- [GPS] Welcome to Georgia. (guitar music) - In this final installment
of the Summer 2020 Road Trip, we're going to visit the Blairsville area. Red Top Mountain State Park, beautiful Savannah and Jetty Park at Port Canaveral, Florida. (upbeat music) ♪ I'm riding ♪ ♪ Riding, riding ♪ ♪ Riding in my RV ♪ ♪ My RV ♪ ♪ Wherever I want to be ♪ ♪ Because I'm free ♪ ♪ In my RV, yeah ♪ (upbeat music) Brasstown Bald is the
tallest mountain in Georgia and we're going to be very
close near Blairsville. We're staying at Trackrock Campground and do not trust your GPS. It will send you to a dead end. The campground is right here to the left. So let's check in and find our site. (upbeat music) Here we are. Beautiful site here at
Trackrock Campground, near Blairsville, Georgia. (birds chirping) Let's make lunch. We have the potatoes, in about 20 minutes,
we'll add the chicken. (chicken sizzling) Starting to look good, let me tell you. (chicken sizzling) Yeah, that is pretty good. And then I'll continue editing. It's a beautiful area here and you probably haven't noticed because, I mean, as far as you're concerned, we probably just arrived here, right? But, you know, we've been
here for almost two full days and you know my time has
been pretty much editing. Editing the next video. Sometimes you need to have a work day and that's what yesterday
and today have been. Now I'm doing laundry. I mean, the trip is pretty
much coming to an end soon here the Summer 2020 Road Trip. Tomorrow Ily is flying into, no, not tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm moving, I'm moving to Red Top Mountain State Park to be kind of close to
the Atlanta Airport. And the day after
tomorrow, Ily is flying in and it's probably gonna
be mostly a family day. I don't know how much
I'm gonna be filming. And then back to Florida and yeah, three days on
the road, back to Florida, which is a whole lot
from Atlanta to Miami is, you can make it in one day but towing the trailer is three or two. So, that's the story. By the way this area of
Georgia is so, so beautiful. And I was gonna go to
Helen, I changed my mind. We're relatively close to
Helen, relatively close to, to Brasstown Bald,
Georgia's tallest mountain been there already. So we're just gonna stay
here at the campground and enjoy this beautiful
lake they have here. And they have a little
trail that goes that way. I might take that too. (upbeat music) All right, let's go on this
trail here for a little bit. Maybe I should be getting
back to the laundry room in about 10 minutes or so. That's how long I think
it's going to take. Such beautiful weather
today, such a pleasant day. It's gotta be like, the low 70s, sunny. I mean, doesn't get much
better than this, weather-wise. (upbeat music) Check it out. They have a small swimming beach area. Let's go for a little ride. (metals clanking) Oh, Mr. Berkey. Mr. Berkey. There it is, the world's
largest Amish chair. - [GPS] Continue for three miles. (car engine revving) - All right, if you
think I look different, I just had a haircut here
at Tom's Barber Shop. Check him out if you
are here in Blairsville. Very cool guy. And now I think it made
me look good, almost. (Robert laughs) All right, I think that's
all I'm gonna do today. I'm just gonna go back
to the RV and relax. Maybe I'll go by that winery. I decided to stop by Paradise Hills, grab some wine to take for the family. (soft upbeat music) It is a beautiful property
and they have goats. (instrumental music) All right, I think I've neglected this sticker map for way too long. I mean, we've come full circle. We've done one of these, you know like all around the United States. We almost made it to the
West Coast, not quite. But yeah, it's time to fill
up our sticker map here. And as you know, we started in Florida, we did Georgia and Alabama,
went into North Carolina, the Waynesville area, Blue Ridge Parkway then I drove, clear across
Tennessee into Missouri. We went into Illinois briefly just at the, Cairo, Illinois, the
confluence of the two rivers. And then we lingered in
Missouri for a little bit and then up to Iowa. That was the next state. So let's go into Iowa. Iowa, we got hit by that
crazy storm, derecho storm. And I got to meet, Anant and I got to meet Steve. I really liked Iowa and at some point I wanna explore more Iowa. As you know, I wanna do all the
great cities of the Midwest. We did not go into Wisconsin but we did spend some time in Minnesota. We didn't do any of the
big cities, of course, but we went to the headwaters
