Yes, Virginia!

Made a sudden realization as I woke up after my nap. I get up when I wake up. I eat when I’m hungry. When I’m thirsty, I have a drink. When I’m tired I take a nap. I’m a baby!

I set my GPS on “Shortest Distance” when I located an interesting campsite listing and headed north out of Tennessee and into Virginia. What an incredible, intensely beautiful area! This setting generally keeps me off Interstates as they are frequently the shortest time, but not the shortest distance. It also sends me down the business routes through downtown and Main Street instead of around the bypasses. Usually that’s great. There have been a few towns where Main Street was barely wide enough to get the trailer down, but only because there were cars parked along both sides. In general, I get to see some beautiful areas. Especially out in the country.

The folks at New River Campground near Blacksburg gave me directions from the freeway, of course, but I was coming in from the South and just followed the GPS. Scared the crap out of me. I was directed onto a gravel road that kept getting narrower. I was no more than on it when the GPS changed its tune and started saying “At first opportunity make a U-turn.” The map showed the road I was on ending. There simply wasn’t a place wide enough to turn around with a pretty steep cliff to my right down into the river. I just kept driving. In about a mile or so, the map changed to show more road, the road widened and became paved, and I found the campground. Thanks for the scare, Maggie!

I was going to take another day getting to Broadway, Virginia for Memorial Day, but there just wasn’t a convenient stopping place, so Thursday afternoon I pulled into Bennie’s Beach Resort and let the family know I was in town. It’s a pretty windy spot due to the openness and folks wanted to know where the beach was when I posted a picture of my campsite. It took me a while to find it, but it was right down there past the rusted pickup and the deer stand. Nephew Rony stopped by and told me to come over for dinner Friday. Niece Lizz and Darren came by as well and I figured to go there the next night.

There’s a lot of relatives in this clan and it was a blast to meet several that I’d never met, especially the youngest generation. I also loved the fact that campfires in the back yard were the norm in the evening. I ended up with a lot of smoky clothes be the end of the weekend!

Rony and Lecia  served enough food and enough people to make this a great gathering and it was wonderful to spend time with great-nephew and great-niece Luke and Stephanie and their kids. Then Keith showed up with his daughter, Chanel. Every time I see Keith I’m bowled over by how much he looks like my dad. And, of course, we are all very proud of Chanel, who came straight from her last day of school and is now a high school graduate. This is nephew Keith and his nephew Luke.

Saturday, I took the opportunity to drive a portion of the Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. