Raleigh is the state capital of North Carolina and is also known as the “City of Oaks” for its many oak trees that line its streets.

Today, Raleigh is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. According to a September 2016 Forbes article, Raleigh is the second best urban-living city at a price people can afford; it is the second easiest city in which to find a job; it is number two in America’s hottest spots for Tech jobs with plenty of opportunities for programmers and engineers away from Silicon Valley, California; it is number three in America’s 20 best cities for young professionals; last year U-Haul reported that North Carolina is the number one state for growth; Raleigh is one of the seventh hottest start-up regions; it is number five on the list of America’s next boom towns; and, North Carolina is number five among the top US moving destinations.

And, fortunately for Mike and Miss Poppy, Raleigh is one of the top 10 cities for beer lovers with some 21 craft breweries. Here they are trying a couple of them today!

Mike and Miss Poppy at Clouds Brewing, Raleigh, NC. The staff were so sweet to Miss P. bringing her a bowl of water and offering her treats.

 

Mike and Miss Poppy at the Big Boss Brewing Company, Raleigh, NC. No problem with Miss Poppy coming inside on a hot afternoon! She made lots of new friends and thinks she would like to work as a greeter!

We are now at the Raleigh Oaks RV and Cottages Park in North Carolina where we plan on staying three nights – a drive of some 160 miles from our last RV park.

We are keen on exploring “the Research Triangle” which takes in the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. It is one of the most prominent research and development centres in the US with a mix of high-tech start-ups, global Fortune 100 companies such as IBM, Cisco and Sony Ericsson and cutting-edge research institutions including Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University. This thriving hub of innovation is home to more than a dozen pioneering industries including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, clean technology, and information technology.

Our interest is from the perspective of a potential future retirement area as North Carolina has a good climate with winters that are totally manageable, an OK tax regime, it has good medical facilities and more importantly for Poppy, it has beautiful trees and lots of them!

Since arriving in North Carolina I have never seen so many trees as there are here. Everywhere you drive, as far as the eye can see, it is just green.

Yesterday, we drive out to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The university is very impressive with attractive departments and halls of residence spread over miles and miles and each of them with well-manicured grounds. With all these high-tech companies in the area, the universities are very well supported and it shows.

We also take a walk along Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill which is a student night-life hub as it is lined with trendy bars, restaurants and of course, craft breweries.

Poppy’s paradise!

While staying at the Briarcliffe RV Resort in South Carolina, we take a drive out to the U.S.S. North Carolina, which is permanently moored in Wilmington, North Carolina.

The battleship, commissioned in 1941, at a build cost of $70,000,000, participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific during World War II.

With a compliment of some 2,300 men: 141 officers, 2,115 enlisted men and 85 marines, and nine 16-inch bad-boy guns, the battleship is equipped for just about every eventuality. It even had a soda bar dispensing sodas, ice-creams and sundaes!

The self-guided tour is excellent but what really made a difference on this battleship is a “Crew’s Memories” section on every information board. The memories are from original members of the crew and really bring alive what life was like serving on the battleship.

After touring the battleship, we head into downtown Wilmington for lunch and a walk around. It is a very trendy, happening area with lots of great restaurants and craft breweries, Mike’s favourite!

In 1961 the people of North Carolina raised sufficient funds to buy and restore the U.S.S. North Carolina which was moved to Wilmington as a tourist destination.

The battleship also carried two Kingfisher scout planes.

The city of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina is found on a man-made island, separated from the continental United States since 1963, by the Intracoastal Waterway.

It is a mecca for golfers boasting approximately 100 courses of varying levels of difficulty and price-range, and almost just as many companies vying to find the right golf package for whatever your heart desires.

Other than golf, Myrtle Beach is a major tourist destination attracting some 14 million visitors each year. The area has miles and miles of pristine beaches, water sports and parks, fishing, amusements, theatre, hundreds of restaurants and hotel resorts galore.

We are staying at the Briarcliffe RV Resort, a 300-site park, with a clubhouse and pool, a store, basketball court, mini golf in addition to all the regular stuff such as laundry facilities, showers and restrooms.

The park also backs up to the Intracoastal Waterway.

A sailing boat on the Intracoastal Waterway this morning.

A marina located at the back of the RV park.

But, it could have been so much worse! And, as ever, bad things happen in threes!

A catalogue of mishaps has shaped our day. Miss Poppy thinks that we should have called-in a “duvet day” and stayed in bed and I tend to agree with her!

Today is a travel day as we head from Hilton Head Island to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, some 160 miles away. We plan on staying there two days checking out the area.

We are traveling along the I-95 and decide to exit for fuel. As we pull into the gas station, we realize that; a) the gas station does not sell diesel (which we need); and, b) there is absolutely nowhere for us to turn around! The only option we have it to disconnect the Jeep, reverse the motor home independently, and try across the street at a BP station which is advertising that is has diesel. No problem, but, and of course, it’s raining and storming……………….what else would it do when you have to be outside!

In the US, diesel fuel is marked by a pump a with green nozzle, regular fuel has a black nozzle. In Europe, it is the other way around. I know this well as I always have to really engage my brain the first time I fill up with petrol in London and again, when I return to the US.

Mike inserts his credit card, hits the diesel button, picks up the green pump and nothing. He repeats his actions and nothing. After several minutes the transaction is null and void! He contemplates the situation and realizes that he’s in a European-owned gas station and that he needs the black pump for diesel …………………can you imagine filling a 125-gallon tank with the wrong fuel………. oh my!

After traveling through terrible weather for most of our day, we call ahead to the RV park as we will arrive after the office closes. No problem, they will leave a gate key and instructions on where to park pinned to the notice board.

We arrive, pick-up our instructions and head to our site only to find that there is someone already parked there. Needless to say, it is just pouring with rain. I get out and trawl the immediate area and find a lot that is unoccupied.

For the second time in a day, we disconnect the Jeep, and Mike does his magical reversing act and swings the motor home on a pin-head to get it to fit on the site. The back of the motor home is hanging some three feet over the back of the pad and we are very, very close to our neighbours!

We will learn from all this!

From left: Artie and Miss Holly don’t care about our mishaps as long as they can look out of the window from their vantage point of the dash-board!

Interestingly enough, we are staying at the Hilton Head Harbor RV Resort & Marine in South Carolina, a park that has 200 RV sites and 16 of them are for sale! This is the first time we have seen this and it aroused our curiosity as to why you would buy a lot in an RV park and how much you would pay for it.

Walking around today, we looked at a good number of the sites for sale, what they offer and why the prices are so dramatically different. For example, the park has a number of sites that directly overlook the marina and several them are up for sale at a cost of $250,000. Sites in the centre of the park, without a view, and varying in size, privacy and accessibility, range from $52,000 to $85,000.

As to the question of why you would buy one, I don’t think that we are yet qualified to answer that one. But, we have some ideas! If you really like an area or are from there and will visit each year or want to have an extended stay, then I guess you buy a site, use it when you need to and with 2.5 million visitors to Hilton Head Island each year, you rent it out when not using it. Likely in summer months, in a place like this, that’s an easy task and in winter, which are usually pretty mild, you might get some takers. Otherwise the lot sits empty! As we travel more, I am sure that this answer will get refined!

An iconic Airstream in the RV park. This kind of lot goes for around $65,000 – it has space for your tow-vehicle, a picnic table and a fire pit.

 

This lot overlooks the marina and has a price tag of $250,000. The RV is what’s known as a fifth wheel and needs to towed by a heavy-duty truck (non commercial). The inside of this RV is much larger than our motor home.

Hilton Head Island is a foot-shaped barrier island located off the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina. The island is some 12 miles long and 5 miles wide and is commonly known as part of the Lowcountry, a geographic area stretching along coastal South Carolina and Georgia and including Savannah, Bluffton and Beaufort.

Approximately 40,000 people live on the island permanently with numbers soaring to over 2.5 million visitors a year enjoying the 23 golf courses, six marinas, 300 tennis courts, 13 miles of public beaches, boutique shopping, art galleries and hundreds of restaurants to name a few things of interest.

The Lowcountry also encompasses salt marches, cotton and rice plantations canopied by beautiful oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, an amazing range of wildlife including Alligators, Blue Herons, White Egrets, Dolphins and much more. Needless to say, none of these critters are leaping out in front of me to pose for the blog!

All that is super fun, but the reason for us being here is to re-connect with my brother –and-sister-in-law, Ron & Shari, and Mike’s cousin and her husband – the gorgeous George and Lorraine!

They all came over last night for a Barbie – our first official motor home party – and it was especially nice for Ron & Shari as they joined us in Alabama back in February to see the initial construction of Roxanne. For them to see it all finished and decked-out was super.

 

Ron & Shari Krywanio at the Tiffin plant in Red Bay, Alabama. 

 

From Left: Lorraine, Shari, Ron, Mike, me and gorgeous George at Head Island Harbor last year.

Tuesday, May 9.

We travel across Florida from Pensacola to Jacksonville, some 335 miles along Interstate Highway I-10.

