Tossed Out of Kathryn Abbey Hanna

Written:  May 28, 2020                                                             Recent Posts:
About: March 2020                                     March 2020:  Anastasia and Its Market
Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park      Late February 2020: My Last Kayaking Adventures
Jacksonville Florida and North

On Tuesday, the drive from St. Augustine to Jacksonville Beach is an easy one and I find the park with no trouble.  It appears to be in a maritime forest beside the beach.  I wish I had taken some pictures of the park’s entrance and the road leading to the campground but my mind is too occupied.

I’m a bit apprehensive about Kathryn Abbey Hanna as I’ve done some research and found many comments about how tight the sites are and narrow the roads.

The carefully taken picture above of my site makes it look spacious but the ones below show the true situation.

There are a lot of sites here and the colors tell you the size of rigs they will accept.  Rose is up to 35’ and yellow is up to 40’.  Winnona is 35 feet so I tried to book  yellow to give me wiggle room but I didn’t book in time and had to take site 121 which was purple.  If you look closely you can see it 5 sites down in row 6 from the left relatively near the lake.  

Here’s the view looking toward the lake.

And here’s looking the other direction down toward the rest of the campground.

The view out  my front window is at least not another campsite straight on though it doesn’t match up to Gamble’s front window view.

Out my side window is my nearest neighbor.

I spent most of my first day getting to Kathryn Abbey Hanna and setting up in the campsite.  On Wednesday, Day 2 of my stay, I walked all around checking out the trails, the lake for kayaking, the Atlantic Shore.

I determined I’d have to get out my kayak cart to get the kayak up to the lake but it wasn’t too far from my site so that shouldn’t be hard.  With two weeks here, I’ll lock it up like this canoe so I can come and go especially in the early morning.

I walked up and down all the campground roads checking out where the closest bathroom was, the campground host and the size and set up of other sites.

Leaving the campground I find swamps, streams, and boardwalks on the way to the beach.

Like  Anastasia, KAH has a long boardwalk to the beach.

It’s a really nice wide and long beach with no commercial interruptions.  It’s so interesting to look at the different kinds of sand on the beaches along the Florida East Coast.  This is much heavier sand than at Anastasia.

On Wednesday, day 3, the detailers came and went.  They were supposed to be here at 8:30 and didn’t come until 10:30 which should have let me know what I was in for.  They said they could do nothing about the gray spots and charged me $150 to wash the entire rig but only wax the painted parts which is about 1/3 or less of the rig.  I was pretty irritated and felt quite taken advantage of.

NOW WHAT??  It was the gray spots I wanted them to take care of.  I had sent them pictures of the problem.  The same problems pictured in my last post.   I’m at a loss to know what to do now.  I’ve sure been taken for a ride on this.

To relax, I spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach.

It wasn’t quite warm enough for me to want to be in the water but some people seemed to like it fine.

  

I guess the proof that I’m getting old is that I’m embarrassed for this woman.   She did make me laugh though and after the beginning of my day I was very thankful for that.

On day 4, Thursday, I went out for breakfast which was to prove to be the last restaurant meal I have eaten in 2020.  But it was delicious.  Had I known it was to be my last meal out I would have enjoyed it even more.

When I arrived back at the campground mid morning, there was a note on my door saying the campground would be closed as of 5:0o today.

OH RIGHT!  And where am I supposed to go? Finding a campground in Florida in March, Spring Break month, is nearly impossible even 11 months in advance let alone a day in advance and on a Friday.  They must be kidding.

I had made other reservations after these two weeks for  my trip north to Virginia.   On the way to Virginia my reservations would allow me to go to some of David’s favorite places to scatter his ashes; to Cumberland Island in Georgia and Congaree National Park in South Carolina.   But now I have a 10 day hole before those reservations and no way to fill it.  

I’d planned to be in Virginia for 6 weeks in late April and May then make my way north to the Finger Lakes and then Maine for the summer.

I get a reprieve from leaving for today, Friday, and leave on Saturday March 14, 10 days early. They say I’ll get a complete refund.  I am out of the campground by 2 pm pretty much one of the very last people in this large campground to go.  I stop at Walmart in St. Mary’s Georgia where I  try to change my upcoming reservations to fill in this 10 day gap but have absolutely no luck.  I can’t get prequels at either place I’m booked into already. 

The next day I try to find other places to fill in these ten days but that proves impossible too so I finally give up and cancel everything and Walmart it back three days to Virginia where it is 33 degrees at night and I feel like I’ve done time travel back to winter.  What a mess this whole pandemic is making out of my and everyone’s life.

Back in Charlottesville the quarantine is in full swing.  I can’t go anywhere or see anyone.  I feel like I’m in an alternate universe.  I’m still making reservations for next winter while I’ve just cancelled all my remaining March and April reservations.

Four days after arriving back and on the Spring Equinox I take a hike at the Ivy Creek Nature Center to mark this special day.  The two pictures above are from that hike.   The trees are bare.  That makes it possible for me to take a picture of the creek from above but it’s been 10 years since I’ve done these hikes when the woods hasn’t been full of green.

This sure doesn’t look anything like spring.

But still it’s wonderful to be out in nature walking on a board walk  through a seasonal wetland even if it’s pretty dried up just now.  There is still the creek and river.

One thing I love about full time RVing is being out in nature every day.  3 nights in a Walmart parking lot and several days trying to get things organized here have put me in a blue mood.

These waters and the lack of greenery are so different from where I was just a week ago.  I never make such a mad dash north in the spring knowing what I’ll find in Virginia.

Still just being back out in the natural world improves my spirits.

The rhododendron is green but no blooms for a while yet.  Normally I’m not back here until mid to late April.

I’ve come out relatively early in the morning and see almost no one on the trails but when I get back to the parking lot around 11, it is totally full and on a week day.  I’m shocked!  But I’ve forgotten that no one is working any more and the lock down is relatively new.

They’ve cancelled my normal March fun activity, the ACC Basketball Tournament and NCAA Championships so the rest of the month finds me getting groceries and trying to figure out how to adjust to this new normal.  I don’t take any more pictures other than this one in the grocery store parking lot.

I wonder if they just got this plate or if they had a premonition.

So much for March 2020.  I have fewer pictures and even less to say about April.  But that’s coming up next.