Road Trip

Oh Savannah!

Claire, Mark & Us

For the second time in a little more than a month we visited the city of Savannah, GA. In February it was a side trip & diversion in our escape from Ice-ageddon. This time it was to catch up with recently wed (6/13) friends Claire and Mark. They were in town from Lexington, VA for the big music festival, so we drove down to spend a couple hours walking around town, eating lunch and watching maritime traffic on the Savannah River with them.

On the way down, and more so on the way back, we grabbed a couple items off the Motoring Challenge checklist.

Started down , went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1300

Friday In Florida

Hutchinson Island

Shopping in downtown Stuart, followed by a drive up to Fort Pierce along the Indian River. From there we went over to Hutchinson Island to have lunch at the original Hurricane Grill & Wings followed by quick step onto the sand to gawk the Atlantic Ocean before heading home to relax on the lanai. Tough life…

Silver Springs Conservation Area

Silver Springs Conservation Area

Just a couple miles south of our hotel was the Silver Springs Conservation Area which has a 2-1/4 mile loop trail with about 2 dozen geocaches. We walked the whole trail, but only grabbed 12 of the caches. We wanted to save the other half for a future visit and besides we needed to get on the road to make it to Palm City in time for wine time.

The plan was to drive south to the turnpike, get on it for 60 miles or so and get back off onto some two lane county roads. By the time we made our way to the turnpike the crowds had dispersed, so we just stayed on the back roads. With the combination of a store bought map, a slightly uncooperative GPS and “rush hour” in Okeechobee we made to Sandy’s with only 15 minutes to spare.

40,000 Ghostly Images of Old Florida

We are on our way to visit Donna’s sister and her family and my snowbird cousin for a couple of days. Because we will drive back on Sunday on mostly Interstate we are taking two days to drive down on mostly back roads. On today’s drive we came into Florida and took aim half way between Lake City and Jacksonville where we found some small town’s and uncrowded back roads.

We originally planned on driving the Miata and doing some more Motoring Challenge photos, but the weather was supposed to be crappy today and then again Sunday for the drive home, so we opted to take the Sonata for the trip. Turns out there were some towns, counties and photo ops that would have been good for the challenge, but they were mostly mid-Georgia, so we filed them away for a weekend in the future.

Somewhere near the small town of Orange Springs the Purple Whale eased by the 40,000 mile mark. Tonight we are in a new HIE in Silver Springs. While this section of town is too full of modern amenities to be considered Old Florida, once inside our dinner spot we were thrown back in time. The Denny’s was located inside a Days Inn and it was filled with characters from Central Casting, including; a really old man alone at a table wearing shorts, sandals with black socks, a Veterans of Foreign Wars ball cap with large-lensed sunglasses who was chewing with his mouth open and eyeballing us because we didn’t belong, a skinny androgynous African-American who spoke on his cell phone loudly in a high-pitched stereotypical gay queen manner, plus the cook teasing a couple of regulars were they going to eat or were they here for the paranormal meeting.

I thought she was just joking, but when we used the restroom before walking back to our hotel, right next to them was a “banquet room” that was shared by Denny’s and the Days Inn and it was all set up for Investigating the Paranormal with Carolynn and Carla.

More Moss Motoring Moments

This spot was today’s goal, the only National Park in South Carolina, Congaree Swamp. We didn’t actually enter the park, we’ve been in a couple times previously, back before it was made a NP, so we just took this picture of the sign. On our way there we drove through South Carolina’s recreation of the Scandinavian peninsula:

I’ve created a gallery so you can follow along with our adventures, it is over there on the left – 2014 Moss Motoring Challenge. We also captured a couple of counties, a dead end, an airport and a candidate for one of the next Sneak Peek photos, but I haven’t finished editing and uploading them yet.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1298

Back

We’re back and so is our power.

Every few hours or so on Thursday evening and throughout the day Friday we would dial our home phone to see if we had power. We knew that if the answering machine picked up, the power was back on, but all we ever got were rings.

After we returned to the hotel from visiting Savannah on Friday I managed to get my buddy Mark (Hi Mark) on the phone. He had just gotten his power back and was in town restocking supplies. He was at a store not too far from the Dunbarton Oaks estate so I asked him if it wasn’t too much trouble, to run by the house and see if in fact we still didn’t have power. He called back a few minutes later to say he was parked in front of the house and the light at the end of the driveway was not lit. But he did say that there was an SCE&G bucket truck right there with him and that he passed a few more such trucks as he started down our street. He also said that if he were me he’d stay where we were for another day as the area was still littered with downed trees and power lines.

I reported this to Donna and suggested we stay until Sunday morning, but she said 2 days in a hotel by the interstate were plenty and to man up because we we leaving Saturday morning, power on in Aiken or not.

When we pulled into our neighborhood this morning we knew that there was no way in hell we had power and we were right. We opened up the house and promptly opened the blinds, shades and curtains to let in the bright sun. It was actually about 5 degrees warmer outside at 55 degrees than it was inside. Spent the next 3 hours with a bow saw, a wheelbarrow and a rake cleaning up what we could from near the front of the house.

We went out for lunch and when we got home we could see a power crew just 2 doors away. Donna went down and asked about how long they would be before they got to us. They told her it would be real soon as our transformer was next in line. While they worked on our group of 4 houses, Donna and I spent about another hour and a half cleaning up the side yard.

We finished at about the same time as the light at the end of the driveway illuminated. So I went over and shook the hands of the two guys working the bucket truck and thanked them profusely. They were from Henderson, KY, about 600 miles away just to help out. Really, thanks a lot guys.

They were in the neighborhood doing the easy ones, trying to get as many folks as they could back online quickly. They would check to see how many houses were connected to a transformer and if there were no issues they would turn it on. One of the 4 houses we shared our transformer with, had had the line to their house knocked off onto the ground. That was going to a problem, but Donna told them that the owner lived in Florida and didn’t occupy the place, so they rolled up the power line and disconnected them from the transformer.

I guess it is a good thing that Donna overrode my wanting to heed Mark’s advice and stay another day down south. Because had we not been around to tell them about our across the street neighbor, the power crew might have skipped our transformer all together because of the downed line and we might have had to wait a lot longer until we got power.