October 6, 2024:
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I've decided to skip a trip to the southwest and stay here in the east. I still want to avoid freezing cold days, so I'm heading to the southeast. The current plan (and reservations) are for a 178 day trip bouncing around northern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina & Alabama state parks.
While today is 2 weeks before I plan to leave for the winter, it appears I may have picked the wrong year for staying in the east.
Hurricane Helene has done quite a bit of damage all over the area I planned to stay. The usual start to my winter snowbirding is a trip to the Hungry Mother State Park in Virginia for a fiberglass rally. The Guidos usually make it the last trip of the season. We are not sure it will happen - Hungry Mother suffered enough storm damage to close, and will wait until October 14th to decide whether to open. My schedule (and reservations) has me leaving Oswego on the 20th, so not a lot of time to make changes. If the rally is canceled, the Guidos will head to Michigan to see great grandkids, but I plan to do my winter trip anyway. I don't have anything scheduled for the eastern part of North Carolina or southwestern Tennessee, the most heavily damaged areas.
I planned the trip with RV Life's Trip Wizard, and a couple of days after the hurricane checked and the next 5 parks after Hungry Mother were all closed. I rechecked this weekend and it is down to 2 closed parks before Christmas, and one after, the first of which, Lake Wateree, has already canceled my reservation & credited my credit card with the full amount of reservation.
I assume that if they opened the park they want visitors - I don't want to be any kind of a burden on the folks that had so much devastation.
I found another state park within my normal driving distance (under 250 miles) that was open & made new reservations for the first stop after Hungry Mother. If Hungry Mother stays closed, I'll need to find something between Creekside Campground in Virginia & Chester State Park in South Carolina.
So, as of today, only one of the early parks is still closed; Aiken State Park in South Carolina. I have a reservation for 3 days, November 3-5 so I hope it opens before then.
More later -
