May 28, 2023 We got up early and prepared to leave. It was a much better weather-day than yesterday. It was still grey and slightly misting, but there was no rain or wind to speak of. We left at 9:30 with 190 miles to go today to our destination of Wilmington, NC. Highway 17 would take us most of the way there, except for a couple of bypasses around Myrtle Beach and Wilmington, since our campground is on the east side of town. Traffic was pretty light through Charleston, as it usually is on a Sunday. We crossed the Wando River to Mt. Pleasant over this very beautiful, but high bridge.
From the top of the bridge, we could see the USS Yorktown docked at Patriot’s Point. We had toured that aircraft carrier on our last visit to Charleston. Very impressive!
Once we got out of town, Highway 17 became a 4-lane, tree-lined boulevard with hardly any traffic.
We passed through Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge and the Francis Marion National Forest. We ran into some rain pockets just south of Myrtle Beach in Georgetown and it was foggy when we crossed over the ICW.
We could see the Georgetown Marina from the bridge. It was filled with many sport fishing boats. There were so many of them.
Moving north, we rain into more pockets of rain, remnants of that weather system that arrived yesterday and is still hanging around. The rain sprinkles nagged us most of the day. We crossed the border into North Carolina.
The wind had picked up as we neared our destination. It pushed us around quite a bit crossing the bridge over the Cape Fear River. The wind was blowing 12 mph, gusting to 19, and we could feel it. It was a little nerve-wracking!
The drive took us 4 hours and we arrived at the Wilmington KOA at 1:45. It wasn’t a bad drive, but there were a lot of highway changes and connections not to miss. We were glad to be off the road!
We will be only be here 2 nights after staying an extra night in Charleston due to the weather. Tomorrow should be nice enough to explore the town of Wilmington and its waterfront. We got plugged in at site #60 and were all set up in no time so I could do some wash. The site had plenty of grassy space for Auggie.
In the compartment with the electrical cord, Bob discovered a “freeloader”. He came all the way from Charleston. Bob couldn’t catch him before we left there this morning and he was still in the compartment when we arrived. He made the trip without any problems and was released into his new home.
Auggie got a “pedicure” and we all relaxed from the drive. The KOA has some fun activities planned for the kids over the Memorial Day weekend. Today they had “Bubbles Day”. The kids were having a blast running around as the bubbles were blown out of the machine. There are a lot of activities and a huge playground for the kids at this KOA.
The campground was pretty full, but campers arrived throughout the afternoon and filled in the few empty sites that they still had available. This rig arrived two sites down from us. It was a traditional semi tractor with an extended frame to carry a Smart Car behind the sleeper cab. They were pulling a 5th wheel behind that.
It sprinkled off and on all afternoon, but we were able to grill lamb chops and asparagus for dinner. We took our evening walk and were anxious to see all the types of campers that were in the campground. It’s amazing to see how many different types of campers there are. This KOA also has 20 cabins and they all seem to be full. We relaxed watching some TV and made plans for tomorrow’s visit to Wilmington.