of the Mississippi River. I stayed at that lake house, Earl and Kathy's house up there at the lake house in Northern Minnesota. That was very special. And from there we cut
across into North Dakota. North Dakota was pretty cool the first part was, you know, flat grass, you know, farmland as expected. But once we hit Western North Dakota we got into the Badlands
and that was, you know I almost got emotional at
that moment because I'm like, (inhales deeply) yeah we are in the West. It starts feeling like the West. And as I think I quoted in the... from the book, "Travels With Charley." What a great book. Written, so perfectly written. He goes: That's where the
map, you know, at the, when you cross the Missouri River there that's where they should fold the map because the landscape
really changes, you know, once you cross the Missouri River there. So that was really, that was really cool. North Dakota was one of the last states in my old map that I had to fill out. And then we crossed into Montana. And that's when we started
seeing some of that smoke from the West Coast fires. But Montana was another
state that I had a kind of cheated the first time I went there. So I wanted to correct that. And of course the highlight of Montana was Glacier National
Park, which was amazing. Now from Montana, I actually
went down into Wyoming for a little bit, as you probably recall. And we just drove through
Yellowstone National Park, actually stayed in
Wyoming at that campground just outside Yellowstone. No, that campground was in Montana, that was in Gardiner, Montana. But you know, we went
into Yellowstone, so... Oops, oops! You know, sometimes I... Yeah, definitely Wyoming
belongs in this map because we saw some of the
geysers we had never seen before. Then we went back to Idaho one more time. And I finally got to see the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Mesa Falls was also very cool to see. And I got to boondock
there near Mesa Falls. Of course we didn't go into Washington or Oregon but I wanted to do at least a couple of miles
of the loneliest road. So we went into Nevada. Into this area of Nevada
called the Great Basin which is basically a desert. You know, we have several deserts, Great Basin is one of them. Then you have the Mojave Desert, there's the Chihuahuan Desert and then the other one, the
Sonoran Desert in Arizona. But this was the Great Basin which is basically Northern Nevada a little bit of Idaho and Western Utah. That would be the Great Basin Desert. And there's a national park there that, one of these days we're gonna
visit, but it was so smoky. I mean, it was really smoky in this area, just in this North Eastern
corner of Nevada that we visited. Then of course, Utah, I had
never been to Salt Lake City. And Utah is one of those states that there's so much to see. I have it in that same
category with Arizona. I mean, Arizona is one
of those states that, I wanna spend a month there. You know, you could spend a month there and still, you know, but Utah was great. Ily of course flew to Salt Lake City. We explored a little bit of city together. I met some, I met Bill there, a viewer and we did one of these, you know we went all the way to the South of Utah and we kind of zigzaged through. We did that road, famous road, I forget the number now. And then of course we went into Colorado and we got, you know,
Minitini for the first time. For the first time I got to, to overnight at a Walmart
parking lot under a snow storm, well, maybe a snow storm dusting, I think is what they call it. But it was very cool, it was
very cool to see the snow and it was a very, very
cool experience to wake up to a place that everything was white. Okay, we didn't do either
South Dakota or Nebraska. Those states were skipped
on this particular trip. But the other state where I had cheated in the previous trip was Kansas. So we basically drove, we didn't
do all that much in Kansas. Let's be honest about it. It was kind of rushed. We did see Monument Rocks on the West and then we stopped in Topeka and which is the capitol. We stayed at that Harvest Hosts and met Lucas of the
Greatness Vodka and all that. And then from Kansas, of course,
I went back into Missouri. I stayed at that campground
right on the Mississippi River. Then into Illinois, I spent some time with Mr. Lincoln there
in Springfield, Illinois. And then I went to what
I call the mothership. Winnebago of Indiana, where
Minnie Tinnie is made. And I got to hang out, you know, with Adam and Joel and Cassie. And we saw all the new Winnebagos. It was a good experience to have like my own private
RV show, if you will. And they took care of
certain little glitches that I had in Minitini. Then Ohio, of course and Ohio is where I spent
time with our friends, Jim and Barb and our new friends the Traveling Buckeyes, Corey and Christy. And we spent some time
at this beautiful lake, it's called the Indian
Lake, as you remember. I got to ride on that Amphicar
and it was a lot of fun. And then another state that
I've driven through many times, not many times, like five times, maybe four times, West Virginia. And I got to explore that the
New River Gorge and that area what a beautiful area, and what a great state, West Virginia. It's just, did I, no,
I didn't do it right. Darn it! Let me see if I can... I think there's, they
made the sticker smaller than the state. (chuckles) No, they didn't. It's just my astigmatism that
sometimes plays tricks on me. West Virginia, great people. I mean, the beautiful fall
colors were starting to appear. Beautiful, beautiful. And then from West Virginia, I kind of crossed into Virginia. I don't know if I should count it. I did skip by the way,
Kentucky completely. I didn't really do much in Virginia except driving through it. So, I'm not gonna count it. And actually I'm gonna put it. I did stop briefly in
Wytheville, Virginia. I didn't stop. I just drove through,
but Wytheville, Virginia was the first Walmart where
we ever boondocked overnight. So, I'm gonna cheat, I'm gonna cheat. And when I have, because
it looks kind of weird that you know, it's a gaping hole, like we drove through there. On this particular trip I'm
being a lot more lenient with some of the states and you know what, it's my map and it's my rules. I'm gonna add Virginia. And of course from Virginia, I went down to North
Carolina a little bit more we did Grandfather Mountain. I went into Tennessee
once again, and then, well, we're here and that's our map. (upbeat music) Before we go, I'm going
to fly a little bit, enjoy our surroundings from the air. And we'll be back to this area soon. I promise. In fact, at this point I can guarantee we'll be back in the spring of 2021. (upbeat music) The tall mountain on the right, is none other than Brasstown Bald. The highest point in the state of Georgia. And now the journey continues. It is time to go. We're going to Red Top
Mountain State Park, a good 30 miles North of Atlanta. (upbeat music) It is the world's largest Amish chair. And now we're going to drive
through downtown Blairsville and it's recently restored
historic courthouse, which is nowadays a museum. (upbeat music) I just remembered I have some
CDs and stickers to mail. Oh, no! It seems to be a dead end. (upbeat music) I always seem to get myself
into these situations. (upbeat music) Here we are. This is Allatoona Lake. We were here a couple of years ago, late 2017 if memory serves. And it is definitely, one
of my favorite state parks. And it is a perfect location to pick up Ily at the airport tomorrow. (upbeat music) This is our campsite here at the Red Top Mountain State Park. I remember the last time I was here, I was able to get one of
those campsites down there right next to the lake but
they were all booked this time. 2020 is the year where everybody
decided to camp, right? We've got water and electric here. (upbeat music) So I bought this shrimp. Oops! Frozen, a couple of weeks ago. I've been thawing it here in warm water. It seems to be sufficiently thawed. So let's cook it. Let's do like a Cuban
style camarones enchilados, which has nothing to do
with the Mexican enchilada. It is gonna be a Cuban
style Shrimp Creole. First of course, some onion and pepper. (piano music) Salt, black pepper. I've got some of these other peppers, too. Lots of peppers and some pico de gallo. And now I'm going to crush,
peel and mince my garlic. (piano music) I couldn't forget my cooking wine, right? I'm going to add some soy sauce because today I'm feeling adventurous. Cumin, a generous amount
of oregano, you know the usual stuff and
smoked paprika, of course. (instrumental music) A dash of sriracha to spice
things up and tomato sauce. (instrumental music) While that simmers a little bit, I'm going to boil some water
to make some Basmati rice. (instrumental music) Let's add the shrimp, to our sofrito and the shrimp should be
cooked in just a few minutes. (instrumental music) The Basmati should be ready
after 11 minutes or so and we just drain it. Note to self, I need to
buy a strainer for the RV. (instrumental music) I'm gonna have a little bit by itself and then I'll add the rice. (instrumental music) Yum! I have to check my trail map. This is the Iron Hill Trail. Maybe we can do it tomorrow. We'll see. (instrumental music) Good morning. We're going to Atlanta today to Hartsfield-Jackson International
Airport to pick up Ily. We're going to spend one night
together at the state park and then we're going to
moochdock in Acworth. And then it's back to Florida. Slowly, kind of. (upbeat music) We can already see the
downtown skyline on the horizon and it wouldn't be Atlanta
if there wasn't at least a little bit of traffic, right? And it's a huge, intense,
intimidating metropolis. And chances are at some point, you're gonna have to drive through it unless you choose the back roads. I believe this has to be
one of the worst bottlenecks in the entire Interstate Highway System. (instrumental music) Oh, by the way, Atlanta
has one of the coolest cellphone lots of any airport. (instrumental music) And we're back at Red Top Mountain. This is the easy Lakeside
Trail, paved, ADA accessible and that actually has
some of the nicest views of Allatoona Lake. (upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) We decided to come back in the morning, explore a little more of the trail. Here we have some historic structures, here's a dogtrot cabin. Designed in a way to make the
Southern heat more bearable. What a beautiful place this
is, everywhere you look. (soft upbeat music) It's a little bit of a tight
turn, but we'll make it. (soft upbeat music) Oh, there's a line at the dump station. Okay, fifth wheel guy gave up and it looks like this guy is doing some black tank, deep cleaning and I don't really need to dump yet. So we're leaving too. (soft upbeat music) We did have a great time, moochdocking with family in Acworth but there's no video of that. Good morning. It is, of course, one
of those long goodbyes. (upbeat music) As I have said before,
driving through Atlanta is usually an adventure onto itself. But I think today we timed it right. It is mid morning on a Saturday
and traffic is not too bad. I'm not gonna bore you with the uneventful drive on I-75 South
and later on I-16 East. It is the interstate after all. And except for rare occasions so unless there are mountains or cities, there's usually not a whole lot to see. (upbeat music) Well, here we are. The first campground we ever stayed at, Red Gate in Savannah, Georgia. (instrumental music) Here we are at Red Gate Campground. In the outskirts of Savannah. Of course, it wouldn't be Savannah. It wouldn't be Savannah if we didn't have a
Spanish moss-draped tree right behind our campsite. These are some of my favorites trees. It is so quintessential, right? The Live Oak, with the Spanish Moss. Of course fun fact, this was
our first campground ever back in, I believe it was 2011 when we rented our first Cruise
America and we stayed here. This was our first stop
on that road trip to Ohio. At the time, I believe
we stayed in one of these campgrounds here,
campsites here to the left. Very reasonably priced, for being just a few minutes
away from downtown Savannah. No, I don't think we're
gonna go to Savannah today. We're just gonna relax here. And maybe tomorrow morning,
we'll drive into the city with Minnie Tinnie too in tow. We'll see. (instrumental music) We had every intention
of going to Savannah this morning for breakfast. Spend a little time walking
around the historic district but we overslept. So we're just gonna
drive around a little bit and then off to Florida, we go. (instrumental music) Here we are, this is Martin
Luther King Jr. Boulevard. And coming up here to the left is the Savannah Visitors Center which apparently has RV
parking available for they use. (instrumental music) This is now Bay Street where many of the major hotel chains are. We're two blocks away from
River Street and City Hall with its golden dome is coming up. And the main reason we
are not too persistent on exploring today is because
we've been here before, both on the RV trip in 2011
and then on another road trip to New York, which we made later that year and we stayed at a hotel here. Let me tell you, I love this city. And I wish we had the time
to stay a little longer but we do have to arrive in
South Florida by tomorrow. The historic district is dotted with all these beautiful squares. This one is called Reynolds Square. The most famous one nowadays
being Chippewa Square because that's where Forrest
Gump's bench was located. (instrumental music) This is now Oglethorpe
Street, busy corner here. (instrumental music) And here's the aforementioned
Chippewa Square of Forrest Gump fame. (instrumental music) Now let's cruise around Forsyth Park which is this large area here to the left. The park is over 30 acres and is surrounded by all
