Subscribe to our blog

The following morning I was feeling slightly worse for wear after the gig and wanted an easy day. We spent some time trying to find a better place to camp for the night, as this Walmart was right on the dual carriageway and very loud. It also meant we couldn’t let Aimee out, and she spent some time in the morning howling at us for our poor parking choices. Having done some research on various free apps, it seemed they had really cracked down on free camping with loads of peo

Now was the downside of prolonging our stay. We had a 3 hour drive to Ocala Forest and Silver Glen Springs as recommended by several people. We initially were going to camp in Hopkins Prairie campground as this would all have worked rather well, but now we were just going to go visit the spring. Arriving at the car park, the staff we intrigued by Ruby and this resulted in us getting an absolute bargain on ticket prices to hire a canoe. It's roughly a 1 mile paddle down the r

The following morning we headed back down south towards Lynne's house. I really wish that I had filmed my reaction on arriving at the address Lynne had given us. We drove down the picturesque streets of Anna Maria island, around 12pm after having packed up and left Bug Jam. Turning down a private drive lined with coco palms and mangroves, the sat nav said we had 1 minute to go. I started wondering if we would really be this lucky, as the houses down here were beautiful. Soon

Our next fixed date is the 6th of November, when Frank Turner is playing in St Petersburg near Tampa. This gives us one more night to make our way north and we started off in that direction. I had booked us an airboat tour in the Everglades that we were going to do on the way, before driving across route 41 through the middle of the Everglades themselves. We got to Coopertown airboat tours where I had booked us a tour for $15 each. We didn't need to make a reservation so we

It was now Halloween, and we had debated for some time what we were going to do. As it is such a big event in the US compared to the UK we wanted to do something with the evening. Initially we looked at the scare nights at Universal but even with a groupon voucher they were $70. Lee then found another event on groupon called 'Dark Horizons' which was a similar thing but only $25 each. We decided that we would go to this show and see what it was like. So we were leaving St Au

It was definitely a lot warmer, and when we stopped to swap drivers in a rest area half way, we were both happy to get back into our shorts again for the first time in a few weeks. After a long but uneventful drive, we arrived that afternoon in Savannah. After our cold, and towards the end somewhat rainy, time in the mountains, we were ready for beach again. Although it’s a coastal town, Savannah doesn’t have a close beach right in the city. For the lovely sandy beaches we ha

That morning the whether was back again, and the views we had missed from the parkway the day before were clear to see as we headed for the city. The colours appeared to have really changed overnight and it was a beautiful drive. Arriving at Asheville we went to visit St Helens bridge, which is apparently haunted. Maybe that's why someone has decided to throw pumpkins off it? The next priority was a clothes wash and then to get some food in. With this sorted the last thing t

After having spent what felt like a lot of the previous week driving long distances down some not very exciting roads, we were quite happy to be away from civilisation and also not need to drive anywhere. To make matters even better, it was a glorious day. We decided to stay local and did a short walk up to what could have been a waterfall. I imagine in the melting snows of spring, it is a truly impressive sight. But on a sunny October morning, after what has clearly been a d

That morning I made some more bread, as part of our money saving programme and we hung about for a bit while the batteries charged. Our wiring still not behaving quite as it should. It appeared that the battery protector had failed and I’m not convinced the split charge was working as it should. This would need some further investigation. Lee managed to arrange to look at a new bike, after the telegraph pole incident we only had one rideable bike still. While we don’t use the

The tone for the day was set by the first place we intended to visit, The Great Dismal Swamp. After a short drive we arrived at the car park, which for the first time ever had signs that said you could camp overnight but at your own risk. It would have been a lot nicer that Walmart, but it’s so unusual to see a sign that doesn’t expressly forbid you from camping we hadn’t risked it the night before, expecting the usual park rangers or police. We were going to walk down the ca

We were only around around an hour from the Assateague Island the next morning, and the three of us headed over the small bridge and towards the beach. We approached the car park, and as we got to the booth the women told us that the booth was closing and we could put money in the honesty box instead. She also impressed upon us at great length that we could not swim in the see as hurricane Melissa was off the coast and there was some very strong currents. We reassured her tha

That morning we had a few hours to kill before we could go and see kittens, so we spent a few hours in Dunkin' Donuts getting our internet usage in and then went for a fairly average walk around Myrtle Point park. It wouldn’t really have been worth mentioning apart from the fact that we saw another eagle! To slow to get a photo this time, but as we stood here one flew past our heads looking like it was trying to eat an unlucky seagull. The walk was mainly in forest, but still

Fancying a break from a big city and also Walmart, we planned to head down towards Mallow’s Bay where you could apparently see lots of abandoned war ships that had been left to rot in the river. We headed out of south out Washington, and not too long after we arrived at the entrance to the bay. Turns out the road down to the carpark has an automated barrier, which was down, but there was a small area for parking before the barriers so we set up camp. Out in the middle of nowh

Today we had planned to visit Washington and we were doing our usual morning routine. Our leisure batteries were pretty low, so we had to turn the engine on to make tea. This drew the attention of a guy who came over and introduced himself as the major of Walmart carpark, his dog is named Sir Rixalot. We chatted to him for a bit while we waited for the kettle to boil. Like many of the people you meet in Walmart, he was homeless and living in his car. It’s always interesting t

The day started optimistically. We were parked on a canal, and had been saying for ages we should start jogging again. This coupled with the fact that I couldn't actually think of an excuse not to, resulted in us both getting ready for a morning run down the canal. Lee had an app that have you a time and speed to try and match on the 'beginner' level, so we set off. I failed pretty miserably at being able to complete beginner, but at least I had actually done running, so I st

We spent a good few hours in the morning making the most of having a normal facilities like a bathroom and a washing machine. Soon we were all good to go, everything was either filled up or emptied out and we had cleaned ourselves and anything else possible. The downsides of living in such a small place is it get pretty dirty, very fast! Jen had given us some free tickets to go and look at Kentuck Knob, a house designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. As this was

We awoke Sunday morning and said goodbye to Rob and Chloe as they headed back over the Canadian border. Another day of seeing some of the local sights was planned. We stopped off at Rural King first, to see if I could buy a breaker bar to fully reattach our suspension. While they did have one, it was double the price of Amazon which just left us to walk around the rest of the shop which sells pretty much everything related to being outdoors. It was good to know that this was

We arrived mid afternoon to Ross and Jen’s new house in Connellsville on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. We were greeted straight away by John, another mutual friend of Lee and Ross, and our amazon packages. We had been gradually ordering everything we had forgotten online and getting it sent in advance for us to collect. John hadn’t escaped either and had to bring us our beam pattern stickers for our English headlights as we couldn’t very easily get them in the US. Soon enough

After our Walmart camping spot we set off south again towards Pittsburgh. In order to break up the drive we decided we would stop off at Kinzua Bridge, formerly one of the eight wonders of the world. This bridge was once the highest train bridge in the world until it was destroyed by a tornado in 2003. The bridge was undergoing strengthening work, but they had not replaced the original iron bolts which snapped under the force of the hurricane. In two minutes, this was what wa

We awoke to a fairly grey morning, which wasn't a problem as today was a bit of an admin day. We decided to try shopping at Sauders, as recommended by Anita. Since being in America, we had struggled to find any reasonable priced groceries. We naturally headed to Walmart, just because we knew what it was, but unlike the English counterpart it was incredibly expensive for a lot of groceries. Sauders was an amish supermarket, which started off well for me when I spied this outsi