Thursday August 20th 2020

Today was a short travel day with a timing problem that often accompanies short trips. The amount of time between checkout and a reasonable check in time at the new location is greater than the time it takes to travel between the two places. In this case I had three hours to travel ninety miles.

To solve the issue I departed as close to checkout as I could. I was on the road at 10:50 just ten minutes before checkout. There is a major rest area about midway down Interstate 95 that I planned to stop at for an hour or more. As I approached the rest area I was greeted by signs indicating that the area was closed. I saw plenty of trucks in the parking lot so I stopped anyway. The car parking area and the rest area building were all closed and blocked off. There were plenty of trucks, RVs and quite a few passenger cars in the truck and trailer parking lot. Most of the cars had desperate people in need of a break. Many had pets to walk, but a few people got out of there cars and ran into the woods. People watching was a good way to spend an hour.

A few more miles along my route, I stopped for gas. It proved to be another time consumer. I waited behind a trailer to get to the pump in one of the RV lanes. The pump wasn’t the fastest in the world and I had to do two credit card passes to put in the sixty gallons of gas I needed.

I arrived at the Jacksonville North St Mary’s KOA in Kingsland Georgia about 2PM. This is a familiar stop. It is nice campground with many tall pines shading the sites right on the Florida Georgia line. The last time I stopped here was the spring of 2019 as I left Florida heading west. I’ll be here for five nights this time.