Wolf and Jan Travels: December 2009

Short update to let you know we are safely in Mexico. We are at Pelanque, in the province of Tobasco and will be doing some Mayan ruins tomorrow. Great little camp ground in the jungle, listening to the Howler monkies and watching fireflies. This is our best spot yet. Glad to be out of the USA, got a little bored with strip malls after a while. We will be heading for the east coast again in a couple days and working our way up from Tulum towards Cancun and looking for some dry camping beaches away from the crowds. We are still in the company of our friends Dave and Donna and it is because of them that I can send this blog. They have satellite internet!!!!! Had to get a place that has internet down here.
All is well, cannot post any photos right now, but will when we get a chance
New Orleans was great, still alot of damage there from Katrina, many places not even fixed up again. The French Quarter did not get damaged much because it is on higher ground. As one man said, those Spaniards knew what they were doing when they built the place.
Merry Christmas to all.

We are still alive and well it is just difficult to get wifi so now I will update our travels since the beginning of November.
We survived Hurricane Ida while at Myrtle Beach with heavy rains for about a day. We left the beach on Nov 12th and headed south to S. Carolina and our first stop of Charleston S.C. Some very old and lovely buildings dated back to late 1700's, but unfortunately not alot of info posted on these buildings. The city market was there in the 1600's and was the hub of action, now it is full of artists and crafts and jewellery etc, no more farmers with their produce. We unfortunately went through Savannah Georgia at dark so just headed to Walmart for the night. White is definately the minority here, but we had a 24 hour security guard driving around the parking lot so felt very safe. One thing I forgot to mention, "BOILED PEANUTS", very popular but very BAD, how to wreck a peanut, boil it in salted water, just gets soggy.
Onward to Brunswick Georgia: started around 1771 and George Washington proclaimed it as one of the five original ports of entry to the Colonies in 1789. The Old City Hall was built in 1889 for a cost of $33,000.00 and restored in 2002 at a cost of $2.5 million!!!! There was a beautiful street with historic homes from 1895-1896, they have been restored.
From here we went to Jekyll Island, great history here. This island has a huge long causeway out to it, but prior to that being built access was by boat. In the early 1700's an English man named Horton got the island as a homestead. It changed hands over the years but the old Horton house has been saved (just a shell) but at least it is still there. In the late 1800's the wealthy from New York (Rockefellers, Goulds, J.P. Morgan, Pulitzer's, Goodyear's etc) developed the island into a private club. Huge houses were built as cottages, some have been restored to hotels, others are not being used.(photos are after this blog). The large Jekyll Island Hotel is where the rich men from New York, names mentioned above, came together in 1910 and proposed the Federal Reserve Bank-much against the wishes of the founding fathers of America, who had kept this at bay since the 1700's. But they did their dirty deed and in the end these few men got their bank which now lends to America!!!!!
The grounds are beautiful, large oak tress dripping with Spanish moss. It is now a state park, very fortunate, there are some private homes but no big condos and high rise hotels.
Got into Florida on Nov 14th and spent night at Anastasia Island State Park, just outside of St. Augustine, known as the oldest city in the nation. Spoke to a camper there as I was surprised at the number of people camped for the weekend, and, she said you can't camp in the summer as it is too hot and humid and the mosquitos are unbearable.
We were fortunate to discover that we were in the area at the time of the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch, could not pass this up. We headed to Titusville, Florida and found our way to the JFK Space Centre where we saw the huge building that the shuttle is assembled in, but we were advised that there was no viewing area to camp at. We went back to town and found a park directly across from the launch site and scoped it out for the following day. Went to Walmart and found this one did not allow overnight parking, only one we have found like this. So, we found our cheap hotel book and went to the Comfort Inn for the $45.95 special only to find that the price was now $165.00 p/night due to the launch. No way, so we drove south 20km to Cocoa and stayed at the Walmart there. Next morning we were up a dawn headed back to Titusville and found our spot at the shore side park. Within 2 hours the crowds started coming with their chairs and coolers to spend the day. We were there around 6:30 am and the shuttle launch was for 2:28pm, so it was a long wait, good thing we had our camper popped up so we were comfortable. The wait was worth it, what a spectacular display, what a once in a life time sight, absolutely amazing. The launch went at 2:28pm on schedule without a hitch.
From the coast we headed inland as we had the thought that we would spend a day at DisneyWorld since we were so close. Found a cheap hotel $37.00, and it was cheap. Started looking for tickets to Disney World only to find that it would cost $85.00 EACH for a day pass, sorry we are too cheap, not doing it. So after our night in the CHEAP hotel, we headed to the Gulf of Mexico and started our 2 week state park stays.
We found some lovely hard pack sand beaches that were a joy to walk on and the weather cooperated with us. St. George's park was our first stop, but got there after the gates were closed so waited for another camper to come along and open up for us. Found our friends Dave and Donna there so spent three days there enjoying the walking.Our next park, St. Joseph's, and this was our favorite spot. Camping was right close to the beach, the beach again lovely to walk on, and, we had our own pet squirrel. Lots of shells on this beach as well, campsites nicely treed and washrooms very clean
The next three state parks, St. Andrew's, Henderson Beach and Gulf State were disappointing as the camp sites were a long way from the beach, so we cut our stays there short.
The area around Panama City and Panama City Beach is just full of huge hotels/condo developments, not alot of action at them, and over the Thanksgiving weekend not that busy. The area around Pensacola has alot of closed down businesses so things are not that prosperous here. But, there is a huge church every 2km, and a dollar store, the two most popular things!!!!!!
Dec 1st we headed into Alabama, Mississippi and Louisianna, Alabama and Mississippi have very small coastal borders along the Gulf of Mexico but they are busy. We drove through Biloxi, Mississippi which was badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina and all along the coastal road there is evidence of large historic homes that were destroyed. All you see are huge foundations and stairs, there are blocks and blocks of empty lots for sale. There has been alot of rebuilding of businesses and some of the homes, but still alot of nothing. We drove on two different bridges that had been rebuilt as they were taken out by the waves and wind and surge. The large two bridges going across Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans were damaged and there are two new larger/higher bridges being built.
We are in New Orleans at present, had a great amount of rain yesterday on our trip here and during the night, but today, the sun is out at times but it is still cloudy. We will be doing our New Orleans touring in the next two days.
Photos follow.