Monthly Archives: April 2012

Roadtrip to Florida

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12 days, 2551miles, a few bottles of wine (and a few gallons of gas), lots of campfires and gourmet food, and very happy children…

Here’s the full trip map. Next time we’ll just continue to Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, and so on and so on :-)

Day 13 – Kiptopeke State Park, VA -> Brooklyn, NY

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Another lovely campsite, another nice meal, followed by red wine by the campfire. And then, sadly, our last day – off we go, driving home. But we have plenty of time, so we book a spot on the Lewis, DE to Cape May, NJ ferry, thinking the boys would love to take the car onto a big boat. And they did! The weather was great, although the boatride a bit more rocky than we would have thought. It took a good 2 hrs, but we settled in the bar for a Bloody Mary and Beer for us, while the boys were busy flirting with a little girl at a neighboring table.

And then smooth driving on wonderful Garden State Parkway back to Brooklyn. Home isn’t so bad either, but we could have done this for a few more weeks…

Day 12 – Wilson, NC -> Nags Head, NC -> Kiptopeke State Park, VA

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When I said it was last day of camping I guess I meant last in Georgia. Seven hours on 95 and a crappy hotel was too depressing, so since the weather was warm, we found a nice camping site in Kiptopeke State Park in Virginia. It was a bit crowded with prepubescent, boys but the noise was reasonable and not too late. In fact, we were the ones who stayed up the latest. Unfortunately, we arrived late and had to leave early so we could not enjoy everything that this park has to offer: beach, fishing and trails. This was a very nice spot – I hope to come back.

Yesterday we did not find anything but beautiful paved hiking trails in Alligator River NWR. It was time to have lunch for us, so we moved on to the beach town of Nags Head, NC. We picked a place with a Mexican name that promised tacos from Yelp. It was the most popular place around. It was an imposter though. It was a little spiced up American kitch bar with tacos on the menu. We had a beer and our food was not as greasy as it could have been on 95. Then we went to the beach and the boys must have run two miles in circles. To the water and back to the dry sand. There were little birds that were doing the same thing right behind them. When the waves go back, the birds run forward and poke in to the wet sand as fast as they can until the next wave comes and they run away from water really fast.

After that we decided to camp, so we needed to get some supplies from supermarket. I made rice with fish and asparagus. Yelisei ate all the tops of my asparagus. I think we’ve never had so many meals together with the children at the same time. This morning Yelisei was even waiting for oatmeal without screaming. Before I had to give him cheerios just to put something in his mouth to prevent him from screaming. I am not sure this trend will continue at home though.

Day 11 – Okefenokee Swamp, GA -> Wilson, NC

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We just watched something fly out of our roof box. Renzo went back to pick it up. Luckily, it was not on 95 with heavy traffic. Thank god! We did drive all day with the box not locked yesterday.

Because we did so well on the drive yesterday (7 hrs), we decided to take a detour and possibly camp in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.

We had our BBQ finally yesterday in GA. It was a very small fish market with a separate outside shack for meat barbecuing – we had the best shrimp I ever had, best ribs, and not so good pulled pork. The Jamaican man from the Bronx who made it was not very happy about his job here, nor was the toothless woman who made the shrimp. She asked me if I could make her robes for her church after I had mentioned that I used to make costumes for Broadway. I struggled to find excuses why I can not do it, but she was hard to shake off. She finally grabbed Timofei, because he was trying to kill himself by running under a UPS truck. Timofei got scared of her grabbing him and started wailing. That finally got this woman off my back with the robes. She did make the very best shrimp though.

Last night we discovered that by 11 pm on 95 all the hotels are booked. So we went a little off the main drag and found plenty of room in a borderline gross Super 8 motel in Wilson, NC. Every one who worked there was a shining example of what happens to people if they drink and smoke too much. It was bad. The beds were clean, but the towels had stains and the plastic bathtub had cigarette burns in our non smoking room. The boys were still having fun jumping on the bed and playing in the warm bath though. It is always amazing to me how little kids need.

We briefly considered going to Norfolk NC but chose more nature, so now we are on our way to the coast.

Day 9 and 10 – Okefenokee Swamp, GA

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Sadly, it was our last night camping. We are heading back home, from Georgia to New York. We will stay in hotels on the way. Our last stop was Okefenokee National Park. Another paradise, but with mosquitos. Otherwise, the temperature for camping was perfect. Not too cold at night and not too hot at noon.

We arrived on Wednesday night, set up camp and met a three year old boy with his Air Force father, eight month old brother and his grandma. Timofei and Yelisei had a blast. They have not seen any other children for a while. So they ran around in circles like mad people. Then they invited us to have our first smorphs (marshmallow chocolate sandwiches). I have to say I was prejudiced at first, but I do agree it was not bad at all. Timofei and Yelisei enjoyed it as well.

After a nice sleep we had a boat ride on the swamp. This park and shark valley in Florida are the best places to see the wildlife. On our one and a half hour trip, we saw countless alligators, beautiful big birds like ibis and cranes, and small birds like swamp canary. Also turtles and deer. After that majestic trip on the swamp, we had lunch of rice and canned organic chicken. I was hoping that both boys will collapse for a nap but they thought differently.

We took a stroll on a boardwalk in the swamp. There was a fire in that forest that was caused by lightning and was burning for a year. It finished burning couple of months ago. So our board walk was not as long as it needed to be for those boys to fall a sleep. Tired of walking in circles we lay down on the floor and Renzo had a nap. Strangely no one else did.

In the evening we were going to do some star watching. They were going to put out 3 telescopes. Since this camp is at the end of a 17 mile dead end road with no light pollution, the sky is pretty incredible even without a telescope. But stupidly we did not register and when we showed up at 9 pm with children in stroller we found nobody with no telescope!! I was so mad at our stupidity! Lesson learned I hope.

I wanted to share a list of equipment that we found useful in our camping trip. It is not complete. I just wanted to mention things I liked.

Our MSR Spider stove. It is small and packable and takes any fuel. We use kerosine, which is a popular item on the countryside. We are thinking of getting one with 2 burners (and a bigger car).

Sleeping bags that can zip together. You never know when the mood strikes you and when the nights are freezing.

REI Basecamp 4 tent. Best compromise between size an comfort. You can stand up to put on your pants but it is small enough not to take over your trunk. It is also very waterproof. We were lucky not to have rain this time but we have slept in it through over night storms. It also was good in windy conditions.

Two large plastic boxes with lids attached. You can find those at McMaster Carr in the shipping box category. One has all the food and the other all the dishes and stove and everything else. If you put the stove on the picnic table and boxes on either side, it works like a relatively comfortable kitchen.

Kitchen sink. Normal people would probably use tubs but we have a rather small car and we stupidly brought our huge stroller. Luckily there is a ‘Sea to Summit’ packable kitchen sink. Worked very nicely.

Do not leave your house without charcoal! Often camp fires are prohibited but charcoal is not. I have cooked entire meals on it.

Swiss army knife.

Wine. It is cold at night and when you wake up with full bladder in the middle of the night it is such a pain to get out of the tent. Stick to wine, not beer.

Find a herbal concoction that you and your children can drink besides water. I made orange hibiscus honey tea or camomile honey. Put it in thermos cups and drink all day.

iPhone. I can not imagine how people travelled without it. GPS is also important. Use them in combination and you can find and make reservations in coming up town or campground. Find out that all the BBQ places are closed without driving to each one.