Oh boy, do I have some travelogue catching up to do! We’re already up in New Jersey, and I’m several stops behind. But, such is life on the road sometimes, there’s just not always time to enjoy it and stop to share it.
So, last I left you we had just barely escaped a tropical storm and were nestled in at Santee State Park in South Carolina.
In our continuing quest for cooler climates, we didn’t stick around long and continued making miles north – but at a leisurely pace. We’re finding that regularly stopping for 4-5 days has become a necessity for us to balance work, travel and life.
Little Pee Dee State Park
We generally only roughly plan ahead a week or so out at a time. Chris likes to wing it, and I like to know we’ll have a beautiful place to stay. Especially over peak season weekends, where campgrounds tend to get filled up.
It works for us pretty well. He indulges me scouting out ahead for spots and I resist the urge to make too many reservations.
Before we left Florida, we were not sure if we would follow a more coastal route and finally explore parks like Huntington Island and Myrtle Beach.
Or if we would stick to a more direct path via I-95 to get the miles in. We ultimately decided the heat was wearing on us and to minimize lingering where we could.
Before the tropical storm path pushed us ahead, I had a couple of next stops on the radar – Santee State Park being one of them. But we decided to aim for more miles and already booked a spot further up at Little Pee Dee State Park (our review).
Of course, the name just grabs your attention, and might even make you blush a bit to say out loud.
I could find very few reviews of the park online. Words like peaceful, rustic and quiet however were frequently used words – which got our attention.
When I looked on Reserve America there was an outside circle pull through available over a weekend, so it didn’t take me long to book it.
At the low price of just $20/night (after taxes and fees) for an electric/water site, we figured if we didn’t like the park we were ok moving on early. But we at least had a spot for the weekend if we wanted it.
Meandering back to our reserved spot was an adventure – as the roads within the park are not overly well maintained. They’re all hard packed sandy dirt, with several pot holes. And lots of twisty turns through trees.
But with a little patience, it wasn’t a problem for our relatively little nibble sport bus.
When we arrived to our booked site, we were overjoyed.
You just never quite know booking online what you’ll find when you get there – particularly states that haven’t gone to the effort to include photos in their listings.
Our site was spacious, and once pulled in, created a lovely private yard. Just what we love.
After our first evening, we were enchanted. The chorus of frogs and other night critters along the lake was mesmerizing.
We loved our stay here. The Verizon signal just enough for us to get work done, as we had a full day of mobile internet advising sessions scheduled, along with content creation.
Aside from venturing into nearby Dillon for a shopping stock-up run and laundry, we stayed at the park.
There are just enough trails to keep us occupied for work breaks. And we got the grill out to enjoy some outdoor cooking.
However the temperatures were rising and the need to run the AC consistent – even in our shady spot. So despite the temptation to stick around even longer, we pulled out on Sunday morning to continue north.
What’s Up Next:
We’re currently in New Jersey having our bus maintenance done (I’m typing this sitting over the pit). Later this week we’ll move on to the Philadelphia area for a visit with friends.
We have plans coming together to be in upper state New York over 4th of July weekend. And after that.. the horizon is fuzzy on where we’ll go next.
Later this week, we’ll celebrate Zephyr’s fifth birthday with us. Wow the time flies by!
We’re planing a little wrap up post of owning & living in a vintage bus (including maintenance costs over the years). If there are any particular questions you have that you’d like us to address, please leave them in the comments and we’ll try to incorporate them in.
Love the sound of your chorus of frogs and night critters. Something to look forward to if I pursue the road life. The meal sounds awesome. My kind of eats. Have to try to duplicate that great sounding salad and burger. Any more detailed recipes would be cool too. Thanks for sharing your travels with us.
The ‘recipes’ are really simple, and pretty much described in the caption. Really no further details to share.
Very inspiring. Love what you’re doing. Been following loosely for a few years and dreaming of doing the same, but we’re having to be patient for the time being.
As a former New Yorker, ” upper state New York” didn’t tell me much. For City folk, anything north of the City is Up State We are from Rochester which is Fingerlakes Region, further west is Western NY and that includes Buffalo. Northern NY is the Adirondacks starting north of The Capital District which is north of the Catskills. So where are you headed in ” upper state New York” 🙂
That’s as narrowed in as we feel comfortable sharing at this point. 🙂
wonderful post…I love that you seem to find these great places to stay without a lot of planning….
Such a pretty spot in the trees! It seems every time I’m ready to take our chances with where we’ll stop for a few days there’s another holiday weekend looming ahead that I need to make reservations for. Funny how our perspective on holidays changes in this life 🙂 Enjoy New Jersey and safe travels.
I enjoy following you along on your journeys. I would like to go half-time RVing but health issues are slowing us down. We are hesitant to go out without reservations but it sure would be nice to have the freedom to not have to follow a particular schedule. Do you normally have any problems with your one week window? Also I am waiting to hear how you like the new purple mattress.
We’ve never really booked too far out in advance, unless there is an event or reason we need to be in a particular area. Otherwise, we keep ourselves flexible and have not had a problem in our many years on the road doing things rather last minute.
As far as the mattress… we’ll likely be having them pick it up as soon as we can coordinate delivery of a new one. As best as I can describe it, it’s just weird.
When you do the 5-years in a vintage bus post, since you asked, I would be interested in what you would recommend for a repair fund at an initial purchase of an older bus/coach and then what you would recommend as a set-aside per year for maintenance and repairs.
Thanks, we’ll be sure to include that.
I am interested in the maintenance cost update for the last year so see how things go long term.
What is the yearly mileage over the last couple of years.
Paul
Thanks, I’ll be sure to pull the mileage numbers from our past year in wrap-ups. And the maintenance & costs is already planned (we’ll hold the post until after our current maintenance is done).
I had a similar experience last July at little Pee Dee. I often had ducks visit my campsite. Great place to relax and enjoy nature.
It is just a relaxing little park, glad you enjoyed it as well.
Cherie,
Thank you for blogging about your travels and especially the camp ground reviews.
Thank you.. I’m so happy to hear the effort to share is appreciated. 🙂
I love this, and all your travel blogs; I am one of your non-RV-ing followers. I do rideshare driving where I live, and love the Sherpashare app to keep track of expenses for tax time. It just occurred to me that you guys get to use mileage deduction too, right? What “app for that” do you use/recommend?
Actually.. as full timers, our RV and current location is considered our tax home base. And you can only write off mileage to/from a home base. So it’s very difficult to write off mileage on the RV. Occasionally, if we’re being reimbursed for mileage by a client, we will write it off to offset the income. But otherwise, we don’t track our mileage for deduction purposes. We do keep a manual written log for for the occasional miles we write off on the RV and our MINI Cooper (when traveling away from where our tax home base is parked.)
Ah-h. Well that’s interesting. Thank you so much for the further education.