"Like Nascar on Bikes..."

Note: This is a BIG blog today, lots of photos we wanted to share. We heard that there was going to be a BIG bike race in Beaufort! (In the south, you say "Bew-fert". Just don't say "Bow-fort", or they will know you are a northerner :-)  It's called the Beaufort Memorial Cycling Classic, the 6th annual one. It was the third in a series of seven races in nine days, each in a different southwestern city. It's an exciting race of a different kind in the sleepy town of Beaufort. It's called "criterion" racing--a short, fast course in an urban area. Everybody is gonna wake up for this one! They are expecting 3,000 spectators, so we thought we'd better get there early. The workers were just starting to set up the rails when we got there...but the crowd didn't start gathering until around 6:00...They had rails all along the course, and hay bales in the turns in case of a crash.

It's an exciting .6 mile course where the bikers might hit speeds up to 40 miles per hour, coming into tight turns at these fast speeds...The bikers go round and round the course, 75 times or 45 miles for the men's race. Criterion racing is based on teams and the cyclists have strategies to protect their sprinters who have the best chance of winning. Sort of like Nascar, where drivers on teams draft (riding just behind the rider in front) and use strategies to help get the win. The riders can save up to 30% of their energy by drafting. They even have a pace car, like Nascar races. It was an all electric Leaf, by Nissan. The pace car stays ahead in the race the entire time, making sure the coast is clear for the riders barreling down the street behind it, honking before each turn. What a great choice! No exhaust for the riders to breathe...We were wondering if the car would make it through both the men's and women's races, but it did...It has a 100 mile range on a full charge.

The race is ensured to keep speed at a constant high, by the riders competing for "prime" ("preem") laps in which the fastest rider for the lap wins a prize. There are many of these offered during the race, so the rider doesn't hold back in speed to sprint at the end. The racers are sort of divided into groups by the nature of the race--you have ones that are going for the final win, you have riders that compete just to get lap prizes, and you have riders that aid the teammate in pursuit of the win. There are "groups" that jockey during the race in order to control the speed of the race, too. The "breakaway" is when a rider or two splits from the pack and makes his move. You might be able to see the teams in some of the photos....

We really wanted to see this, so mid-afternoon today, we headed to Beaufort to find a place to park the car and a good vantage point to watch the race. Nothing like getting there early to get a good spot. The event was FREE and open to the public. Woo-hoo! We're in!

We got ourselves situated, got Sparky (and Eldo) fed with some good local food "to go" from a place called "Luther's" and settled in to wait. We took a quick walk on the way in, around the waterfront park, which was absolutely GORGEOUS, while waiting for the kids' race to start at 5:00 PM. The waterfront park in Beaufort is one of the most beautiful parks we have ever seen...beautiful grassy, shaded areas, porch swings, many of them down by the waterfront, greens for bocce ball, and a wonderful view of the harbor.

Time for the kids' race...They were so cute!

This kid gave the fist up winner's signal....He's a future winner of something, for sure!

Next, the women's race, 70 competitors.....50 laps around the streets for a total of 30 miles, speeds averaging 25-30 m.p.h. coming into the first turn at Scott Street. And--there was a CRASH!

Nobody was seriously hurt, just some bruised egos, bent bikes and frustrated riders...This gal below, was in the crash, but as you can see, but she has a winning attitude....and a winning outfit! Wow! (And a few other winning things, says E., smiling)

Eldy enjoyed checking out the women's cycling outfits, like the one above. Sparky thinks it makes the sport extra "cool" to see these amazing outfits and gear.....Unbelievable, the cool shoes, racing outfits and gear, including the bikes! The price of the bikes is in the thousands for these skilled racers, who came from all over the world to participate in today's race. No harm in lookin' good, even if you may not be the best of the best, Sparky says...But these are the best of the best riders, they come from all over the world and the U.S. to compete in this race.

