RV Trip 2011

We arrived about five minutes before Kelly got home from work. Nice timing! For a lovely welcome, Kelly shared a special bottle of wine with us – one she brought back from Italy.

The wine was delicious and went perfectly with dinner – rack of lamb! Kelly is such a good cook – the food was yummy and we had a good time chatting.

Here is Kelly’s new kitchen! It’s awesome… granite counter tops, spacious cupboards and a stove to die for.

The next day we went to Philadelphia. First stop – Kelly’s work. We met many of the people she works with – all very nice. I wish I had taken their pictures! Here we are near her building, with City Hall in the background.

Kelly treated us to lunch at one of her favorite restaurants – Barbuzzo. Kelly & I had pizza (hers with a fried egg on it and mine with lardo) and Dad had a burger. We really enjoyed the meal and it was an interesting place to visit. The chef sent over an antipasto platter when we got there, and boy was it good! Olives and vegetables and cheese – nom nom nom.

After lunch we decided to spend the afternoon at the Camden Aquarium, just over the river in New Jersey. It’s a very nice place! They had a HUGE tank with all kinds of interesting stuff in it – various sharks, stingrays, huge turtles and big schools of fish. Our favorite in that tank were the fish riding on the wake of the stingrays.

Here we are touching the stingrays. It’s surprising how they are velvety soft.

The piranhas better watch out for Kelly!! hehehe

I loved this part of the aquarium. It was very tranquil, being surrounded by all that water.

There were so many awesome creatures to see. I took lots of pictures but won’t bore you with a whole bunch of them – unless you come over and ask to see! There’s video, too. I did want to include this beautiful sea dragon, though.. he’s just stunning. The picture doesn’t really do him justice.

The last “show” we got to see was the Penguin March. The penguins knew it was 4:30 and time for them to go in, eat and bed down for the night. They lined right up and marched in when the door was opened. Each penguin has its own spot inside and I think they said they enter in the same order every day… they have a hierarchy thing going. So cute!

I don’t remember what we did for dinner that night, but in all, it was a fun and relaxing day spent in good company.

The next day we planned on driving up to Rochester to visit with Dad’s family there, so that will be my next post! You can also read about the entire trip here.

Dad and I set out for New Jersey on Saturday morning. Our first destination was St. Augustine, Florida, to visit the Fountain of Youth. Here we are at the entrance, with Don Juan Ponce de Leon.

It was a nice little place to explore, with exhibits about the native Indians and the Spanish people who landed there in 1513. We were welcome to take a drink from the Fountain of Youth. It tasted of sulfur.

The park guy said we were lucky it only stank a little because some days it was just terrible. We finished our tour and after driving all afternoon ended up in Savannah, Georgia, where we camped at a little RV place just off Route 16.

There was a bad storm during the night and a very large tree came down near the entrance. It rained so hard some of it got under the slider covers and when Dad pulled out, it spilled down his back in the driver’s seat when he first braked! Luckily it wasn’t overly much but it was sure enough to wake Dad up fully!

We made our way down to the beach in Tybee Island and it was a very pretty drive. Some of the streets of Savannah are very narrow… we took up the entire lane.

Tybee Island is a beautiful place and I would love to go back someday. It’s full of little artsy shops and stuff. We parked a block away from the beach and walked down to put our feet in the sand. Here’s Dad on the beach.

On the way back we saw these cats doing what cats do best… laying around and looking pretty. :)

I drove from the beach on the very narrow roads (only hit one curb, whew!) and then we went all day. For Dad’s Father’s Day dinner we found a steakhouse in Smithfield, Virginia, where I treated Dad to two of his favorite foods – steak and ribs! The food was very yummy.

It was almost dark by the time we left the restaurant and got to the RV park in Selma.

We camped by a lake and in the morning, some ducks came by to see if we had anything for them.

We had another pleasant day of driving, conversation and listening to music. We went under the Baltimore Harbor. I’m always amazed by these feats of engineering… driving under a big body of water like that is incredible.

I’m also a big fan of bridges but some of them were a little scary in the RV… the ones that had very low sides made me pretty nervous. Seems like you could go right over the edge if something bad happened. Even just looking at the picture now gives me the willies!!

Here’s a spectacular bridge that goes from Delaware into New Jersey – the Delaware Memorial Bridge. There was a lot of traffic but we kept moving.

Yay! After crossing the bridge, we were very close to our destination.

The next post will be about our first couple of days with Kelly in New Jersey. Read about the entire trip here.