of these beautiful houses. What we won't see this time around is the fountain near the North
end of the park, very iconic. And it is very similar to those at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. (instrumental music) Last but not least, Jones Street, considered the most
picturesque in Savannah. (instrumental music) Now, how do we get out of here? (instrumental music) Down to Florida we go on I-95. Another mostly uninteresting
stretch of interstate. Who was it that said it? It was journalist, Charles Grout famous for his "On The Road" segments on the CBS Evening News
with Walter Cronkite. He said, and I quote, "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System. "It is now possible to
travel across the country "from coast to coast
without seeing anything." And when it comes to stretches
like these, I tend to agree. (upbeat music) And we're back in the Sunshine State. Ironically, it is supposed to rain. (upbeat music) We're back in Florida. Back in Florida after almost three months just a week short of three months. And I have it here because I never reset my trip odometer. 13,487.8 miles. Yeah, it's been a long
trip, longest to date not mileswise, but lengthwise. And we still have, how many
miles to Miami, Florida? - [GPS] You are 371 miles away from Miami. - Yeah, arriving in Florida
doesn't mean arriving home. We're still half of Texas away from home but we're on the home state. So the adventure continues
for a little bit. We're gonna stay at a place that I've been wanting to
stay in for a long time. And that's Jetty Park. They're there in Port Canaveral. You've seen it before in one of my videos, I'll put a link somewhere. That's Jacksonville and yeah, I killed some kind of
bug with the GoPro again. (instrumental music) I told you it was gonna rain. You think whoever put up
that sign is from Miami? (instrumental music) And here we are driving across
the Intracoastal Waterway also known as the Indian
River Lagoon in these parts. Going towards Merritt Island. (instrumental music) This second bridge goes
over the Banana River onto Port Canaveral. (instrumental music) Very strange to see Port Canaveral
without any cruise ships. It is 2020, all right. Here we are. We've made it. And since we're only here for one night, let's take advantage of the hour or so we have left before sunset. (upbeat music) Talk about biting more than you can chew and it doesn't want to share either. (upbeat music) Yeah, sunset is a pannus. And it's gonna choke on that fish. Watch it. (birds chirping) Still trying. (birds chirping)
(upbeat music) Pelican. (soft upbeat music) And here's the beach and the jetty that
gives the park its name. (upbeat music) Well, here we are, sun
setting on the West. And we finally made it
to Jetty Park here in, in the Port Canaveral area. The last stop of our 2020 road trip, Summer 2020. We ended here on the East Coast. There's a ship leaving port. So we're gonna film that now. That's gonna be cool. Look at that. (bright upbeat music) I've often wondered what it must be like to travel the world aboard a cargo ship. (bright upbeat music) It's got an eye on that fish bucket. This birds are incredible. Always hungry. (bright upbeat music) It is such a pleasant day
here on the beach at dusk. I can't think of a more fitting end to our Summer 2020 season than right here. Back where we started, in Florida. (bright upbeat music) Look at that sky. (bright upbeat music) There comes the Victory Casino Cruise. (bright upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (electric guitar music) Well, yeah, all good
things come to an end. And this one, this one's a wrap. The Summer 2020 is finally in the books. And I hope you enjoy the adventure from the sandy Florida beaches to the little Grand Canyon
of Georgia, to Appalachia to the Ozark Riverways, to
the Mississippi River or Iowa or the Lakes of Minnesota,
the Plains and Badlands of North Dakota, Glacier National Park, the Craters of the Moon, the
Great Basin, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, the Land of Lincoln, Indian Lake in Ohio, West Virginia. And I want to thank profusely, all the people who offered me their homes or their boats or fed me
or in one way or another made this trip even more unforgettable. This has been the longest
uninterrupted trip to date in a difficult year for that but the ongoing adventure
continuous until the next one. Thank you so much for watching
and see you on the road. (bright upbeat music) ♪ I'm riding ♪ ♪ Riding in my RV ♪
