Our trip started later than expected when a “Wintercane” hit on Thursday night, February 25. We had winds of 75 mph and gusts over 90 mph. Most of the seacoast area had lost power, there were trees down everywhere on Friday morning. Sharon and I went to Harvey’s Bakery in Dover Friday morning for breakfast. We had four different roads closed when we tried to get to Dover. The usual 15 minute ride took us 40 minutes.  We finally got the power turned back on at home on Sunday, just before noon, about 60 hours without power. We were the lucky ones, several in town didn’t get their power back on until Monday evening.

Watching the long range weather forecast showed another storm coming up the Atlantic coast, with snow expected through Pennsylvania and New York, right where we need to travel through to go south. It looked like we would get out of Eliot until Thursday, March 4. Watching the local weather on Wednesday night it called for 35 mph winds on Thursday, another day to stay off the road. Finally Friday, March 5 came and we had a clear window of several nice days to travel south.

We left Friday morning about 7:30 AM and travelled all day. There was no snow on the ground through all of New England until we got to Nyack, New York. There was the new snow that came in on the last storm. We arrived at Western Village RV park in Carlisle, PA. about 5 PM.  A very nice campground with about 8 transient RV’s in for the night and about 25 seasonal’s enjoying the 25 degree over night temperatures. There were four RVers travelling together and we said Hi to them as we were on our evening walk around the campground to stretch our legs.

We left Saturday morning about 7:30 AM and travelled all day. There was snow on the ground until we were south of Washington, D.C.  As we were travelling down the highway, the 4 RVers that were at the last campground passed us. They had left the campground at 6 AM that morning, about 1 ½ hours before we left. We arrived at South of the Border in Dillon, SC about 5 PM.It was about 65 degrees outside.  We were sitting down to supper about 6 PM when the four campers pulled into South of the Border campground.  We spoke to them a little later when we were out for our evening walk. They were from Ontario, 2 were retired from Canadian Bell phone company. They spoke very little English (French was their native language) so our chat was short. They were headed to Cocoa Beach for 2 weeks. We called our friends Ron and Karen, who are hosting in Georgia Veterans State Park in Cordele, GA to let them know we would be there late Sunday afternoon.

We left Sunday morning about 7:30 AM and travelled all day. We stopped for lunch at the Georgia Welcome Center. Just as we were finishing, Ron called to say he had a special spot all picked out for us at the campground and was wondering what time we might get there. We made arrangements to give Ron and Karen a call when we checked in at the office. Ron met us at the campground gate and escorted us to a very nice site, right next to them in the campground. Looking out our front window, we can watch the sunrise over the lake. Looking out the door or the kitchen window, we get to watch the sunset over the lake. Not only did they get us a beautiful campsite, Karen and Ron cooked supper for us. We were treated like royalty. We decided to stay here at this beautiful State Park for a week, until Sunday, March 14. Then we will head for Florida.

Monday we took a ride with Ron and Karen to Andersonville Prison and  National Cemetary. It was a Civil War prison for Union soldiers. 12,900 Union soldiers died in this prison (of the 45,000 prisoners) in the 14 months that it operated in 1864 & 1865.  It was very moving experience watching the informational movies about the prison. The cemetary was beautiful. One of the best parts is the Maine monument for the fallen Maine soldiers. The soldier on the top of the monument faces North, with his back to the South.