It’s amazing what kind of events can unfold when you decide to go somewhere else at the last minute.
We left Safe Harbor yesterday, not sure where we were staying just knowing that we were heading south to the Redneck Riviera . . .Myrtle Beach.
Along the way, I picked two campgrounds out of the Woodalls Directory — a private one, and a state park. When we got to Myrtle, and saw what a heinous tacky place it is, I pointed Jim to the state park, thinking it might be a little more down to earth than “Pirateland Campground.”
At the state park, we met Chris and Elizabeth, two 30-something urban refugees from New York City, who chucked all of their stuff, bought a rig, and headed out into the unknown for a year. Just. Like. Us. They don’t have kids. He’s a tech geek. She’s a PR writer. They were sick of the urban jungle and their careers, so they saved their dough and split. Just. Like. Us!
Chris and Liz are not only new RVers, but they are new campers. For two people who had never even been camping before hitting the road, they’ve really gotten into it and seem like old (young!) pros. Very impressive.
We hung out and shared stories over wine, beer and Turkey Day desserts, probably being too loud, and having a great time. The four of us are heading to Florida on our own timelines, but we will definitely hook up at some point to let the libations and road trip stories start all over again.
One of the best things about a long sabbatical and being on the road is that after a while, you start to let your guard down, which lets great people and events come into your life. We are so glad that Chris and Elizabeth came into ours.
We’ve been doing our best to eat local wherever we go, but the hardest thing to find local on this trip has been seafood. So except for some Walleye in Minnesota, and lots of Lobster in Maine, we just haven’t had much fresh fish since we left California. So we were extra excited to catch the end of shrimp season when we went to the beach in North Carolina! (more…)
A while back, one of our readers declared that the RVer’s National Anthem should be Hank Snow’s I’ve Been Everywhere. While some of you may think this is a Johnny Cash original, it’s not.
“I’ve been everywhere, man
I’ve been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I’ve breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel I’ve had my share, man
I’ve been everywhere“
Well, I finally got around to adding this to our cross country road trip soundtrack of travel tunes. While I was at it, I put some elbow grease into the page and added an interactive slideshow of CDs available from Amazon that include the songs we’ve added to our list. This way we’ll be able to update our soundtrack easier and more often. (more…)
Workamping can be anything from being a campground host, to running an office at a KOA campground. Sometimes it pays, often it doesn’t, but it always includes free rent of a full hookup site and other perks, like free laundry. It’s a great way to stretch your budget.
A while back, we were dreaming about what kind of business we would operate next, and came across an ad for this nifty dog kennel business for sale, just north of the Saugerties / Woodstock area in New York. Recently, we stopped by to check it out. The owners were kind enough to give us a tour. But as much as we’d love to stop everything and start working with dogs full time, we kept our promise to hold off on decisions for the next few months. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in a great home based business in a rural area, check it out:
A while ago, my sister Mariclair sent me a link to this manual for a Telescoping RV Tower. Rich, who together with M.C. runs O’Connell Solar – and designed our own RV’s solar energy system – had just spent three days at Southwest Windpower and thought it would be cool fodder for the blog. Cool indeed.
Then when we were getting a tour of Tugboat Margot from my brother in law Tim back in Troy, NY, I noticed an Air X mounted on a boat docked nearby and filmed it in action.
While this particular tower mount wouldn’t work with our rig without some serious modification, seeing the wind generator do its job got me thinking…
After driving for thousands of miles over the past few months, I have to say that one of the most vital accessories we purchased for this cross-country road trip has to be our iPod. We got a used 40GB iPod on eBay that has a good dent in it, but it was a deal!
I spent many a late night transferring most of our CD collection onto it before we left, and it was time well spent. I only wish I had copied all of our CDs.
While you can always find classic rock somewhere on the dial, much of this country has really, really bad radio. That’s why I was happy to find out that Amazon is finally offering MP3 downloads!
This week started our first real Workamping gig at Safe Harbor Animal Rescue in Maysville, North Carolina. We’ll get to talking about that soon. But today, we went out exploring on our day off, to secure provisions and check out the nearest big city, New Bern.
Carol would call this one a Back Track … one of the hardest things about trying to blog about our travels is trying to keep everything current when there is so much to see and do. Hell, there is still stuff I could write about from way back in Colorado. At least this one only goes back a few weeks to my birthday dinner.
Rene got off easy this year. I was a cheap date. All I wanted was a to take the day off from driving and do nothing, other than barbecue myself a steak. So the day before – on Halloween – we went to the Blacksburg Farmers Market for some fresh produce, in search of some local meat. Having never seen cattle ranchers at a farmers market until we got to the East Coast, I was feeling lucky. And I struck gold, or black rather, as in Angus.
Are you a trip planner? Before you go on vacation, do you put together an itinerary (“On Wednesday, we’re going to play mini golf and have fun, dammit!”), and chart your exact course on your GPS (“At Exit 25 we’ll stop and have lunch”)?
I used to be a planner. I thought that the more organized I was for a vacation, the better it would be. I would waste hours on the web, researching every detail about where we were going. Then I’d chart out a Plan B, just in case.
This would guarantee that our precious vacation time was the best it could be, right?
We left Safe Harbor yesterday, not sure where we were staying just knowing that we were heading south to the Redneck Riviera . . .Myrtle Beach.
We hung out and shared stories over wine, beer and Turkey Day desserts, probably being too loud, and having a great time. The four of us are heading to Florida on our own timelines, but we will definitely hook up at some point to let the libations and road trip stories start all over again.
wherever we go, but the hardest thing to find local on this trip has been seafood. So except for some Walleye in Minnesota, and lots of Lobster in Maine, we just haven’t had much fresh fish since we left California. So we were extra excited to catch the end of shrimp season when we went to the beach in North Carolina! 
. While some of you may think this is a Johnny Cash original, it’s not.
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