Thousand Trails Year Two

Our second year of Thousand Trails expires on June 30, 2020. The program has worked very well for us again, as it would for most traveling full-timers.

Little Diamond WA campsite overlooked a large disc golf arena.
There was an indoor hot tub and ice cream socials once a week.

This year I am closing out this record-keeping a little early because we bought a boat in April and hope to be sailing the rest of 2020+ and into the forseeable future. Therefore we will not be renewing our Thousand Trails membership for a third year in July.

Cherokee Landing TN was a quiet park with an abundance of wildlife

But, if we were to remain full-timers I definitely would renew it.  Even with only 9 months of use we still came out way ahead. 

Here's how the math broke down for our second year of  membership:

Date		Description	Value	Balance
7/1/2019		Basic Program Dues w/1 zone (NorthEast)	($585)	($585)
7/1/2019		Trails Collection	($214)	($799)
7/1/2019		Two Additional Zones (SouthWest, SouthEast)	($108)	($907)
7/1/2019		Zones - One more zone (NorthWest)	($54)	($961)
7/9/2019		Portland Fairview Encore (4 nights @ $20 vs $63.60)	$174	($787)
7/21/2019		Birch Bay WA (4 nights @$0 vs $68.11)	$272	($514)
7/26/2019		Little Diamond WA (14 nights @ $0 vs $44/night)	$616	$102
9/24/2019		Cherokee Landing TN (14 nights @ $0 vs $44/night)	$616	$718
10/16/2019		Natchez Trace TN (10 nights @ $0 v $44.61/night)	$446	$1,164
11/12/2019		Crystal Isles FL ($0 v 1@$63, 10 @ $47)	$533	$1,697
3/19/2020		Goose Creek NC (12 nights @ $0 vs $80)	$960	$2,657

As we discovered before, the Encore resorts are swankier, and some of the older basic TT resorts are in need of significant maintenance. Thousand Trails can always be counted on for at least the basics, and we always go in expecting just that and let ourselves by pleasantly surprised by any extras.

Goose Creek, NC, has a stocked pond in which the kids fish all day

We did not have any problems getting into areas we wanted to visit; we didn't always get the exact resort or the exact dates we wanted but we could always land close enough with some flexibility.

So, our annual investment for this second year was $961, which we turned into $2657 of free camping, which worked out to be an average of $13.93/night for our year's investment. We'll be parking the RV in storage soon after transitioning onto the boat, otherwise we would be seeking additional campsites through the last quarter of our membership and these figures would be even more favorable.

Crystal River, FL has boat ramps and manatees

Closing out our account was a bit of a hassle, they want it in writing as well as by phone call during which time they tried to talk me out of it. Because I'm a belts-and-suspenders type of gal, I also did a website chat and then followed-up by e-mail which they confirmed over a month after receipt. Time well tell if it has all been cancelled properly. I'll let you know in July.

Natchez Trace Campground in TN winds around a large pond.
The park also contains a fabulous rec hall with pool tables and a foosball table.

Oriental NC, a Sailors' Town

The town of Oriental brags that it has three boats for every human being. So as expected the town is set up well for cruisers. The local grocery store is a Piggly Wiggly and it has a shuttle van: for now it delivers groceries to the dock, in better days it shuttles cruisers to and from the store.

The OiNC shuttle

The adorable restaurants along the waterfront, shuttered for now, have wooden patios that look quite dog-friendly. I can't wait for the day they are populated and I can taste the goodies listed in the window menus. Everybody we meet around town shares a friendly wave. I imagine they are smiling beneath their masks.

The wind here is fairly constant; we're not that far from KittyHawk after all. I can see why the Wright Brothers chose this region for plane development.

The whole town follows a central essential website daily. It's a tidy way of keeping a community together, something I have not seen anywhere else in the nation. Check it out for a glimpse into this small town life: towndock.net, it's got everything from the local gossip, to restaurant and business hours, to swap meet locations, to weather reports with a slant towards boaters' concerns. This morning a neighbor told us copperheads have come out of hibernation and are being seen around town, he read it on "the website". 

Here on the East Coast there are two tides to worry about. The normal moon tide that we are already familiar with, and also a wind tide, the latter of which being far more prevalent here. The wind blows water in and out of the rivers and since Minerva draws over 6'6" of boat draft when fully loaded, this greatly affects the windows for getting her into and out of the repair yard and some marinas. For now she is low on fuel and low on water so she can make it around town to her various appointments, she looks a bit cork-like riding a full foot or so above her usual waterline.

Minerva at rest in her Oriental Harbor Marina slip 

Buying a boat is a process, and we are now in the phase where repairs are being made to satisfy the insurance company, pursuant to surveyor recommendations. The things the insurance company is concerned with have to do with safety of vessel and crew, Lance has his own checklist above and beyond that. He loads the daily tools into the Mini almost every morning while I work at my desk and spends the day alongside the owner wrenching on this or that, both of them decked out in stylish N95 masks (we dug ours out of  the first aid kit). Later this week a different surveyor will come by to approve completion of the insurance company's checklist, next will be the sail test. Assuming all of that goes smoothly we will be trading keys and signed documents for our life savings. Hopefully soon.

New Friends in Times of Plague

We found covered storage for Loretta in nearby New Bern. Lance still wants to drive her home to California so my Dad can keep an eye on her but considering the state of the nation the trip might not be wise. We have completed quarantine here and there may not be services to support Loretta on her journey across the nation now, also he may not be able to make it back by public transport. Importantly, we'll lose sailing time while he makes the round trip, which becomes more precious as hurricane season approaches. So we'll wait and see on that for now. Oriental is a good spot to ride out the plague, and it would be safe and dry enough under cover for Loretta to wait out the summer while we sail up to Maine and back. Mr. Toad is not part of our long-term picture so we'll be looking for a new home for him soon, it makes more sense than storing him.

The RVers' world is beyond crazy right now. Some states have simply closed parks, cancelled incoming reservations and kicked everyone out who was already there. While this makes sense if you have a home to go to, or if you are just camping for fun when you should be sheltering at home, it doesn't make sense at all for full-timers. Forcing someone to move around who had been safely quarantined in place is the opposite of helpful, but that is exactly what has happened in many places. We barely made it into Oriental before the lockdown went into place by order of the NC governor, the park we left made it clear we couldn't come back once we had left, and we were one of the last allowed in before the town locked down on this end too. It made for a stressful transition, others haven't been as fortunate as us. Many full-timers we know have been bounced out with nowhere to go, roaming between WalMarts and private parks, always in quarantine since they are never allowed to stay anywhere for long. I'm grateful we made it into this private park just in time, it's within bicycling distance of most everything we need, which right now is an endless loop of boat,  chandlery, and groceries. The RV faces a huge lawn area, Lance thinks it is sod being prepared for sale. Chloe and Stewie frolic daily on it with the neighbor dogs and I enjoy the stunning green view outside my office window.

Chloe frolicking on the lawn beside the RV park. The light is magical here.

This is probably the last view I'll be enjoying from this window for a while. The next round of stunning views will all be from the water: Annapolis, New York, Maine. Maybe the fjords of Nova Scotia if we can get moving in time.

Internet Speed Comparison Oriental RV Park, Oriental, NC Sampled 3/31/20 at 11:41 am
	MB down	MB up
Calyx (Sprint)	0	0
Google Fi	21.5	12.3
Jetpack (Verizon)	8.66	14.2
Park wifi	none

Carolina on My Mind

Richland Rum distillery in downtown Brunswick

On the last afternoon in Georgia we toured the Richland Rum distillery, ate some Brunswick Stew, and packed up Loretta. The next morning we hit the road for South Carolina.

First stop: Charleston. Such rich maritime history. Like Georgia, the history feels very close to the surface.

The campground we stayed at was a ridiculous $50/night - $25-30 would have been the right number considering the condition of the park. The buildings on the property were all under active construction, which made an annoying din all day, it was basically a bug-infested swamp, but it certainly qualified as remote and the bugs kept us indoors, so it was a good place to be when the Corona Virus landed on the East Coast.

Cypress stumps line the pond at the Magnolia Plantation & Gardens

Pond at the Magnolia Plantation & Gardens

Fortunately for us, there were plenty of outdoor dog-friendly activities to do that kept us 6 feet from other humans. First up: the nearby Magnolia Plantation and Gardens property. North and West of Charleston on the waterway, it was here that the Colonists prepared for the anticipated British assault and ultimately failed, surrendering 7000+ troops to Her Majesty's army. In short, Charleston was sacked by the British because of some bad strategic decisions made on this very piece of property in 1780, and the despair of it all nearly crushed the patriots and the young nation.

Pond at the Magnolia Plantation & Gardens

Next up in virus-avoiding activity... a walk along the fortified waterfront in Charleston. The big guns remain and it isn't hard to imagine the locals of generations past defending their town from pirates (BlackBeard successfully blockaded Charleston for a week in 1718), a collection of iron-clad Union Navy warships, and receiving the first German submariner prisoners from the cutter Icarus.

The guns of Charleston's Battery still pointed at the waterfront

The big gazebo at the heart of Battery Park often hosts music and dancing. Chloe wasn't into "the dip".

Antebellum architecture of the Battery area of Charleston

The next park we stayed at in North Myrtle Beach, SC also was $50 for our one-night stay, but it was a superb park and we felt the price well justified. The RV pads were level concrete, the property was well cared for, and it bordered the ICW and hosted boat slips and a dry dock. Watching the forklifts wrangle the speed boats between water and their storage shelves made for endless entertainment. The park also had a water slide and a roster of park activities, all temporarily silent because of the social distancing requirements of COVID-19.

We met some boaters that were tied in a slip for the night. Full-time RVers and cruising boaters have similar lifestyles, it's easy to make friends. We offered them a ride to the grocery store in our car since they didn't have one, and they offered us a tour of their beautiful boat because they could clearly see us enviously eyeballing it. We spoke for hours about the ICW, sailing, weather and of course boat designers. Everyone has opinions on boat design and this is a subject any boater will tell you to wade into carefully and only with plenty of time on your hands. We happily debated the pros and cons of various boat designs for an hour or so, from 6 feet apart on their boat and dock, and parted ways laughing about the awkwardness brought on by a group of people trying to establish new social norms around virus avoidance with a virtual handshake, or elbow bump, or wave, or... nobody knows what to do so we all just laugh and shrug.

North Myrtle Beach Luxury RV Resort and Dry Dock is one of our favorite campsites

The next morning we settled in to a Thousand Trails park in North Carolina for boat shopping. It's a lovely quiet park with a pond, within easy reach of New Bern, Oriental, and Wilmington. The word here is that the region has "3 boats to every human" so this should be good hunting grounds. Call it a sixth sense or whatever... I feel like she's very close.

Internet Speed Comparison North Myrtle Beach RV Park & Marina Dry Dock, SC Sampled 3/18/20 at 2:06 pm
	MB down	MB up
Calyx (Sprint)	41.6	2.93
Google Fi	16.8	3.61
Jetpack (Verizon)	15.4	15.9
Park wifi	3.72	8.26

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Gulf Shores, Alabama is a resort town on the water, bordered on the South by beautiful white sand beaches along the Gulf, and split in half by the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW). Their motto is "small town big beach" which pretty much sums it up. It was the perfect place to hang with friends in the evenings, and get significant piles of year-end bookkeeping work done during the daytime.

Red Sky At Morning, as seen from out campsite, the prelude to a particularly stormy day

The hotels along the waterfront, as seen from our campsite on a foggy evening

We are also taking a moment here to lick our boat shopping wounds, it's taking more of a soul toll than expected.

Stewie is sulking because I won't let him out to roam during the day, but he'll have to wait it out until we move on to the next spot - the neighbors are coming out of hibernation and are looking for breakfast.

Anyhoo... back to Gulf Shores, our January landing spot. Snowbirds are welcomed here. Most of them come from Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana, with a few Canadians sprinkled in.

No self-respecting Gulf Shores camper would be caught without a koozie over their beverage of choice. When I told a circle of campers I had no idea what a koozie was they collectively gasped, and later that day we were presented with a pile of them. Whether this is an Alabama thing or a Michigan thing brought to the region by snowbirds is a mystery.

There's $1 minigolf, live music every night, oysters, and hot wings. I've been told it's off the hook for Spring break. Plans are already under way for assorted Mardi Gras celebrations around town, people have started decorating floats and selecting colorful costumes.

The Hangout is just a few blocks from our park. The list of Spring Break headliners is impressive. I've been told this outdoor venue can be heard for many miles around when it's in full swing.

A unique chotchky collection lines the walls at The Hangout

We exchanged our Florida flip-flop and swimsuit attire for boots and hoodies and embraced the bug-free cooler weather. The January storms that rolled across us were plentiful, windy and wet - during one particular storm we were grateful to be living in a heavy Class A, and I felt compelled to place the Mini between us and a nearby lightweight popup camper I was worried about blowing into us. Finding a body shop for the Mini is less hassle than settling Loretta into one. It seems the normal January weather pattern for this region is one day in the low 60's followed by a day or two of very wet and sometimes thundering storms. The snowbirds didn't seem to mind - their people were all shoveling snow at home after all, but it was a shock to us coming from the Keys so recently.

Beautiful white sand beaches are lonely in anticipation of the coming storm.

Sunset after an epic storm, as seen from my office window

You may remember Gulf Shores from the news in 2010 - it was hit with a huge oil spill that affected the town in many significant ways. As part of the cleanup and restoration process, BP funded several improvement projects, my favorite of which is the 60 miles of bicycle paths through the wetland preserve, easily accessible from our campground. Lance rode nearly daily while I worked, I joined him whenever I could escape my desk.

The bike path of Gulf Shores Park is beautifully maintained and equally welcoming for hikers, bikers, and dogs.

Shelby Lake in Gulf State Park

Shelby Lake as seen from the bike path in Gulf State Park

And Loretta got some lovin' - a new coat of wax! We were thrilled to find someone affordable to take on the job.

The old gal can still shine

White sandy beaches on a cool blustery day.

No trip to the area is complete without a tour of nearby Fort Pickens This fort was build in 1834 and saw action in the civil war and also protected against German submarines in World War II. Today only a few of the monstrously huge cannons remain on the beach, standing vigil among the lizards and seabirds.

Another great find was Joe Patti's Seafood, which has fish covered from catch to market to restaurant.

The fishing boat @ Joe Patti's

Crawdads can generally be found on every menu in Gulf Shores, although Alabama tips the spice jar quite a bit less than nearby New Orleans.

Tuna steaks carved right in front of our eyes, quickly and carefully with no morsel wasted

.

We were invited here by friends we met a couple of years ago in Mexico Beach, FL. We were there because friends we made in the Keys invited us to follow them there when we all left the Keys together. We were in the Keys because friends we made in Brookings OR in our first few months on the road recommended we join the Elks and the Elks hooked us up. So it definitely pays to make friends on the road. It's easy - just take a lap around the park with the dog. Or open your lawn chair and sit down in front of your rig. Or open a hatch on your rig and look puzzled - I guarantee you'll get more help than you may need.

The stage at the Flora-Bama awaits the next band

This park in Gulf Shores has a core group of snowbirds that return year after year. Their travel is different from ours in that they pretty much live in Wisconsin, Michigan or Minnesota half the year and live here at the park the other half of the year - their rigs travel only back and forth or just stay here and await their return. Classic snowbird behavior but so foreign to us. I can definitely see the allure in rejoining friends year after year. They welcomed us into their events, of which there were many ranging from a superbowl party to weekly mini-golf and bean-bag toss games (out here they call the game corn hole - the idea is to throw a bean bag into a box with a hole in it).

While we are still enjoying our life of travel, I find that the goodbyes are wearing on me. But it won't stop me from continuing to make new friends along the way, that is the point of all of this after all. Maybe a snowbird life is in my future - when I can enjoy good weather and look forward to seeing the same friends next year, making the goodbyes a little easier.

After the next adventure, maybe...

Internet Speed Comparison Luxury RV Resort, Gulf Shores, AL Sampled 1/6/20 at 6:57 pm
	MB down	MB up
Calyx (Sprint)	55.2 (!!!)	3.66
Google Fi	32.6	10.7
Jetpack (Verizon)	21.1	8.62
Park wifi	Free wifi workig intermittently, there is a cabled paid version we didn't buy into

Natchez Trace Parkway

The Natchez Trace Parkway on a rainy day, as seen from one of the roomy pullouts

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a wilderness park that stretches 444 miles from Nashville Tennessee in the general direction of New Orleans and ends in Natchez Mississippi. I've been hearing about this stretch of road for years from fellow motorcyclists, and planned our approach to coincide with the fall colors.

