Chapter 5: Adventures on our drive south

Leaving Maine early in the morning

It’s hard to believe that it has already been two weeks since we left Maine! We’ve been busy and have already covered over 1,500 miles! The girls have had no issues riding for long periods in their car seats and Kevin’s been doing all the driving like a champ.

From Augusta, Maine we headed to Southborough, Massachusetts to visit with some of Emma’s college friends and had a nice relaxing weekend reminiscing and playing with the kids enjoying the warm fall weather. (Insert a photo of my friend Katie however we were too busy chasing kids to take photos!) We left there and drove 430 miles west to have a few items fixed on the 5^th wheel at the Camping World in Buffalo, NY where we originally purchased it. While we were waiting in Buffalo Kevin heard that his good friend Brandon was going to be in Asheville, NC for the week and since we were headed south anyway we decided to head down to Asheville to see him. 

Thankfully Camping World was able to complete the warrantee work in one day and we were on our way again that evening and drove 260 miles and rested in West Virginia.  We stopped only to sleep and headed out again in the morning and drove the rest of the way to Asheville. It was a long, but beautiful drive and we were glad to take a long break enjoying Asheville. We visited the Botanical gardens, the Blue Ridge parkway, Chimney Rock state park, and met up with Brandon too.

Exclamation point at Chimney Rock State Park

Lego butterfly at the arboretum

Beautiful day at the arboretum

The campgrounds in Asheville were quite full and expensive (apparently its their busy season there) so we decided to move along to South Carolina for 4 days to explore that region. On our drive over we stopped to explore the Conagree National Park where we walked the board walk and saw some huge (!) spiders. Ew.

Can you see the big spider?

We had a great (but very hot) time visiting Charleston and the USS Yorktown. Eloise loved exploring all the different parts of the aircraft carrier.

USS Yorktown

Exploring the USS Yorktown

Unfortunately our visit was cut short by hurricane Matthew and we were evacuated from our campground in Yemasse, SC as it was within 100 miles of the coastline. We decided to head to Orlando (which was our ultimate destination before turning and heading west) a day earlier than planned.  We pulled into our campground in Clermont, FL and watched the local weather channels carefully for two days before deciding that the forecast was too unpredictable and it seemed hurricane Matthew was headed closer to Orlando than was originally thought. (What are the chances that the one time we are in Florida Disney World is closed, my grandmother is under mandatory evacuation from her home, and there is a major hurricane! Oye.)

We packed up and moved further west to Tampa to ride out the storm. We anticipate returning to our campground later this weekend and plan to head north out of Florida later this month.

Maybe we should have let hurricane Matthew wash the truck and 5th wheel!