The rest of the women's race proceeded uneventfully...Sparky got lots of camera practice with the Nikon D3100 but had lots of trouble with figuring out the best setting without getting blurry photos. (Sparky is not very good about doing her homework beforehand! explains Eldo.) But this is kind of a cool blurry photo. It's her attempt at an "artsy fartsy" kind of photo, showing the speed, the riders really were a blur as they went by, they were going so fast!.....This was from the men's race after the sun went down....

Almost immediately after the women's race, the men's started, with 118 competitors. You could really see the difference between the speeds in the two races. The men's was much faster and more intense, even the pace car traveled faster around the course, and the competitors were much more close to each other, just inches away. They hugged the rails a lot more closely, too! You didn't dare stick an arm out with a camera over the railing, or you might break an arm or cause a wreck! Eldy said he could see the whites of the eyes on some competitors, they were so close! It was a little unnerving, he said. The WHOOSH of air as the pack went by was a STRONG gust of wind.

Here they come, get out of the way!

Some people tried to cross over to the other side to get a different perspective on the race and had a close call! Eldy said that he could have easily touched the riders as they came by...You didn't want your arms or a camera to be outstretched, that's for sure! The men came a LOT closer to the rails than the women did.

Some people were bored by the whole thing, but that was a rarity.... ;-> Most hung near the rails for hours to watch the cyclists whir by again and again.

It was a very well organized event from everything we saw. It was really exciting and the crowd grew as the evening hours descended.

You think the group of racers is just a bunch of riders all trying to win, but it's much more complicated than that, and we learned a LOT about criterion racing today by watching and listening to the announcer. The team that can get a small group of riders to the front of the pack to keep the speed up and protect their sprinter, is the one that is going to win the race.

When we heard the announcements of the winners tonight, we heard the name, and "Team ....." demonstrating just what a group effort it takes to win a race like this. The only disappointment we had in the race was the announcer botching the names of the women's race winners. He couldn't even recall the names of the three winners and used the excuse he had been to too many races this month. Sparky was very upset about that! (She's a feminist, you know...) Shame on him! But it was exciting, there were lots of cowbells ringing and people urging the riders onward and faster, ringing the bells, hollerin' and whistling, the crowd had lots of enthusiasm for the race today. Heck, Sparky got into the spirit of things and was whooping and hollering for the racers and she didn't even know anybody! It was a great celebration of healthy living and southern town hospitality and we will definitely come back to Beaufort, South Carolina for another visit! Hope you enjoyed your visit at the Beaufort Memorial Classic today!

Heads Up Hilton Head!

We're comin' to see you! And we did..We just decided to go see the golf capital of the world...Well, it's not really the golf capital of the world but it could be, there are enough championship golf courses there for the most discriminating golfer. We just wanted to see it...It's one of those places where you have an image in your head and it's nice to verify whether it's the right one or not. It wasn't...We were very surprised to see it's not the extremely expensive place we thought it was (at least where we were) and it's far more beautiful than many resort areas that we have seen. There are NOT the high rise hotels and motels and restaurants lining the roads to where you can't see the water...They must have a lot of restrictions on how you can build in the area. It was so lush and green with vegetation!

It's a beautiful community....the restaurants and hotels are there, but they are set back from the road, there are many protected "green spaces" on the island, there are tons and tons of trees and beautiful landscaping around all the shopping areas...We just took a little jaunt today to see it, so we just scratched the surface, but what we saw we thought was wonderful.

porch swing by a massive oak on the resort property

We kind of stumbled upon a resort area called Sea Pines...and a little section called Harbour Town. You pay 5.00 to enter the resort area-- you can shop, eat, see the Hilton Head lighthouse, and a famous golf course, Harbour Town Links, whose 18th hole lines up with the Hilton Head Lighthouse. The 18th hole has been one of the most photographed finishing holes in the world. Sparky climbed the 114 steps of the lighthouse to see the 360 degree view of the island. It's a 3.50 cost to get a little exercise and get a little history about the island, both militarily and in the golf arena.
We walked around a bit, then rocked in one of the many red rocking chairs that are available for you to sit and watch the world go by. We did.....

