Week ending Nov 29, 2018 Williamsburg, VA to St. Augustine, FL

Black Friday morning, now that we are leaving the Comfort Inn, we won't hear the fire trucks and ambulances from the station a couple of blocks away.  After another good breakfast, we loaded up our stuff and took it out to the truck.  Then we tried to start it.  It was very reluctant, however Joan got it started.  Unfortunately, when she put it in gear so we could load the back of the truck that was up against the hotel dumpster, it stalled.  Then we couldn't get it restarted again.  We called Trev for some ideas, and he told us to cycle the glow plug warmup process a few times. Still no luck.  We figured the problem was that the front end of the truck was higher than the fuel tank.  The front desk called a tow truck from Send Towing who arrived in about half an hour, pretty good for a day off for most people.  He tried starting it a few times with a powerpack to boost it.  Still no luck.  Then he pulled it up onto the street, hoping this would fix the problem.  Still no luck.  After about half an hour he called his truck repair guy (he has a diesel as well) who wouldn't be working until Monday.  We were about ready to figure out what dealer to tow the truck to, if we even could on a holiday.  The tow truck driver figured our fuel pump had probably failed.  That gave him the idea to pump the fuel pedal a few times before trying one last time.  It fired up!  Thank heavens.  We thanked him profusely and paid him for his services.

We had been planning to go to the Mannassas Civil War NHP, just west of Washington, but decided, we needed to take the truck on the full trip to our next stop, Williamsburg, VA, to make sure we got the batteries (2 of them) charged up again.  After an uneventful trip, we arrived at the hotel. 
Then we walked the 1.3 miles into Colonial Willamsburg to view the sites.  Being the Thanksgiving Weekend, there were quite a few people enjoying the restored village here.    Many of them had bought passes($41 adult, 20.50 for youths) to go into the various venues, but we were happy to just wander through the streets admiring the architecture for an hour, with the end of the trip being the Governors Palace. 

Governor's Mansion

Coke-Garret House

On Saturday, we drove south from Williamsburg through Newport News, Hampton, then through the tunnel under the James River to Norfolk.  We avoided a toll road with our new GPS, following an older road that goes the same way but through the towns along the way.  At the end of the toll road, we arrived at a Welcome Center in North Carolina, where we picked up maps for NC, Georgia and Florida.  They didn't have South Carolina because they just elected a new governor and aren't sending out any new maps until his picture is on them.  We had a nice long chat with the hosts at the Welcome Center who are locals that do a lot of traveling with a small camping trailer. They headed for Alaska last summer, but turned back when they got to Glacier Park and she found out they were still only half way to Alaska.   They gave us information which led us to Kitty Hawk, on the outer banks, to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial.  It was interesting learning the the improvements they made in 4 different flying machines,

bi-plane

looking at the historical markers representing the distances for 4 flights,

Flight distance markers

and climbing Kill Devil Hill to the memorial marking where they made initial pre-flight trials.

Wright Brothers Memorial

It started to rain just after we left the Memorial, so we parked in an outlet mall lot to have some lunch.  Then we drove back inland across the inter-coastal waterway over Croatan Sound, across the Alligator River (with its nature reserve).  We saw signs in the nature reserve to watch for bears, and for red wolves.  We noticed a Red Wolf Recovery Program.  For informaton on red wolves see
https://owlcation.com/stem/Places-to-see-red-wolves-in-North-Carolina

We carried on until we got to Washington ('the original Washington'), North Carolina.  We saw on TV news that there were tornado warnings around the area.

On Sunday morning we went looking for breakfast since the hotel breakfast wasn't open until 7, and we were ready to go about 6:30.  The nearby McDonalds was being renovated, and the Burger King didn't open until 7 either, so we just got some coffee at the hotel when we got back to it.  We noticed that the service station across from the hotel had all of its diesel pumps out of service.  That made us wonder.  
We headed south on highway 17.  South of New Bern, around Maysville, we began to see evidence of the hurricane in September.  There were a lot of houses with tarps on the roofs, and several with piles of wood and garbage bags ready for removal.  We also saw a 'disaster recovery' crew with machinery removing debris from along the ditches


When we got  to Jacksonville  we filled up at one of the slowest pumps ever.  It was so slow, that we couldn't hear the nozzle stop when the tank filled.  We got talking to a guy across the pump, and mentioned the lack of diesel in Washington, NC.  He said that could be why the diesel pumps were running slow here too, since the tornado had gone through the area the night before, so maybe the diesel trucks hadn't been able to make deliveries.   He told us that one house had the roof ripped off, and that it had landed in the middle of the highway 9 miles away.  Wow!

In Wilmington, we saw a lot more evidence of hurricane damage. 

Tarping due to hurricane

From Wilmington, we crossed into South Carolina where we stopped at a Welcome Center to pick up some information on Myrtle Beach and Charleston.   When we got to Myrtle Beach, we had lunch at a Red Robin, one of the first we have seen for quite a while.  After getting set up in the hotel, we drove down to the beach, where we walked along the boardwalk for a while.  Then we went down to the water, took of our shoes and socks, and waded a bit, before returning back along the beach.  We probably should have had lunch in one of the beach restaurants to look over the ocean, and watch ships move by, but we do like Red Robin.

