We awake on 13 December and after a quick breakfast set our sights to Lincolnton GA to an Army Corps of Engineers site known as Bussy Point. We only have a small website review on our destination so our fingers are crossed. The first red flag. The navigation system in the truck does not recognize any of the roads for the last 10 miles before our destination. For most of our marriage, Yvette has always taken the left seat as the driver. She absolutely hates to navigate and refused to read a map. Even with written instructions, she would much rather face Monday morning traffic in Boston than to navigate. But that all changed when we took delivery of the new rig. The size of the new vehicle and the fact we were going to pull a trailer changed her mind and Yvette opted for the right seat for a while.
The trip goes well at the beginning but we discuss the subtle differences in how each state we've visited thus far seems to use or doesn't use highway road signs. Some states are very good at placing signs especially when it comes to junctions and overlapping roads. For some reason, this trip was fine until about the last twenty miles. What made it go bad to worse was the navigation system in the truck, "MyLink", started giving us erroneous information, and during the last 10 miles, showed no roads on the screen at all. So, time to go old school, we yanked out the National Geographic road atlas and with a bit of trial and error, completed the rest of the trip without incident.
We arrived around 2 pm and the area is quiet, real quiet. Other than a vehicle parked at the boat ramp, we are the only other vehicle on the campground. We pick our spot that has a great view of the lake and set off for a walk before dinner. Even for winter, there is plenty of wildlife here, including common loons, herons and more. The body of water is partly man-made, the Savanha River damned off to create what is now known as the Strom Thurmond Reservoir. It's huge! 1200 miles of shorline, 70,000 acres of water and over 80,000 acres of land. At night our view reveals tiny pinpoints of light of a distant bridge. The wind is such that you all most think you're at the ocean with the gently lapping of waves that sing you to sleep. It's chilly at night, but the furnace keeps us warm until the sun has a chance to take over in the morning. The weather back home shows temps in the 20's. Here, the night time temp low is about 40, the day time temp around 58.
Yvette and I hike and bike the first and second day and take advantage of the outdoor kitchen in the turtle. No dehydrated meals here. We cook exactly what you would cook at home. We have a freezer and refrigerator that constantly keep our foods fresh to create meals like chicken soup or beans and rice. The only thing we lack is the ability to bake. But we're working on that.
We only plan on staying three days as we must be in Milledgeville Ga., on the 15th at 1 pm, to house sit for 19 days. As fate would have it, we have our only visitor on the second day late in the afternoon. Of the 13 other spots they could choose from, they choose one right next to us. I could go on a ten minute rant about this, some of you may have seen a quick Facebook video I did about this, but suffice it say, we were packed and rolling out of our spot by 8 am on the last day.
It was a great spot while it lasted and we would visit it again in a heartbeat. But now it's time to get to Milledgeville for some re-grouping and some organizing. As we roll out of camp, I hear my navigator groan as she retrieves the Atlas from the back storage area.