There are some fantastic bike trails in that part of the island. They were absolutely beautiful..You can rent bikes there if you want. We are definitely going to return and ride and ride and ride (well, maybe just ride, says E.) in a couple of days, after the high 80's temps go away....The bike trails went for miles and miles all around the island and were very shaded and level. Can't wait!

beautiful bike path to the right of the road

Kayak rentals available down at the harbor, along with jet skis....

What was interesting about today, was, Eldy decided to "check in" on Facebook just for fun. He did, and a post went out over "Cyberland" where he was, in Hilton Head...We took a photo, too, of the two of us to. This was about 1:00 PM. A little while later, we headed over to Pinckney Wildlife Refuge to check that out...no photos of that today, it was too hot to get out and hike. When we got back home today, an old high school chum of Eldy's commented on Facebook that he had been at the Hilton Head Lighthouse at noon today. We just missed him!  Eldy hasn't seen him since high school. Small world, getting smaller all the time with technology.....Tomorrow, it's back to Beaufort.....

Savannah Sights

We were going to stay just a week at Thousand Trails The Oaks at Point South, but after seeing a tantalizing glimpse of Savannah, hearing that Charleston is about the same distance in the other direction, and hearing that FIFTEEN tall ships are coming to Savannah the first weekend in May, WE'RE STAYING! And it's a free, two week stay at TT, so that enables us to explore Savannah and do a few touristy things, like perhaps go for a sail on a tall ship?

downtown Savannah

Off to Savannah today to take a Grayline tour with Richard, on the Oglethorpe blue bus tour. Eldo LOVES Grayline tours, and this one for an hour and a half, was just 15.00 a person. What's even cooler, is, Grayline takes you all around the tour first, with no stops, then you can go back to the stops you want to spend more time at, and hop on, hop off for free with your tour stop sticker for the rest of the day. Richard was a great tour guide...he grew up in Savannah, and remembers when parts of the city should have been condemned and he used to play in the old sections and in the old houses. He was very proud of his city having made a turnaround. He was also very interesting and VERY informative. We had time to take photos, it wasn't rushed.

We learned that Sherman didn't burn the city of Savannah, he never touched it, he left it intact so he could get supplies from the harbor there. We learned that Savannah has a HUGE shipping industry that generates about 60 billion dollars a year and provides over 300,000 jobs for the city. We learned a lot about Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, which was the colony originally intended for EVERYBODY except Catholics and heavy drinkers. Just kidding, but that's partially true. Oglethorpe allowed everyone to settle in Georgia, it was a debtor's relief program for the poor back then to relieve crowding in the English prisons, but Catholics and lawyers (!) were not welcome (the colony was supposed to be for Protestants) and slavery was forbidden. AND, NO ALCOHOL! Ogilthorpe did not want anything that might contribute to colony residents being lazy and the colony itself floundering and not growing. But, for some odd reason, he brought plenty of beer over on the ship, I kid you not! (This is Sparky's oversimplified version, she's not a history buff, explains E.) When the settlements floundered because the emigrants were a little on the lazy side, slavery ended up coming into the Georgia colony. There's a whole lot more to the story, but Sparky is sticking to her abbreviated version. Sort of a Sparks' notes on Georgia...hehehehe......

We learned that Johnny Mercer, a Savannah native, wrote over 1400 songs and one of his most famous was "Moon River."

We saw and learned about the beautiful Victorian houses and architecture. The staid Victorians liked using color but not this much! Like this pink "Pepto Bismal" house, (NOT in the historic preservation district!) The other house pictures are....

......the churches...

Savannah is one super planned out city, with regular symmetrical streets and about twenty town squares where beautiful trees provide shade along with all kinds of memorial statues to famous soldiers and war heroes. Here is a tribute to the Haitian soldiers who fought so valiantly for our country in its early days.

