Day 15, Sunday, November 3, 2024 - Aiken State Park, Aiken, SC - 144.6 Miles, 1,080.9 Miles for the Trip
During my morning walk there was only one open site, #18, the small one across from me. Even one of the two cabins was rented. Quite a few left during the morning, but when I got to the dump station, it was empty.
The traffic on I 77 was very heavy going north, but our side wasn't too bad. I eventually hit I 20, US 1 & US 78. The signage at the park is minimal. There is a sign that points to the campground from the main road, but no more campground signs. I managed to do an extra 25 miles criss crossing the park until I decided that the campground "might" be on Picnic Road which is a 10 mile or so one way loop road. Sure enough, I first found the office (it was closed) and a family that knew the campground was further down the road. The roads in the campground are sand as is the campsite. I'm in site 11, a water & electric site with picnic table & fire ring. Level enough side to side but I had to drop the tongue 2". $30.00 per night plus $10.80 in state & local taxes.
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| Site 11 |
The park is about 20 miles from the nearest shopping so I suspect I'll end up eating out of the refrigerator & freezer. While both Verizon & AT&T show 1 bar of service, neither are going to win any internet speed records. Verizon showed 7.3Mbps down and 0Mbps up. The ping at 125ms & jitter at 192ms looked better than AT&T's, but using it for websites, FaceTime or internet radio was useless. AT&T first showed a 776ms ping & 212ms jitter and 22.3Mbps down & .4Mbps up. 5 minutes later it was 62ms ping & 12ms jitter with 26.7Mbps down & 4.1Mbps up. In any case, while I couldn't Facetime the Guidos, a phone call was OK & viewing web pages as well as internet radio and uploading today's site photo was usable.
An Oliver pulled in across the road from me. Another retired college educator (computer science). Not sure why, but folks in education seem to like fiberglass trailers.
After setting up I drove back to the office and picked up my site & mirror tags. Along the way I could see why the park was closed for quite awhile after the hurricanes. Many trees down & cut just clear of the road, as well as a number that were topped.
Back at the trailer I read outside for a bit, then headed in to do my afternoon exercises & make dinner. With the loss of daylight savings time I won't be spending time sitting outside after dinner - it gets dark an hour sooner.
Dinner was a cheese brat & chips.
More Tomorrow -
Just curious as to why you picked state parks over CoE, TVA, NPS, or other federal government parks for you Winter visit. Much cheaper with the geezer pass, and most are better than any states facilities we've visited throughout the southeast.
ReplyDeleteI do often stay at COE and other federal parks, but at the time I was making reservations for the trip it was too early to reserve at them. I do have one national forest in the plans...
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