As we all know, 2020 was quite a year. The pandemic put a monkey wrench in a lot of RVers’ plans and, even though it impacted us some, we were able to travel to most of the places we had planned for the year. This post will briefly cover the final month of the year followed by a summary of all the places we were able to visit with emphasis on National Parks.
Georgia State Parks
After spending Thanksgiving in a KOA in southeastern Alabama instead of with Amy’s folks as originally planned, we decided to work our way over to Savannah to check out the historic city. After a few nights in Eastbank COE campground in Bainbridge, Ga, we managed to find availability in 3 Georgia State Parks. After that we would be moving into a park in Chiefland, FL for the majority of the winter.
First up was Reed Bingham State Park in Adel, GA. This was a very nice state park with trails for hiking and/or biking. They also had an outside exercise station with several pieces of equipment. We took advantage of this and found it to be a nice change of pace from the exercises we try to do regularly in our RV. We would later learn that all 3 of the State Parks we would visit had the same equipment. We now wonder if they are standard at all Georgia State Parks. Maybe we’ll have to visit a few more to find out.
After Reed Bingham came Fort McAllister State Park in Richmond Hill just 20 miles south of Savannah. We were told our site in the park was the only non-pull through site. Normally, we would prefer a pull through, but the ones in this park were shaped like the letter ‘U’ which makes the turn in the site would have been a challenge. In fact, most 5th wheelers we saw chose to back into the exit of the pull through and then park their truck in the entrance side.
Getting into our site wasn’t too difficult and we had a beautiful location, with tall trees and dangling spanish moss hanging off the branches. We took a day to visit Savanna and walk around the historic district. We visited Forsyth Park, the childhood home of Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the Girl Scouts), and The Cathedral Basilica of St John the Baptist. We ended our day of walking with an ice cream cone at Leopold’s and dinner at Moon River Brewing. It was a nice visit into the city and walking around the various historic squares gave us a feel for what makes Savannah so unique. We spent our remaining time in Fort McAllister State Park just hanging around, hiking and relaxing.
About halfway between Savannah and our winter base hangout was our third and final Georgia State Park. Crooked River State Park had some very nice sites, several miles of hiking trails and, of course, the aforementioned exercise equipment. Our stay here was a bit shorter but we did manage to use the exercise equipment and hike/run the trails. Of the three state parks we visited, this was the nicest and best maintained. Based on our experience with all three, I feel comfortable recommending staying in a Georgia State Park if you get the chance.
We moved into Strawberry Fields for RVers located in Chiefland, FL. on December 18th. We will be here until the end of February as part of an Escapees Winter Hangout. Escapees is a wonderful resource for RVers of all types and we highly recommend you check them out if you plan to dabble in the RVing lifestyle. We know some of the couples that are staying here, included the couple serving as hosts (Rob and Laura are mentioned in a few of these blogs). It will be nice to have a little neighborhood of friends, both old and new, that we can spend the winter with and perhaps share experiences while exercising all social distancing precautions. Gatherings are all outside with couples staying 6 feet apart and masks are encouraged. We will write about the overall experience in a future blog.
2020 in Review
We were lucky enough to follow through on our original plans for 2020, even with the pandemic. We had planned to visit the national parks in the Rockies and were able to do that and more. We did have a reservation or two cancelled on us but over all we made the most of the year to end all years. To make it easier to review, we’ve created the custom Google Map shown below that includes layers for the campgrounds we stayed in (75), the hikes we took (52), the national parks we visited(10), and the breweries (35) we were lucky enough to enjoy (mostly with outdoor seating). For best viewing of the map, take it to full screen on a computer or laptop with the icon in the upper right of the map.
As always, beautiful pictures and lovely recount of your travels… Miss you, Love you and Stay safe… until we see each other very soon….
LUVS
Dan…you are an over achiever when it comes to google maps. Thanks for a trip down memory lane. Amazing how things can change in such a short span. Wish we were there with you!
It was a bit of work but worth it. As I linked the hikes (data from AllTrails) and the breweries (data from Untappd), I would think “This hike was with Jim and Corinne” or “this hike was with Rob and Laura”. Same thing goes for the breweries (which were far fewer than I would have liked 🙂 ).
As usual, enjoyed the pictures, write up and getting a peek into your lives and lifestyle. Your ratio of breweries to national parks per your map is a bit of concern though…just kidding of course! I stopped briefly in Savannah once when driving my mother back from Florida to New York and thought it was a wonderful place to visit. In fact I recognize the fountain in the picture from Forsyth Park. Glad you are both spending the winter season with friends in an RV park for an extended amount of time, enjoy!
The ratio of hikes to breweries was pretty good, though. Actually would prefer that ratio to be 1:1, but not all hikes have a brewery nearby. 🙂
Your map (and year’s travel) were very impressive — an excellent summary and technical achievement. The Georgia parks’ industrial strength, rustproof, nicely painted exercise equipment were awesome– only lacking outdoor chess tables to be complete . Other states should take a lesson. Best wishes for 2021.