We left our place at 4:00am to get to the storage facility by 5:00. We got there about 10 minutes early, which was good, in a way. Once we were able to get into the storage facility, we went to the Brave, and got started. We had several things to do before we got on the road - like change out the mattress for the bed, bring stuff in, get the fridge/freezer set up, etc. We also needed to get gas. By the time we got on the road, it was about 6:15am.
We knew we had a long drive ahead of us, but we weren't prepared for how long it was really going to be. By all accounts, we should've been pulling into HHI by 4pm, at the latest. Unfortunately, traffic was not on our side. Once we got into South Carolina, we basically sat in traffic for over 6 hours. It was awful. We ended up calling the resort & let them know we wouldn't be making it by 5pm to get escorted in. By the time we got there, it was about 7:30pm. We had been on the road since 4am, up since 3am. It was a VERY long day.
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| All 4 of us headed down 95. |
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| Guess to figured out how to get on the dash? |
It was great to have a glass of wine (or a beer - depending on which of us it was) and get to chat with everyone. We decided to head back to our coach around 9:30 and get to bed.
Dec 28:
When we got up the next morning, I checked my phone, like usual (mostly email, Facebook, etc). I noticed that I had a couple of texts and a phone call from Jeffrey asking if we were still up around midnight. That was weird since he knew we were out of the count right after they dropped us off. Long story short, it turned out that their friend, Pete, fell & hit his head on one of his slides. He ended up in the hospital almost the rest of the week. Not the way they wanted to spend their vacation at all! (Side note: the slides are REALLY hard!) Jeffrey & Sam came back from the hospital right before we were being escorted in, so we told them we'd figure out when to pick up our rental car.
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| Look at these two hams! |
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| View out of our front window |
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| Wendy likes to protect her brother |
Once Jon was done working, we had appetizers with Sam & Jeffrey at their RV and then dinner at ours. It was so nice to be able to have people over for dinner IN the RV! I made Grilled Hawaiian Chicken Skewers and a Gluten Free Creamy Ranch Pasta Salad (with a couple of modifications, including using gf pasta instead of normal pasta). We all agreed that both were pretty tasty!
Dec 29:
When we got up this morning, we found Wendy like this.
Poor Jon got the short end of the stick this week with still having to work. Though, with everything that 2015 gave us, I was using it as an excuse to get some down time as well.
After having the ice maker on for about 24 hours, we figured it should be making ice. Jon wanted to move the fridge in order to get to one of the lines behind it. I decided I was not on board with that (which led to a bit of a tiff). It turned out one of the lines (that was completely accessible by the outside panel) was kinked and smooshed a bit when they installed the fridge. It was leaking, so Jon cut out the part that was kinked and leaking and replaced it with a new piece of tubing. The ice maker works just fine now, without having to move the fridge.
During the afternoon, I went to the beach with Jeffrey while Jon was working & Sam was napping. We walked about 3.5 miles or so. It was nice to walk & chat. Once we were back, we both got cleaned up and the four of us had dinner at Bistro 17. We had a great experience here and really enjoyed the food. Jon and Jeffrey had the steak - which they both took home leftovers for steak & eggs the next day.
Dec 30:
While Jon was working, I ran over to Walmart to return one thing and buy a few others. One thing about being gluten free is that you really do need a toaster if you want to have gluten free bread. We never got one for the Lance, because I didn't really eat a lot of gluten free bread. I still try not to have a lot of it, but when you do want it, it needs to be toasted.
Once I was back, I had lunch with Jon and then got a text from Sam & Jeffrey asking if I wanted to come have drinks with them. I managed to find where they were and joined them at The Porch for a couple of afternoon drinks.
Once we were done at The Porch, we headed back to the resort. We all got cleaned up and eventually headed to dinner at Hudson's Seafood on the Bay with Jon, Jeffrey, and Sam. It was a fun place & we all enjoyed dinner.
Dec 31:
Jon didn't have too much work to do, so he was finally able to "play" a little. We had lunch at A Lowcountry Backyard Restaurant; it was an awesome little place. We enjoyed the food, and a good bit of the decor.
After lunch, we stopped to get macaroons at Marche de Macaroons for dessert later that night.
We finally got a chance to walk on the beach together. Yay!
A couple of hours later, we walked on the beach with Sam, Jeffrey, and the pups.
It was time for NYE dinner! We had appetizers at Sam & Jeffrey's place and dinner at ours. We had grilled maple pork tenderloin with pear salad (from Meals Made Simple, Against All Grain) for dinner. It's one of our absolute favorites from the book.
We made it all of the way to midnight, had our grapes and champagne, and got to bed around 12:30/1am. It was a late night for sure! Even the "kids" stayed up.
Jan 1:
We had a lazy day for most of the day. We had breakfast at Stacks. It's so hard for me to have breakfast out, so it was great to be able to eat out. We also had lunch out at The Smokehouse, which was just ok. We kept our activity level pretty light though.
Jeffrey took us to drop off the rental car. We all decided that we had big breakfasts/lunches, so a small dinner was in order. Jeffrey and Sam had us over for gluten free pasta, meatballs, and salad. They were even nice enough to give us the leftovers, since they weren't going to have the fridge on the way home.
We drove to the Enfield/Rocky Mount KOA. You can read a little more about that here.
Jan 3:
We headed the rest of the way home from NC, got the Winnie back into storage, and headed home. We were a little sad to put it to bed for the winter!
