Bella seemed like her old self when we awoke on Wednesday, March 26th and we were SO happy for that. We spent the morning packing things up and then left Watsadler Campground around 12:30 pm for a two hour drive to Sawnee Campground in Cumming, Georgia.
Sawnee Campground
Sawnee Campground is just north of the Buford Dam on Lake Lanier outside of Cumming, Georgia in Fulton County. It is a former Corps of Engineers campground that is now run by Forsyth County Parks and Recreation Department. There are 59 RV and Tent sites, 2 bathhouses, a playground, a boat ramp and a designated swimming area.
No trails except for a very short one through some woods between loops. Unless you count the area they have closed off due to needing maintenance. You can see how bad the road is in that section over in the photo album. Tree roots have cracked the asphalt and pushed it up several inches in spots. Deferred maintenance has not helped the area and it basically cuts off four or five sites that cannot be used or accessed by vehicle.
The bathhouses are old but clean. We thought we might have to use their showers since we were there for 2 weeks, but we managed to be able to stick to using ours.
This place was covered in pollen! You can see in some of our photos how Voyager was covered in a yellow coating and the water near the shores of the lake looked more like yellow paint. At one point the entire designated swimming area, which is bordered by plastic tubes, was just one huge square of yellow.
Our site was a nice, level concrete pad. The driveway was another matter. It was so slanted downward that, for the first time in almost 4 years, Voyager’s transmission overheated while backing Nomad up and into the site.
Lake Sidney Lanier
Lake Lanier is a reservoir that was created in 1956 when Buford Dam was completed, creating 38,000 acres or 59 square miles of water with a shoreline of 692 miles. The lake’s deepest point is 160 feet near the Buford Dam. The average depth is 60 feet and that can vary depending on the location and the water level of the lake.
The lake is named for Confederate poet Sidney Lanier and over 30 million people visit the lake each year; more than visit Niagara Falls. It is the largest lake in the Southeastern United States and offers virtually every outdoor recreational activity represented within its boundaries.
Some people though think that the lake is haunted, due in part to its creation. On the photo of the map of the lake in the album I have circled two areas. The blue circle is where Sawnee Campground is located. The yellow circle is approximately where the African-American town of Oscarville was located before the damming of the rivers that created Lake Lanier.
Oscarville was a town of approximately 1,100, mostly black residents, that was very prosperous. Most of its residents were farmers who did very well with their crops, but there were also stores and businesses that flourished. Beginning in 1912 the town was the victim of racial riots from nearby white residents that resulted in driving away many of the black residents. Later, the government exercised the right of eminent domain to buy the property of the remaining residents in order to create Lake Lanier. The entire town; land, buildings, and even the town cemetery were left standing to be flooded when the dam became operational and covered the town of Oscarville in a watery grave.
Since its creation in 1956, an estimated 700 people have died at Lake Lanier, with over 200 of those deaths occurring since 1994. The causes of these deaths include drownings, boating accidents, and other tragic incidents. As of February of 2024 there were 27 people who died in the lake and have yet to be recovered. There are those, both local and as far south as Atlanta, who believe the lake is haunted or even malevolent in its “behavior” due to what happened to Oscarville. I had a friend who used to live in Atlanta that said she would never, ever go swimming in Lake Lanier.
New Key Fob
Wednesday night, after setting up, we enjoyed a nice dinner and started watching the final season of “Modern Family” before heading to bed.
Thursday we drove into nearby Cumming to go to Publix and Costco for some shopping. When we walked into Costco there was a booth where a locksmithing company was offering vehicle key fob replacement.
A couple of months ago my key fob for Voyager began malfunctioning. It would be in my front pants pocket and if I moved a certain way it would lock/unlock the truck, always sounding the short honk of its horn. I found a video on YouTube demonstrating how you could take the fob apart and clean it. This would sometimes solve the problem as the contacts just needed to be cleaned. I took it apart, cleaned everything inside and put it back together.
Sometimes.
Mine behaved for about a week and then started up again. I would get out, close the door, use the fob to lock the doors and tailgate, put the keys in my pocket. begin to walk away and the locks would unlock or just keep locking/beeping. I started holding the fob in my hand until I was in the store and out of range of the fob being able to do whatever it wanted to whenever it wanted.
Reading up further, I discovered that locksmiths would usually charge you far less for a new fob and programming than a car dealership would. Then, when Cindy’s cousin Darla and her husband Ron visited us in early March at Paynes Prairie, Ron suggested trying Ace Hardware. At our next stop I found an Ace Hardware, but never had the opportunity to go and check out what they could do.
So, when the guy at the booth said he had my fob in stock and showed me what it would cost, Cindy urged me to go ahead and get it replaced so I could stop messing around with the misbehaving fob. They took my fob and by the time we finished shopping had replaced it, programmed it, tested it and had it ready for me to pick up.
This is so much easier and I can go back to carrying my keys in my pocket, where they belong and are meant to be!
I was going to install our new tongue jack on Friday but instead I decided to have a stomach bug that laid me out most of the day.
Happy 28th Wedding Anniversary!
