Spring in South Carolina - Short Update

Hi all -- Dianne here:

Just a quick update, mainly because I wanted to show just how lovely spring is here in South Carolina! 

 We spent one night at Magnolia RV Park and Campground outside Kinards, SC on our way to our next stop.  The flowers were SO pretty here that I just had to take a couple photos.  This is a nice, quiet campground; fine for an overnight stop.  It's a Passport America campground, so with the discount it was only $12 per night.  It is convenient to I-26.  They do have some pull-through sites, and the site we are in (site 39) allows our satellite to work.  (It is an issue in many of the sites here, though).

It's obviously a former KOA and is under recent new management.   Nice, shady sites, with some pull-throughs.  

 Check back soon as we return to Four Paws Kingdom in Rutherfordton, NC.  It's a very unique campground for dog lovers.  We stayed there on vacation once, back when we had our little Sunline travel trailer.  At the time, Four Paws was brand new.  It will be fun to make a return visit to see how the place has evolved over the past years.  I'm sure "the boys" will have a great time!   They deserve it, after being cooped up in their crate much of the time during the rally.  Gotta hit the road, so bye for now!

Nothing Could Be Finer Than to be in Carolina.... RV Dreams Rally

Hi all - Dianne here.  Roger and I had an uneventful trip to Longs, SC and got settled in at the Willow Tree RV Resort, site of the 2010 RV Dreams Rally.


South Carolina is beautiful in April!  The azaleas and dogwoods are in full bloom, and everything is my favorite shade of spring green.  The weather has been perfect.

Willow Tree RV Resort is a beautiful facility.  The sites are large,  private, and beautifully
 landscaped.   It's very quiet; I love hearing the wind rush through the tall pine trees, the mockingbirds singing, and the woodpeckers drumming.   Last night I listened to Whip-poor-wills singing their evening song.

There is a lovely lake with a paved one-mile path for hiking, biking, and walking our dogs.   Fishing and paddle boats are available, along with a swimming beach and large pool area.

There are even some sites at this resort with individual hot tubs!  We are getting a special rally rate, so we're not in the deluxe sites, but even the site we have is large, private, and very, very nice indeed!  We opted to stay a few days after the rally just to enjoy this beautiful place.


 Howard and Linda Payne, who have the RV Dreams web site, are hosting the rally.  Howard and Linda hit the road back in 2005 after quitting the corporate rat race in their early 40s.  I came upon their web site in 2006, because that is about the time Roger and I started thinking about his retirement and how to hit the road ourselves.  


Howard does a better job of 
describing the events here, so if 
you would like to learn more about
 what we've been up to this week, 
check out his blog by clicking on
 "RV Dreams" on the left sidebar.  There's even a photo of Roger helping out with registration on the first day!


Here are a listing of seminars we've attended:

• Emotional Aspects of the Full-Timing Decision
• Selecting a "Home Base" and Insurance Considerations
• What Does it Cost to Full-Time?
• TV Options for RVers
• High Speed Internet for RVers
• Buying an RV - Pros, Cons & Must Haves
• Boondocking/Solar
• Working on the Road
• Manage Your Digital Photos With Google's Picasa 2
• RV Tire Safety
• RV Weight Safety
• (Roger: I have now been to three of these presentations.  This one, including the tire safety, by Walter Cannon may well have been the best.  Loved his sense of humor and very clear explanations.)
• Choosing a Camp Site
• Every RVer Needs a Blog

Even after a year and a half of full-timing, Roger and I learned some very important things in each and every seminar.  It also helps to refresh our memories on things we had already heard.  I had already taken the "blog," "Picasa," and "internet options" seminars last fall at the Gypsy Journal Rally.  These were presented again by "Geeks on Tour."  Their tutorials are available on line for everyone, not just RVers, so if you need help on computer issues, you can click on the link in the left sidebar and go to their web site.  I highly recommend them!   They are also living this lifestyle and traveling and working from their RV.


