hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4120.txt

Episode: 4120
Title: HPR4120: South Carolina to Home
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4120/hpr4120.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 19:51:20

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4,120 for Friday the 17th of May 2024.
Today's show is entitled, South Carolina to Home.
It is part of the series travel.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is…
We leave Charleston, South Carolina, and head back home.
Hello, this is Ahukah for Hacker Public Radio.
Welcome to you and inviting you to another exciting episode in our RV travel series.
And we're going to wrap up our trip from the winter of 2022-2023.
We're still in South Carolina, staying in Charleston.
And we'll start with the 13th of February, 2023, which was another good day.
After breakfast, we set out for Magnolia Plantation,
which turned out to be pretty near where we're staying.
We went on a guided tour of the Manor House, which was very interesting.
It has been in the family for generations.
We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but we enjoyed the tour.
Clearly, people were shorter in the 19th century, judging by the size of the beds.
After that tour, we went on a tour of the slave cabins, which were quite primitive, of course.
Following the Civil War and the 13th Amendment, slavery was outlawed in the United States.
But many of the formerly enslaved people stayed on the plantation because they didn't really have any place else to go.
Now, the cabins were from different times, one having actually been renovated in the 20th century, but they're all very basic.
Now, after the plantation tours, we went to see Angel Ok.
Now, this is what's called a live oak, and live oak means that, unlike the oak trees we're used to up north that drop their leaves every year,
live oaks keep their leaves all year round.
Now, this particular live oak is reputed to be the biggest tree east of the Mississippi River, and I can believe it.
It was huge, magnificent tree.
But by the time we finished, I was starting to feel a bit worse for the wear, and we went back to the RV where I lay down while Cheryl went for a walk.
I felt like I had come down with an illness of some kind who went to bed early and slept late in the morning.
Now, the next day, February 14th, Valentine's Day of 2023, and when I got up, I was still not feeling all that good, so we decided today would be a day off.
Thankfully, I started to feel better as the day went on, which is good, because tomorrow we start the trip home.
We've got a three hour drive ahead of us.
So, we get up in the morning, packed up the RV, this is on March 15th, 2023, and started our trip back home.
Now, the first leg had us retracing our steps to Savannah, where we picked up Interstate 16, but this time he headed west instead of into downtown Savannah.
It was a nice sunny day, a very pleasant drive. I was not 100% yet, but nothing specific was wrong with me, and I enjoyed the drive.
Now, we're back to the up and down of rolling hills to be sure.
We pulled into the Honey Suckle Farm RV Park in Dublin, Georgia after about three and a half hours of driving,
and just did a quick setup of connecting electric and water and didn't unhitch the truck at all.
That makes for fast set ups and fast getaway in the morning, but it does leave the RV moving around a bit more when someone is walking around inside.
But we find it worthwhile to save time.
Now, on February the 16th, 2023, up in the morning and getting that early start, I could still enjoy my leisurely breakfast, and yet we were out of there by 9.30.
I was still just slightly off a little bit, but I felt like I'm almost over whatever the heck it is it's been bothering me.
Unlike the previous day, the roads were a little more difficult than the Interstate, but that mostly meant I annoyed other drivers by driving slower than they would like on some one lane roads.
But I'm the one towing my home around with me, and I know that I need more room to stop.
Today's drive ended up being about four hours, and we pulled into the Montgomery South RV Park for a two-night stay.
We'll be running a few errands like shopping and refueling, so we unhitch the truck this time.
February 17th, Montgomery, Alabama, again.
For the first time since that bug bit me in Charleston, I woke up feeling perfectly normal. I even look forward to my breakfast.
But it's good that we planned a day off so I could rest up a bit and get even better.
We did some grocery shopping, but otherwise not much.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, this year we did something that we've learned was important, and that is not to just go day after day after day driving.
So we did two days of driving, and then it's like, okay, build in a day of rest.
So that's why we had this extra day in Montgomery, and we continued that pattern two days driving in a day of rest.
And also, we're driving less.
We're doing three to four hours of driving a day is quite enough.
When you're driving a big truck and towing that big RV behind you, for me, that just makes sense.
Some guy on the internet, he's a professional.
So he would probably think nothing of driving eight or ten hours with that.
But I'm a senior citizen who just learned how to do this stuff recently, so I like to take it easy.
