SA Japanese Tea Gardens and a follow up to our engine repairs…

When in San Antonio I forgot to mention a neat place, we visited while staying at our son’s house. Our son told us we need to check out the Japanese Tea Garden close to where the Cummins Service Center was located. So, one afternoon after we went to check on the RV at Cummins to stop by.

The Japanese Tea Garden is a lush, beautiful park that was created from an abandoned rock quarry. The garden includes a 60 foot waterfall, koi ponds, a pagoda-style pavilion, and a café. There are walking paths and trails that take you around the garden. Several picturesque stone bridges. Cross the waterways.

It was constructed in 1918 by prisoners for about  $7,000.It has paid  for itself multiple times over as it includes areas that are available for rent for functions such as for small weddings. A small wedding was being set up while visited. It is a nice place to visit on hot day in San Antonio.

When I last blogged we had just left San Antonio and were  quite pleased at how the RV handled during our drive. When we arrived in College Station Texas we set up our site and settled in.

As soon as set up Sharon insisted we needed to rent a carpet cleaner because the Cummins service folks left quite a mess around the opening to the engine.Curious about the work they had done we started to inspect things closer. There was quite a bit of engine grime all around the front area so I decided I needed to take this up with the Cummins people.

Before calling I lifted up the engine opening cover to inspect their work.  The top of the engine was very clean but when I crawled under the RV to inspect the underside of the engine I was horrified to see oil everywhere. Oil was dripping off of multiple surfaces prompting me to immediately call Cummins in San Antonio.

When I called the service manager was very understanding and told us have the carpets cleaned and they would pay for the service. He also stated that we should take our RV to a nearby service center and if the oil leak was due to their work they would pay for it.

We chose to simply rent a carpet cleaner so we could do the cleaning ourselves to our satisfaction. As for the oil leak it took a while before we could get it serviced. Once we did they determined the valve cover gasket was the likely culprit and ordered the part. We have since returned and had the service performed.

While we certainly weren't pleased with the original work on our RV we were very pleased with how their customer service made things right. We would return for service there because of that and do recommend them for the same reason.

Fingers crossed that this is now all FINALLY behind us!

Last trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens…

Since we previously blogged about the Desert Botanical Gardens I won’t be adding any text about it here. I will simply share some photos of all the sights including the highlight of this visit, the many butterflies and flowering cacti. Enjoy!

Next stop Tucson AZ!

Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens in AZ

While the weather in Mesa this year hasn’t been as warm as we have experienced in the past, it has not kept us from being active. We haven’t hiked as much as would have liked this year, but we are still here for another month or so. We expect this weather to break and normalcy to arrive soon.

In the meantime, we have been simply enjoying our resort park. However, we did make time to visit the Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens. We have visited the garden before and enjoyed it so much we had to return.

As before we went the one day a month when entrance to the park is free. On the second Tuesday of each month access is free for visitors but the requirement is to obtain a ticket online so as to manage the crowd. With parking always free it makes this a fun and frugal day trip.

Upon arrival we spent the better part of an afternoon strolling around the gardens which are nestled amongst the red rocks of the Papago Buttes. There are several loop trails within the campus representing different types of natural gardens. The varieties of cacti are as numerous as anywhere we have ever visited. 

It is stated that the garden currently has more than 50,000 plants from more than 4,000 different taxa. Additionally, about one-third of these plants are native to the area, including 379 species, which are rare, threatened or endangered.

The last time we visited several years ago we spent a good deal of time enjoying the variety of butterflies in the butterfly sanctuary. However, to our dismay it was closed until spring this year. Oh well we plan to go again in March and are hopeful it will be open then.

We noticed there were also lots of plants just starting to flower offering small splashes of color here and there. With the backdrop of the red rocks there were plenty of photo ops which of course we took advantage of.

We spent several hours enjoying the plants, butterflies and birds in the gardens. Upon leaving we decided to go to go to Four Peaks Brewing for happy hour in Tempe AZ.. They have some tasty craft brews making for the perfect ending to a great day.

Why are some camp hosts so rude?

Again the time came to move on so we packed up the RV and entered another state  into South Carolina. We were heading to a new, for us, campground named Conerose Campground which is a COE campground located on the huge Lake Hartwell.

Near the small town of Townville, SC this is another fabulous COE campground. We did run into a challenge getting there though. I knew from looking at the drive using Google Satellite View that the last few miles would be on crappy roads. What we didn’t know was that we would have to make two u-turns to get to the park. Yikes! However, it was our own fault using our GPS and not noticing beforehand there were two Conerose roads.

We finally arrived at the gate house and were informed that someone was still in the site. No biggie. I politely asked where we could park to wait and the gate attendant curtly states we have to leave the park outside the gate. She proceeds to tell us to make a u-turn behind the gate house, which is totally impossible for our sized rig to do.

I explain this to her so then I was told that I should drive through the host loop to get turned around which I was able to do. Outside the gate house I pull over on the narrow road so I could get out to assess what lies ahead to do yet another U-turn so I would be pointed back toward the park. That’s when Miss Surly sternly hollers that I can’t park there as I am not yet outside the gate!

To which I say, sorry, but I am going to look at my U-turn options ahead before moving any further. She then tells me I can do a loop through the neighborhood. And marches back to her gate house. As I peruse my options once again her advice would have been dreadful for our sized RV so I found a spot where we could back into and turn around once unhitched.

