Cape Canaveral - North to South Carolina

6 May –

After publishing the last blog we drove down to the beaches of Miami and North Miami with their apartments on the beachfront.  We could not find anywhere to park so we drove on and up the I-95 passing thru Fort Lauderdale and onto Palm Beach where we did a shop up. This area was much the same as Miami Beach with gated communities and apartments. As this was Friday night we had pre-booked a site at Jonathan Dickinson State Park for the weekend. This is a very new camping area with many large sites.

7 May –

Another sunny day but much cooler. We even had the duvet on last night. We rode the bikes about 5 miles to the visitors centre down by the river. There seemed to be lots on with an official bike and a canoe race happening. Back at “Ernie” we spent a very lazy afternoon enjoying the cooler temperatures reading and relaxing.

8 May –

We drove back down to the visitors centre to use the free Wi-Fi to book a state park for next weekend and check on any rocket launchings from Cape Canaveral where we will be next week. Unfortunately the next launch is 10 June. On the road and north on the “1” thru the populace built up coastal areas. Slow going! We are now about ½ way up the east coast of Florida. Eventually we went further out onto the “A1A” which follows the coastline and came to the Sebastian Inlet State Park and managed to book 1 night with the hope of another night tomorrow. We have a great site overlooking the huge inlet with boats coming and going. We rode down to the surf beach and enjoyed the sun and the sea. The water temperature is about 23C. Sat watching the sunset over the bay in balmy temperatures. We have been really lucky as the humidity has been really low. There are no mosquitoes but we have been plagued the whole time we have been in Florida by a tiny (about ½ poppy seed sized) little bug called by the locals “no-see-ums”. You do not feel them bite but the result itches for hours.

9 May –

Back to the ranger where we managed to get another different site for tonight. We rode back to the surf beach but the tide was higher and too rough to swim. Nice in the sun though. After lunch we rode to another beach near the entrance of the inlet and as the surf was better were able to have a couple of swims and sunbathe. The temperatures are around 30C. Another balmy evening watching the sunset.

10 May –

We drove up the A1A following the beaches thru some nice unpretentious areas with lovely houses right on the beach. The camp we are at is on Cape Canaveral with beaches on one side and a canal leading to Port Canaveral on the other. We booked in for 2 nights as we will visit the Kennedy Space Centre tomorrow. We biked thru the camp to the beach and spent a couple of hours swimming and sunbathing. There is a casino ship that goes past our campsite and out to sea for 5 miles so that the gambling is legal.

11 May –

Woke to the surprise of a huge cruise liner just outside our bedroom window. It must have snuck in during the night. We left the camp and drove 19 miles to the Kennedy Space Centre. We debated whether we would go as it seemed it would be very like the Houston Space Centre which we visited last year. In some aspects it was but all done in an entirely different way. After buying our tickets we decided to take the bus trip passed the Rocket Assembly Building. This is said to be one of the largest buildings by volume in the USA.

The flag on the building’s side has stripes that are 3m wide which gives you a sense of its size. We drove 4 ½ miles on to the various launch pads. The rockets are driven on huge tracked platforms from the assembly building to the launch pads. 4 ½ miles is the minimum safe distance if there is an explosion! Our next stop was at the Saturn V building where marvelled at the huge rocket used to launch the Apollo missions. We went into the launch control room

where there was clever audio visual simulation of a take-off. This was interesting as 10 seconds after the launch the flight is handed over to Houston where we had also been in the control room. Back on the bus to the visitors centre and the space shuttle programme. Another clever audio visual display lead us thru to where the last space shuttle, Atlantis, was housed. We even went into a simulator where we experienced the noise, thrust and vibration of a take-off. The last area we visited was the Orion Mars programme which included a 3D IMAX film. It was a great day and we spent a total of about 6 hours there. Well worth the $US50 entrance fee.

12 May –

Back on the “1” (the coastal highway) and north thru the Space Coast. At Daytona Beach we headed inland on a scenic byway into the Ocala National Forest. There were several camping sites in this forest and we ended up at Salt Springs Rec. Area. After lunch we rode our bikes down to the spring which turned out to be a beautiful natural spring (a bit like the Pupu springs near Takaka). The water was pleasantly cool (the locals thought it was cold) and we had a couple of great swims. Do not know why it is called Salt Springs as it was very fresh water.

13 May –

This is another Friday so we have a pre-booked camp for a couple of nights at Gold Head Branch State Park. It was a short drive of 40 miles but we stopped for shopping, fuel, and LPG on the way. The weather is quite hot again (around 35C) but we had a nice shady site. At about 6:00pm we had a brief electrical storm and some rain. This cooled things down.

14 May –

As we have been a bit lazy latterly we decided to do a longer walk today. We packed our lunch and followed The Florida Trail which comes thru this park.  It was a great walk thru various types of forest, some very dry areas and some lush ferned ravines. We walked for about 7 miles and were happy to get back to “Ernie” as the temperature was back up again. Spent the rest of the day in the shade relaxing.

15 May –

We headed back towards the Florida coast around the northern city, Jacksonville to a State Park at Fort Clinch. On the way we got two large stone chips on our windscreen. Fortunately we are insured for this! We checked in for 1 night with the possibility for another if we wanted it. There were two camping areas, one on the beach, and one near the fort where we had a cool site under the huge trees with Spanish moss hanging down. 

It was a short bike ride to Fort Clinch.
The construction of the fort was started by the Confederate army during the Civil War but abandoned and taken over by the Unionist. Huge canons guarded the entrance to the Cumberland Sound. The fort has never completed or used in anger. Back on our bikes and a 2 mile ride to the beach. This was another lovely NZ type beach with surf but the water temperature was about 8C warmer than NZ. We have purchased small sun umbrellas for our chairs which were very successful.  We liked the beach so much we decided to spend another day here.

 

16 May –

We had to drive back to the park gate to book another night. Back on our site Val did a wash and then we drove back to the beach and spent 4 hours enjoying it with a break for lunch in “Ernie”. The weather is perfect with just a slight breeze to cool the temperature down. This will be our last night in Florida where have been for nearly 5 weeks.

17 May –

We left the state park and headed north on the I-95 for about 90 miles along the coast of Georgia which is made up of salt flats and inlets. The weather forecast was not good and we ran into rain just before we headed back out to the coast at Skidaway Island State Park. The rain got heavier and was torrential for about 4 hours (3.5”)  Probably the heaviest rain we have ever experienced. Later in the evening it eased off.

18 May –

We decided to have haircuts in the morning. The weather slowly cleared and we drove thru the old historic town of Savannah, across a large bridge and into South Carolina. Our plan was to stay a couple of nights at Hunting Island State Park, which to our surprise is on a beach. They had a site for two nights. Unfortunately the site the staff gave us was totally under water from the same rain as we had had in Georgia. We waded around in the muddy water and set ourselves up but after a walk around the camp we went back to the Park HQ and were given site that was not underwater. There is a nice beach here which we will hopefully use tomorrow.

19 May –

An overcast morning and the weather quite cool.  As it is forecast to rain this afternoon we went down to the beach after breakfast. It was pleasant but we were not tempted for a swim. After lunch we walked along the flat wide beach to a lighthouse. It was huge and a long climb (170 steps) to the top with great views in all directions. When we returned to “Ernie” the forecast rain arrived.

20 May –

We left this soggy camp and drove north thru the islands, inlets and swamps. There are shrimp boats docked along the canals. This is where they filmed the scene in Forest Gump with Bubba and the shrimp boat. We had lunch at the cute little town of Meggett. I tracked down a lady at the town hall who told us the history of Meggett. The town was named after a large family called Meggetts. We drove on to a camp just out of the historic city of Charleston which we will visit tomorrow. Good internet so we managed to skype the family and will publish this blog.