It is a wonderful route as the I-10 is a well-maintained freeway with immaculately kept rest areas about every 40 miles. In each rest area there are two sections, one for cars and one for trucks with a “pull-through” bay for each truck.

With a motor home, as with a commercial truck, the last thing on earth you want to be doing is reversing especially when you have a car attached to the RV. In fact, you physically can’t do it, so maintaining a forward direction is essential. In these rest areas, you can pull into a bay, attend to your business, and then drive forward and re-join the freeway. In Florida, it would seem, most of the rest areas have night-time security enabling drivers to sleep at ease.

We overnight at the Flamingo Lake RV Resort which is a park with some 300 sites located on a lake. It would seem to “Mrs. Inexperienced-RV’er” that they are marketing to a range of different clients: 1) those stopping for a night or two; 2) RV owners who have kids and want to go somewhere for the weekend where there are activities; and, 3) folks who are full-timers and want the camaraderie of neighbours, the freedom to up-stick and move-on when they want, and the ability to access activities if they want.

Wednesday morning, we head from Jacksonville, Florida to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina via the I-95 – some 170 miles.

Oh my, what a difference. There was only one rest stop in the 150 miles we travelled!

We are now on Hilton Head Island at the Hilton Head RV Resort & Marina where we plan on staying three days.

Harbor Town Lighthouse, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

 

If you are ever passing through Pensacola, Florida then a visit to the National Naval Aviation Museum is an absolute must.

We spent an afternoon there yesterday, having visited for the first-time last year and our experience this time was even better, if that’s possible!

Museum visitors can join guided tours hosted by pilots, many of whom served in World War II. They are willing volunteers and talk with incredible knowledge about the planes, the roles these planes played in aviation history and wars, their technical capabilities and how they became to be displayed at the museum.

As part of the museum’s displays, we took part in an “on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier” experience which was simply fantastic. Over a period of 15 minutes you feel what it’s like to be on the deck of an aircraft carrier while planes take off and land. Wow, it was fantastic and our host, a former aircraft carrier pilot, was simply amazing.

Painted with the number 41, George H.W. Bush (41st President) flew this plane. Bush enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday as a Seaman 2nd Class. He was commissioned an ensign and pilot and served aboard the USS San Jacinto.

 

Soon after the end of World War II, the Chief of Naval Operations created a flight exhibition team to raise the public’s interest in naval aviation and boost Navy morale. Known as the Blue Angels, the display team have been demonstrating their outstanding flying capabilities ever since. We saw the display team practicing on Sunday night as we were touring around the area – fantastic!

One of the joys of traveling in a motor home is that you are able to take with you some of the furry ones who make each day so special.

Traveling with us on our maiden voyage are:

Miss Poppy-dog. She also answers to other endearments such as Poppylicious and Popsicle!

Poppy is a Jack-a-Bee which is a cross between a Jack Russell and a Beagle.  The Beagle element in her means that she needs to sniff every blade of grass every time she sees a blade of grass!

She is adorable and her favourite things in life are to cuddle with her Daddy, chase Squirrels and sleep. She is also a wonderful guard dog – just as long as she is awake!

Miss Poppy in the gardens of the Biltmore Estate, North Carolina.

Mr. Artie, kitty. Artie is usually called Artie-pants!

Artie became part of our family when Mike was working in Papua New Guinea and, bored one night, trawled the Houston Society for the Prevention of Animals site and found him needing a home. We adopted him just after he underwent surgery to amputate one of his back legs after a car hit him.

He now runs as fast as a race horse, is as strong as an Ox and has developed incredibly powerful front shoulders which is how he lifts himself up onto the furniture. He has the softest, thickest fur going and is the cutest little guy imaginable.

Mr. Artie at home.

Miss Holly, kitty. Holly also answers to the names of Hollylicious, Miss Scissor-hands and The New Sheriff in Town.

Holly became part of our family in August 2016 after Mike cat-napped her from outside his hotel in Lubbock, Texas while he was helping my stepson move apartments! Mike checked with the hotel reception and she was a stray that they were feeding from the breakfast buffet…………not any longer!

Holly is just the sweetest kitty going. She loves to chat and to play hide and seek, but her favourite thing in the whole wide world is to chase Poppy-dog! Actually, the two of them are very sweet to watch playing. One chases the other, they stop, and reverse the process. She also loves playing with Mike’s shoes and generally chasing all the other fur babies in the house to encourage them to get more exercise, something which is not really appreciated and only just tolerated!

Miss Holly taking a cat-nap after a busy afternoon chasing Poppy-dog!