Chippoke State Park, Day 4 camping

It's the fourth night of our summer vacation. I'll be with my family the first week as we drive up to Virginia to visit my brother David. While I fly back to FL on the 5th, Linda and the Kids will continue up through Boston, New York and other places to visit key historical sites where we (she) can show our kids the places, people and events that were significant to the founding of our country. With all the "hope & change" going on we felt it was important for them to learn the real history of our nation, what was going on at the time and how that led to the founder's taking the huge risks they did to create a new nation. The kids have journals to take notes and write down what they've learned along the way. I'm putting my thoughts and notes down in this blog and Linda's keeping her journal as well.

We are all setup at the campsite for our 4th night camping. Chippoke State Park is a beautiful place, Situated along the James River near one of the 40 odd spots John Smith of Pocahontas lore landed as they sailed their ships up the James River. We went down to the river shore and we were the only ones around. The red sunset lit the sky orange-pink against bright blue. Schools of small fish made small ripples along the surface of the lake as the only disturbance to the otherwise glassy surface. We broke the rules and jumped the fence of a closed trail down the to the river's edge. Along the water we found thousands of shells from scallops, oysters, clams and other mollusks. I found scallop shells as big as a lions paw! (Eventually I'll figure out how to get pictures into my iPad from the camera and post them with my blogs).

Sleeping tonight will be much nicer. It's in the 70's here which makes nice sleeping weather. Monday and Tuesday night we spent at Edisto State park near the beach in South Carolina, south of Charlston. After sunset the wind died down and the humid mid-80's air wasn't the best sleeping conditions. Any movement drew a sweat so I slept in my cool-max sheet (basically a sleeping bag made from light tee shirt material) in my boxer shorts. The MSR Mutha Hubba tent is awesome with a fully screened enclosure to keep even the gnats out but let the air flow. There wasn't much fishing around. The campsite backed up on to a salt marsh. I walked out to a small pool of water left by the receding tide which seemed to be low water the entire time we were there. Thousands of fiddler crabs scurried out of the way as I walked, trying to avoid being crushed by my feet. The kids spent most of the time in a nearby tree, climbing like monkeys and playing all kinds of games. The water at the campsite was slightly salty so we ended up picking up a couple of gallons of fresh water on the way back from our Charleston visit.

In Charleston on Tuesday, we went to Patriots Point and took a tour of the USS Clamagore, a Diesel WWII Submarine and the USS Yorktown CV-10 Aircraft Carrier. The Yorktown was awesome. We spent 4 hours (9:00am to 1:00pm) walking the decks and stairs throughout the ship. We ate lunch in the main mess area. Lunch was cooked in the ships kitchen and served on the same stainless steel food trays the crew used when the ship was on active duty. It was really cool.

After the Yorktown, we drove to downtown Charleston, and visited The Old Exchange, the last building built by the British before the revolutionary war. The building sits on top of the half moon battery which was situated on the East wall of the old city wall. When built, Charleston was a walled city along the river. We took a self guided tour of the upper floors of the Old Exchange and then a guided tour of the dungeon. Timothy was our tour guide, a young blond man who worked as a park ranger at Lexington and Concord (as I recall) so he knew a little history. He told us the story of Charleston during before, during and after the revolution. During a part of his talk, he asked the audience about what we knew of the Boston Tea Party. Nicholas was the only one to answer and explained the Boston Tea Party was a protest about taxes on tea, and how the men dressed as indians, boarded East India ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. Timothy was completely impressed. He told Nicholas that he has been the only person who knew those three facts and details of the event. He explained that the people of Charleston had a similar tea party incident after the Boston event. The British however locked the tea up in the cellar of the Old Exchange to protect it from being dumped as was done in Boston. The Sons of Liberty in Charleston however did better than the Boston group: They managed to break into the Old Exchange, steal the tea and sold it. The proceeds went to purchasing arms for the fight against the British.

We also learned that one of the cash crops of the area at the time was Indigo, used to make blue dyes for clothing. Because of it's expense, blue material, especially deep blue, was reserved for only the very top ranks of the British military such as Admirals and such. Knowing this, the American patriots decided to outfit their troops in Blue uniforms as a dig to the British. They were basically flaunting the fact that a new privateer in the American military wore a uniform more expensive than the top brass of the British Army! Overall the tour was excellent and we learned more about the history of this country and how the founding of our nation came to pass.

