We decided to expand our typical run so far by almost double. To date Gainesville had been the furthest we had traveled, so we decided 250 miles to Ft. Clinch would be do-able. We wanted to see how we would feel after 4-5 hours of towing. The drive did go very well although we did discover that we need to be more selective about gas stations we stop at. Many gas stations are designed for small cars and maneuvering 50 feet of truck and trailer thru one can be challenging. We were looking for a pull thru type pump and the Shell station we pulled into had one, it unfortunately was not working. We learned the hard way that the trailer just doesn’t follow the truck’s path but can pivot on it’s own axles. You do need to make very wide turns. We ran a foul of one of those protective pipes they put around the pumps and managed to scrape Minnie’s side.The white paint wiped off with a little solvent but I will have to bang out a small crease in the slide out’s bottom edge. Luckily we never bought the all aluminum Airstream we were lusting for. That would have wound up as about $8000 in damage probably. Next time we’ll just keep going till we find a bigger gas station or truck stop.

Fort Clinch State Park sits on the Florida/Georgia border about as far North as you can go in the state of Florida. Getting here involves some tight turns on back streets in Fernandina and it’s easy to miss the entrance. In general it’s a nice park with huge over hanging oaks on the roads (really tall RVs might have to watch those branches or good bye A/C! We decided to stay in the river campground vs the beach. There are no shade trees on the beach one and it looks more like a parking lot than an RV site. The sites there are very close with no vegetation and in the full sun. In the summer it has to get very hot there. There is some standing water back in the river sites so I imagine it is crawling with mosquitoes in the warm months. You need to watch the length of your site as some are short. Ours was 35 feet but we wound up with the bike rack right up against the fence. One thing about this  camp ground that is really great, it gets the award for best bathrooms! They are brand new, extremely clean, heated and A/C’d! Closed doored so no mosquitoes or tons of hanging spider webs.

Thursday night, the high winds and rain had finally ended but I kept waking up to what sounded like highway sounds, that low roar you hear when you are too close to a highway. And I thought I heard train whistles and the clickity clack of train wheels. We finally figured out the next day that the noises were coming from the wood processing plant (paper?) up the river in Fernandina. If we were in a tent I’d have never gotten to sleep.  Below are some more photos of Fort Clinch, lots more on my website http://www.fishbourne.shutterfly.com