St. Mary’s, GA

Thursday, April 15th, we drove from Charleston, SC, to St. Mary’s, GA, where we had 3 nights reserved at the Crooked River State Park.  I am still not brave enough to drive to an area on a weekend without having reservations.

I’m glad we did this since we found out  when we reached the park office shown here that the campground was going to be full over the weekend. 

They have an interesting way of handling the reservations.  They take enough reservations to cover the sites but you don’t actually get assigned a site.  You simply go back into the park after you’ve signed in and take a site that is available (one that doesn’t have a tag) and tag it. 

This is also for first park where we’ve encountered a 50 amp site actually being a site with 2 30 amp plugs.  This isn’t common up north and so Ken doesn’t have the appropriate pigtail to tie in this way.  Not a problem though since it is not warm and we don’t need 50 amp if we don’t need both A/C’s.

 

We ended up choosing a huge site that allowed us to back far under the pine trees, pretty much totally on our own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we were set up we drove back in to St. Mary’s for dinner to get a taste for the area.

On the way, we drove by the Naval base where they have a full-size submarine ‘submerged’ by the front gates.

Based on comments from folks in the campground office and a sample menu, we decided to try to ‘Lucky Dawgs’ restaurant.

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They had live music that night which was excellent and all-you-can-eat ribs which were good but not ranking with some of the greats we’ve had.  It was interesting to see the different makeup of this crowd.  Like Folly Beach, we weren’t far from the ocean but this was a naval base crowd versus a beach crowd.  We stayed for quite a while for drinks and to enjoy the music.

Friday morning Ken and I took our laptops up to the park office where they had wifi available. We sat on the outside porch and did emails, facebook and I published my latest blog post. 

It was our 29th wedding anniversary and we got lots of well wishes from family and friends….thanks to all!!

We had a lazy morning at the rig, enjoying the lovely weather.  The ‘No-See-Ums’ didn’t seem to be swarming in the morning so we enjoyed being out under the awning.  I cut Ken’s hair and we went for an extended walk with the dogs.

We drove in to the St. Mary’s historic district. 

 

There was a nice little cafe overlooking the water, called aptly the Riverview Cafe where we stopped for a late lunch.  Ken and I each had the day’s soups.  Ken had a lemon chicken rice soup and I had a crab, zucchini soup both of which were absolutely marvelous.  We shared a greek salad.

 

 

This was another restaurant where we enjoyed just setting back, taking our time and enjoying the scenery.

 

 

 

This well manicured park overlooked the water as well.

 

 

One of the gardeners even offered to take a picture for us, so I guess this is our 29th anniversary portrait!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked out on the pier to get a closer look at some of the unique sailing ships docked nearby.  Ken decided that since just being over the water on the pier was still giving him some feelings of dizziness, we’d better forego the 45 minute ferry ride over to Cumberland Island for our next visit.

Back at the motorhome, we took the dogs for another walk and, as usual, got to know some of our neighbors better as they came out to see the dogs.  It’s amazing how often our dog walks can end up taking an hour or more and really not be much walking!

We did one of our better collaborative efforts on the grill tonight with Rosemary Butterfly Chops with Honey Mustard Sauce, Cheesy Garlic Red Potatoes and Grilled Cabbage.

 

 

 

I leave you with our view of the night sky through the pines.

Hoping for at least another 29 more wedding anniversaries as wonderful as this one!

Hugs, C