Every day I have been riding my bike, this is a great place to ride the bike because it's flat and all the roads in the campground are blacktop. I love to ride the bike but unlike my buddy Pete, who likes to climb mountains with his bike, I like to cruse around without much effort.
Bev has been very active here (as usual). She has been teaching line dancing 4 days a week and this past Saturday she had a table at the campground tag sale. This is a smaller campground and all the "snow birds" have not arrived yet so she didn't have much activity at her table. Actually there were only two tables set up and neither of them did much but she had fun.
Here are some of the things she made with her beads.
Here are some dog bone treats and turkey pins she made. She just loves doing her crafts and it keeps her out of trouble.
I don't mess around with crafts. My craft is messing around with camper maintenance which is an ongoing process with any RV.
We did drive around the area a bit seeing the old sites from our stay here last year. Of course we did get out to eat at some of our old stops. Did I tell you we like to eat out.
This week is Thanksgiving and we will be enjoying the feast here at the campground. We will probably also continue driving around the area seeing the sights.
As I mentioned in the last blog I didn't have time to cover all the places we toured on our last stop so I will cover our tour of Folkston, GA.
Folkston, GA which is known as "The Gateway To the Okefenokee Swamp" is also known as "Train Lovers Paradise". Over 60 trains a day pass through the The "Folkston Funnel" which is a double track serving as the main artery from railroad traffic into and out of Florida. All the CSXT's trains moving to Florida (except the few trains that go west) must pass through the Funnel.
Waycross, GA, which is just north of Folkston, is the home of CSXT's Rice yard, the largest rail yard in the southeast.
Intermodal trains that originate in the northeast move south through Savannah, down to Jacksonville. The intermodal trains from the Midwest move south through Atlanta down to Jacksonville. The northbound trains just reverse the routing. The unit coal trains originate in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia, and move south through the funnel to the coal-fired generating plants in North and Central Florida. When these trains are empty, they will return to the coal mines by reverse routing.
In addition to these trains you can see loaded and empty automobile rack trains and molten sulfur trains going to the Bone Valley in Central Florida.
There are also eight Amtrak trains passing through the Funnel each day; four southbound and four northbound. The Auto Train is one of these which originates in Sanford, Florida and terminates in Lorton, Virginia. (If you don't want to drive your car to Florida you can load it on the train and have an enjoyable train ride to Florida.) Tropicana Juice Train moves from Bradenton, Florida to Kearney, New Jersey five nights a week.
A unique thing in Folkston is the "Train Watcher's Platform" which is located on the east side of the track. The platform features lights, ceiling fans, and a scanner to listen in to radio traffic between trains. Adjacent to the platform are picnic tables, a grill, and a new restroom facility for guests. We were able to listen to the train crews talking as they approached and passed by the platform. They also have flood lights shining on the tracks from each end of the platform for night viewing.
Trains can also be enjoyed from the grounds of the restored Folkston depot, just diagonally across the tracks from the platform. The depot is also home for the Folkston Train Museum which we visited.
This guy in the yard of the Train Depot/Museum almost looks real.
There were many displays of old time train equipment and tools.
They even had and old phone used in the train stations. Hey, I have one like that hanging on the wall in my house. It was given to us a long time ago from an old friend who worked for the railroad.
They even had an electric train display set up which they ran for us. Oh the memories of my old train set from the past.
While we were in Folkston we had to try out the local food so we stopped at the "Whistlin' Dixie"for lunch. It is located in the old section of Folkston and along with a little diner it is a gift store and a section where they do framing. It is run by a bunch of little old ladies which were having a great time there. As you can see they already have the Christmas decorations up.
Well that concludes our past touring, now I will try to keep this blog up-to-date. I can't complain though, we're having too much fun to have time to write about it.
Tom & Bev livin and lovin the RV lifestyle.
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