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Jennings KOA, Jennings, FL

Jennings KOA, Jennings, FL

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We stayed at the Jennings KOA for a week to escape hurricane Dorian. Luckily, Dorian turned and stayed off the coast of Florida but we were glad to be on asphalt pads rather than dirt like we were at Christmas, FL. We got very little wind and no rain here from Dorian but I don’t think it ever got that bad in Christmas either. We do know they got a fair amount of rain and it really didn’t take much to turn the park into a swamp. For peace of mind it was worth adding a few hundred extra miles to our trip.

Watching the sunset from our site
Beautiful sunset as hurricane Dorian passes by 200 miles away
Looking east toward hurricane Dorian

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Site Quality:  Asphalt roads and pads. Barely long enough for our rig and truck, we had to back the truck up under the trailer as far as we could. Sites are somewhat narrow and only have broken concrete patios with a picnic table. Luckily they have electrical limitations supporting 50A trailers so they generally only fill every other site which makes it feel less cramped.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: Just off Interstate 75 on Hamilton Ave in Jennings.
Staff: The staff were friendly and accommodating as we lengthened our stay twice as we tried to figure out where hurricane Dorian was going to go. The owner moved other reservations around so we wouldn’t need to change sites part way through.
Amenities:  Laundry facilities, Restrooms/showers, Volleyball, Shuffleboard, horseshoes, Bocce, Basketball, Cornhole, Gaga Ball, Tic Tac Toe, community fire pits. Playground and picnic area along with a small lake. Swimming pool. Recreation room. Free cable TV and WiFi.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent at about 4 Mbps. Their WiFi was also usable at about 3.5 Mbps.
What we liked: Full hookup sites on pavement (important during the rainy season). Although within site of I-75, there wasn’t much road noise.
What we didn’t like: KOAs are always expensive for what you get. Sites are narrow and the site we were on (#50) was difficult to get the truck parked in front of the trailer. You either had to back up a long way or go through an empty site. There isn’t much around Jennings, however, Valdosta Georgia is only about 20 miles away and has pretty much everything you would want including a Walmart and Sam’s Club.
Verdict: This is not a destination park but for us it was exactly what we needed. It was about 100 miles from the coast which helped distance us from the expected path of hurricane Dorian. It also had paved roads, few trees above the sites (nothing to fall on our rig in high winds and satellite TV access) and it had cable TV which included the weather channel and several locals for us to get weather information. Overall, it was one of the nicest and best maintained KOAs we have stayed at.

ULA Delta IV Medium Launch, Cape Canaveral, FL

ULA Delta IV Medium Launch, Cape Canaveral, FL

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This launch on 8/22/2019 was historic as it is the final launch of a Delta IV rocket in the medium, single stick configuration. There were clouds and some rain in the area the morning of the launch that caused weather to go red for a short time.

Launch day sunrise.

We found an Osprey waiting for the launch nearby where we decided to set up to see the launch. We were in Jetty Park where we camped the week before.

Osprey waiting for the launch

We were about 8 miles away from the launch pad which is about as close as you can get for safety. The picture below shows what we could see (with magnification) of the launch pad from where we were viewing the launch. The rocket is hidden just below the trees.

Launch pad LC-37 from Jetty Park
An early launch photo captured from our video
About 40 seconds into the flight and we began to hear the roar of the engines
Smoke trail after launch
Launch Video (Caution large file)
Jetty Park, Cape Canaveral, FL

Jetty Park, Cape Canaveral, FL

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We originally booked Jetty Park hoping to see a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral as well as to spend some time on the beach. While we accomplished the latter, we missed the opportunity to see a rocket launch by just a few days and had to move on. Luckily we didn’t move far though and we plan to come back to Jetty Park on launch day to see United Launch Alliance send a GPS satellite into orbit aboard the final launch of a medium configuration Delta IV rocket. We will have more about that in a future blog post.

We weren’t too sure what we’d get into at Jetty Park since many of the sites including ours were grass and the roads were dirt. It turned out to be about as we expected with numerous small pot holes in the road and at least some of the sites were in bad shape due to recent rains. Ours turned out to not be too bad and we managed to get in and out without leaving deep ruts. The other issue was that we were only able to get a 30 amp site instead of a 50 amp site. Because of the way 50 amp connections work you actually get 100 amps of power to work with. So, 30 amps was less than 1/3 of what we normally have. What this means is that we could only run one AC unit at a time and with temperatures reaching into the 90’s they each run full time normally. We managed by just running the AC in the area we were using – bedroom at night and living room during the day. Lucky for us, we had rain nearly every afternoon and that helped too . The one night it didn’t, it took a while to get the bedroom cooled down from 90 degrees.

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Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC

Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC

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Live Oak Campground is one of two that make up Edisto Beach State Park. The Beachfront Campground was full when we made reservations so we stayed in Live Oak instead. The Beachfront Campground is about a mile away from the Live Oak Campground. We didn’t find out too much about the Beachfront Campground although we had coastal flooding all week due to high tides and have heard that some of the campsites on the beach are subject to flooding. Of course, on the beach you would be able to hear the ocean so there are tradeoffs to being safe from the flooding. There are nearly 4 miles of nice soft trails throughout the park winding through the salt marsh area.

Edisto Beach State Park is just outside the town of Edisto Beach on Edisto Island. This is a small town of about 400 permanent residents and numerous tourists. Most houses within the town seem to be vacation rental properties. There are no stoplights, and very few stop signs but there are several great seafood restaurants including the Sea Cow and local favorite (as well as our’s) Whaley’s. There is a small grocery and a few other shops as well as a few non-seafood restaurants there too.

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Lakewood RV Resort, Flat Rock, NC

Lakewood RV Resort, Flat Rock, NC

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The next stop on our trek to cover the southeast corner of the US was the Flat Rock/Hendersonville/Asheville area. We picked a great time to stay due to the higher elevation and an unseasonably strong cold front we had cooler weather and no rain. Daytime temperatures stayed in the low 80’s and nighttime temperatures were in the upper 50’s – not bad for the middle of July.

We first ventured out into the nearby town of Hendersonville with a population of about 14000. It was a great little town nestled in the foothills of the mountains and with a vibrant downtown area with lots of shops and restaurants. We stopped by the visitor center and had some lunch at a nice Japanese restaurant but we didn’t end up doing much more than just driving down Main street. With our big truck, the streets were uncomfortably narrow and parking was an issue as well so we just moved on.

On another day we went into East Flat Rock and ate at Hubba Hubba BBQ at the recommendation of one of our neighbors in the RV park. There were several highly rated small restaurants right there together and they all shared the same parking lot which was on hilly ground behind all of them. That too was a mess for our big truck but we managed to get out unscathed and we found a nearby shopping area with a nice empty parking lot. We were glad we did, the BBQ was great and the vibe was a lot like something you might see in Austin with outdoor seating and lots of people with their dogs.

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