Too Much History

Crawfish eaten the proper way

We stopped at the Welcome Center when we came into Georgia and there in front of me was a brochure for the Annual Crawfish Festival taking place in Woodbine, GA beginning that evening and going into the next day. We drove across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida without once eating Crawfish except in the form of etouffee, a creamy rich thick soup made with a roux. Very French. A crawfish boil .. now that is how a true connoisseur eats this delicacy. So we found a place to park for the night behind a truck stop just off I95 and at the time the event was set to begin we headed into town. Indeed we found a crowd gathering in a huge tent with boiling pots in the back. Lined up on the top of a counter were bags containing about 20 crawfish, a half ear of sweet corn and about 4 small red potatoes all boiled in the pots. That was one serving.

We decided to share one serving. So we took our bag of food and a pile of napkins and sat down at a big table with a bunch of other folks. We each took out a crawfish and looked at it. It looks like a tiny miniature lobster with claws. We asked our neighbors, “How do you eat these things?” They said they really didn’t know but someone said to break the tail off and eat the meat. They said that sometimes people suck the brains out of the head of the creature. We did that and found a morsel of meet that tasted pretty good. Don went to another table to get pointers on eating these things but found more novices.  We ate what we had and were still hungry so we had a bowl of etoufee and went on our way. We stopped to listen to some bluegrass music at an old school house. They had a small auditorium with a bunch of musicians on stage. A local goup who looked like they may have graduated from that school in 1955 which was the last year that school was in session. The main thing was that they were all having a great time.

Best Flea Market

We spent a night at Keller’s Flea Market in Savannah since we couldn’t get into the state park on the weekend. Here I found a tie dyed onesie for the new one and a matching tee shirt for her cousin. A unique stop.

Cypress Bend Vineyards -a great place for camper repair.

We stopped at this beautiful Harvest Hosts site for a night on our way north. We were the only RV there and our host said, “You can drive anywhere you want back there to turn around.” My driver took her at her word and seeing no obstacles, I stayed at our chosen parking spot and waited while he drove out into a wide open space to turn the camper around. So I was surprised and dismayed when I heard a loud crunching sound and looked up to see the camper at a complete stop. I started walking toward it and saw the front end of the camper bent away at the top and completely falling to the ground. So I started running. (in flip flops). I’m not sure why. There was nothing that I was going to do by arriving quicker. What I found when I arrived was the bottom of the front end embedded in a sandy embankment on the side of the driveway and the front end of the camper lying on the ground.

It was all in one piece with minimal damage to the fiber glass. The radiator looked intact though the tray on which it rides was stuck in the sand. Fortunately for us, North Carolina has soft sandy soil. Don backed the camper while I watched to make sure nothing else was wrecked. It came out okay and we moved the camper over to where we wanted to park it for the night then we went back to carry the front end over by the camper while we assessed the damage. We were in the middle of nowhere and I could see us living here at the vineyard for a month waiting for someone to fix it. It’s spring and there are no grapes to stomp so I could see us cleaning up after weddings or something to earn our keep. There are other problems with living there not the least being that they have no hookups. It looked pretty hopeless to me. Don, on the other hand was studying the problem at hand figuring out how we might be able to fix the thing. He said, “I think we can fix this thing ourselves.” I thought, “Oh God. Here we go again. I’m going to ruin my nails.” I had gotten a nice mani-pedi back in Savannah so I would look chic when we saw my friend Linda Truax. Don said, we just need to get some fiberglass and stick those brackets back on the front then install it back on the camper. We can do this. Our host stopped by and asked how we were doing and said she was really sorry about what happened. She gave us directions to the nearest Lowes, about 20 miles away and said it was okay to work there except we would have to move around to the back the next day because they had a wedding.

So we did that. The manager of the place offered us a sheltered place with electricity and a stack of pallets on which to set the front end while we worked on it. We drove to Laurinburg to get supplies that night and on Saturday morning we went to work. We were cleared out of the shelter by the time the caterers arrived for the wedding and moved the camper way in back of the vineyard for the installation. It was actually a lovely setting in which to work. We drove back to Laurinburg to pick up some adhesive for a door that was damaged and picked up a pizza at the gas station, the main restaurant in Wagram. Our rig was not only drivable, but you couldn’t tell what it had been through same with the owners of rig.

  So we enjoyed a glass of wine and pizza. Fortunately I had decided to get the gel manicure and my nails are relatively intact. All is well.

Fun with Linda and Wayne

Our friend Linda Truax moved to St. Helena Island, South Caroline and started a second career after we were done raising kids in Springfield, IL. Sadly, she lost her husband Paul who was also our dear friend to a heart attack 15 years ago or so. Her daughter Lindsay and our Kelly were good friends since grade school. She was an awesome Girl Scout leader and I was her sidekick back in the day.  When she was able to retire from the special education district in Springfield, she moved out here and began teaching special education at the high school in Beaufort. So, when we got to South Carolina, we looked her up. She is in a new relationship with a wonderful southern gentleman named Wayne and they hosted us while we were there.

She lives in a gated community out on Harbor Island and was able to procure us a place to park the rig right outside the gate in the General Store parking lot. The General Store is closed because of damage from Hurricane Matthew which tore up the coast last fall. Linda’s place had minimal damage but some of the house out by the beach had been destroyed and many are still in the process of making repairs. She took us on a tour of the neighborhood and we walked on the beach. And on Sunday, we drove to Hilton Head Island and Wayne gave us a tour of the Plantation in which he lives. Plantations on Hilton Head are huge gated developments with residences and golf courses. Then we sat on the beach and had lunch. Back at Linda’s she treated us to a Low Country Boil which is a dish that includes boiled potatoes, sweet corn, sausage and shrimp with some yummy spices. We now have her recipe.

We also had the treat of joining her with some of her students at a dance in Beaufort. She is retiring this year and I could tell that she will be missed but eventually it’s time to let younger people take on the hard jobs.

Beautiful Charleston by the sea – Ft. Sumter

Linda gave me a couple of Pat Conroy books to read when before we left so I started reading South of Broad while we were camped at James Island County Park. That was a treat. Forget about bus tours when you tour Charleston. Use the free shuttle and/or do walking tours. But make sure to check out Fort Sumter. You’ve all read about it in history books since grade school. If you decide to see Boone Hall Plantation you can skip the house tour and the tram ride. Just spend your time on Slave Street.

Listen to the story of the slave trade and the life of slaves, see the child finger-prints in the mortar, visit each cabin and make sure to go to the Gullah show and hear the stories. Charleston is a beautiful city with amazing mansions.

All of that awesome construction was done by slaves. We could have spent more time there. Before we left I made sure to take a ride down James Island to walk on Folly Beach.

Savannah – Sherman’s last stop

By all means, take the on-and-off bus tour of Savannah. Those guys know how to tell a story and this town has a unique and interesting history. Oglethorpe knew how to settle a colony and had some vision. We stayed at Skidaway Island State Park which is a beautiful place. Our first day, we checked out the city and walked along the waterfront where we stopped for lunch. There we met a couple from International Falls who were there for a logger’s conference. We shared Minnesota stories and said “you betcha” a couple of times. We drove out to Tybee Island and walked on the beach for a minute but left because the wind was sandblasting our legs. We stopped at Ft. Pulaski and heard about how the Savannah folks came out and took over the fort after Georgia seceded. The next day we took the tour. We got off the bus at the Dungeon where the British kept POWS during the revoloutionary war and checked out St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. Unfortunately, we did not stop at the Market but I would do that if I could go back.

Trees… Here in the South they love their Live Oak Trees and insist on lining the roads with these beautiful trees, draping they with Spanish moss and allowing the trees to canopy over the roads making for cool shady lanes. This is beautiful unless you are driving a 13.5 foot rig. Need I say more. Here are some pictures from the front seat.

Raleigh – NC State Fairgrounds

After we left the vineyard, we came to Raleigh for a couple of days and stayed at the State Fairgrounds. We spent a day and toured the capital which still holds a few executive offices but much of it is kind of like a museum.

We were there with about a thousand school children on their mandatory trip. More interesting was the history museum across the street where we learned about North Carolina history. Most interesting was the story about an actual “coup” in which some white supremacists violently took over the government in the city of Wilmington, NC forcing all of the black leaders out of town thus beginning the Jim Crow era back in the 1890’s.

The Civil War

We’ve been talking for years about when we get to this part of the country we want to do a “Civil War Tour”. As we travel through the South we have made a point to go to the places where the war was fought we stop and check it out. But there isn’t enough time to do it justice. Don is mad and blames me for shortchanging us on time because I had to spend time at all the beaches. He says that if you’ve seen one beach you’ve seen them all and that is just not true. Every beach is different and deserves it’s day in the sun. But I am not here to extoll the beaches along the gulf coast and up the Atlantic. I’ll save that for another day. This piece is supposed to be about the Civil War for which we do not have enough time to really do it justice but we are making the effort.

Currently we are staying at Bull Run Regional Park Family Campground about 15 miles east of Washington DC another competitor for Civil War touring. Since we got to Richmond, it is clear that there is too much history in this part of the country. We’re just not used to it back in the Midwest. Where we ae staying is about a mile from the Menassis National Battlefield Park and we’ll head over there today.

Two years ago, we spent some time at Vicksburg and heard the story of that devastating battle. That was the first battlefield that we saw. But here in the southeastern part of the country is where so much of the war was fought. In Beaufort, SC we heard the story of how the residents evacuated the town taking their valuables and left their beautiful mansions for the Union soldiers rather than having those mansions burned to the ground. In Savannah when Sherman arrived in town it was the same. He had burned his way through Georgia and the Savannahans saved their beautiful city by abandoning it. We stood by the river where Sherman completed his “march to the sea”. Needless to say when our guide on the tour-bus had nothing positive to say about General Sherman. At Charleston, we took the tour of Fort Sumpter and it looked just like it did in our grade school history book pictures.

It makes sense that the South wanted that fort guarding the entrance to the Charleston harbor. In Savannah early in the war when Georgia decided to secede, a bunch of guys went out to the fort guarding their city and took over Fort Pulaski and held it for a good part of the war. Those stories took place early in the war when there was a lot of optimism in the South and the Confederates had no idea how bad it could get.

Then we got to Richmond whcih is where I discovered that there is too much history. We took a drive south to Jamestown the first day and stopped at a couple of battlefield sites where the trenches are still deep where Lee’s soldiers dug in for the battle of Richmond. Then we stopped at a place called Berkeley Plantation which boasted of being the site of the first Thanksgiving attended by Pocahantas, the home of the two presidents Harrison, the place where “Taps” was written, the first bourbon made in America among other things and we didn’t have time to take a tour because we still had a long ways to get to Jamestown

and Yorktown and now we were immersed in Colonial and Revolutionary War history for the rest of the day. There are roadside plaques everywhere down here. 

The State Capitol in Richmond is an amazing historical building. Designed by Thomas Jefferson while he was the ambassador to France it is very classical. The government of Virginia has been meeting there since 1812 and it was the place where the Confederacy had their Capital.          

We took a day to drive over to Appomattox to see where the Civil War finally came to an end and to hear of the devastation of the Confederate Army and the South by the time this all ended. At least I think it ended.

When we toured the Richmond Capital, our guide showed us the Virginia State Seal in which a female figure representing virtue stands with her foot on a figure which represents tyranny that has been beaten. The motto is Sic semper tyrannis meaning thus always to tyrants. Someone in the group said, “Like John Wilkes Booth to Abraham Lincoln”. I was shocked by the statement. Our tour guide ignored the comment and just went on. It’s disturbing to be made aware that kind of rancor still exists.

So yesterday, we toured the U.S. Capital in Washington, DC. There the tour guide showed us the motto of the United States Congress, e pluribus unum (out of many, one) and talked about how our Congress represents the struggle to bring all of the voices and points of view into governing this country.

Of course, it is messy and contentious. It is all part of the design and only works as long as we keep on arguing and leave the guns at home.

On a sidebar, near Appomattox we came across the gravesite of Joel Walker Sweeney (1810-1860) who is known as the very talented musician who added the 5^th string to the banjo. He also replaced the gourd with a round wooden frame stretched tightly with a skin head making a more resonant and versatile instrument. His brother Sam was the official banjo player for Gen. J.E.B Stuart. Useful information to know.

4/28 Woodbine truck stop – Crawfish Festival. Woodbine, Georgia

4/29 Keller’s Flea Market,  Savanna, GA (Harvest Hosts)

4/30-5/3  Skidaway Island State Park, Savannah, Georgia

5/4 Camp Lake Jasper, Hardeeville S. Carolina for laundry and clean up day

5/5-5/7 Harbor Island General Store – Linda and Wayne

5/8 -11 – James Island County Park, Charleston SC – 120 miles to make it 70 miles driving among live oak trees

5/12-13 Cypress Bend Vineyards,  Wagrum, NC (Harvest Hosts)

5/14--16   North Carolina State Fair Grounds – Raleigh, NC

5/17-18 Kerr Lake State Recreation Area, Henderson, NC

5/19-22 Pochhantas State Park, Chester, VA

5/23-25 Bull Run Regional Family Campground, Centreville, VA

The Perpetual Tourist - Part 4 or 5 ro whatever

Heading out.

Boldly hooking up a new car to tow… It was with some trepidation that I agreed to be the one responsible for setting up the car to safely flat tow it behind the camper. It has an automatic transmission and an actual key that you insert into the ignition. Don had wired a switch so we can turn off the accessories while it is in tow. I took out the owner’s manual and wrote out the steps for setting up the car, put the instructions in a plastic sleeve and attached them to the valet key that we keep in the console. I dutifully look at each step and complete it each time we hook up the car. The instructions attached to the key will hopefully prevent me from ever completing this task without thinking about it. I still kind of catch my breath when I think about doing something so courageous.

Oil change--- On April 6 before we left Corpus Christi, we took the bus into Freightliner to get the oil changed. That took up the better part of the day. By the time we left, we were good friends with the service technician and he cleaned off the oil pan to see if he could see where there was a small leak. Eventually we will need to get a new gasket but not before next year when we get our next oil change. He was helpful and friendly and talked about his plans to retire in 57 days. When we left Corpus, the main bridge across the bay was closed because of a big tanker fire earlier in the day so we had to go back through the town across the bridge to Mustang Island passing the place where we burned up the car last year and took the ferry at Aransas Pass. We stayed in a pull through in Rockport, TX and took off the next morning toward Galveston. I noticed that the car was spattered with mud and that seemed strange because I couldn’t remember any mud. When we arrived at San Luis County Park we went to unhook the car. I noticed that things seemed kind of oily and on checking the “mud” spatters I realized it was oil. Then we turned our attention to the back of the RV and noticed that it was covered with oil spatters. We got the bikes off the back and lifted up the grille. Oil was dripping off the grill on our heads. Our friendly technician had forgotten to put the oil cap on. We still had plenty of oil in the engine but we spent a couple of hours and a bunch of Dawn dish soap cleaning the back of the camper and the car. Some things are still greasy. What a mess.

So it’s been a long time since I wrote anything. I guess my excuse about not having a good work station really doesn’t hold water since I did set up a work space that is at least adequate. Since I last wrote, we said good-bye to our friends, I took a trip to Minnesota to see Edie before we left Palmdale, bought a new residential refrigerator to replace the old Dometic RV refrigerator that shot craps after I defrosted it, put Sparky in Ray’s storage shed again and hit the road. We went deep-sea fishing with friend Gary and caught a couple of nice red snapper.

We finally got out of Palmdale on April 4 and here’s where we’ve been since then

4/4-4/5 Richard M. Borchard Fairgrounds in Robstown, TX (Just north of Corpus Christi.)

4/6 -Ancient Oaks RV Park in Rockport, TX

4/7-9 San Luis Pass County Park

4/10-11 Galveston Island State Park

4/12 Golden Nugget Casino in Lake Charles, LA.