So, then the next day, the 18th of February, 2023, we hooked up left Montgomery, Alabama, and drove to Tupelo, Mississippi.
This is the birthplace of Elvis Presley for those who are interested.
Now, this just an overnight stay, the park was nice, it's a bit hilly, and we were not able to get quite level while staying hooked up.
But this was just, we just wanted to get an night sleep and hit the road again in the morning.
So, the morning of the 19th of February, 2023, our days drive took us from Mississippi to Missouri,
where we checked in at the Boothheel RV Park. Now, Boothheel refers to, if you take a look at a map of Mississippi,
in the lower right or south-eastern corner of the state, there's this little bit that sticks down
compared to the rest of the state, sort of like the heel of a boot sticks down compared to the sole of the boot.
So, that's the Boothheel, in case you're wondering.
We checked in at Boothheel RV Park. There was no one there, but they left us and enveloped with our site assignment,
basically a nice flat gravel site, which wasn't bad except for the sewer connection.
Um, Cheryl had some milk that had gone by as the saying goes and dumped it in the sewer,
but it looked like it was just sitting there.
Fortunately, we could go another few days without dumping, so we didn't worry about it.
Now, we drove, we were just driven two days, so, you know, that means, took another day of rest.
So, on the 20th of February, 2023, that was our day of rest, and I'm liking it. I'm doing all the driving.
We did go to a nearby town to do some grocery shopping and refill the propane tank, but otherwise relaxed.
I finished the book I had been working on about Paul McCartney. It's called McCartney Legacy Volume 1,
1969 to 1973. Then, with dinner, we watched another Avengers video.
Now, this Avengers is the British program from the 60s, so it's nothing to do with the
Marvel universe or whatever the hell that thing is.
Um, now, next day, 21st, we got up and drove to the WJRV Park in Chatham, Illinois for an overnight stay.
So, our plan was to dump the tanks, fill them with water and add a cup of dawn dish detergent to
each and let that slush around on our trip tomorrow. Normally, we would do that in the morning
before leaving, but the forecast was for rain, so we did it in the afternoon while we still had light.
Um, and the next day, the 22nd, it was indeed raining when we got up, but
you know, we had stayed hooked up, so that was not too much of a problem. We just had to disconnect the
water and the electric and get back on the road. And we drove to the Lake Haven RV Park, and that's
where we stayed on our outbound trip back in December. Little better getting there when it was still
light out, and we got almost the same sight as before right near the entrance. Then, the 23rd of
February, 2023, we dumped the tanks, put some more water in to rinse them and dumped again,
then we drained the water heater, drained the system using low-point drains, and added RV
antifreeze. The RV will not be used any longer, and temperatures are still below freezing,
where we live, so precautions needed to be taken. Now, the we knew there was a freezing rain
problem back home, but the forecast was that the temperatures would rise during the day,
and we checked with our neighbors who said that, yeah, it looked good, and that we had not lost
power unlike many in our area, so we took our time in the morning, and then hit the road for our
last leg, and we got back just after 3pm, and started to unload the RV. Over the next few days,
we finished the unloading, washed all of the linens, and placed them back in the RV, and on Sunday,
we took the RV and the truck back to our storage lot, and this ended our trip.
Now, lessons learned, we did a whole lot better on this trip, we drove less each day, and built in
rest stops, and because we paid attention to the grade of the roads, we did not have any scary
moments. We learned a lot about winter camping as it turned out, because of the polar vortex issue,
that had us freezing in Alabama over the Christmas holidays. And while I would have preferred not
to go through that, I guess knowledge is always a good thing. Cheryl did us a very good turn by
purchasing a heated water hose in our preparations for the trip. We had a few below freezing nights in
Arizona the previous year, so we knew it was a good idea, but what we hit in Alabama was totally
unexpected, and we now have reflective panels to put in all of our windows, and they can do double
duty by keeping out heat when the temperature is rise, so it's all good. All in all, I think we're
getting a comfortable veterans of the RV experience, though you never stopped learning. The last
thing I'll mention is the Wi-Fi hotspot we bought. It is from Solus, and it worked great for us in
letting us get online. It connects to telephone carriers, but we just pay for the device and for
the gigabytes we download directly with Solus. It may not be the cheapest solution, it is dead simple,
and I like that. So that is the end of our trip, so this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio signing off,
and is always encouraging you to support FreeSoftware. Bye-bye!
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