Back in North Georgia

Left you in Charleston, actually a campground outside of Charleston, not so hot really, but decent location.  We went into town and had lunch at an institution, Hyman's.  Been there since 1890!  It was very nice, great service, great food, very interesting, our table had a plaque saying Kevin Costner ate there:-)  

We had delicious she-crab soup with light as a feather wonderful hush puppies.

Sea bass croquette, shrimp, and collards

Grouper, oysters, and a grit cake

Then we walked the streets for an hour or so, the weather was perfect.

Then we moved farther south to Savannah, and stayed at a new place for us, Red Gate Farm.  It is a working farm and event venue place, nice but the traffic noise was intense.  We wanted to find oysters while we were there as the last hurrah for a while.  We searched and searched, and we really didn't feel like going into downtown, both if us have been there many times before, but we hit pay dirt when we found Bluffton Oyster in the quaint town of Bluffton, SC.  We splurged on  two dozen oysters, fried shrimp, fried oysters, and had a cup of delicious clam chowder.  An excellent lunch!

The other thing we wanted to do while in the Savannah area was to get a lot of fresh shrimp to freeze.  We were very successful, and between two seafood markets picked up 8 pounds of fresh off the boat shrimp.

Then we headed north to Woodruff, SC near Greenville-Spartanburg to another not so hot campground, Fireside, kind of like a work camp, we even cut out a night early, but saving grace we found a delicious Vietnamese restaurant, Lemongrass in Spartanburg, so all was not lost:-)

The Banh Mi and the beef pho were wonderful!

Then since we cut out early we ran over to another uninspiring campground in Toccoa for a quick overnight, then on to Ellijay, GA to Talona Ridge, where we had a surprise visit from Jan's sister, Karen and Tom, in fact they pulled in an hour after we did.  And they told us they were staying for more than a week!  Great news, we have a lot to catch up on, it's been since the spring since we've seen them.  There will be many lunches, dinners, and Happy Hours to come.

Charleston Now

From Virginia Beach we headed south to Wilmington, NC, after negotiating about 35 miles of roads that seemed to be only a lane and a half at best, quivering each time a car would go by, and shaking in our boots whenever a truck went by we finally got on some decent width roads and made our way to the campground.  It was a fairly new campground, In The Pines, and initially we thought it would be okay.  First we noticed that although there was ample room between sites, the actual gravel pad you sat on was barely wide enough for our rig.  But it seemed peaceful and quiet, that is until the kids showed up, and their parents let them terrorize the park, they would scream and run around everywhere, especially through people's sites, even watched them step on and collapse a dishy on a nearby site.  Parents totally oblivious.  Then night fall came and on came the LIGHTS!!  Brighter than a Walmart parking lot, you could have operated on the picnic table.  This is a small park and Jan counted 21 high intensity LED street lights.  Unless you like lights we do not recommend this park.

We went into Wilmington for a good lunch at Elijah's, sat outside and enjoyed it very much.  After lunch we walked along the boardwalk and around town for a while, a beautiful day.

Happy camper waiting for lunch

Seafood chowder

Oysters and shrimp, yummy

Wilmington sits on a peninsula, so we drove south as far as Fort Fisher, actually as far as you can.  Fort Fisher protected Wilmington overlooking the Cape Fear River during the Civil War. The fort area was still closed due to tropical storm damage. Then we took a ferry across the river to Southport.  It was a lot of fun, and very scenic.

It turned into a much longer day than we had anticipated as the traffic was horrendous in Southport as several bridges are out from the storm and everyone is routed around them.  

The next day we went into Southport, it is a cute town, lots to do and see and much quieter than Wilmington.  We had another good lunch there at Fishy Fishy, and then walked all over.

Amazing clam chowder, maybe the best we've ever had

Asian salmon sandwich

On the way back we found a fantastic fresh seafood market, Haag and Sons, bought lots and lots of shrimp and a beautiful piece of red snapper for dinner.

Then it was on to one of the absolute nicest parks we've been to, Willowtree in Longs, SC, near Myrtle Beach.  We figured out the last time and only time we were there was in 2006, and were curious if it still was nice.  Our site was huge and sat right on the lake, all paved roads and sites with patios.  We thought long and hard about it and we can confidently say we have never been in any park that had more space and privacy between sites.  It has a large lake with a paved trail around it, 1.25 miles long.  There are many more trails throughout the park.  It is very quiet, and dark.  I don't know how many acres it sits on, but our guess is a couple hundred.  Can't say enough good about this park, amazing!

Having said all that, in reality, at least for Jan and I, we really are not that fond of Myrtle Beach.  It is so busy, so commercial, just like any other beach town, high rise condos everywhere, but we intended to make the most of it and enjoy the super campground while there.  And what do you know, that has to involve more food, so into North Myrtle Beach we went to a hometown favorite, Hoskin's, like a friendly seafood diner, very busy, great service, and great food, and a bonus, very affordable.  Jan got a small fried oyster plate and I got a small scallop plate and we shared, that doesn't include the basket of delicious hushpuppies that came with it.  So much delicious food, we took enough home for another lunch!  Thank goodness we got smalls.

