Departure

July 1-2, 2008

Yesterday, we left dad’s house on the first leg of our journey, with a few expected delays getting going. Our car, which went on the trailer (we are towing our Mazda 3 hatchback on the trip, the back tires remain on the ground) without any glitches when we left Atlanta, kept catching on the front of the trailer, nearly tearing off the entire front bumper. After a few attempts, Shaune used some blocks to elevate the car, which worked in the end. After we drove off, we stopped at the first gas station just outside of Boston, Ga., to get enough gas to get us the Interstate. It was pretty funny, because we also decided to put air in one of the trailer tires, which was really low. It’s incredibly difficult (for now, anyway) to back up with the trailer – any twisting could result in jackknifing the trailer, which means taking the entire trailer off, or worse. After many unsuccessful attempts at backing up to the air pump, we finally drove around the back and parked nicely in front of the air pump. Our next attempt to get gas failed, as we pulled into a station off of the I75 that was impossible to turn around in. The next gas stop went well, and we put a whopping 210$ into our “rig” (I have heard that we will need to become at ease with calling our RV a rig, I am having great difficulty).

We arrived at Anastasia State Park just outside of St. Augustine, Fla., around 3:30, and checked in to our site, which is a beautiful, secluded site surrounded by palmetto bushes, shaded completely by gnarled, twisted oak trees. Our friend David visited from Jacksonville for the night, as Shaune and I cooked dinner, realizing all of the stuff that we had forgotten at Dad’s. He’s sending us a box to Savannah, one of our upcoming stops.

Today we took a long walk along the beach, and later ate a late lunch at Osteins, a local diner-type place that specializes in fried shrimp, just before the Bridge of Lions. In the late afternoon, we drove in to St. Augustine and wandered the streets; we had Pete and Boris (our two canine traveling companions), so we skipped museums, and just slowly walked around the Old Town. Despite its appeal, the shops seem to be caught in a time warp. Out of style women’s dresses filled store windows, dust covered windowsills. We did see a school of dolphins circling a shark in the Mantanzas Bay, in front of the Castillo. A homeless man poking around the oyster clusters on the shore told us, that the dolphins were killing the shark by biting and butting its head until it dies. Occasionally, the shark would fling its tail or head above water in an attempt to escape.

Tomorrow we are heading to a private RV camp in Townsend, Ga., near Sapelo Island.