Myrtle Beach

Shore birds

Monday we drove from Myrtle Beach to Charleston. About 15 mi north of Charleston, we started seeing little roadside booths, advertising sweetgrass baskets.  None of them were occupied.  Our first stop was Fort Moultrie National Historic Site across the river from Charleston. On the GPS, this also lists as Fort Sumter.  We found out that Fort Sumter is on a small island in Charleston Harbor, and you need to take a boat to get to it.  We toured around Fort Moultrie.

Fort Moultrie

This was a fort, in various phases of construction from its first use in an encounter with the British Royal Navy in 1776, reconstructed in 1798 while England and France were at war, destroyed by a hurricane in 1804, rebuilt in 1809, abandoned in 1860 for the newer Fort Sumter, modernized in 1885.  Newer guns were added during World War II to protect the area from German submarines.

From there we drove to Middleton Place, a plantation.  We had looked at doing a tour there, but we are too cheap.  The minimum entrance fee is $46 each for a guided tour.  We were on the way to Savannah, and are too cheap to spend that much on a tour, but we stopped in to try to get a few pictures and buy a postcard.  However, you can't see much from the parking lot.

House on Middleton Place (not the main house)

Further on we stopped in the parking lot of a church in Orangeville, SC to have some lunch.
Then the sun came out, as we drove south to Savannah, Georgia.   We had booked a kitchenette efficiency in Suburban Extended Stay with a queen bed and sofa bed.  However, they didn't have a sofa bed in the room they assigned us.  When we pointed this out they said they had a room with two twins.  The cards they gave us wouldn't open the room, despite the clerk setting them up twice.  The second time, he gave us a card to call if we still couldn't get into the room.   We couldn't, so called the number, which was for the general manager.  It went to an automatic system that asked us for the extension of the person we were calling (not on the card).  We went back to the office and told them we wanted to cancel (our non-cancellable reservation), since they didn't have what we reserved.  They reversed the charges for us.  We drove a couple of miles back to the Quality Inn, part of Choice Hotels program we have been using, and booked two queens in a much nicer room, but with no kitchenette.  Better room for the same price. 

Tuesday  morning, we told the desk that our heater blew cool all night.  A while later the maintenance man came by to put in a new heater.  This isn't the first time we have had problems with the heaters not working correctly, but the first time we reported it.  We will be more proactive next time we have an issue.  We went to the market in the morning.  After lunch, we headed into downtown Savannah

Driving to downtown Savannah

and walked through the river district.

Stairs down to river walk

Waving Girl

Trolley lines

There was a woman making 'roses', woven from palmetto leaves .  They looked really good she told us that they were originally made by the negro women for the Union soldiers to thank them for not burning Savannah. 

Wednesday, we took I95 south.  Along the way, we saw a high load, house?, stuck under an overpass.  It must have been close, because it was almost through.  We stopped at the Florida Welcome Center to pick up some literature and hotel coupons.  Then we headed east to the coast on route A1A, which follows the coast south. A little disappointing, as you still can't see the ocean from the highway, unless you are crossing an inlet. At one point, the GPS directed us to St Johns River Ferry.  This was only because a) we don't have it set to avoid ferries, and b) we had it set to the shortest route.
After coming off the ferry, we saw a cruise ship which looked like it was on land from a distance. 

Cruise ship on intercoastal waterway

At the time, we were on our way to Fort Caroline National Memorial in  Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.  This fort was established in the Timucuan tribes area of northern Florida on the St. John's River estuary east of Jacksonville.  It was built by the French in 1562 in an attempt to establish a foothold in America to gain some of the benefits Spain was enjoying in the new world.  It was also used as a colony for Huguenots to escape persecution in France.  A few years later, Spain heard of the colony and sent ships from a base in St. Augustine to destroy it.  It was a massacre, with only about 60 women and children being spared, and about 40 to 50 of the 200 people escaped by ship back to France.  Their ship was wrecked not far away, and the Spaniards found them and killed them.  A few years later, in retaliation, the French sent a force to Florida to massacre the defenders of two Spanish forts.
  

Timuacan shelter

After seeing the replica of the triangularly shaped fort build by the French,

Fort Caroline from the water

we did a half hour nature trail back to the visitor center.

Nature walk

We continued further south on A1A along the coast to St. Augustine Beach. One stretch of the highway goes along a dune ridge, where we got occasional glimpses of the Atlantic between the houses.

Thursday we went past the lighthouse, the oldest one in Florida.

St. Augustine lighthouse

 to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.  St Augustine is the oldest settlement in the USA.  The fort was a critical point on Spain's gold routes from North America back to Spain.   The fort has an interesting shape, designed to make it almost impregnable by allowing artillery file in all directions, including along the walls from the corners.  Very different from the triangular shape of Ft. Caroline we had seen yesterday.  The information on the history here is very well done. 

Shape of Castillo de San Marcos

After the Castillo, we walked around the main district of St. Augustine. 

Oldest wooden school house in USA

Oldest wooden schoolhouse in the USA

There are some beautiful buildings in St. Augustine.

Flagler College

Cathedral of St Augustine, for the parish which dates from 1565, is the oldest Catholic parish within the USA. The cathedral was built two centuries later in 1797.

Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine