Farewell to Marsh Country; Hello to Macon

On Friday we bade farewell to Georgia's marsh country, and headed inland to Macon.  The 243-mile trip was to be an easy one--travel north on I95 to Savannah, then travel west on I16 all the way to Macon.  Make one rest stop about 80-90 miles into the trip, and one lunch stop 100 more miles down the road.  We would arrive in Macon around 2:00 pm with lots of daylight to set up before relaxing with a cold one--all following the operating mode we've used thus far.  Well, best-laid plans and all that 'stuff'.

Our drive on I95 was very pleasant--nice smooth road, average traffic.  We exited to I16, and began looking for a place for our first rest stop.  Suddenly, the decision on where to stop was made for us.  At mile marker 139 on I16, no more than 25 miles west of the center of Savannah, there was a mighty THUMP followed by the truck's strong desire to go left while the RV continued to go straight.  After wrestling the truck & RV to a stop on the shoulder of the road, we discovered that the tread on our truck's left rear tire had bid the tire goodbye.

It damaged the fender of the truck, but at least that was the extent of it.  Very scarey, to say the least, and certainly not in our game plan, but not to worry.  We had enrolled in Good Sam's Emergency Road Service for this very reason.  We made the call and was assured that someone would be there to help us in 55 minutes.  When we hung up, it was 11:10 am.  We had rather hoped that since we were practically still in Savannah, the response time would be quicker, but OK.  So we'll just combine the scheduled rest stop with the lunch stop, and we should still be in Macon in plenty of time.  Let's have our sandwiches and be thankful that the damage was not worse, that the weather is still very nice (thunderstorms are expected for later today, but we'll be out of here way before that), and that we have the basic comforts of home right here (bathroom and refrigerator).

After an hour and a half, we called Good Sam to find out why no one had arrived yet.  We were told that they had just found out that the service they had dispatched to us had just informed them that we were not in their service area--someone else would have to be dispatched.  Good Sam apologized, and said they would look into another resource that would be able to send service, and would get back to us.  Did I mention that we were only 25 miles from the very center of Savannah?  How hard should it be to find a service?  Anyway, we were stuck so we waited...and waited...and waited.  Long story that is filled with lots of phone calls, lots of apologies from Good Sam, and lots of frustration and irritation.  The short version is that we sat at mile marker 139 on I16 for 5 hours before we were able to continue our trip to Macon.  We arrived at our RV site at 7:00 pm, very tired and not wanting to go through that again.  Good Sam will be hearing from us.

At least the park here in Macon is really nice.  The scenery is gorgeous, the site is great (concrete, very long, very wide), and the atmosphere is very peaceful.

We're pretty sure we're going to enjoy spending a week here even if we hated the trip.

Brunswick, Georgia

We've been in Brunswick, Georgia since February 23.  We'll be leaving here on March 23.  The first 2 weeks were fraught with rainy, windy (15mph-25mph/gusts to 35mph) weather and a couple of tornado events just to keep us on our toes.  It seems to be true that mobile/motor homes are magnets for tornadoes--we've been threatened with them several times over the past couple of months.  We do have our routine down--find the best available shelter (turned out to be a ditch when we were in Alabama), dress in something more substantial than sweats, make sure we have credit cards/cash/cell phones, have the laptop wrapped in plastic and ready to grab as we run out the door.  So far that's as far as we've had to go, and truly don't wish to go any further.  Over this past week the weather has FINALLY become very favorable with sunny skies and light winds, so we've been able to comfortably get out a bit.

The park that we're in here is labeled as 'resort', and is an improvement over the last park.  The streets are paved and the pads are level concrete.  Most all the sites are pull-thrus with a concrete patio and grill.

We've been able to get out on our bikes again, and walking around the park is very comfortable.  There's a small pond at the back side of the park where we spotted a blue heron on one of our walks.

We're actually about 10 miles outside of Brunswick proper.  To get to Brunswick, we drive over the Sidney Lanier Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge.  It's about 1.5 miles across and is a popular route for runners, walkers, and bikers.  We took a walk over it in each direction yesterday.

Brunswick was home to one of the shipyards that built liberty ships during World War II.  The number of ships that were built in a short amount of time by these shipyards is impressive.  Brunswick's World War II memorial is a model of one of these liberty ships.

There are 2 islands in Brunswick that are popular tourist areas--St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island.  Both of them were playgrounds for the rich and famous in the early 1900's.  Today St. Simons Island is very touristy, while Jekyll Island has tried to maintain its undeveloped status, focusing on nature.

On St. Simons Island, we visited the lighthouse.  This still-functioning lighthouse was build in 1872, is 104 feet tall, and there are 129 steps to the top.

We also visited the Fort Frederica National Monument which is on St. Simons.  The ruins of this fort is an interesting tour.  It was built by James Oglethorpe in the 1700's to defend the Georgia colony from the Spanish invasion.  Despite its success, its existence was short lived once the Spanish threat disappeared.

This was our first visit to a national park.  We procured our senior-citizen lifetime pass to all national parks for a whopping $10!!  What a deal.  Even though only one of us is officially a senior citizen, the pass allows the senior citizen to bring along a guest, so we're now set to visit as many national parks as we can/want during our adventure and beyond.

Our visit to Jekyll Island focused mainly on the sea turtle protection and rescue mission that is in force there.  We visited the Sea Turtle Center and saw some of the turtles that are currently undergoing medical and physical rehab procedures.  The situation for sea turtles is not good.  Pollution of the Sargasso Sea where the sea turtles mature is causing great harm to the turtles.  One of the bigger problems is the growth of barnacles on the turtles' shells.

There was a bit of laser surgery going on while we were there.  Visitors could view through a window.

Tomorrow we're going to Jacksonville, FL which is about 60 miles south of Brunswick. And we're toying with the idea of taking a swamp tour next week in the Okefenokee Swamp not far from here.