Simnett Travels

Thursday, March 31st – Fort Yargo State Park, Atlanta, Georgia – Day 51  Another late start after getting into the camp site late. We had a beautiful spot near the lake (“premium lake front” in the words of Fort Yargo) but the lake was no longer there. They had to lower the lake level four feet, so we looked out onto a dried lake bed. There was still a lake, but we had to look a little bit further. It was still very scenic but if the lake was there, we would have been very close. Pollen was flying everywhere and ended up coating our car such that you could see all the hand prints the kids had left. Gen and I took a romantic stroll along the dried-out lakebed. The kids played at the play structure that was nearby.  We eventually got our act together and got on the road. Gone With the Wind, if you’ve never seen or read it, is about the end of an era of Southern culture when the civil war struck mixed into a love story. Gen and Mary have both read the book, watc

For my loyal reader (one day I hope to pluralize that),   Unfortunately, someone (cough, kids with netflix, cough, cough) killed all of our data for the month and we have been waiting for our data to renew. I thought somewhere along the way that we would find free wifi and I would be able to update our adventures. Unfortunate, all the state park wifi I've encountered has been worse than my current connection. To put it into perspective, it just took 16 seconds to fully load google.ca on my laptop.   After finding no wifi in our travels, I decided to endure the extended wait and start posting text of our travels. I will update with pictures when possible. I will now wait a minute or two for this post to publish. My sincere apologies. Our data has since been updated and somehow we have used 4 gb on my phone in 6 days. This does not bode well.

Wednesday, March 30th – Devil’s Fork State Park, South Carolina to North Carolina to Fort Yargo State Park, Atlanta, Georgia – Day 50   In the middle of the night, we were awoken by noise in the campsite next door. There was some rustling and then our neighbours started banging pots. We opened the zippered window on the trailer to see what was going on. Aisling woke up and joined us. In the faint light we made out the shape of a good-sized bear in their campsite. Aisling was excited to see a bear up close. We watched and a few minutes later the bear ran off.   We woke up in the morning and opened the window to lay and look out on the lake. The mountains rose from the lake edge and stood out in the distance. I reflected on how fortunate we were to be doing this trip. We ate some breakfast and helped the kids finish South Carolina junior ranger level 3. Mary and Gen took the kids to the shower while I packed up the trailer.  By the time I finished with the trailer

Tuesday, March 29th – Poinsett State Park to Congaree National Park to Devil’s Fork State Park – Day 49   Our campsite at Poinsett State Park was open. You could see everyone’s trailer but no one was really around. There were these beautiful small trees with white blossoms that were all around the park. We ate oatmeal with honey. Charlotte free poured honey onto her oatmeal and it was a sweet mess. After packing up, we ran into three mountain bikers that had just come back from riding the trails. They had biked 12 miles and had completed about half of the park’s trails. They were coming in for a bite to eat and then heading back out. My dream would be to wait until the kids are a bit older and do the same trip only to make the focus mountain biking. I have previously seen trails at Jonathan Dickinson in Jupiter, Florida that were professionally groomed with banked curves and jumps. It would be so much fun biking trails through the forest.   We went to the visitor’s centre to get a stam

Monday, March 28th – Myrtle Beach to Poinsett State Park, South Carolina – Day 48  I woke up feeling better. Gen was still feeling a bit rough. We packed up while the kids played. We went by the nature centre and the kids handed in a poorly done scavenger hunt. I had started the scavenger hunt two days prior but the previous day the kids didn’t want to do it and I did not feel like forcing them. You had to read signs posted around the park and then answer multiple choice questions. We finished the questions in the morning but a lot of them were wrong. The kids donated $1 and received the badges. Normally, I make sure they are completing every activity to the best of their ability because they shouldn’t be rewarded for anything less. Even John answers the questions. But we gave ourselves a pass for this one.   At Myrtle Beach they have cabins that you can rent. They cost $150 - $170 a night American. We looked at renting them for March break next year but didn’t end up deciding.   To ea

Sunday, March 27th – Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – Day 47  The generosity of the South Carolina people shows no end. The church group we were hanging around with had offered us their fire, they’d let our children play with theirs, given us some delicious dessert and now, Henry, our new best friend, went a step further. He had booked an extra night at Myrtle Beach State Park but wasn’t going to use it and offered it to us. Thank you Henry and family!   We wanted an extra night because we had been moving quite a bit and wanted to take a breathe for a moment. Also, Gen and I felt like death. The kids woke up early and went to the play structure. We stayed in bed. Our hypothesis was mild food poisoning from the beans or broccoli in the chili the night before. We had reasons to suspect both.  Eventually we had to get up and get moving. We went to talk to Henry about switching sites. He refused to let us give him some money. The kids were still playing in the park with their friends while

Saturday, March 26th – Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – Day 46   First thing in the morning, the kids asked why there was an empty food container on the campsite. The South Carolina grizzly had struck. Our beautiful leftover Mexican food had been taken out of our cooler sometime between arriving and going to bed without our realizing it. There were tiny little claw marks in the Styrofoam. We had to go through the cooler and try to find out what had been taken and touched by our friend the racoon. Lesson learned, store our food inside. Our limited storage space was reduced further.   In daylight we realized there was a play structure right behind us. Awesome. The kids went to play. They soon made friends with the children of our friends from the campfire the night before. They were a church group that had 9 different families staying around the campsite. They had invited us over to get beef brisket breakfast sandwiches, which sounded like the most delicious thing ever, but they were gone

Friday, March 25th – Savannah, Georgia to Charleston, South Carolina to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – Day 46 We have a book. We also have a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was not necessarily accessible to all (a lesson for my teaching practice). So, I started a book for everyone to list what they would like to see. Mary wrote that she would like to hear about the history of Savannah, the civil war and architecture so I was pushing for a walking tour around Savannah. I thought it would meet a lot of those criteria. Gen wasn’t sure about advertising a free walking tour that also required a $2.85 tax to book the tour and the suggested $10-20 tip each for the tour. But I booked and to Savannah we go.   We were late after packing everything up. The weather was better and getting better by the moment. We found the tour guide in one of the epic Savannah squares and I dropped off the family to enjoy the tour while I found a double-parking spot for our car and trailer. I finally found parking an

Thursday, March 24th – Savannah, Georgia – Day 45   We had a slow start in the morning. It had been raining all night and it was still overcast and raining. Laundry was done. After getting breakfast started and the girls starting to connect, John and I went to a snake feeding at the park’s nature centre. They had multiple species of snake and an aquarium of turtles. The feeding was interesting. One red snake went to town eating a mouse and John loved it. The turtles were enthusiasticly swimming around eating their salmon. Interesting fact, snakes can only eat something up to 1.5x the size of their body. The other interesting tidbit was that they had a skeleton of a giant sloth displayed that was found in the park.   When we got back to the trailer, everyone was disappointed because it was raining, the girls couldn’t get onto their class and we had not adequately planned to go to the snake feeding so they had all been sitting around waiting for John a