We learned that the local Kroger store came in, paid a TON of money to move three architecturally beautiful and historically important houses one block over so they could put up their parking lot, then they designed their store to fit in with the neighborhood vision and a previously demolished architectural gem. Here is a photo Richard showed us of the building that didn't get saved...

And here's the Kroger store....

Every effort is made to preserve the integrity of the design of new buildings to blend in with the old, as much as possible. Lots of renovation is still going on in the heart of the city and it is spreading outwards. And here are a few more tour tidbits: Richard said that there are two things you don't mess with around Savannah natives, one is their "to-go" cups...you can drink alcohol to go in a paper cup out and about town...and two, Girl Scouts. Somebody tried to do away with the drinking outside of establishments, a politician, and he was soundly defeated. Someone else tried to make the Girl Scouts pay for selling cookies on the street, and that said person was totally embarrassed into making a retraction and run out of town, well, sort of. Remember, Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts is a Savannah native. You don't mess with those two traditions here in Savannah!

Lots of culture here...lots of interesting things going on, a very vibrant city...We loved exploring the town today, on the tour and a little bit on our own.....

some harbor entertainment

You need a couple of weeks to explore Savannah, if not more...We'll do our best with about a week left in our stay, we'll be back! Gotta see the home of the Girl Scout founder, Juliette Gordon Low, and some other very special things to see and do in this beautiful city.....See you later!

LOOKS Like Michigan, FEELS Like Michigan....

But it's South Carolina! We're back in the forest lands of America..Woo-hoo!  We're back where there are beautiful oak trees, TONS of them....

We're back where the temps are in the sixties during the day, and forties at night...and there's sweet smelling honeysuckle blooming....WOO-HOO!

Never mind that it's going to be 87 degrees in a day or two. Ugh!... But we're not in Michigan, we're in SOUTH CAROLINA.....for a week, maybe two, at the Thousand Trails park called The Oaks at Point South, in Yemassee, South Carolina, off I-95, exit 33. It's an old park, aren't most Thousand Trails?  This park is located near the tiny town of Yemassee, there's nothing there, really. No main grocery stores, just a couple of convenience gas stations, and a few motels that are dying. But we have 50 amp service and the park looks like an RV park in Michigan...It's heavily treed, but we had no problems getting into our site. It's shady and very pleasant.  All the sites are pull thrus...Sites are level and gravel. You pay 3.00 a day extra for very basic cable. People are having difficulty getting satellite because of all the trees, it appears.  AT & T phones shift in and out between two bars and "E" and sometimes for a fleeting moment 4G and sometimes no signal at all. No wi-fi unless you pay for it. Verizon Mi-fi card works fine if you move it around in different locations in the coach depending on your site for best reception. For us, it's the front of the coach, three bars. There's a pool, but it looks like this....Score 1 for the algae!

Here's our site....You can bike around the park a little or go outside the park and get some miles in on area roads, but we're not sure it's safe to do that, so Sparky is going to restrict her riding a bit.

We like our site, we like the park. And it's FREE with our Thousand Trails zone membership! Woo-hoo! Our site has trees closer than some other sites. We can't get our awning out all the way. There are other sites with more width before getting trees in your way.

Typical site....

The park is located in a very economically depressed section of the county...no nearby grocery stores or places to shop other than convenience store gas stations. To get to a "Piggly Wiggly", it's 12 miles. (That helps keep Sparky's compulsive grocery shop spending down, says a relieved E.) It's also a bit of a drive to get anywhere to see anything like Savannah, 42 miles away, Charleston about the same distance. Beaufort, a smaller historical town is about 22 miles away. Hilton Head is about an hour's drive. There are so many islands and harbor towns in the area that it would take weeks to explore the area. This really is a central location to stay to explore the "Low Country". You're just going to have to budget some more money for gas for your car if you stay here. But gas prices are around $3.68, which is a welcome relief from what they were in Florida.