We waited an hour and a half before the person finally departed our site. As we were checking in little Miss Surly had suddenly become little Miss Bubbly only after Sharon emotionally confronted her about her lack of useful information in front of a co-worker. I am guessing she was afraid of being reported. Unfortunately she is not the first surly camp host we have encountered and I am sure not the last. Some people relish the power embodied by being a camp host while others are truly welcoming.

Once settled we loved our large and heavily wooded site. We chose this area as it was close to Clemson SC and we wanted to visit the University. A short drive away we found the University and both felt it was a bit underwhelming especially after visiting the magnificent University of Alabama (maybe we had overhyped our expectations). We did stroll around a bit but the highlight was the SC Botanical Gardens on the campus.

We hiked a beautiful lush trail along a creek and encountered lots of birds and beautifully landscaped planting. Near the end of the trail was a small cabin that reminded us of one of our stays in a cabin in Gatlinburg TN near a babbling creek. We highly recommend this short hike as there is much to see. Many of today’s photos are from this garden. It was very enjoyable and washed away all the unpleasantness from the day before.

Turkey Creek Sanctuary and FIT’s Botanical Garden near Melbourne Florida…

All good things come to an end and so did our stay at Flagler Beach Florida. We packed up the RV and headed further south until arriving at Wickham Park, a Brevard County Park. We have stayed often in this park as it usually has sites available and if  one is lucky enough to score a site on the back row like we did it will be a really large site. We plan to be here six nights before moving further south.

One fun thing about Wickham Park is that we able to walk to the disc golf course within the park and enjoy a nice round of disc golf. This course has 22 holes fairly well marked out with only a small amount of water coming into play. The biggest hazards are palmetto thickets which of course we landed in often and had to spend a good deal of time searching for discs. Boy isn't our life rough…

One day we drove over to the Turkey Creek Sanctuary which has a nice (but short) 1.6 mile hike through the woods. With much of the trail on wooden boardwalks hiking there is relatively easy. The planks of the boardwalk are mostly claimed by donors as many of them had their names or honorariums placed on them. The trail was through typical vegetation for this region and also took us along part of the banks of Turkey Creek. We did spot a few Gopher Turtles and not much else but that didn’t stop us from enjoying this hike.

Another afternoon we drove over to the Botanical Gardens at the Florida Institute of Technology. We had a hard time finding parking so I asked a parking patrol person where we could park and he said “Follow me”.  I followed his three wheeler where he pointed out a reserved spot indicating we should park there park there. Cool… he then gave us walking directions to the garden.

This 15 acre Botanical Garden has a stream meandering throughout the garden. Overhead is a shady hammock of mostly palm trees . The garden is right in the heart of the campus and we noticed students passing through it on the way to class. The main trail was named after Dent Smith in honor of him being the founder of the Palm Society which is a worldwide organization whose focus is the study of the palm family. It was a neat little park and we love the botanical gardens in Florida as they are always so tropical and “other worldly.”

With a few more days in Wickham we will relax then slowly move on making our way to Bonita Springs by the first of December. Our next stop will be in Vero Beach to spend some quality time with Sharon's cousin John and his wife Penny whom we always look forward to spending time with.. As always we are still very thankful for the experiences we have enjoyed in this lifestyle On the Road of Retirement…

NOTE: We are now in Vero Beach, Florida until just after Thanksgiving…

Enjoying a Stroll in the Duke Gardens NC…

It sure has been great to see the sun again after Hurricane Florence held us hostage in the RV for nearly a week without a lot of outdoor activity. We did sneak in a few rounds of disc golf and visited a few breweries or tap houses but it was pretty dismal while the storm was raging in the area. Now that the sun has returned we free to resume normal activity. The people who stayed in Wilmington are not so lucky as they are pretty much cut off from the rest of the state because of extreme flooding. 

One of our first outings was a trip to a place we always make a point to visit in nearby Chapel Hill NC, the Duke Botanical Gardens. We definitely feel Duke Gardens is a must visit locale. The gardens are a part of Duke University and are free to visitors but may require paid parking. We were lucky to score a free parking space and walked to the gardens to enjoy them.

While there are many attractions in the gardens my favorite is the Blomquist Garden of Native Plants which is home to over 900 species of regional native plants. With many of the plants donning a name placard telling what the plant is it is a great way to learn a few new plants. Sharon’s favorite garden is the Asiatic Arboretum. She loves the red Asian Inspired red bridge featured there but unfortunately it was under repair during this visit.

One thing we also love doing after touring the gardens is drive over to nearby Carrboro NC and visit the Co-op there called Weaver Street Market. We like to buy food and adult beverages then take them to a table out front under the large oak trees to consume. This is a favorite spot of ours ever since we first discovered it back when Katie played collegiate softball in the area. It is a very pleasant place to sit and watch the world go by. It is definitely a place that brings back good memories for us.

We also snuck in a visit to a Raleigh Brewery called Crank Arm where we tried a flight of beers. We weren’t too impressed with eastern NC beers last time we visited this area but there are a lot of new breweries and happily they are starting to make some nice and tasty brews.

We will remain in Raleigh until after Katie and Brooks’ wedding in mid-October and we are taking the time to take care of Sharon’s yearly medical appointments and beginning to make plans for our travel route for our return to our favorite winter destination on the east coast, Bonita Springs Florida… hopefully the hurricanes will stay away the rest of this year!

NOTE: We are now at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds again as we wait for other parks in the area to reopen…