Colleton South Carolina

Colleton State Park is pretty small, but it is nice. We seem to be beyond the yellow fly and mosquito area now so sitting outside is WONDERFUL! The park has terrific wifi, which is always a plus. Just a relaxing place to be.

The nearby town is good place to visit. We drove out to Anderson Field where the Tuskegee airmen trained. It was also a general training field during WWII, a camouflage school, along with a POW camp for captured Germans.

Colleton Museum was neat. It seems to be that everyone was asked to donate or loan something to the museum, but the quality of the items are high. Plus there are frequently stories to go with the items. The light colored dress on the left was worn by the SC senator’s wife to the JFK inauguration ball.

Apparently the sharks were big around here back millions of years ago.

This pottery is called Dave Pot. It was made by a slave named Dave in 1857. Dave signed the pot, which was unusual to allow a slave to write. It was purchased by someone local. The whole concept of displaying items that have been passed down in the family made by a slave seems bizarre but hey, the pink and green ceramic parrot I have from an aunt is kind of bizarre too.

Subs and Tabby

St. Mary’s Georgia is home to a submarine base. This submarine is right outside the entrance. Pretty cool with it being buried in the lawn!

There is a submarine museum in town. It was pretty dated with typed cards identifying items (remember typewriters!). The best part was a working periscope with the scope on the roof. You could see the water and town from above. Very cool!

There is also the Tabby Ruins. This was a sugar mill built in the 1820’s. Actually, I thought it was in pretty good shape given it’s essentially made of shells (some burnt to make lime) and sand.

Bugs and Creatures

The bugs are terrible right now. North Florida is full of yellow flies. If you haven’t seen these flies, you are VERY lucky. They are the size of house flies but yellow and they bite! Between yellow flies and mosquitoes, my legs are covered with bites. John is more allergic to bites and his bites swell up. Hopefully soon we’ll either be out of the area for these bugs or past the season.

The neighbors at one of the campgrounds had a pet potbelly pig. Apparently you can’t put a leash on it, so it wandered around the sites. Kinda bizarre seeing a pig at your campsite. This is not a pet I would want…especially while camping. Oh, well. Everyone is different.

Every park seems to be different on what creatures you might see. At Ocean Pond it’s all about squirrels. At one point we counted 17 squirrels in sight.

At Crooked River State Park in Georgia, it is all about gopher tortoises. I’ve looked for these at other parks but never saw them. We saw 3 on a short bike ride along with seeing them at the campsite.

We also saw several armadillos at recent campsites. It was harder to take pictures of these. Either it was dark outside (and there is nothing better than hearing rustling leaves right outside the window in the dark!) or they hide in the brush.

Recently we’ve had some heavy rains. In a house, you hear rain but in an RV you really experience the rain. It is extremely noisy in our RV. We’ve tried to watch TV during a rain, but even with the volume all the way up it’s difficult to hear.

Paynes Prairie

We’ve visited Paynes Prairie before. Except for the mosquitoes, it’s a great park for a hike or bike ride. Pictures from the trails…

And from around the campsite…

Geocaching

We’re at St. Andrews State Park. It’s one of the most difficult parks to get into with reservations filling months in advance. The trick is just to keep going online and looking for a site to open up.

There are several geocaches in the area. The first I found was just outside the park. Smallest geocache I’ve ever seen. It was the size of the first digit of my little finger. One of the things geocachers talk about is to not attract attention from muggles. Muggles are anyone who doesn’t geocache. This cache was on a fairly busy street corner. I’m pretty sure I attracted attention as I was crawling under a park bench!

The 2^nd cache we never found. There was a recent controlled fire in the area. Maybe it burnt?

The 3^rd cache was far at the end of the island with plenty of sandy trails that slowed our walk. We finally got close to the area and then saw a snake right in the general location! It was probably non-venomous but we didn’t really know. We tried walking around the area to see if we could get to it in another direction. Finally, I read some of the notes that no one has found this particular cache in several months. The thing is, geocache isn’t all about finding the cache. It’s about looking for it in some pretty cool places. This time we got to see this heron up in the tree alongside the path. Pretty cool!

The 4^th cache I couldn’t find during my search of this area but John found it later on.

The park is full of deer and birds.

 

Not sure what is happening, but the beach is disappearing. This wasn’t like this the last time we were here.

These are reproductions of the Nina and Pinta that came into town.

Excitement in the Woods

This week we’re at Camel Lake in another national forest in Florida. This time we got to swim in alligator infested water. There were two smaller alligators that literally live and swim right beside the beach. Small means one was 2-4 feet long while the other was 4-5 feet long. In the evening we can hear around 4 alligators that grunt to each other across the pond. We’ve heard that the alligators on the other side are bigger, but we didn’t see them.

One day John watched a turtle come up on the shore. She laid her eggs in a hole. By the time I saw it; she had covered her eggs and was entering the water. Just a few hours later, we came back and saw the hole was empty. Apparently birds will eat the eggs, but I never thought it would happen so quickly and take them all. 

Coming into the campground with the RV, we ignored the GPS for the last few miles when we saw signs directing us to the campground. On a day trip out, we decided to follow the GPS. WOW! The “road” was a path that seemed designed for ATV’s. It had foot deep holes in the middle of the road. It had sand pits where we held our breath to see if we could make it out. There were points where we scraped through the bushes on both sides. I am very, very glad we didn’t take the RV on this road. We wouldn’t have been able to turn around and there was no way we would have made it.

And, butterflies on the beach.