Saturday – Port Wentworth, Georgia
I woke up as usual just after 6am, I wish I could sleep in, but there you go. I started to write some blog stuff without making too much noise. Packed up my gear and stuff as well. Here is some info of Tim’s shop before I forget, if you need some work done, go ask him, I am sure he can help in some way.
A bit later Jim was up and after a cup of tea and some bacon and eggs, it was time to hit the road, Jim had been going to ride north to St Augustine with me, but he needed to get the car some new tyres. Thanks for everything Jim, I have since found out that Ester in oil is good, so my apprehension has gone. 🙂
First stop was to get to Daytona Beach and drop off the key, but most essentially pick up the remainder of the Bundy, Lesley had told me to take it if I had room, well, priorities, there is always room for the bear, I could dump something else if it came to that 🙂 I saw this pub shaped like a boat on the way in, quite neat, no time to look inside though and it was closed anyway.
I spent a short time posting at the house and checking emails etc. I had tried to connect to the cable internet at Jims, but there was some type of encryption stopping it happening, same as happened with Tombstones place. After that it was head north along the beach for about 20 miles before heading inland and hitting the slab. There is not much choice really if you want to get in or out of Florida. One thing about this state, it is nice for a visit, but too congested for me, too many people, too much traffic, especially in the south. I did enjoy myself, but some of it was hard yakka.
One thing I am really happy about after yesterday is the fact I now have a tyre watch with all systems go 🙂
I got to St Augustine and pulled in to look for a camping shop that Jim had mentioned called Gander Mountain. There was a heap of speciality name brand stores here, this is where factory outlets sell returns and the like, names like Gucci, Nike, whatever, all here and this place is massive. It took me ages to find the damm camping shop, I went everywhere, eventually I found I was on the wrong side of the highway and had to find a way across.
I eventually found it and had a look in the tent section. Now, this store is massive, it covers a heap of outdoor activities, but they only had two styles of tent, none of them with a full rain fly, so that was a fizzer. Oh well, if I had not looked, I would never have known, so off I go to have some lunch at the Wendy’s and while there look at a map and see where I wanted to go. While there it started to bucket down, so I took the opportunity to don the wets.
I headed back to the slab and headed north towards the Georgia/South Carolina border, not caring where but out of the heat and rain, horrible to ride in when you sweat so much.
As I got to Jacksonville I needed to basically go right on through and the rain I had been through, although heavy, was nothing to what was ahead by the looks, but no hail that I could see. I thought I would miss it, but the road turned and went straight towards it
And this is what it looked like, the wipers could not handle the rain, a lot of cars slowed down and some pulled over, but the best thing was to ride on through because the storm cell was not moving fast at all. I also do not like being a stationary target for some dumb car driver on the side of the road, I have seen a lot of dumb drivers over here!
After a little while, maybe 5 minutes or so I was through it, but I could feel the water had seeped up over the liners and under, yucky. But, just north of Jacksonville was the reason I had come this way, to get a photo of the state border and of course I had taken a small off ramp to do so, not stay on the interstate. They have the same state logo as my state of Queensland back home 😉
The rain stopped the further I went north and of course now I was sweltering, so I found a suitable location to remove the extra layers, before continuing north, I did not know where I would stop for the day at this stage it would depend on the rain and when I got sick of adding/removing layers 🙂
Hmm, the clouds looked bad up ahead, this could get monotonous.
I ended up a bit later putting the gear back on as once again I got hit by the rain. As I continued some of the things I was passing looked familiar, I am sure I had been this way before and eventually I realised of course, this is the way I had entered Florida from the north. This eventually made me make the next decision about where to stay. I had enjoyed my time at Port Wentworth, so I figure, Saturday night why not, do a repeat 🙂
So, I stayed at the same motel and nearly got the same room as well 🙂 I know I needed to dry out, my boots were full of water as well, so I set the room heater going and settled in for a while before having some dinner in the room. This was also the time I had planned to phone my sister as it was her birthday. I did so as it was 9am the next day back home, but for some reason I had stuffed up my world clock settings and it was actually only 6am, oops. Never mind, we had a great chat for a short while, she was awake but dozing anyway. 🙂
As I wondered up to the pub, I saw these two old grannies roll in with a couple of trikes on a trailer, good on em if they were theirs 🙂
So, I had a few beers and a bit of a chat with a couple from Savannah, that is Melinda and James.
After a while my eyes started to go like the camera, so I headed back to bed, it was a good night, music tonight, but not live.
Day – 186 miles and 299 km
Trip – 16,369 miles and 26,343 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 