The KOA campground is directly opposite on the same road as the Thousand Trails park. Sparky rode back in there to see what it was like. It's very nice but overpriced for being far from most attractions, 45.00 a night. But they have a wine bar/cafe! Woo-hoo! And you are welcome to come and visit if even if you are staying at the OTHER park, our TT park! The wine bar is GREAT. For 5.50, we got to taste 15 local wines, yep, that's right--15! Many of them came out of Hilton Head or the Biltmore Estate Winery...One was a margarita wine! Very nice....And if you purchase a bottle of wine, you get 10% off...Good thing we rode our bikes over there instead of driving the car, haha....(Sparky is the lightweight here, NOT me! explains E. She was a little all over the road going home....) Uh, I was just avoiding some potholes, honey! :-)

Look at this cool phone booth they have outside the KOA office. Wonder if the phone works?

It will be tough to explore such a historically rich area in just a few days, but we're gonna try! We amassed a HUGE bunch of brochures of things to do and everything you'd want to know about South Carolina/Georgia at two different visitor's centers today, the one for Georgia and the one for South Carolina.

The visitor's center at the Georgia/Carolina state line had a cool kiosk called "Tourist Assistance Portal" or TAP.

You scan the bar code (that little square box with lots of black squiggles--see right photo) with your smart phone providing you have downloaded a little scan code reader for the Android or iphone, and it loads an app all about Savannah, complete with tours, maps, music, things to do, family stuff, lodging, food and fun, etc.  AND complete with DEALS! Like 5.00 off a tour or something, or a buy one, get one free entree at a local restaurant. Once you get the app loaded, the TAP kiosk mails you great deals to your phone for the city you are visiting, then you just show the deal on the phone to the restaurant, the tour company, whatever. Cool! (Sparky LOVES technology! explains E.) The company, Blue Focus Media, is planning on expanding this program as it has been wildly successful in Savannah.....It will be fun to try and pick some things out that won't break the budget while we are here. Stay tuned!

Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am, Er, Sir!

We left at 9:00 this morning, on our way to the Oaks at Point South, in Yemassee, South Carolina, our destination for tonight.  It was about a 250 mile drive, no biggie for Eldo...About a half hour into our drive, with Sparky passively knitting her way through her second sock, minding her own business and letting Eldy take care of the big business of driving the rig through heavy traffic......

WHAM! BAM!
What the hell was THAT??????!!!!! SOMETHING HIT THE COACH!!!!! Did we blow a tire? Eldy quickly pulled over to the shoulder to see...Sparky's heart was beating a million times a minute...It was so SCARY! It sounded like a cannon shot hitting the side of the motorhome! He said he saw something black go flying by the window while he was driving...But it wasn't any of our tires. We thought maybe the truck driver who passed us had blown a tire and it smacked the side of the motorhome. All the tires were ok....whew! But the side of our Tiffin wasn't...A rest stop was less than a mile away, we pulled in, just as we saw the driver of the truck who passed us pull out. He must have been checking HIS rig for a blown tire. He apparently didn't have the damage but his rig sucked up the road debris and then threw it at us...Gee, thanks a LOT, buddy! But, it could have been a lot worse, and maybe he didn't know what happened as he blew by us. We looked at the damage...It makes you want to cry when you see a nice, almost new rig with no scratches get a bunch all at once....

Our Tiffin has such a nice shiny coat it's hard to see how bad it REALLY looked....you can see the reflection of the RV's from across the way in it.

Whatever hit us, bounced right at Eldy's driver window, slid across the side of the rig and down to the rear tire, it even scuffed the tire and then flew off...thankfully, not under the rig where it could have done some more damage. It could have been worse...There's one small scratch through the paint, the rest can be buffed or super buffed out with the right equipment...We'll probably get the scratch fixed when we head to Red Bay later this year. We've got slides with edges abraded by ill fitting gaskets, so there's a second paint job in our future at Red Bay.