Our wedding anniversary was March 30th and this year we were celebrating 28 years of wedded bliss. I wrote a little something about it on my personal blog.
However, we decided to have our anniversary dinner on Saturday, the 29th because the weather forecast was calling for severe weather on Sunday the 30th and we did not want to be out in that if we could help it.
So we enjoyed a nice, quiet, romantic steak dinner with all the trimmings Saturday evening. The rest of the night is none of your business.
Sunday morning I awoke to this text from my Bestest Brother:
Happy Anniversary! Give my condolences to Cindy for another year in purgatory! Haha Hope you two have a great day!
We also received congratulatory texts from Amber and Wendy during the day.
Planning For Michigan
We spent part of Sunday morning on the phone with our friends Kirk and Laura planning our meetup in their home state of Michigan in August. We’re looking forward to seeing them and visiting The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island (setting for one of our favorite movies, “Somewhere in Time”), Colonial Mackinac Fort and then traveling down to the Detroit area to visit their childhood homes, Laura’s mom’s home (Hey Royda!), the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield and the Motown Museum (that last one is just me…I’ve always been a big fan of Motown music). We also got a nice “Happy Anniversary” message from them both before we ended our call.
We also finally finished watching the “Modern Family” series. Always one of the funniest shows out there, to me. I’m sure we’ll eventually get it on DVD so that we can watch it whenever we want and hopefully the DVD set will have some BTS extras that we know we’d enjoy.
April Fools Day
When you’re retired and not around a job, office or people you know, April Fools Day is just another day. Every year I think about pulling an April Fools Day joke on Cindy, however I like living so I just think about it but don’t do it, lol!
So instead, I grilled up some burgers and chicken. I grill up enough at one time so that we have several meals’ worth that Cindy can put in the freezer to save for future dining choices with appropriate sides. It’s works out being easier than grilling every other day or so.
We also started watching “The West Wing” again on DVD. We’re currently in season 3 and are really enjoying the show. I’ve mentioned before; it just makes you wish for the same to be happening in our real life instead of what we currently have in office.
New Tongue Jack
On Wednesday I installed our new tongue jack. Ours had been leaking some kind of fluid and has been making a lot of noise when in use. I kept waiting for it to give out completely, but it hadn’t so I decided to stop hauling around the new one and just install it, especially while we were on a nice, level concrete pad.
It would have been an easy job if, like most I had seen, it connected directly to the battery. Instead ours grounded to the frame with a couple of other wires. While attempting to unscrew the old wire something broke, and the connector just would not come off the screw. I cut the wire so I could splice in the new tongue jack wire and got the connector back in the general area it had been attached at the frame. Tried the jack and it worked, then had Cindy check the brake and turn signal lights to be sure I hadn’t messed up something on those and they worked, so I guess I got it done right.
Thursday we went shopping and decided to try Whataburger for lunch. The last time we ate at a Whataburger was last year in Mississippi and it was pretty horrible. This one was even worse. I used to manage a Whataburger back in the day and I can tell you that the sorry quality of the food we received would have never made it out of the service area.
Plus, like a lot of fast food joints these days, they now have you place your order at a kiosk instead of with a person at the counter. But this Whataburger does it one better; when you place your order and it includes a drink, the screen instructs you to get your cup from the person at the counter. Except, of course, there is no one at the counter. I reached over and got our cups, expecting someone might freak and come to the counter, but no, no one did.
Anyway, pretty sure we won’t be trying Whataburger again.
Mess in Metropolis
Saturday the Fort Massac State park in Metropolis, IL called to let us know they were having to cancel our reservation for April 16th-23rd because the Ohio River, which they are on the banks of, would flood in the next couple of days and wouldn’t recede until after April 20th. Cindy scrambled and found us another campground about 20 miles north that we can stay at. So, we’ll still get to visit Metropolis and the Superman Museum, etc. We’ll just have to drive a little farther to do so. We’re missing the Annual Superman Celebration in June, but we wanted to at least visit the city again.
Sunday Cindy needed to go to Michael’s for some items for projects she’s working on and I wanted to fuel up Voyager. When we left Nomad the forecast was rain would start at 2 pm. Instead, it started at 11 am while we were running our errands. Luckily, Cindy had suggested we close the windows before leaving, so we didn’t have to worry about rain getting in while we were gone.
By the way, in our last post I promised you would see the ironed/framed version of the Superman “S” Emblem she made for me and I kept my promise. Check it out in the photo album. It looks so awesome! Thank you, babe.
It rained all of Sunday and almost all of Monday.
Tuesday was spent getting ready to move the next day, we started watching a couple of episodes of season 4 of “The West Wing” on DVD, then I streamed episode 8 of “Daredevil: Born Again” on Disney+. Only one more episode to go in this season.
Wednesday, April 9th would have been my dad’s 100th birthday, had he not passed away in 1999. I wrote about some memories I have and posted them on my personal blog.
Then it was on to our next stop.
Thank you for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.
Sorry, I never remember anniversaries. I don’t have social media anymore to remind me lol. I’ll add it my calendar for next year. Love you guys!
No apology necessary 🙂
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