In addition to the educational seminars, there were social activities as well:

• Catered Welcome Dinner
• Chili Cook-Off
• Roger here...  Dianne won't tell you this, but the organizers of the rally had her stand up for an ovation for the chocolate eclair dessert that she brought.  Mmmm!  I married a good "cooker"!
• Favorite RV Gadgets "Show and Tell"
• My anal-retentive system of storing and finding "stuff" drew a lot of comments from the other RVers.  People from my former employers (Hamilton Southeastern Schools) will probably not be too surprised by this.  By the way, Dianne referred to me as anal in front of the entire group.  Very embarrassing!  (Dianne:  If the shoe fits....)
• We did a blog on Roger's organizational system when he did it; if you want to see that, click on "organization" in the left sidebar to bring that blog up.
• My "show and tell" included two of my favorite gadgets that save weight and space in the motor home.  I'm including a link if you want to learn more:  
• Potluck
• Dianne's BLT salad was scraped clean before we got in line.
• Family Feud (what a blast that was!)
• Open Rig Walk-Throughs
• Catered Steak & Shrimp Dinner
• Golden Oldies Sock Hop
• Dianne actually danced with me several times.  What fun!  Felt like I was in college again.
• Catered Full Farewell Breakfast

As my friends will testify, I'm not usually all that "social," but I have to say, we really had a lot of fun at each and every activity!   I'm usually one to try to cut out early or skip, but I found myself wanting to attend every activity and staying to the end.  Roger even got me to dance at the sock hop!


We loved meeting and talking to folks who are going through the same process we just finished.  We actually felt like so-called "experts" as we answered some questions!  The people, including Howard and Linda, were great - fun people with common interests who felt like friends. 

All in all, it has been a great experience and we're really glad we came.  We have met some real characters and wonderful people this week and hope to stay in touch and follow their progress as they begin their own adventures.

Hiking, Edisto Beach, Southern BBQ

Hi - Dianne here. On Thursday, Roger and I took the dogs for a hike in Edisto Island State Park. It's sure different from Turkey Run! Palm trees, pine trees, and marsh grasses. It's very pretty in its own way. (Still looking forward to Turkey Run next summer). The only wildlife we saw were some gray squirrels, which got the boys' attention, and some marsh birds that I added to my birding life list.

All our hiking on beach and trails worked up an early appetite, so we traveled to check out the BBQ place Roger mentioned the other day. Wow, what a spread! I'll let him elaborate on it below.

We have been really lucky here, weather-wise. The local newscasters keep saying it's about ten degrees above the normal temp of 61. It's actually been in the mid- to upper 70s each day. It was so nice Friday, that after our morning beach exercise-walk, we packed up our beach chairs and walked back over to spend about three relaxing hours watching the waves crash on the beach, reading (Roger), and reading and Sudoku (me). The dogs even enjoyed laying on the grass mats at our feet and made no attempt to leave. We need to enjoy it now, because it's supposed to become more seasonal next week, with a

high in the 50s.

We've heard that sand fleas can be a problem here, but evidently not in December, because we've not been bothered by insects at all, even mosquitos. I can believe they'd be a big problem part of the year. This afternoon Roger plans to watch the Purdue basketball game on CBS, and while he's doing that, I think I'll take a beach chair, my bird book, and binoculars to the beach and try to add some more birds to my list.

Tomorrow we pack up and head for Skidaway Island, outside Savannah, GA for two weeks. We'll have to find a replacement for our beach walks. I was mortified to learn that in the motorhome I only manage to get a couple hundred steps a day, as opposed to about 5,000 just walking around in my three-story house in Pendleton! There will have to be some major compensating for that.

Roger here... The Barbeque place was great. (Gary Z. - worthy of driving through five states for dinner.) We had been reading about it and saw that it had been rated as one of the top ten barbeque places in the country. Because it was in a little room attached to a gas station, miles from nowhere, it was even more fun. It was definitely a mom and pop place. For $9.25 you got a barbeque buffet that not only had delicious pork barbeque, but also 29 other "southern" foods. At the table there were five different barbeque sauce choices. My favorite was the Carolina Red. All the other customers were local. Quite an experience.

