and convenient introduction to the KOA camping experience. The dogs really enjoyed hiking in the heavily wooded area surrounding the park.

Next month we continue our Civil War explorations at Gettysburg, visit the Finger Lakes region of western New York and then on to Cape Cod.

More soon,

Bob