The Buffalo River along the Natchez Trace Parkway

The Parkway travels through three states and became recognized in 1938 as important enough to annex into the National Park System. The speed limit is 50mph which gives you plenty of time to enjoy the tunnels of trees and pause at the many pull-outs, most of which are RV friendly and those that are not are well-marked. Here and there are hiking paths, creekbeds, picnic tables, and plentiful plaques to read about the history of the area.

A coffee break pause at Sweetwater Branch offered plenty of room for Loretta

Mr. Toad got us into the smaller turnouts along the Trace where Loretta could not fit

Wildlife is plentiful and we regularly paused or dodged

 to avoid hitting turtles, white-tail deer, squirrels, foxes, armadillos, possums, raccoons, and one very fast-moving black bobcat. The night skies are stunning and cell signals are scarce adding to the feeling of isolation. As the crow flies, the Trace is never far from a real town and you can easily exit the parkway and find fuel, food and internet, but while on the parkway it felt like we'd gone back in time.

A section of the Old Trace

The Trace was originally a game path which Native Americans followed to pursue bison, elk, deer and other tasty critters. The natives of the area were Chicosaw, Choctaw, and Natchez all of which welcomed the Europeans who came along the game path, trading and intermarrying with them and even establishing inns (called "stands") along the route and profiting from them until such time as they were eventually betrayed and forced out of their ancestral homeland along the Trail of Tears, which crosses the Trace at several points.

This is all that remains of an old Steel mill along the Buffalo River

Famous travelers along this route include Andrew Jackson, John James Audobon, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, and Meriwether Lewis, who at age 35 died at a stand not far from Nashville and was buried there. Other travelers include "Kaintucks" from the Ohio River Valley in the early 1800s who floated cash crops down the Mississippi River, sold their boats for lumber and walked or rode horseback up the Trace back home. Highway robbery was not uncommon and a few enterprising bad boys on the Trace became the organizers of some of the first (land-based) organized crime rings in the young country.

Look who we found on the trail

One of many river fords along the Trace, this one looked like it might be a likely spot to get ambushed

We stayed 10 days or so at Natchez Trace RV Campground, a Thousand Trails campground not far from Hohenwald, TN with a tricky entrance hiding behind an 11' bridge. There was no cell signal there for either my Google Fi phone or the Sprint puck on the bus, but Verizon occasionally got a text message through to Lance's phone and friends had good luck with AT&T in one particular section of the campground. The campground offered unlocked wifi at the rec hall which was pretty fast when I was alone there in the early mornings but bogged down in the afternoon when it filled with other campers, so I packed up my computer bag and went to the Hohenwald Library on workdays, where I enjoyed lightning-fast wifi and a quiet desk all to myself.

The Meriwether Room at the Hohenwald Library, my high-speed internet work oasis

The Meriwether Room contains books of the epic endeavor's maps, letters, and findings. Coincidentally, we have been following much of the same path this year in our RV, fitting that I should discover these at the end of the road for Meriwether Lewis.

Many of the campers in this park stay long-term and some have built elaborate decks out onto the lake from their rigs, and 4-wheel toys are standard equipment for most of these long-term spots. We saw lots of wooded trails where these would come in handy, including and crossing the original Old Trace Road. Fun.

4-wheel side-by-side commonly found at the campground

A seasonal camper's setup at the Natchez Trace Thousand Trails campground

I had this grandiose idea of drone footage of the Parkway with us traveling along, the sweeping red and yellow fall colors and the plentiful wildlife, and then the rain started and didn't let up for days. Sometimes it feels like the very nature we came out to shoot is playing hide-and-seek with us intentionally.

Closeup of fall leaves on a rainy day, I call this one the "bruised banana" leaf

Well, rain or no rain, it's time to roll South.  Next stop: Abbeville Louisiana, we should make it just in time for the 5000-egg omelette festival.