Gibbs Gardens en Route Home

The pansies everywhere added a lot of color and beauty.  

They claim to have 20 million daffodils that last for about 6 weeks since they plant a variety that bloom at different times.

the Manor where the owner lives

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom - so beautiful!

the most unusual daffodil I saw out of several varieties

 

Eighth and Last Stop: Petersburg Campground

Our last weekend of the trip we were on campsite #75 on Strom Thurmond Lake at Petersburg Campground.  It was so windy and cold, so we only sat out by our "fire" awhile Sabbath evening after getting back from our ride.  

Fri. night sunset

Sabbath we headed out on our bikes at about 11 on the Bartram Trail.

It was narrow in places, definitely a single track mountain biking trail.

Time for a bike break and snack.  This was the only bench we saw along the part of the trail we biked.  We covered about 20 miles total in the five hours we were on the trails.  

The trail was along the lake most of the way.

The empty campsite beside us Sat. night gave us more breathing room.  Most sites had more space between neighbors than ours  and were on the water. I hope we go back sometime to bike more of the 27- mile trail, through the Lake Springs Rec Area towards West Dam, which is the easier part of the trail.  We started out on the intermediate part between our campground and Wildwood Park, and it was a little too exciting in places with logs to get over, rocks to bike over, ditches, gullies, mudholes to walk way around . . . No wonder we didn't see any other bikers on that part of the trail!  Somehow we didn't get the memo.

 

Seventh Stop: Huntington Beach State Park with the Grands!

Our site 88 had close neighbors but lots of space behind.  When I booked it in January, there were only two sites available that had 5 days in a row available so we were happy to take them.  Ryan's site 40 was the nicer site with more space around it.

When we took our bikes off the rack, we discovered my front tire was flat.  Randy was able to patch it successfully so we got in a couple of nice rides on the Bike the Neck Trail that we got on at the park entrance.  

Going out for their first time on the beach here on Mon. morning early

shell collecting fun

Gotta collect those beach treasures!

Yes, it was windy and cold!

Some creations made from beach collectibles were planted in the sand

We all enjoyed a 12-mile ride into town and back on the bike trail.

Yep, China is still down there.

They were digging up live clam shells and moving them to their lakes

art class at the beach

Would ya look at her round!

Sunrise our last morning there

The site we moved to without any danger of a tree falling onto our rig when we had the strong risk of tornadoes.

Taking down camp, and time for good-byes 

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