Saturday April 9th 2016

I went back to Charleston to see the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier museum today. It is located across the river from downtown Charleston in Mt. Pleasant SC. Besides the aircraft carrier the Destroyer USS Laffey (DD-724), the Submarine USS Clamagore (SS-343) and a mock up of a Vietnam conflict base camp are included in the Patriots Point complex.

Bow of the USS Yorktown.

The USS Yorktown (CV-10) was commissioned on April 15, 1943 as a replacement for the original USS Yorktown (CV-5) that sunk at the battle of Midway. The carrier was upgraded several times during its service life which ended in 1970. It has been a museum since 1975.
The ship tour begins on the hanger deck with examples of World War II era planes that the carrier hosted, a replica of the Apollo 8 capsule that the Yorktown recovered after its historic moon orbits and a special Medal of Honor Museum. There are five tour routes from the hanger deck.

• Tour 1 includes the mess area, medical facilities and some sleeping areas
• Tour 2 goes several decks down to the engine room
• Tour 3 goes to the flight deck and the bridge. The flight deck contains aircraft from the jet era including an F/A-18 which I don’t think was built before the Yorktown was decommissioned. It doesn’t matter, it was still interesting to see.
• Tour 4 contains exhibits on other carriers and ships that fought in World War II.
• Tour 5 is highlights the ships brig.

Each of the tours goes up and down narrow ladders (stairs). You need to follow the yellow arrows painted on the floor. Many areas are so narrow it is clearly one way. Without the arrows and signs you could easily get lost. It is a big ship.

USS Clamagore (SS-343)

The submarine USS Clamagore was commissioned in 1945 shortly before the end of the war. She didn’t see any combat in WWII. It’s service life was extended by two major changes that extended the length of the ship and updated its engines. It was one of the last diesel boats in service.
You enter the boat into the forward torpedo room and work your way to the aft torpedo room. Going through the hatches and narrow passages make you appreciate the roomy passages in the aircraft carrier. I’d have a bruised head if I had to spend any length of time on board.

Destroyer USS Laffey (DD-724)

The last ship I toured was the Destroyer USS Laffey. It’s claim to fame was surviving 22 bombing and suicide kamikazes attack planes during the battle for Okinawa. In one of the interior spaces they show a History Channel film on the attack.  The video gave a better  appreciation for what the ship and her crew went through.
I really enjoyed touring these ships and reading the stories about their service. Checking out other versions of these floating museums around the country is one of the things I want to do on my rambling road trip.

Friday April 8th 2016

Today I drove about an hour and a half into the center of Charleston South Carolina. The objective was to tour Fort Sumter. Next week on April 11th is the One Hundred and Fifty Fifth anniversary of the start of the Civil War with the artillery assault on Fort Sumter by Southern Forces.

Welcome sign at the boat dock to Fort Sumter

The National Park Visitors center is at Liberty Square in downtown Charleston. From that location you can take a boat tour to the Fort 3.5 miles out in the mouth of the harbor. The displays in the visitors center and the narration on the boat ride provide a good background on the fort and the civil war battles in which it played a role.

Fort Sumter 3.5 miles from the visitors center in downtown Charleston SC.

Fort Sumter close up as the boat docks at the pier.

It is interesting to note that Fort Sumter was never really finished. It was part of the coastal defenses built after the War of 1812. It is the largest of four fortifications protecting the Charleston harbor. It was nearing completion at the start of the Civil War. Major Robert Anderson commander of an 85 man artillery unit moved into the incomplete fort from the less defensible Fort Moultrie when South Carolina seceded in December 1860. This move inflamed the people of the area setting the stage for the seizing the fort by force in April of 1861.

Example of one of the cannon that were used at Fort Sumter

One of the openings in the Fort wall for cannon. At the opening the wall is about 3 feet thick. Between the openings the walls are much thicker.

The Fort was three stories high at the start of the war. All of the artillery attacks by the Union to try and retake the Fort brought the walls down to 1 story at best. After the Civil war it was cleaned up and re-armed with a big coastal artillery piece used to defend the coast from the time of the Spanish American War until World War II. The Fort was turned over to the National Parks service in 1947.

There are four boat trips from the visitor center and three or four from Patriots Point across the river. The three trips I observed, the one before mine, mine and the one after, were all full. The boat I was on had two or three school trips on board. Each boat full of people get about an hour to tour the fort.

The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown CV10 is part of a museum complex across the river at Patriots Point.

Tomorrow I plan to go back to Charleston to visit Patriots Point an area that has a number of retired navel vessels including the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.

Thursday April 7th 2016

After a breakfast of pancakes with orange juice and coffee at the campground, I got on the road about 10:30 this morning. I didn’t have a long distance to travel, just across the state of Georgia.
The weather was great for most activities, but not for travel in a high profile vehicle. There was a 20plus mile an hour wind from the West North West. Right into the front corner of the Motorhome. This turns out to be harder to handle than yesterdays wind from the East that hit broadside to the Motorhome. I am still learning how the Motorhome handles in various conditions. I’ve only driven it a little over 3000 miles. I don’t want to start adding after market shocks, sway bars and steering stabilizers until I have a good understanding of what I really need. I have read many internet discussions on the handling of the Ford F-53 chassis and what can be done to improve it. There is also a school of thought that load balance, weight and tire pressure can fix most of the problems. Time will tell.

Site 14 at the Point South KOA

I am staying at the Point South KOA in Yemassee SC. This RV park is about midway between Savanna Georgia and Charleston SC on Interstate 95. This was the best I could find near Charleston for 4 days. I’m about 50 miles away. I’ll drive into Charleston tomorrow and Saturday to see the sights. Sunday I may go back to Charleston or possible Savanna for the day.
I stayed at this campground last December on the way to Florida so I knew what I was getting. It is OK for a night or two. If we get heavy rains there could be mud issues, but none is forecast while I am here.
The difficulty in finding campgrounds is new to me. While I always knew there were a lot of snowbirds going back and forth to/from Florida, I never really appreciated the impact that has on finding places to park a Motorhome. Perhaps the fact that the smaller units I’ve had in the past could be fit into a greater number of sites minimized this issue. I need to plan the remainder of my trip north more thoroughly.

Wednesday April 6th 2016

Today I traveled from Daytona Beach to St. Marys Georgia. I am at the Jacksonville North KOA. It is about half way to my next destination in South Carolina.
It was not a fun day to travel. The wind was blowing at 15 to 20 MPH from the east with gusts even higher. I was ready to stop early after fighting to keep the Motorhome in the lane. It was right around 2PM when I pulled into my site.

Site C13 at the Jacksonville North KOA

Over the last couple of days, I’ve uploaded to Google Photos many of the pictures I’ve taken over the winter in Florida. Here are the Links to the shared albums.

• Van Fleet Rail Trail – This album contains the pictures I took while walking and riding my bicycle on the General James A. Van Fleet State Trail. Several different visits are included in this album.
• Tico Warbird Airshow – This album contains all of the pictures I took of the static displays and the aerial activity.
• Bok Tower February – My visit to the botanical garden in February.
• Bok Tower – My visit to the botanical garden in late March. This album was shared in a previous blog post.
• Disney’s Animal Kingdom – This contains pictures from three visits to the Animal Kingdom in February and March.
• Disney’s Hollywood Studios – This album contains the pictures from my only visit to the studios this winter.
• Disney’s Magic Kingdom – This album contains pictures from two visits to the Magic Kingdom.
• EPCOT February – This album contains pictures from two visits to Disney’s EPCOT.
• EPCOT Flower & Garden March 4 – This album contains pictures from one of the first days of the annual flower and garden festival.
• EPCOT Flower & Garden March 11 – This album contains pictures from one of the end of the second week of the annual flower and garden festival.
• EPCOT Flower & Garden April 1 – This album contains pictures from my last opportunity to visit the flower and garden festival this year.  This album was shared in a previous blog post.
• Disney Springs – This album contains a collection of pictures from several visits to Disney Springs. Disney Springs is the new name for Downtown Disney.
• Blue Springs State Park – This album contains pictures from by trip to Blue Springs State Park in Volusia county.

Tuesday April 5th 2016

I spent the day today trying to figure out what the attraction is here in Daytona Beach. It was a sunny day in the 70s with a good breeze. I toured around the area stopping at various places looking for what it is that draws people to the area.
One obvious attraction is the Daytona International Speedway. I would have liked to take the tour, but some kind of event was going on. This limited the available times and the extent of the tour so I didn’t get an opportunity. The speedway is only a few minutes down the road from where I’m staying so I drove by a few times. It is a huge structure. This is not surprising when you consider it is a two and a half mile tri-oval.

Daytona International Speedway main grandstand. The picture was taken out the car window from US 92.

I went to the beach on the Atlantic Ocean. I had no desire to drive on the beach, I was a passenger for a drive on the beach back in the 1960s. It was a novelty then and now it just doesn’t interest me. There is a ten dollar a day charge to drive on the beach.

Ormond Beach looking south

Ormond beach looking north

A little bit north of Daytona Beach is Ormond Beach. It has a number of fee parking access areas for the beach. I took advantage of a couple of these to get down and walk on the beach. The tide was either half out or half in making for a wide area of packed sand to walk on. If I were in the area for a longer period of time, I would probably take a much longer walk on the beach.

Looking south toward Daytona Beach from the mainland side of Inter-coastal from Ormond Beach.

The area I found on my touring that was the most interesting was on the mainland side of the Intercoastal Waterway. I stopped at two locations. One was in Ormond Beach and the other in South Daytona. The Ormond beach location was beside and under the bridge out to the beach on the barrier island. A fishing pier is built out into the waterway, under the bridge and back in on the other side of the bridge. It is nice spot to sit and watch the boats go under the bridge. There were several people fishing, but I didn’t see anything caught.
The other location on the Intercoastal that I stopped in South Daytona provided a good view of the condo towers of Daytona Beach Shores. This stop was in a small park with picnic tables, a boat launch and a fishing pier. There weren’t any fishermen at this location. Once again if I were in the area for a longer time I might get a fishing rod out and drop a line.

Condo towers of Daytona Beach Shores across the Inter-coastal waterway.

Tomorrow I will be traveling further north. I’ll probably only go to the Florida Georgia line. That’s about halfway to the RV site I found as a base to visit Charleston SC this coming weekend. I had some difficulty finding a site. Maybe there is something special going on this weekend. Time will tell.

Monday April 4th 2016

Today was a travel day. I got up as soon as I woke this morning; no watching TV in bed today. I made steady progress with all the remaining travel prep tasks and got underway about 11:30. I didn’t want to get to early a start since I couldn’t check in until 2PM at the Daytona Beach Speedway KOA. It was a good day for traveling. There wasn’t a lot of wind and the sun was shining. The high temperature for the day was about 80.
Driving up Interstate 4 through Orlando is not fun. They are expanding large sections of the highway. When completed in a few years, the road will have a second set of lanes for through traffic. These new lanes will have variable toll collection. I’ve driven on similar systems in Baltimore and Washington DC. Depending on the volume of traffic you could pay a little or pay a lot. The whole Orlando area is turning into toll road city. Most of the east west highways and the loop roads are already toll roads. You really can not survive with out a toll transponder and a toll account. Right now the system is not compatible with the EZPass system in the northeast, so I had to get a SunPass transponder  for the SUV.
When I came down through Orlando in December, I don’t remember any of the sights along the way. All I remember is the traffic. The same thing happened today. I remember the road and the vehicles around me, but not any of the buildings or intersections. This isn’t my normal behavior. Usually, I am observant of the area. Driving through Orlando in the Motorhome is just to intense for sight seeing. I drove through the city in the car a couple of times this winter and didn’t have any problems seeing the sights. There’s nothing special to see.

Site 170 at Daytona Speedway KOA.

I checked in to the KOA a little after 2PM. I have a corner site in the middle of the park. The sites are laid out in an odd pattern. To get into this site you need to drive across the driveway to the one next to it. The campground is located about a mile from the Daytona Motor Speedway. The down side is that it is within hearing distance of Interstate 95.
I’ll be here for two nights. Tomorrow I’ll see what the area has to offer. If there are more things to see than I have time, I’ll stop in the area on a future trip. That’s the nice thing about this Rambling Road Trip; I know I can return.

Sunday April 3rd 2016

It was a beautiful spring day in central Florida. The sun shined all day with a moderate breeze allowing the temperature to reach the high 70s. I spent the bulk of the day readying the RV for travel.

Outside of the RV picked up and almost ready to travel

When you spend  4 months in one place, things get taken out and used. It doesn’t make sense to put them back in their travel homes every time they’re used. Consequently, it takes longer and involves more work to get ready for travel. Some of the things I needed to do included

• Removing the covers on the tires. The tires on the sunny side of the RV were covered to protect them from the Ultraviolet light.
• I needed to check and add air to the RV tires. Low air pressure is one of the biggest causes of tire failure on Motorhomes. I carry a compressor to keep them at 90 psi. I need to get the RV weighted so I can adjust that pressure. Ninety pounds is probably more than I need, but better safe than sorry.
• My gas grill has been out on the picnic table since I got here in December. It got returned to the basement storage area.
• The chairs and side table got wiped down and stored in the basement storage area.
• I checked and wiped off any sand from the hydraulic leveling jacks.
• The bicycle rack got put back on the SUV and the bike was loaded on it.
• In general, I re-arranged and secured the various  basement storage bins.

Tomorrow, I still have a number of tasks to complete:

• I need to dump the tanks and take in the sewer hose.
• Take in the water hose and disconnect the power cord.
• Inside the rig I need to stow everything away into travel positions. I have removed the clutter and stored a lot of stuff already. That has been the focus of the days leading up to today.
• The final steps are bringing in the slide outs, raising the jacks and hook up the car for towing.

These are really only the high points. There is a lot to do to get ready to move my RV home.
Today wasn’t all work, I had the TV on to various sporting events. I managed to see some of the Pittsburgh vs. St Louis baseball game, the NASCAR race at Martinsville and the UCONN ladies basketball game.
I’m only going about 80 miles tomorrow. I’ll stop at Daytona Beach for a couple of nights. The short distance will be a good test to make sure everything is stowed away for the longer driving days ahead.

Saturday April 2nd 2016

The heat wave that we have been experiencing here in central Florida came to an end today. Thunderstorms started around 11 this morning and continued until about 4 this afternoon. During that time I did the laundry and made a grocery run to Walmart. This was probably the last cheap laundry for a while. It only cost $1 to wash and another $1 to dry.
I managed to find a way to get yesterday’s EPCOT picture uploaded. I am including some here in this post. The entire collection is available in Google Photos Shared library called EPCOT Flower & Garden April 1 2016.

Ranger Mickey sponsored by the National Parks Foundation

Pluto

Flower bed well filled in compared to similar photos taken in early March

Buzz Lightyear

Fireworks from IllumiNations Reflections of Earth

Fireworks from IllumiNations Reflections of Earth

Tomorrow is another prep day for Monday’s travel. I’m not sure what other excitement I might get into.

Friday April 1st 2016

Summer weather has been here the last couple of days. Today it was still 90 degrees at eight in the evening. I spent the morning on tasks around the RV and the afternoon and evening at EPCOT.

Daisy Duck Paints the welcome sign.

This final winter of 2016 visit to EPCOT was to see how the Flower and Garden Festival has matured 1 month into its 3 month run. Earlier in the month some of the plantings were sparse showing signs of being freshly put into the ground. This time around there were lush and dense beds of flowers throughout the park.
I took many pictures of the flowers and IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth show. I am not going to include them in this blog post because I am running up against my internet data limit for the month. When I can find a strong WiFi connection or my new month of data starts, I’ll upload pictures.  The picture above was from my last visit in March.
EPCOT was very busy. There were a lot of high school age students in the park. It seems to be a combination of senior trips and the high school band competition that Disney has been hosting this week. Three bands marched around the world showcase while I was in the park. The one from Louisiana was impressive providing a jazzy swing march music. It was very New Orleans like.
As part of the Flower and Garden Festival, Disney has a weekend concert series. This weekend was Herman’s Hermits staring Peter Noone. I caught the end of the first show and the beginning of another one later in the evening. They played parts of many popular music of their era as well as the Herman’s Hermits hits. Some of music was down right strange for Herman’s Hermits; Peter Noone sang some of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. The set ends with their early hit Henry the Eight I am. It was an OK show, but I didn’t have a seat. The line was just to long an hour before show time.
My evening at the park ended with the Illuminations pyrotechnic display. I had reserved a Fastpass to the preferred viewing area. This area is right at the entrance to the World Showcase from Future World. It provides an unobstructed view of the hole lagoon (pond). I still think a pure fireworks display would be better than the attempt to tell a story with lasers and narration, but it is enjoyable.

Thursday March 31st 2016

Today was partly cloudy with the high in the upper 80s. It was a good day for a ballgame. I went to see the St Louis Cardinals play the New York Yankees in Tampa Fl.

Electronic Score board at George M. Steinbrenner Field

The spring training home for the Yankees is at George M. Steinbrenner Field. The facility is located across the street from the home of the Tampa Bay Bucaneers Football team Raymond James Stadium. They share parking facilities. The seats at this stadium were probably the most comfortable of the four stadiums I went to games at this spring. They seemed wider with more leg room. It was a clean and modern facility.

The Tampa Yankees play at this stadium when it’s not being used for NY Yankee spring training.

The Cardinals won the game decisively 9 to 1. Both teams had most of their regular season rosters start the game. It was the Cardinals starters that ran up most of the runs against the Yankees. The Yankee’s one run came late in the game against the substitutes. The Cardinals had the home run ball going in this game.
As with most of these spring training games the visiting team had as many fans at the game as the home team. Cardinal red was all around the stadium. Even on the first base (Yankee) side of the park where I was sitting there were a lot of Cardinal fans. I think this mix makes the game more enjoyable when you don’t have a particular bias for one team or another.
I enjoyed the game, but paid the penalty during the drive home. The traffic along Interstate 4 at rush hour was very slow. Not having had any ballpark food I was really hungry when I got home to my hot RV. I turned on the air conditioning and cooked supper.