Moving on to Gamble Rogers or Life is Tough I’m Trying to Get By

Thursday December 6, 2012
Gamble Roger Memorial Recreation Area  Site 4
Flagler Beach, Florida

 

Tuesday December 4

We leave Hunting Island at about the VERY last minute.  NOON  :-)
We don’t even get off the island before we are stopped.
I think it is a sign that we should turn around and return; the island doesn’t want us to leave.

 

We are stopped by a bridge.

Not a draw bridge but a turning bridge.
I really do think it is a sign because neither of us sees anything that needs the bridge to turn in order for it to get through.

 

While waiting, I get my last look at the wetlands I so love at Hunting Island.

 

 

Next stop a nice short 158 miles to  Walkabout Camp and RV Park.  Woodbine Georgia.  Hardly a Paul Dahl day!

We arrive, pull into site 18 in the back row and I hustle over to do our laundry.  This is becoming a pattern.  Stop at Walkabout between state parks and do your laundry.  

We chat with the very congenial Aussie owners.  They’ve been putting in raised flower beds and redoing some walk ways.  They are very industrious.  Things look great!

 

 

Wednesday  December 5

 

This is my kind of day, no hurry.

 

We leave Walkabout around 10. We are only going 113 miles today to Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area. A perfect day’s drive!!

(I know Paul our total of 271 miles in one day is  a single light day for you. Probably half of your day’s drive.  You too Eldy .)

 

We arrive and get set up in Site #4 which I have picked site unseen.  It turns out to be a good choice if we can’t be on the ocean side.

Gamble Rogers is small park, only 35 spaces and is very popular.  I would love to have had two weeks on the ocean side (those are the odd number sites) but feel lucky to have that much time period.

The park is named in honor of Gamble Rogers a Florida folk singer who died in October of 1991 at age 54 while in the park trying to rescue from drowning the father of a young girl who begged him to help. 

 

 

The sites are a very nice size and some of them are really nearly huge.
I just love the hook ups.  The park has water and electric –50 & 30 amp – and a dump station.  It’s on the pricey side for us at $31 a night all taxes included.  You can stay for half of that IF you are a Florida Resident and over 65 or disabled.  Unfortunately that leaves us out.  But for a nearly ocean front site, I’ll take it.  Limit is 2 weeks.  The park has 2 washers and one dryer just outside the one bath house which appears to be relatively new. 

 

 

 

Site 4 is directly across from an ocean overlook so we have other rigs sort of on the right and left out our front window but we can see the water.  AND it’s really GREAT that I can get up out of bed and walk about 20 steps to see the sunrise from the overlook.   VERY FINE!!   Can’t wait for tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

I am still getting set up inside in the afternoon when I first hear the noise. 

It gets louder and when I look out the front window there, just off the overlook in front of me,  are three power kites close enough the folks at the overlook can nearly reach out and touch them.

This first shot is so blue because it is taken out of the upper tinted part of Winnona’s front window.  I didn’t get outside in time to get a picture of all
three of them but this yellow power sailor circled back a second time over the motor homes on the ocean side.

 

My favorite sport as a kid was water skiing and if I were that age now I would MOST definitely be wanting to kite surf.  It looks like so much fun.  The closest thing to real flying without the noise of the power kite engines.   Do these power kites remind you of Dick Van Dyke and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang zipping around in the air?   Or am I off on a planet by myself??

David wonders what Orville and Wilber would think of them.

 

Thursday December 6

 

This is so convenient it almost seems like cheating.

Often I have to drive or at least walk some distance in order to see the sun rise or set.  It’s seldom right outside my front door.  But today I go out in my pajamas and a sweatshirt to catch the sunrise from the overlook which really is just right outside my door.  

 

 

Just off to the left of sunrise in both of these pictures you can see the portent of things to come.

 

 

Here’s a better picture after the sun has risen.  Rain and clouds over the ocean.  Moving in our direction.  Beautiful but………………

 

None the less, the fisher folk are out here in numbers we haven’t seen before.  I come to learn that many of the people who reserve sites at Gamble Rogers are here to fish.   These folks were all here just after sunrise.  Some of them are prepared to get wet.

 

 

I go out for a run, tempting the rain by taking no rain gear.  But the rain doesn’t move inland and later in the morning, I’m in my element.

 

 

 

Am I approaching too many beach photographs? 

Looking up the beach from my spot. 

Looking down the beach.

 

In the afternoon when the wind really picks up and it’s a bit too breezy and chilly to walk the beach, I enjoy reading in my chair.  Life is tough; I’m trying to get by.

 

Gamble Rogers is another of the rare places where you can see both the sun rise and sunset relatively close by.  In this case we just hop on our bikes and go across Highway A1A and over to the boat launch site on the inner coastal waterway.

 

 

Don’t forget to look behind you when you are watching the sun set.  The skies in the east are often also lovely and very different from those in the west at sunset.

 

Beauty all around me.