The rest of the trip went uneventfully, thank goodness. Every time a truck passed, Sparky's heart started beating crazy fast, thinking another SOMETHING was going to come flying out at us. We finally arrived with out further mishap....We're settled in at the Oaks at Point South in Yemassee, South CaroLAH-NA for a week. Another FREE stay with our Thousand Trails zone pass, we're out of the Florida Max Pass zone now.....We'll tell you about the park tomorrow.....

Scenes from St. Augustine

For our last day at Bulow (yay!) we took an afternoon drive to St. Augustine...about a 45 minute drive from Flagler Beach. St. Augustine is the OLDEST city in the United States, founded in abut 1565. Lots of history there...we just wanted to look around and see what there was to see for a couple of hours.

After visiting the beautiful visitor's center--don't miss it! It has a beautiful mosaic entrance, and a gorgeous spacious interior.

We decided to take the trolley tour, a quick way to see a city and learn something about it. For 23.00 a person (no discount rates), and about a 70 minute tour, we learned a few things about St. Augustine. Sparky forgot that on these bouncy trolley tours, it's just about impossible to take a decent photo, so not very many good photos today. What did we learn about St. Augustine?

Flagler College

It's got some BEAUTIFUL architecture...Flagler College is the top destination for tourists according to Trip Advisor. It is named after Henry Flagler, the railroad baron who originally was a Standard Oil man and it used to be known as the Ponce deLeon Hotel that Flagler built. The college is one of the finest examples of Spanish Renaissance/Revival architecture. You can take tours to see this beautiful National Historic Landmark, part of which would be worthwhile to see the dining hall where the students eat under numerous Tiffany stained glass windows. Flagler also had a memorial church built in memory of his only daughter, who died in childbirth.

dome on Flagler's church

There are beautiful churches and missions in St. Augustine...we saw some on the trolley tour..You can hop off and hop on at any time on the trolley, but when you hop off to see something, it costs extra to tour--like the "oldest house" in St. Augustine, or the college (7.00 admission for that) or the "old jail". We were pressed for time because of the lateness in the day and couldn't hop on, hop off, we had to stay on for the ride.

We learned that Ponce deLeon was a short guy--4 ft., 11 in. tall, and he always wore a plumed hat, the the feather standing straight up to make himself appear taller.

We learned that the Spanish moss is NOT Spanish, and it's not moss. It's a bromeliad, an air plant or epiphyte. It's a close relative to a plant called "beard lichen" but is really a member of the pineapple family. The "moss" used to be used to stuff mattresses in the 1800's. Florida used to have quite an industry in shipping "tree hair" over to England to be used for stuffing mattresses. The guide said you don't want to handle it, that it's a good way to get "chiggers" which are little bugs that make you itch for DAYS. GREAT! It's bad enough to worry about no-seeums, now there's chiggers!

The "Fountain of Youth" is one of the trolley stops, but it was unclear where the fountain was, and it seemed very hokey the way the Fountain of Youth Architectural park was set up. Nearby was one of the oldest oaks in America, the "Old Senator", and it supposedly marks the spot a few feet away from Ponce deLeon's footsteps....

Oh...and the original, first Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not museum is in St. Augustine, with a reproduction, full, life size statue of Michelangelo's "David"...in the full monty (the entire anatomically correct form), with a hedge row of bushes half way up the statue and half way around so you can't see his private parts from the street in case there are little children running around. Heck, all they have to do is run around the bushes, and VOILA! There he is! Mom and Dad will have some explaining to do, maybe, if they haven't been informing parents.

