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Published: January 6th 2012
Thursday January 5, 2012
Happy 65
th birthday to Richard! (Scoutelas, my ex husband)
Now that that’s out of the way, welcome to my Snowbird blog. (Sorry Louis, I did not remember to pack my Snowbird T shirt, duh.) Most are seasoned readers, what is this, the 4
th? 5
th? Year I have written while on my winter trip? Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is so good to be writing again, I find it very therapeutic. I promise to try to keep writing newsy and entertaining blogs.
I am trying something new this year. My camping friend, Kathy Everett, introduced me to
www.travelblog.org. This first blog will go out as an email to all those who are not facebook surscribers. You will get another email from travelblog.org which will have a link in it to follow. The easiest thing for you to do is go to the website and search for me Kat McGrath, or NanaKat. If you signup/register there, you will automatically get an email when I post something new. I like the site because it allows me to show you on a map where I am, and easily add pictures. I am very interested in hearing from each and every one of you if you like this new format. I will also post from travelblog.org to facebook, so you can catch up with me multiple ways.
As pretty much all of you know, I made the move from NJ to NC in November. I have never regretted the decision to leave my as yet unsold NJ home to relocate near oldest son Tim and his family, wife Gretchen, and 8 y/o Lilly and 5 y/o Ben. I spent a wonderful holiday season with them and my new extended family including Gretchen’s dad and step mom, sister and her family, and occasional visits from her mom and step father. Confused yet? I love my new home, and left it this morning with a little sadness as I really am having fun there and love the much warmer weather. As I see on TV (we have a NY channel on Time Warner cable) the weather in NJ has been unusually warm as well, but I have worn shorts pretty much every day until the past few when temperatures dropped into the 20s at night and only highs in the 40s.
But, on the road with Winston is more fun! Here we go. Please, jump on and travel with me.
My new community does not allow parking RVs in driveways. I had it parked at a nearby storage facility. With permission, I can park it for 24 hours to prepare for a trip. In previous years I worked for 2 weeks getting things clean and packed; this year I had 24 hours. These 24 hours was preceded by 4 days of painters in my house painting 3 rooms leaving a horrible mess from sanding the previously wallpapered kitchen walls. I had to take everything out of the kitchen cabinets, wash them inside and out and wash all the dishes, which I had just done when I moved into the house in November. The dust was everywhere! Fine, white pasty stuff that just left streaks when wiped. I was physically exhausted, as I had never really cleaned up after taking down the Christmas decorations. My point, I was tired, and had 24 hours to clean and pack the RV. I worked on a 10 minute cycle….10 minutes cleaning and packing RV, 10 minutes rest, 10 minutes cleaning house, 10 minutes rest, on and on and on, and it all got done, except as I left this morning, I saw that I had never cleaned the dining room chandelier – still coated with white dust. It will wait.
I left Wilmington at 8:30 headed for Savannah, GA. It truly was nice to know that I am 650 miles closer to my final FL destination than I have been in previous years, and not to have to drive around Baltimore and Washington, and be overall warmer. I already know I packed too many cold weather clothes, as it got to 65 today and will get progressively warmer as the week goes on and I get closer to central FL.
I set Garmina to Dillon, SC, about 150 miles southwest of Wilmington. I made the very conscious decision not to drive directly south on US 17, avoiding the whole Myrtle Beach/Charleston corridor, heading west on US 74 (soon to be I74 if I can believe the signs). Garmina hiccupped about 100 miles in and put me on ultra back roads. I had to pull over and check googlemaps on my phone, and was kind of going in the right direction, but not the fastest way for sure. But, I did get to see some of NC that I probably will never see again, reinforcing what I already know, these small towns are often only identified by a no name gas station, a Baptist church, and a Dollar General. I passed thru one town ?Fremont? ?Hancock? not sure, were many of the houses had bigger than life sized not plastic, maybe concrete or plaster, red flamingoes as lawn decorations. Many of them had 4 or 5, and I even saw some as mailboxes, just an unusual sight. Some still had Christmas decorations adorning them.
Very mistakenly, I thought gas would be cheaper in GA, and it sure wasn’t. It was $.20 more expensive/gallon than it was in SC. But, I made it to my final destination for the day on one tank of gas, only filling up with 30 gallons when I got off I95 at the exit near this campground.
Winston walked the whole way from Wilmington to Savannah. He paced back and forth and back and forth and whined a whole lot. He got all out of sorts with the painters at the house, and he has not yet recovered. He is very unruly and thinks he is the boss, and sometimes he is. But it sure gets annoying when he barks at every person walking past the RV. Do they make doggie Phenobarbital?
Savannah Oaks RV resort isn’t any of that. I do not see oaks, I see long needle pines and sweet gums. No acorn trees anywhere to be seen. It is not a resort, either. There is a pool and a river, but uneven dirt sites and my cable TV does not work. I am not sure if that is problems with my TV or with their cable, but the air antenna works just fine and I am already tuned into ABC to be sure not to miss tonight’s Grey’s Anatomy. There is also free internet, and I can’t identify the network they told me to look for, it just isn’t here. Good thing my 2 year old PalmPre has mobile hotspot! I will be using it!
Technical notes. My ‘house’ battery does not seem to be holding a charge, and I wonder what that’s all about. After conferring with Richard (and wishing him a happy birthday) who knows about these things, we agreed I should take it to some auto parts store tomorrow and have them perform a battery check just to see what’s going on. Late next week I am going to need that battery to run lights and plumbing, so it must be in tip top shape and hold the charge, and be powerful enough to turn on the generator when needed.
And so my dear family and friends, time to figure out how to get this posted on travelblog.org and sit back and relax and gear up for Grey’s.
Kat out
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Kathy Everett
non-member comment
Thrilled to see you're on!
Hi Kat, You got your blog going,,yeh! I was thinking about you today and wondered if you were on the way to FL. Great start. I can't leave til early Feb., I'll e mail you. Kathy