At Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia

Blog Post April 4-5, 2023

At Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia

We awoke on Tuesday to the sound of rain hitting the tent.  Once we stepped outside, we realized that it wasn’t actually raining.  The fog was so thick that condensation was dripping off the trees in a rain-like fashion.  We were somewhat surprised by the fog!

After a damp breakfast, we decided to drive to the start of a walk that would take us to the “wall” near the top of Fort Mountain.  This 930 foot wall zig zags below the summit of the mountain. It’s made of piled rock and is believed to have been constructed by Native Americans about 2,000 years ago.  The original purpose of the wall is unclear.  Interestingly, there are several other stone structures found in the southeastern states.  Some of these are walls but others are cairns, mounds or enclosures.  Legends abound regarding the people who built the wall at Fort Mountain but nothing is really known. As we walked along, the fog lifted off the top of the mountain.  Even better we were able to get some cell reception.  The forecast predicted clearing and a warm afternoon.  

Later in the day we walked a path around the spring-fed pond before returning to our campsite.  This turned out to be beautiful and we saw a lot of birds. A hearty lunch led to a slightly less ambitious afternoon!  We did hatch a plan for the next day.  The drive to Bayou le Batre, Alabama would be 430 miles—probably more than 8 hours.  So we planned on a 4:30 am wake time with a target departure of 5:30 am.

Today, Wednesday, started at 4:30 am!  I for one was not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!  Despite packing the car and tent in the dark, we were on the move by 5:15 am.  It’s really dark at that time!  Not to mention that it must be rush hour around Atlanta at that hour of the morning.  I wasn’t driving but I was freaked out—so many trucks, so much traffic all moving super fast.  Whoa! This brings me to the odd thought I had while we drove in the greater Atlanta area.  Traffic is like a big school of fish—everyone is swimming along smoothly.  Suddenly, some fish get spooked and the whole school darts off in a different direction.  With traffic, it’s similar.  Someone gets jittery, applies the brakes and suddenly the whole roadway is full of break lights and a big slow down results! (This is what happens when I have to get up too early in the morning.) 

To our surprise, we entered the central time zone shortly after crossing into Alabama.  Probably we should have realized that this would happen... Our long day got a bit longer. We arrived at our AirB&B at noon.  At this point I’m too tired to figure out how long the drive took—we leave that as an exercise for the reader.  After a few hours of birding at some locations in Mississippi (!) and a nice dinner at a restaurant, we are quite tired!  Tomorrow it’s off to explore the gulf coast of Alabama!   

Gloria

The view as we approached Fort Mountain State Park

A foggy morning indeed! (B&W)

Sitting on a plastic bin bag to have breakfast

The walk up to the summit of Fort Mountain

Centipede ??

One of many beautiful little Iris in the woods near the summit

Walking round the edge of the spring filled pond (iPhone)

Perfect reflection in the misty dead-calm (iPhone). By the time we finished walking around the fog had cleared and the sun was out.

Drugs and Guns: Refill or Reloads - We’ve got you covered.

Drugs and Guns: Refill or Reloads - We’ve got you covered.

3 April 2023

One of the great things about making a trip like this is that you see so many different parts of the country. As we were driving up to Hanging Rock State Park, I was struck by how beautiful the surrounding area was and how attractive the local villages appeared. When we arrived at the park I immediately felt that this was a wonderful place. Move on a couple of days and we are now driving through the western part of North Carolina and the contrast could not be more stark. Admittedly it was raining, but the sense of foreboding that we felt as passed the Nantahala National Forest was almost tangible. Steep sided, gloomy valleys are dotted with decrepit houses engulfed in vines. Once past the national forest, the road is littered with billboards advertising a side of American culture that is so far removed from my own experience. “Pray for Peace, but prepare for the worst” alongside the picture of an automatic rifle. “Drugs and Guns: Refills and Reloads - we’ve got you covered”. I personally think this one-stop business is missing a trick. If I were stopping by for my anti-psychotic meds and 0.762 ammo, I’d really appreciated being able to pick up a six pack and a pint of whisky at the same time.

Step back a day … We had a great time at Hanging Rock SP. I would give it 5 stars. We climbed the peak for which the park was named, toured the area where the Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) were based when they initially created the park, and walked to a couple of waterfalls. Gloria was interested to read about the CCC contribution because her uncle Raymond spent some time with this group prior to WW2. The program was initiated by President Roosevelt in response to the great depression and was responsible for a tremendous amount of conservation work, not to mention the positive impact on the lives of those involved and their families. The program was closed in 1942 as America entered the second world war and we figure that none of the people involved will be alive today.

I should mention that we experienced extremes of temperature whilst staying at Hanging Rock SP. When we arrived it was in the 70’s oF, but with a pretty strong wind. During the night the temperatures steadily steadily dropped under the clear skies, and by morning it was so cold that I lit a camp fire prior to starting the morning coffee. It warmed up considerably and we were fortunate to have cloudless blue skies.

As I write this we are in Fort Mountain SP in northern Georgia. We’ll be here two nights before making a long drive down to the coast of Alabama. We haven't had cell phone service at either of our last two campsite so there may be a delay in posting this.

P.s. Did you know there are 33,000 post offices in the USA (we were happy to find one yesterday to post a letter). There 380,000 churches. 

Mike

I’m not always great at taking people pictures, but I have vowed to make more effort on this trip. Along with a couple of landscapes, the following set of pictures show various people enjoying Hanging Rock State Park.

What the sign doesn't say is that the serious injuries and deaths occur when reluctant climbers are pushed too hard by their partners !

The view from the top was spectacular. Although hard work, the hike up is fairly short (1.5 miles) and is very safe ... unless you start scrambling around at the top with a camera.

Another hiker (Joshua) admiring the view.

Enjoying the lovely lower cascade

Photographing the falls

One happy father and his son, who seemed enthralled by the cascade

Posing for a photo ... but unfortunately not for me so they aren't looking at my camera!

Hanging Rock State Park

 Hanging Rock State Park

April 1, 2023

Rain was our bane,

Noon brought our boon!

Yesterday morning we drove from the Maryland portion of Asssateague Nat. Seashore to the Virginia portion near the Chincoteague Inlet.  We were rewarded with seeing a large number of shore birds to add to our “big year” list.  Departing around noon, we drove to Kiptopeke State park near the southern end of the DelMarVa peninsula.  

We had visited Kiptopeke from the water in 2021. A harbor of sorts has been created by sinking a number of old Liberty ships (from WW2).  We found our campsite, showered (hurray!) and went for a walk (bird-watching) before starting to prepare dinner.  In keeping with the forecast, the rain began after seven pm.  Thankfully, we had eaten and washed up by the time the sprinkles began. Preparations for an early departure were accomplished without getting very damp.  One of our campers elected to have an early night while the other worked on photos seated in the car.  

Somewhat reluctantly, we crawled out of bed this morning and were able to get the tent packed away.  A short shower of rain meant that the fly-sheet was pretty wet, but it wasn’t raining as we sorted out coffee and sandwiches for lunch.  We were on the road shortly before 8 am. Driving across the Chesapeake Bridge and tunnel was made more interesting by a high wind advisory.  It was an excellent day not to be on the boat! We drove west through Virginia and then south into North Carolina.  The trip was quite long and we experienced a few hours of rain.  In the afternoon, the rain stopped and the sun came out. 

This park is in the mountains and is known for it’s hiking trails.  It’s pretty with some good views. The campsite seems lovely. We will find out more tomorrow.

Gloria

Abstract photos are my absolute favorites. The following shots were taken at the kayak rental concession down on Chincoteague Bay near our campsite. They were taken in the 15 minutes or so prior to sunset. the light was fabulous and they were all generated using focus stacking techniques.

Sunset from the kayak rental concession at Assateague Island national Seashore

Our next door neighbors in teh campsite at Assateague Island National Seashore. To this point I would say RVs and Campers out-number tents 100:1

Great Egret in Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

Cape Henlopen and Assateague Island National Seashore

 Cape Henlopen and Assateague Island National Seashore

29 - 30 March 2023

Rather than head straight over to Assateague Island National Seashore we opted to drive out to Cape Henlopen State Park, which is located to the east of the Lewes to Cape May ferry terminal. It was worth the extra hour of driving and we enjoyed visiting both the ocean and Delaware Bay sides of the park. We even got on our bikes and did a short ride down to Gordon’s pond, where there were hundreds of seabirds. It has been perfectly clear blue sky the past two days, but with a really cold northerly wind. I think the combination of thermal heating from the sun and the cold wind created a lot of shimmering and it was hard to get a clear view of the birds even with our scope. 

We arrived at the campground on Assateague Island in the later afternoon and it’s perfectly lovely. We had steak, tortolinis and salad for dinner, which was delicious, but you had to eat quickly before the food went cold. Once the sun went down it was too cold to sit outside so we retreated to the tent to read, and probably were asleep before “boaters midnight” (9pm). The wind howled all night and we got up shortly after dawn to white-caps on Chincoteague Bay and temperatures that felt like 32oF (according to our forecast). After coffee and breakfast we headed out to walk along the seashore. It’s tempting to say it’s just a beach, but it is incredibly beautiful and wild. The park was created after the storm of 1964 which destroyed the road and the planned development that was underway. Now there are tens of miles of pristine coastline that will be preserved for the future. Now we are resting back at our campsite. The breeze has dropped and the sun is warm - what’s not to love about this place? Tonight we plan to have a campfire and then tomorrow continue south.

Mike

P.s. I’m editing these photos in the open-air under bright sun, so if the exposures look off then please excuse me - I can adjust them later. This is one aspect that is harder when living in a tent versus living on the boat. Also short of electric power - as we rely on charging using an inverter whilst running the car.

Cape Henlopen - Atlantic Ocean

Cape Henlopen - Delaware Bay

Our tent with the sleeping bags, mats and lightweight cots in place - before we put up the flysheet

Sunset over Chincoteague Bay

American Oystercatcher

Assateague Island National Seashore

Sanderlings flying off the beach

Our Second … or Third Honeymoon

 Our Second … or Third Honeymoon

27-28 March 2023

Gloria and I got married on the 1st August 1987 in the Brown University chapel. The following day we took our bikes onto a ferry over to Martha’s Vineyard and spent our honeymoon camping. We then spent a week on vacation with my parents up on Long Lake in the Adirondacks before we went back to finish our post-doc positions in the chemistry departments at Brown and Columbia Universities. We secured jobs at ICI Pharmaceuticals (which would later become Zeneca and then AstraZeneca), but they didn’t start until January of 1988. So in the middle of September, having shipped the bulk of our worldly possessions over to the UK, we set out on a ten week camping trip around the USA. We took a counter-clockwise route covering 14,000 miles and visited several of the countries exceptional National Parks. Some of our family think of this as our honeymoon, but technically speaking it was our second honeymoon. We had an outstanding trip, but perhaps didn’t appreciate how rare and how fortunate we were to spend that length of time on an adventure. I think we thought this would be something we would do regularly. Move on 35 years and you realize that all sorts of other things take up your time and commitment. Obviously we have enjoyed extended sailing adventures over the past decade, but we have never come close to repeating a camping trip of this magnitude. 

Yesterday we set out on what we hope will be another 10-week round the country car camping adventure. This time, because it is still only early spring, we plan to take a clockwise route, heading south to start with so that we get into some warmer weather as soon as possible. We have planned our “third honeymoon” well. We have a new tent (which is big enough to stand up in), lightweight cots and super-thick camping mats to make sleeping as comfortable as possible, and a two burner stove powered with propane from an aluminum 10 pound tank that we have borrowed off the boat. All of this gear, along with two coolers, spare clothes and, of course, a small amount of photographic gear is jammed into the Toyota Rav4. Did I mention we also have our bike ?! Tasha advised us that the quality of the experience would be enhanced by having less stuff … I think she’s right, but we struggled to trim it down as much as we would have liked.

We left home around 7.30am yesterday and drove 420 miles to Trap Pond State Park in Delaware. We only stopped twice to fill up with gas and use the loos, and other than that drove solidly, arriving shortly after 3pm. We were lucky that the rain showers that were forecast held off and we got the tent up in a matter of minutes. A short walk was followed by a fine evening meal of what we call “cabbage dinner” (ground beef, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, caraway seeds, served over rice). All our equipment seemed to work well and we snuggled up in bed before 9pm. 

I slept really well … Gloria not so much! The temperatures dropped down a lot overnight and it must have been close to freezing when we got up this morning. After coffee and bagels, we headed out on a 5 mile walk around Trap Pond. It really is a beautiful place with bald cypress trees in and around the water and pine forests inland. We saw lots of birds, including wood ducks, winter wrens and purple finches. We are working to see how many species of birds we can see in one year. We may take a bike ride later to a subsidiary area called Trussum Pond and then tomorrow we move on to Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland.

Mike

Trap Pond in the early morning mist

Trap Pond in the early morning mist

Bald Cypress swamp

Gloria ... after the sun came out

Carolina Wren ... a very cooperative subject!

Snake warming up in the watery sunshine

Guanajuato

 Guanajuato

12-19 March 2023

Well its been almost two years since we returned from our last “year afloat” and we stoped writing our blog, but we are now ready to start up again! 

After returning from our trip down the east coast in 2020-21 we ended up going back to work at Framingham State University for one final year. Initially this was intended to be part time work, but for Mike it became full-time when the Chemistry Department needed someone for the academic year at short notice. It has always been a pleasure to work at FSU but it seemed harder in the aftermath of Covid even though classes were all back in session. All the students and faculty were still required to wear masks and there seemed a lot less interaction than previously. In any event we enjoyed the experience and retired (again) in May last year and have been adapting to our new lifestyle. We have continued to enjoy life at home in Massachusetts and have also done some sailing locally in New England. In November we had a lovely visit to see our daughter Tasha and her partner Mac in their new home outside of Spokane, Washington. We also spent time generating big plans to travel this year. Mike got things started with a trip back to the UK earlier this month and we have just returned from visiting our friends, Lynn and Lee, in Guanajuato, Mexico. At this point we are just about ready to set out on a 10-week car-camping tour around the USA, and we also have plans to head south on Cotinga later in the year. So all told, it seems like the right time to re-start our blog and to capture some of these adventures.

We first met Lynn and Lee in the autumn of 2012 at River Dunes marina in North Carolina. We were on our first year aboard Cotinga and Lynn and Lee were living on their sail boat Serendipity. We had gone to the marina to enjoy the excellent and inexpensive facilities, but ended up staying a week as we sheltered from hurricane Sandy. We got to known several cruisers during that week and bumped in to many of them again. We were delighted to be able to catch up with Lynn and Lee later that year down in St. Augustine and the following spring we joined up with Serendipity to cruise for a couple of weeks in the Bahamas before crossing back together to the USA. We became close friends and over the past ten years have met up with some regularity. Lynn and Lee have moved on from sailing and are now focussing their adventures on canoeing and “dirt-cruising” (camping). They are now also retired and have spent the past 3 winters down in Mexico, the last two in Guanajuato. When they invited us down to spend a week with them we jumped at the opportunity.

Guanajuato is a beautiful city, nestled in the hills about 250 miles north-west of Mexico City. We flew in to the nearby airport of Leon and took a taxi over to the center of historic city where Lynn and Lee met us. We hiked up the steep narrow alleyways to their apartment, which was challenging at an altitude of 6500 ft. The view across town from their rooftop patio was amazing! Over the next week we had a wonderful time exploring the city, eating fine food, visiting the orchestra and hanging out with good friends. On one day we took a 90 minute taxi drive through the countryside to San Miguel, where the four of us took a cooking class with a well-known chef in his home kitchen. We prepared four different meals and ate them as we went along! The food was terrific, Chef David was highly entertaining and we learned a lot. Altogether a great experience! We also spent a couple of days hiking in the nearby countryside, firstly climbing up one of the hills that surround the city, and then later, walking to the Presa Peralillo reservoir. It was a pleasure to see something of both the city and the countryside. One of the things that impressed us the most was seeing Lynn and Lee chatting with the locals. They have worked hard to improve their Spanish and take lessons three times a week. It was so obvious to us how having those language skills enhanced their interactions with the local community.

In the following pictures I want to try and give you a sense of the atmosphere and beauty of Guanajuato, with it’s colorful buildings, vibrant culture and it’s countless winding alleyways.

Mike

Sunset over Guanajuato from the roof patio on Lynn and Lee's apartment

The town at night (panorama stitched together from 6 individual images)

One of the many plazas / parks with cafes and restaurants, live music and a great atmosphere

Selling balloons outside the cathedral

One of the stepped alleyways leading up to Lynn and Lee's apartment

An elderly lady peers into the window shrine of a small local store, high above the city center

It was wonderful to just wander around the roads and alleyways with all the beautiful painted houses

It was challenging to take photos during the day as the contrast between the areas in the sun and those in the shadows was extreme. However, as the sun went behind the hills the lighting became soft and beautiful. I used focus stacking techniques to ensure great depth of field in conjunction with combining multiple images into a panorama for some of the street views

The vertical format gives you more of a sense of how narrow and steep some of these alleyways are

There were beautiful murals on the walls of many of the buildings

Here a religious mural is painted on the adjacent corner to a pop art depiction

There are lots of dogs in Mexico! Many are kept as guard-pets and live on the roofs of their houses. This husky-like dog was next door to Lynn and Lee and I shot the photo from our bedroom window

Never doubt how seriously we take ice cream! Lynn and Lee preparing to indulge