Magnolia Plantation, Charleston, SC

Hi all - Dianne here again. Yesterday we zipped up the dogs in their crate, and Roger and I drove over to Magnolia Plantation, outside Charleston. Turns out, we could have taken the dogs with us (we were just touring the gardens), but it was too far to go back for them. What an interesting, beautiful place! We were there in probably its worst season for the gardens, but they were lovely anyway. The camellias were just starting to bloom. Parts of the garden date back to the late 1600s! I definitely recommend touring this plantation's grounds if you're anywhere in the area. It's $15 each per adult just to tour the gardens. We spent three hours walking around the grounds, so the admission price was well worth it. We didn't pay extra to tour the house. We didn't care much about seeing it, because the house had been burned to the ground by Sherman's Army during the civil war; this one wasn't the original plantation house.

Last night we attempted another campfire. There is such thick fog off the ocean every morning, that everything gets soaked overnight, so we've been dealing with wet firewood. As you can see from one of the photos, our normal setup is three chairs around the fire pit: One for Roger, one for me, and one for Jasper! He requires a chair, not a cushion, because after all, he's NOT a dog. (Just ask him) Chaplin prefers to lay on his dog bed next to us.

I hesitated to include the full length photo of me at Magnolia Gardens, because part of my goal this winter is to lose 10 pounds, all of which show up in the photo. We've been walking down the beach every morning for exercise. I'm wearing my pedometer, and it's about a mile and a half each way. It takes us about an hour to walk down to the tide river and back. Walking the dogs in the sand gives some good aerobic steps, according to my pedometer. If I do lose some pounds, I'll update it; if not, I won't mention it again!!!!!

Every day on the beach is different. Yesterday on our walk, we passed by a 3-foot shark that had been washed way up on the beach by the tidal waves. It was dead, of course, but was creepy anyway.

Roger has strung some Christmas lights on the bushes at our camp site, and we have our little LED-lit tree in the front window. I'll include a photo, but not sure how well it will show up. We'll set them up again when we drive to Skidaway Island next Monday. After New Year's at Skidaway, we'll pack them away in the deep recesses of the motor home until next Christmas.

Roger here... It has taken a while to adjust to the time frame of retirement. For awhile, I continued to wake up at 5:00 a.m. every morning. I tried (usually unsuccessfully) to get up and have some coffee without waking up Dianne. As the days have passed, I have eventually gotten to the point of not waking until the sun rises. However, this morning the harsh realities of our old life surfaced when the cell phone rang at 5:15 a.m. and then again a few minutes later. When I answered the phone, I was greeted to the familiar sound of my friend Jim White, school transportation director, who had sent an automated Honeywell message to the HSE constituency announcing a two-hour delay for the start of school, due to ice in the neighborhoods. I need to figure out how to disengage from automatically receiving those messages for as much as I miss hearing Jim's voice, 5:15 a.m. is now for me very early in the morning :)

Edisto Island, South Carolina

Dianne here.   Wow, we have a beautiful campsite here!   We're in site #26 at Edisto Island State Park.   We are close to the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and a salt marsh on the other, with views of both from the motorhome!   The salt marsh looks totally different at low tide from high tide.  I'll include a photo of each.   Since it is the "off season" here, it is not at all crowded.  In fact, the times we've walked the beach, we've had it all to ourselves.   Dogs are allowed on the beach during the off season, so the "boys" are really enjoying their daily walks.   It is even safe to let Jasper off the leash on the beach (not Chaplin, though, of course!).

The weather changes a lot from day to day.  It's been rainy, windy, cold, warm, etc.  It sounds like the rest of the week for our stay here, we'll have beautiful, warm, '70s weather.  I can handle that!   The waves crash onto the beach here, so we have the constant background noise of the ocean.   It's been warm enough to leave our bedroom window open enough to hear the ocean at night.

The other night, there was a beautiful full moon, the largest and closest moon of the year.  Roger had taken the dogs on their nightly walk on the beach, and came running back to the motorhome to get me so I could see it.  I'm including a couple of photos of the moon and the sunset that night.   I could not get a proper photo of the full moon after dark; the one posted here just gives a hint of how beautiful it was.   