Sunday Night we stayed at Ft. Clinch at the very Northern most tip of Florida right across from Cumberland Island GA. In cooler weather that is a very nice campground. The fort there is awesome. I lived in Jacksonville Beach growing up and through High School and yet never went to that park. :( We will definitely go back there with the kayaks and/or the boat to spend some quality time on the St. Mary's river fishing and adventuring. Next time we visit there I need to remember to reserve campsite 39 or 40 which is right next to the river.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Chippokes Park Rd,Surry,United States

Did Kagan Compare the NRA with the KKK? - Robert VerBruggen - The Corner on National Review Online

Did Kagan Compare the NRA with the KKK? - Robert VerBruggen - The Corner on National Review Online

Interesting bit of insight into her thought process.

The new computer...

A few weeks ago my 10 year old, made from spare parts desktop system, running Windows 2000 finally bit the dust. As you can tell from the state of my last machine, I'm not much of a "latest and greatest PC" kind of guy. Which is actually strange because I am a bit of a gadget guy with GPS, iTouch, HAM radio and such. I've been using an old emachines laptop with a thermal shutdown problem (watch a youtube video and the fan goes turbo before the entire system just drops dead). After some consideration of what I actually do on a computer at home (most of the time) if figured all I need is a system that does email, browse the web, edit/create word documents, spreadsheets, and maybe a drawing or two (with Visio if possible). I didn't think of the iPad until I talked to a guy with one at the Austin airport flying back last week. I asked a few questions and decided that it may do most of what I want. This weekend I took the plunge and purchased an iPad with 3G and 64G of memory. Signed up for AT&T's unlimited data plan and mobileMe (cloud computing stuff).

I've downloaded a few apps to let me access the files on my NAS storage disks (Filebrowser), use the device as a car GPS (motionX), and an office document suite (Office2 HD). I must say the email in the iPad isn't the greatest. I tried sending an email with an attachment but wasn't successful. Apparently since the iPad doesn't have the concept of a local file system, there's no "attach file" option. I was able to go into the file browser, copy a file from my NAS disk to the iPad and then "send as an email attachment". That didn't work to well with a .pdf; I couldn't read the attachment on the copy I sent to myself as a test. A quick search didn't reveal any alternatives to the built in email on the iPad....

I tried to edit a word document with Office2 HD but strangely, the application doesn't work with the blue tooth keyboard I picked up for the iPad (to make typing easier). Using the BlogPress app (free) I can create blog posts like this one (I'm typing it now with the keyboard) and it seems to work pretty well. I sent an email to Office2 HD to tell them about the issue and hopefully they will fix it soon and I'll see an "update" when I hit the app store soon.

The Apple/Mac style keyboard takes a little getting use to. I can't figure out how to page up/down/home/end. I have no idea how the option and command keys work (if at all) but for basic typing with some tactile feedback, it's pretty nice.

Now for wireless: It is awesome to be able to browse the web from anywhere (almost). I have yet to find a place I can't get a 3G signal. After getting home from Best Buy (where I purchased the iPad) I hooked it to my laptop and started a sync in iTunes. I took quite a while, mainly because I chose to restore my iTouch stuff to the iPad (which worked fine). As soon as the sync was done we jumped in the car and headed to the beach. I played with the iPad, setting up the 3G account with AT&T as my wife drove us to the coast. Setup was quick and I was online browsing, setting up email accounts and downloading apps basically in the middle of nowhere. It was sooooooo cooool (still is).

Right now I have the iPad in a docking cradle on my desk with the keyboard right in front. A nice little setup for typing emails, blogs and other stuff. And portable: no wires at all!

I'm hoping I find the right combination of apps to let me edit and create MS documents, spreadsheets and such. I also need to find a good app to enable printing to my wireless printer. All-in-all it seems to be working out. There are a few kinks (when using Goodreader for PDF's, the unit forgets my wi-fi network security key!) Apple claims the "closed" OS and all is robust but so far I can't see it being much better than a PC with some of the bugs in apps I've seen.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad