On the Road Again!

Evening, Campers! Welcome back! It's SilverCliche' checking in tonight from Little Talbot Island State Park in Jacksonville, Florida.

Today's story actually begins 7 weeks ago when we returned to Vero Beach from Yellowstone. Thanks to all of you who came along with us on that trip. We cleaned (and cleaned, and cleaned), polished, upgraded (Mrs. C' now has a 12 volt fan and two USB charging ports on her side of the bed), repaired (that broken plexiglass window has been replaced with a new part sent to us from the Airstream factory in Ohio) and re-provisioned the Airstream so it would be ready for this adventure.

We started today with a sunrise trip to the beach down the street from home to say goodbye to Vero Beach for a while. Here's the sight that greeted us...

As attractive as that is, we were both ready to get underway and see more of America. The theme song for today could easily have been Willy Nelson's "On the Road Again" (I just can't wait to be on the road again...). We were so pumped up by the Yellowstone trip that we couldn't wait to try it again.

We finished the packing and loading, ran our last errands, said goodbyes (including to one of the dogs who is staying home while we travel) and we pulled out of the driveway just before noon.

The route from Vero Beach to Jacksonville is a familiar one to us -- I-95 North. Having taken 4 years to move from Maryland to Florida we are well acquainted with I-95. For several of those years I was neither a legal resident of Maryland nor Florida... I was an I-95'er. The closest thing I can think of to the I-95 experience is a colonoscopy. It's a better choice than the alternatives; if you make it to a certain age you are certain to have the need for it; the preparation and anticipation are worse than the event; and it's desirable to have some anesthesia to avoid the memory of the experience. We dove in.

Once we got off I-95 just south of downtown Jacksonville we headed east and the sights became interesting. The airspace included a steady flow of military aircraft (mostly helicopters) heading into Naval Station Mayport. There were two huge car carrying ships in JAX Port (BMW's arriving from Germany?), acres of containers stacked next to huge gantry cranes. Strangely, there were no container ships in port being loaded or unloaded. At one point we even saw Navy ships at Mayport (although that was only because we made a wrong turn and came to a dead end on the opposite side of the St. John's River. Mrs. C' snapped this pic of the Dames Point Bridge as we headed to the campground:

So where are we now? About 10 miles from the bridge above are islands between the ocean and the tidal rivers. These islands are low-lying and surrounded by salt marshes on the west. One of those is Little Talbot Island where we are camped tonight. Here's a pic of the rig in the site from which I am writing this blog entry:

The weather is stormy. That's actually good news since the arrival of afternoon showers knocked the air temperature from the mid 90's to the low 80's. That moved the humidity from high to wringing wet. It's the kind of humid that makes your glasses fog up when you step out of the car.

Here's tonight's panorama. It was taken before the thunderstorms hit and I was standing about 100' to the right of where the pic above was taken. The trailer would be just out of the left side of this frame. It was low tide when I took the pic.

I'm hoping the sunrise shot from that spot will do justice to this amazing landscape. The flat light of the cloudy evening didn't do justice to this beautiful spot.

So, that's it. Back on the road. Glad to be here. Looking forward to sharing interesting stops along the way to Buffalo and back.

Until tomorrow...

SC