It's a shame I hate oysters, because we could harvest all we want right on the beach if we chose to.  

I'm adding photos, but again, I still haven't figured out how to make them post in order.   Hope you can match them up!   

Also, for those of you adding comments, I have it set up to moderate them before posting, "just in case."   (Anyone can read this blog if they come across it on the internet; I want to keep it family-friendly for Kaia).   That's why they don't show up immediately after you post them.  They e-mail them to us first, and then we publish them to the blog.   Sorry for any confusion about that.  

Roger is going to add his comments today, so keep reading!

Roger here....  After the cold trip down, the weather here has been much better.  I am sitting outside in shorts and a t-shirt at the campsite - listening to the ocean.  We had a campfire last night, and probably will again tonight.  Since we have been here, I have been reading, taking long walks on the beach, and doing a daily chore (at least one a day).  Today I cleaned the dead bugs off the front of the motorhome - very fulfilling.  None of the dead bugs complained or threatened to sue me or file some kind of formal complaint, so life is good.

Yesterday we got rations from the Piggly Wigley just across the street from the state park.  For me it was like going back to the 1950's - narrow aisles, basic food, friendly down to earth people... I loved it.

I was frustrated yesterday with the NFL coverage.  Our TV reception is great, but the only way to keep track of the Colts game was to watch the ticker during the Jets game.  It looked a little too close for comfort.  Am I wrong? .  The coverage problem will be solved when we get our satellite installed when we get to Ft. Lauderdale next month.  CBS did a promo about the Purdue/Davidson game, but I did not catch when it will be on.  If anyone knows, send me an email so that I can be sure to watch it.  Before we leave this area we are planning to visit a plantation outside of Charleston and maybe eating at a dive that is supposed to have the best barbecue in the country - just a mile away.  Otherwise, I am just planning to continue walking on the beach and vegging on the hammock.

To all the HSE people who sent emails...THANKS!  It is great to hear from you.

Lazy Day, Dog Park, + Folly Beach

Dianne again (I'm on a roll!)

On Tuesday we spent a lazy day around the campground at Lake Aire until we finally got our act together and went exploring around 2:00.   For those teachers and folks back at HSE, I have proof that Roger is taking to retirement like a duck to water.   I snuck a photo of him drinking a beer and working a crossword puzzle at 1:00 in the afternoon.   He probably didn't even know what day it was!!!  

We walked the dogs on a nature trail here at the campground.   The trail is next to a small lake and I'm adding a photo of it, since a picture is worth 1,000 words.   Once again, the photos don't show up where I intend for them to in the blog; maybe someday I'll figure it out.   Here also is a photo of our motorhome in our camp site here at Lake Aire campground.

There are some large, exotic ducks here at the campground called Muscovy.   I stalked one of them to get a photo, and lo and behold found myself right next to a bush where they had hidden a nest of duck eggs.   

Around 2:00 we put "the boys" in the car with us and drove to James Island County Park, where they have an awesome dog park.  It is HUGE!   There is even a small sandy beach and water for them to swim in.   The tall structures in the photo are part of a light display they have here at the county park every Christmas.   Jasper and Chaplin had a great time running and playing with the other dogs.   There were a LOT of dogs there.   Jasper chased a frisbee, and Chaplin just ran around and acted like Chaplin.   I made the mistake of carrying a plastic bag with dog toys and treats in it into the park and got jumped on by about five wet, sandy dogs who wanted my toys and treats!   We stayed for quite a while, until a chow started acting a little aggressive toward Chaplin.   Jasper was a good "big brother" and actually tried to deflect the chow away from Chaplin.  

From there, we drove down to Folly Beach.   This was our first view of the ocean during this trip.   The Low Country is beautiful in a very different way than we are used to in the Midwest.  There is a sea of grass and marsh land.   I'm including a couple photos we took at Folly Beach, looking AWAY from the ocean.   

The last photo for today (probably will show up as the first one on this blog) was a great shot of the crashing waves, blue sky, and the moon just starting to show.   I have to say, this is the life!!