Headed to Seymour Johnson AFB then Camp Lejeune Marine Base

  We were on the road by 8:00 today for the 45 minute drive to Seymour Johnson AFB in Goldsboro, NC to check out the RV storage area.  We plan to leave Harvey there at the beginning of Nov on our way home from Jekyll Island, GA, so we don't have to bring him home and "winterize" him.  Then we will pick him up on our way to Florida in January.  All was well there, so we got back on the road for our 2 and 1/2 hr drive to Camp Lejeune Marine Base in New River, NC.  We arrived at about 11:30 and checked in without any problem.  We will be staying 3 nights.  The base is huge!!  We had to drive another 8 miles to get to the CG after entering the base!  It is located right next to the Intercoastal Waterway.

 

The entrance side on the right...

 

...the drawbridge in between...

 

...the exit side on the right

  The CG has 36 sites with full hook UPS.  The ocean is across the street just over the dunes.  There are a couple dozen cottages and bungalows all along the street and ocean that can be rented.  The beach is known for fossilized teeth and bones of sharks, dolphins, whales, and believe it or not... wholly mammoths!  John set up outside Harvey while I organized inside.  Then we went back to the office to check out their fossil collection.  It was incredible!  I never saw so many huge shark teeth, coral, and bone pieces.  I was so excited John thought I was going to wet myself.  I could hardly wait to get out there and hunt for them!! 

These are all from Great White sharks.  I think
you would hear me scream all the way in PA if I found one of them!!

He gave us this postcard to help identify the various kinds of teeth.

So we went back to Harvey, had some lunch, changed into our bathing suits and out we went.  It was near 90 degrees and very humid but the water was gorgeous... like bath water.  We were out until about 6:00 when the tide started coming back in.  I even swam in the ocean a bit.  We were pretty successful with shark teeth although none of them were very big.  John did find a rib bone from a wholly mammoth! 

I could do this all day long!!

You can see all the shells laying all over
the beach at low tide.  It was actually pretty
easy to spot sharks teeth.

The sun is starting to set.

John took this with a "fish eye" setting.  Pretty neat, huh!

Here's our "catch" for the day.  The wholly mammoth
bone is top right, sea glass on bottom left.  The upper left
is just a stone shaped like a chicken head...I liked it.

Hey, Sis, picked up a few for you to use for your jewelry.
The beach is a treasure trove for you!!

We came in, got showers and headed off base to Food Lion to get a few things.  Then we went to Texas Roadhouse for a steak supper.  It was yummy!

The moon was so pretty shining over the ocean!

  When we got back to Harvey we watched some TV then turned in about 10:30.  I joked with John that we should get up in time for low tide at 4:30 so we would have the jump on shark tooth hunting.  For some reason he wasn't interested! 

We're Back on the Road to NC!

  OK, OK, I know I'm way behind with my blogging.  Give me a break... I'm out of practice!!
  Since our trip to Cape Cod we've been pretty busy!   We went to a Labor Day picnic up near Catawissa, moved Heather to York the same weekend, went to Knoebels Grove Amusement Park with the kids and grandkids, went to the Hershey RV show, and celebrated Bennett's 4th birthday.

Grandpa needed to fool around with the boys a bit
before riding the rides at Knoebels.

 

Cooper looks a little less comfortable
than Bennett, doesn't he?!?

 

We were all encouraging the boys to let go of the safety bar.

 

Bennett and Cooper loved driving the car!

 

Cooper in "the Red Baron" at Knoebels

 


Grandpa and Cooper playing in the playground
at Bennett's 4th birthday party in York.

 

The birthday boy sure liked Uncle Dustin's gift!

 

Bennett holding "the Incredible Hulk"...

 

...Bennett as "the Incredible Hulk"

 

He's getting ready to blow out the candles on his cake.

 

The "Bounce House" was a big hit!!

 

 
I went to OCMD with my Frogette friends for 8 days while John kept Kylie company at home.  While I was away he and Dustin's family visited with his Mom up in Mt Carmel, he visited his old work buddies twice in Mechanicsburg, and helped to build the new playground in Mt Joy 2 days.

The playground was destroyed by arson a few yrs ago.
The community got together to rebuild "Joyland" last week.

 

  

Here's proof he was really working!

Then it was time to pick up and pack up Harvey.  We had to keep in mind what we need not only for this trip to NC and GA, but also what we'll need for Florida in January, because we will be leaving Harvey in NC at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base at the end of October.  So it made packing just a bit more stressful.  We were on the road by 7:30 am and stopped for gas at Giant (we had $1.10 off per gallon).  We didn't hitch up the Jeep because Harvey's tires needed some air and it would just be a lot easier to pull into an air station without having the Jeep attached.  We stopped at Love's Truck Stop off of 283, got the air, and hitched up the Jeep.  Next stop...Virginia.  It was a nice day to travel because it was cloudy.  Too much sun coming thru the front window makes the dog hot.  We made our first stop about 2:30 off I-81 at exit 205 in Raphine, VA at a Wilco/Hess.  Harvey was thirsty and we were hungry!  There was a Wendy's there, so we grabbed burgers for us and the dog and then got back on the road.  When we got into NC it started to rain.  The farther we went, the harder it rained.  It was pretty nasty, but John did a great job, as usual!  We drove another 3 hours and stopped at a Home Depot off I-40 at exit 221 in Sanford, NC just to stretch our legs and let Kylie go potty.  Back on the road for the home stretch to the Cracker Barrel off Rte 70 near Raleigh where we will have dinner and spend the night in the parking lot.  We got there about 7:30, had dinner and then just relaxed for the rest of the evening.  I watched The Voice while John watched TV in the bedroom.  We were in bed by 10:30...we were both exhausted and so was Kylie.  She spent most of the trip on my lap, so neither one of us got to take a nap!

Last Full Day in Connecticut


   We got up about 7:30.  John seems to be feeling better, but the persistent cough still wakes him up several times a night.  We had breakfast and got ready to head into Mystic Seaport to spend the day.  We made the short 15 minute drive, parked, got our wrist bands, and off we went to explore.  It was so neat!  Everything from ship building to period houses, druggists, barrel makers, printers, and wood carvers.

 

These are flowers right inside the entrance.
I forgot to ask what they are, but they sure are beautiful!

 

 

This is the seed pod on the plant,

 

First stop... the ship yard.  They actively work on
 Anything from large sailboats...

 


...to medium sized motorboats.

This is called a "mishoon" canoe.  Enlarge the
picture below to see how it's made... very interesting! 

This is the saw used to "slice" pieces of wood to use
various places in the ships.

These slices are called "knee" pieces used in the front
of the ship to form the point.  All the side pieces are
run off of it.

  Two of my favorite places were the whaling museum and the carved masthead museum. The variety store was pretty neat, too.  I got my prize souvenir there...a prism that they put into the deck floor and hung down into the lower part of the ship.  The sun would shine through it and provide light.  One of the biggest attractions at the seaport is the Whaling Museum... it was phenomenal!!  We spent at least an hour in there.

This is a hairbrush made from the "baleen" out of the
mouth of the whale.  It is rigid but flexible.  They also
used it for "stays" in corsettes.

This is a scale model of Capt. Morgan's Whaling Ship.
I'll talk about it later.

I had to romp with the whale a bit.  In New England
they paint these instead of cows like in Lanc Co :)

  Then there's the Capt. Morgan Whaling ship. It is the only surviving original whaling ship in the world.  It was built in the 1800's and survived a hurricane and a fire.  It was completely refurbished and actually launched again last year...quite the labor of love for a lot of dedicated people!  

This is the 200+ year old Capt. Morgan

Imagine having to figure out which rope
to pull to raise and lower the sails!

This is the center and tallest mast.  It's quite
a ways up there!!!

Thought this was pretty neat.  The cabin is below.

This is a whaling boat that would have hung on the side
of the whaling ship.  The sailors would hop into
them armed with harpoons after spotting a whale.
They would hopefully kill the whale before the whale
Destroyed their boat and then pull the dead whale
Back to the ship to be skinned and cut up in pieces.
Blubber, baleen, jawbone and teeth were removed.
  Very little else was kept and the rest was thrown back into the ocean.
 

At about 2:00 John was pretty wiped out from the heat, so we went back to the little café we had stopped at right after entering the seaport to take a potty break, refill my soda and John's coffee (refills were free ALL day) and relax a bit in the AC.  John continued to rest there and I went to see the masthead museum.  

These Masthead replicas were very impressive!
  The smallest one was at least 5 feet tall!!
( the bird was about 3 ft tall but almost 5 ft long








With me being a music lover I found this pretty neat.
You'll have to enlarge it, of course, to read it!
These 2 pictures were from the Sailing Gallery
Right next to the Masthead Museum.




This is a scale model of a whaling ship, completely
made of metal and a MUSIC BOX!

 

 

We left about 2:30 and drove about 5 minutes over to Mystic to S and P Oyster Co., another recommendation from our friends, Chuck and Melissa.

  It was incredible!  John had clam chowder and I had lobster bisque.  John's clam chowder wasn't quite as goose as the one he had in Newport at "The Landing", but joy came close.  My lobster bisque was probably the best I've ever had although "The Cottage Café" in OC Maryland comes mighty close!  Then we shared seafood stuffed potato skins and they were probably the best thing I've EVER eaten... 5 of them, nice and crispy but not burnt and each one topped with a whole shrimp and small lobster claw, cheese and rémoulade sauce.  Oh Yum!!  Should have taken a picture!!  When we hot back to Harvey John took a nap and walked around the CG to take some pictures.

This is our site.

The laundry and bathhouse.

A pavilion with roll down sides!

Lots of room and mostly pull thru sites!

A laser tag area

9 hole mini golf

A fire pit with a bocce ball court in the background.

The pool

 

  I stopped at one of the coaches that was checking in yesterday when we were, because they had told us that they were headed to Lanc Co next.  We chatted for a while, until they were ready to eat supper.  Nice couple our age from Nashville, Tennessee!  On my way back to Harvey there was a coach that had just pulled in since we had gotten back from Mystic Seaport.  They were sitting outside with 2 dogs in a fenced in area.  One of them looked just like our dear departed Rat Terrier, Rossi, so, of course, I had to stop.  We chatted for a while and then John joined us.  Another nice couple our age from North Carolina.  We gave them one of our new "business cards".  Hopefully, they will contact us with their info also, like they said.  We went back to Harvey when the bugs started biting, took showers, and did some "cleaning up" to get ready for our trip home tomorrow.  It was truly a wonderful day!