4/13-15 Vermillionville Living History and Folk Life, Lafayette, LA. (A Harvest Host site.)

4/16-17  Southern Oaks Mobile Home and RV Community, Gulfport, MS (need plumbing to do laundry)

4/18-19 - Eagle’s Landing RV Park, Holt, FL (near Pensacola)

4/20-23 Leon County Fairgrounds, Tallahassee FL

4/24 – 26 Kelly’s Countryside RV Resort, Hilliard, FL

4/27       Fort Clinch State Park, Fernandina Beach, FL

We made it to the Atlantic Ocean and if I go across the dunes I can walk right into the ocean. We’ve made it from sea to shining sea. Now we can start heading north and that’s a good thing because it’s getting pretty hot where we are.

Some of our highlights besides the oil splatter…

At San Luis Pass we spent 3 nights near the ocean and since we have Texas fishing licenses we went fishing and learned how to catch the blue crab. I caught a small but legal black drum and we caught 3 blue crab and made a meal out of it.

At Galveston we parked on the ocean side. We took a day to drive into Houston to do some shopping and go to the Space Center for a tour. Then we had a rainy day at the beach and I made a batch of granola. We spent a night boondocking at the casino in Lake George.

A highlight of our trip was the Harvest Host venue in Lafayette, LA where we stayed at a historical village and learned about the history of the people who settled this part of Louisiana. We ate some good Cajun food and listened to a jam session of Cajun Music. On the tour of the village we met an Accadian woman about our age who remembered speaking only French as a child but going to school where she could only use English. In this part of the country the local people are bi-lingual. In spite of the best efforts of the dominant culture, the continue to speak their language. I could spend more time in this part of the world.

We spent a couple of days on the Gulf coast of Mississippi. We’ve been here before a couple of times but it is changed a lot. Still some of the most beautiful white sandy beaches but those dreadful casinos dominating the shore in Biloxi and a lot of vacant spaces where there were houses before the hurricane.

At Pensacola we toured the Naval Air Museum and listened to the stories of an old vet talking about the history of naval warfare since WWI. We saw some of the aircraft that were involved in important battles including the one that Bush 1 flew in combat during WWII. He survived some pretty harrowing experiences. Gets you thinking about how one individual’s survival can make a difference in history but that’s always the case.

At Hilliard, we were just down the road from the Okefenokee Swamp and our hopes for going on a swamp tour were dashed because the swamp is on fire. One day the wind was in our direction and we were breathing the smoke and ask from the fire. We decided to drive up and see for ourselves and talked to one firefighter who was involved in clearing out some brush to prevent the fire from spreading. Firefighting involves keeping the fire contained to the refuge so it doesn’t spread to the communities around the swamp. They expect that it might burn till November when they can count on getting some good rain. At the time we left the area they had 70,000 acres of the swamp burned. We got some pictures of alligators.

So yesterday we came here where we were able to get one night near the ocean. We’ll head up toward Savannah today. I’m finding that if I want to get good campsites I need to plan ahead and make reservations so I’ll be doing more of that.  

Preparing to leave

Sparky's escapades

He ran off and this is where he turned up.

We were gone for a day getting new tires

and Sparky was gone.

Needed a bigger chain

In Storage

Red Snapper fishing

Me with our catch

We went Red Snapper fishing again this year and while fishing was not nearly as good as the last couple of years, Don and I each came home with some nice size snapper. The crew on the boat speculated that we have had such warm winters that the Snapper may be going to deeper water earlier. This is always one of my favorite experiences in the winter so I hope they figure it out. We were luckier than the group that went out the week before we did because their whole boat came home empty handed.