The next day I had to get a blood test, so we set up an appointment in Myrtle Beach proper, then went to Costco, and since we had kind of OD'd on seafood, we thought we'd take a break and try a small Mexican restaurant that had good reviews, Tu Taco.  Well, wow!  It was great, an order at the counter kind of place, but it was so good, simple, fresh, delightful food, in fact we were so enamored with it we actually went 3 days in a row!  How weird is that?  Are we crazy?  Nah, we had something different each time, and really enjoyed it.

So now our Mexican fix will do us for some long time:-)

Now we are outside of Charleston, in a not so nice campground, small sites, close to each other, but close to the city.  We are here just 2 nights and will go into town tomorrow for lunch and to walk around, then we will head down to Savannah for another quick visit, and turn north to head back to Northern Georgia for the next month.  We have much planned while we are there.  I'll fill you in soon.

Moving Along, Watching Milton

So right back to the food, I mentioned a very good Vietnamese restaurant, Lang Van in Charlotte that we actually visited twice.  The first time it was stellar and the second, good, maybe it was just what we ordered.

A very good noodle stir fry

Excellent Pho

Good wonton soup

Fried rice

Another stir fry with crunchy noodles

Before you think we are pigs, this made up 4 lunches for us:-)

As I said previously when we got all taken care of at the service center we had to go somewhere so we went to Cross Winds, a park we had been to previously and booked 3 nights to get our bearings, we had cancelled everything out to Sunday when we had the engine issue.  Although there is little to do near Linwood, NC, we figured we'd just extend 2 nights and then go to Virginia Beach on Sunday.  Well, that didn't work, they had no room at the inn for Fri and Sat night, so on to plan B.  We looked around and ended up going to a nice park in Fayetteville, NC, Fayetteville RV Resort.  It was a huge place with lots of walking and we didn't even unhook the truck for our 2 nights.

What we did do however was celebrate our 51st anniversary with shrimp cocktail, superlative bourbon and whisky, and stellar cigars, followed by a filet mignon dinner with hasselback potatoes and a wedge salad.  Some would say not much of a celebration, but it works for us.

Then off to Virginia Beach and the North Landing Beach RV Resort, a place we definitely had never been to before.  It was an easy ride until we were about 20 miles out when the road became so narrow we weren't sure even two cars could pass, they could, but wow.  We had a site all the way out on the end of a peninsula surrounded by water with an interesting twist and something we had never had to do previously.  You had to back up about 250 yards to get into the site!  

That's us marked by the arrow,
and we had to back up from where we took this picture!

And except for the first night, we had the point all to ourselves

With amazing sunsets.

It was quite a haul into Virginia Beach proper, or Norfolk but worth it.  We also found out this is off season for this area, in fact the first place we went to lunch, Seaside, very good by the way, we were the only people in there.  It was like having a personal chef that took care of us:-)

We got delicious raw oysters, oysters Rockefeller, shrimp bites, and an amazing crab and corn soup.

Yeah, we were almost done before I took the pic

One other thing I really wanted to do was take Jan to a restaurant that I used to go to on Norfolk layovers almost 30 years ago, it hurts me to say that.  The Surf Rider had the best crab cakes and the most interesting side.  I tell everyone never order a crab cake in a restaurant, but there are exceptions, this place and downtown Baltimore.  Now to think, first of all that this place would still be around, let alone still good after all these years was a stretch.  They now have about 7 locations, so we picked one on the water and went.  All I can say it was everything I remembered and more, we both were so pleased with our lunch, we talked about it for days.  First of all the crab cakes are amazing, basically all crab, a little seasoning and baked.  The unusual side is broccoli, now you say what's different about that?  Well it is an entire head of broccoli, steamed and comes with a small dish of Hollandaise.  even though I had told Jan about this for years, to see it come out is amazing.  Then we ordered a fried oyster plate, and not only were the oysters delicious and perfectly cooked, there were 22 of them!  We had no idea we'd get that many, so we also ordered a side of 4 shrimp, little did we know they were huge and butterflied so each side of one shrimp was equivalent to a big shrimp all on its own, even the hush puppies were wonderful.  It filled us for lunch and we had enough for dinner as well.  Service was great with a view, what more could you ask for?

In the picture it's hard to make out, but these are about the size of a baseball

Another thing we wanted to do while there was take a Navy Harbor Tour.  It was fantastic, the weather was perfect.  It goes out of downtown Norfolk from the Nauticus where the battleship Wisconsin is on display.  It's 2 hours with over half of it narrated with info and data of the many navy ships at dock or in dry dock.  It's a good take.

The Wisconsin, bow and stern.

Loading coal

Hard to see, but there are 2 nuclear attack subs docked here

The USS Dwight D Eisenhower, a Nimitz class carrier, 1092' long

We had been watching Milton like everyone else, keeping our fingers crossed.  We have friends that were directly affected and in the path.  There is a lot of damage, but everyone made it through okay, but it sure is going to take a lot of clean up and repair.  

I'll leave you with one more sunset.