We were disappointed in the tour, it was not one of the better trolley tours which this company runs in major cities...can't quite put a finger on what was so disappointing..For one, it was too fast the way it was conducted, the trolley kept moving and there was seldom enough time to located what the guide was pointing out before you were past the point of interest. There was constant shifting back and forth between the left and right sides as to what you were to look at, and because we kept moving, you couldn't really see what you were looking at with the canopy on top of the trolley. The trolley would stop momentarily for people to get on and off, but never long enough to get out from under the canopy to take a photo. We would recommend a slower carriage ride tour instead, or heck, why not just walk around? There's a great fort across the street, and the churches and missions are very close to the center of town. There are also a TON of cute restaurants, bars, grills, and tourist trap shops all in the center of town.

Tomorrow, we say goodbye to Florida, we are heading for South Carolina and eventually, Freightliner School!

Bulow Plantation RV Park in Flagler Beach, FL and Daytona Beach

This is one of the Florida Encore parks in the Max Pass membership of the Thousand Trails system. It is on Old Kings Road South in Flagler Beach. We stayed here for three days as a stopover before we headed to South Carolina. The literature for this park calls it a "Premier RV Resort".  We'll let you judge by the accompanying photos. If you are wanting an overnight destination, this would be ok. If you are thinking of staying longer, think again! In our humble opinion, this park is in severe disrepair and definitely showing its age. Everything about it is old, rusty, falling apart, and not very pretty. The entrance/exit to and from the park was VERY narrow and almost impossible to navigate with our 40 foot Tiffin and the car in tow. We highly recommend unhooking your car before coming in the entrance should you decide to stay there and not hooking up till you are OUT of the park. It was difficult pulling in and we barely missed scraping a mailbox and running over the curb on our way out.

This is the clubhouse. Looks like they gave up trying to repair the roof.

How hard would it be to slap a couple of cheap electrical face plates on the outlets in the bathrooms? Rusty mirrors, soap scum on the shower handles. We know for a fact they clean the bathrooms daily basis, but they still look bad!

Sites are mostly grass and dirt. There are some good things about it. It could be a beautiful park with all the huge, mossy live oaks. There is plenty of space between sites. Some of the sites have concrete patios, although very tiny. The rear of the park is filled with ancient trailers that have been made into more permanent trailer homes. They look terrible. There are some new park models at the very back of the park.  Our site was wonderfully shaded, which we liked. They allow any make and model of trailer or RV to stay in this park, which is great, because not all parks allow that. Electric is dated and only 30 amp, not sure if there's any 50 amp in the park. But we didn't have any troubles with the service while we were here. AT & T phones were a little spotty, three bars but our side of the calls were cutting in and out when we made calls. The mi-fi had two bars. We seemed to get kicked off more than normal here in this park on the mi-fi.

They have a 60 foot pool which looked nice. Free cable TV, which Eldy appreciated...they have a 24 hour laundry which is in serious need of an update, but the machines worked fine. They have firewood for sale but the park was under a county wide burning ban. There is a little grocery store with beer and wine and RV supplies, but we never saw it. The "waterfront" RV and tent sites are either on a canal or small pond that has litter in it. There are 25 rental cabins, but they are in need of repair as well.

But here's a great thing...it's 10 minutes to Flager Beach, and you're on the Atlantic Ocean! Not a bad beach, but not a lot of sand, it's a narrow beach. The town of Flagler Beach is a small fishing town, there's not much there.

After checking out Flagler Beach, we decided to head down to Daytona Beach, about 25 miles from Flagler Beach. Eldo wanted Sparky to see how you can park your car on the beach. So we did, cost us 5.00 but that's not bad. It was a very cloudy-with-a-chance-of-rain kind of day, so we didn't stay too long....

But Sparky got to ride her bike on the beach--it was a good workout even if the sand was packed!

Not too many people at Daytona Beach today, just a few shell searchers with not very many shells to find....

And Eldo just HAD to have some ice cream even if it was 3.50 a bar! (Now, Sparky, c'mon, you did, too!) Yup! I did.....See you tomorrow...maybe in St. Augustine, if it's not raining too hard....