Ray and Cyndi came back

Ray and Cyndi came back to Palmdale at the beginning of March so we had a few weeks to enjoy their company. Cyndi’s surgery didn’t help her that much but she is a trooper and we made a trip to the flea market and to Mexico so she could so some shopping. Probably our most memorable excursion was a Tuesday trip to get the wings special at Arnie’s Winghouse. Ray has a minivan so he can comfortably seat 6 older adults. Don and I took the way back seat. Lee and Max the middle seats with Ray and Cyndi in the front. We didn’t have too much to drink but on the way home, Ray was in a hurry so when he took the turn on Hwy. 101, he accelerated and we headed back to Palmdale. You have to know that the Los Fresnos police are always on the lookout for speeding Winter Texans so it wasn’t long until the blue and red lights came on behind Ray. He looked in his mirror and said a bad word. Don, who was conditioned at a very young age to correct whatever law he is breaking when the police arrive, grabbed the first seat belt he say and hooked it up. I grabbed my seat belt and couldn’t buckle it because Don had used my buckle so I held the seat belt with my left hand down by my side. Lee, who was in the seat in front of Don was trying to find his seat belt but couldn’t because Don had grabbed his seat belt. Everyone else was already wearing theirs. When the cop came to the window, he shined his light at the back seat and asked Don why he was putting his seat belt on when we were pulled over. Don, of course just said, “What?” Everyone chimed in that Don can’t hear very well. At that point Don decided that was his best option. The cop tried a couple of more times with that question but gave up. I was sitting there holding my seat belt and looking at Don’s seat belt that was angled from up behind Lee’s seat and diagonally across Don from about 2 feet in front of him to his right side thinking that looks pretty dangerous. The Cop gave up on Don ever hearing him and asked all the men for their ids so Don and Lee provided them with their drivers licenses. We were like a representative sample of Winter Texans… from Missouri, South Dakota and Nebraska. When the licenses were returned, Ray was informed that he was getting a warning and never to be speeding in Los Fresnos again. As we left we were all laughing and now we have a story to remember and laugh about for as long as we live.

Fun with Edie – I took a trip to Minneapolis in March

A new refrigerator – Our old Dometic RV refrigerator quit working after I defrosted it. So when I came home from Minnesota we shopped for a new refrigerator. The F-Street RV Service in Harlingen were very helpful in diagnosing the problem with the old refrigerator and sait that it could be removed through the front door. We figured if that one could come out, we buy a residential one that fit the refrigerator cabinet and it could come the same way. So we took careful meas

Out with the old in with the new

urements and armed with our measuring tape headed out to the appliance stores. Lowes had a black GE that fit and could be delivered in 2 days. So on April 3 the day before our departure the F-Street guys came and removed the old refrigerator. Getting the new one in wasn’t so easy.


We had removed the passenger seat but much more needed to be done. It took a couple of hours and about 5 or 6 attempts and by the time they were able to get it in the camper, they had removed parts of the camper ceiling over the dash and much of the dash. They cut an aluminum brace around the tv opening above the dash and were finally able to get the new refrigerator in. They used screws to repair the cut and replaced all the dash parts and there is no evidence that any of that took place. We did the installation. Don put some screws in the bottom of the refrigerator and put in some O-hooks which we put a tie strap that is holding the refrigerator in place. There is about a 3” opening on the left side and on top of the refrigerator and when we get to Minnesota where we have tools we will fix the cabinetry.

RV refrigerators are made with access panels with ventilation on the outside of the camper to dissipate heat from the propane burner. The front of the cabinet was sealed around the old refrigerator to prevent air from coming into the camper from the outside. Now, we can see the daylight coming in behind the refrigerator. When we parked at Galveston Island State Park we had a stiff wind blowing straight in from the gulf and that night I woke up feeling the humid cool air filling the camper and thinking about the corrosive salty air blowing on the back of my new refrigerator. So I worried about that for a while. We stuffed some blankets around the refrigerator along with a couple of towels to block the air from coming into the camper.  We took off the panel on the back and covered the vent part with some cardboard. That still left some parts open and we used duct tape to cover that. We still had wind coming in on the top vent but it was better. That is how we are traveling now.

We are in disagreement about the best way to make a permanent fix since this is clearly not satisfactory. My thinking is that we need to insulate the space and make it interior space. When we fix the cabinet we will leave air flow space around the refrigerator so heat from the motor can dissipate into the camper. I think the residential refrigerator was designed to be in the interior of a building and that letting the back side be exposed to the elements and the outside temperature fluctuations is probably not good for it.L