Day 7- 29th April

The plan today is to drive from St Augustine in Florida up I95 past Jacksonville and on to Savannah, Georgia for some tourist stuff. Then in the afternoon drive on to Summerton, South Carolina where we will spend the night. A 3 state day. We will be with Jim and Bette in their RV - should be an interesting experience. Will be a tad over 300 miles with a planned 7:30am departure. The RV will tow Jim's car and I do believe Buster the dog will be coming along for the ride.

More when I know what happens!!!

Day 7- 29th April - Part 2

Today we drove from St Augustine in Florida to Summerton in South Carolina with a stop at Savannah on the way.

This camper is pretty cool. Two sit in the front and two sit just behind, one in a nice comfortable chair and the other on a couch which can fold out to be a bed. For most of the day I sat on the couch and so slept for some of the drive.

As usual I got up at 3:30am which is a pain but gives me time to work on my web sites, lots of time to work on my web sites!

At 7:25, 12 minutes behind schedule, we headed off. This is a major event for Jim and Bette, they will be up north for 6 months (so Jim hopes) and I am sure you can imagine the work that goes in to getting ready for such an adventure. At the last minute we dragged our three bags out and away we went onto I95 and north towards Jacksonville.

Jim and Bette have a game they play to pass the time on the road. They look for license plates from all the states and provinces of the USA.
This from Jim's blog about today's efforts.

Pretty exciting day for plate watching. We ended up with a total of 32 plates, BUT: we saw an Alaska, also got Oregon, and a few Canadian plates as well, and to top off the day, we saw a Canadian NorthWest Territories plate! Haven't seen one of those for about 20 years!

After an hour and 22 minutes we crossed from Florida to Georgia and stopped at the Georgia Welcome Center for a rest break and to pick up some maps. Remember there are 5 of us in the camper, poor Buster the dog needs a rest break as well. Now here is a strange one...... Buster the dog is the perfect traveller but for some reason whenever the camper crosses a bridge or there is water on the side of the road he rushes to the window and wants to get out. Weird!. Buster was an interesting one in that he to watches TV like our dog Hunter does at home.

Anyway we travelled on to just near Brunswick where we stopped for fuel and breakfast, a buffet brekkie. After an hour we were on the road again and stopped just out of Savannah, Georgia. We parked in a Wal-Mart car park and the car was unhitched and whilst Bette stayed with the camper Jim, Rayls and I headed into Savannah.

Day 7- 29th April - Savannah

Savannah is a historic town, many old buildings which go right back to the begging of the USA.

Speaking of the beginning of the USA, Jim is a retired history teacher and much of the conversation is about the history of the USA. Interesting!

Sadly, given the great history this town has, the main reason we are here is to tick off another item off the bucket list (as Jim says). That item involves the movie Forrest Gump. The scenes on the park bench were filmed here in Savannah. So we went to the Savannah History Museum, watched an 18 minute video on Savannah's history, and then went into the main area where we found the park bench which was provided to the Museum by Paramount Pictures. There is even the suitcase Forrest uses as he sits on the bench. Ahhhh, life can now go on. People who know me know that I am big time into trivia so this was a deal for me.

There was also a quilt display which Rayls checked out whilst Jim and I stood there tapping our feet with our arms crossed!!!

After the museum we headed towards towards Chippewa Square which is where the park bench was actually located during the filming of Forrest Gump. This took some time because we had some bad directions

This again from Jim's Blog;

Turns out the location is not marked at all- it's in one of the many pretty city squares in town. Garry and Raylene finally decided amongst themselves where the site most probably was, and as I was about to take a picture, one of the tour trollys came by and said over the speaker "Right where those two tourists are standing is the spot where the bench scene was filmed for Forrest Gump. " So success. We then made a quick stop down town to River Street, got a Savannah pin, and then we headed back to Wal Mart to shop a little for foodstuffs and then hooked the car back up and off we headed 129 miles up the road to our stop for the night, Summerton SC.

I hope you don't mind me referring to your blog Jiim - I give you an extra i because you gave me an extra r!

So here we are in a Days Inn in Summerton, South Carolina. We had hoped to have dinner in this you beaut fantastic diner that Jim speaks very highly of but alas it is closed on Thursdays and so we ended up at a Cracker Barrel which was nice.

It was an early night and then at 3:40am I was up and here I am sitting in bed tyoing on this damn laptop.

Today we have breakfast at this you beaut fantastic diner and then it is on the road to Wilmington, North Carolina - one of son Scott's favourite places in the world. I believe dinner with friends of Jim is in order and even a cruise. Should be an interesting day.

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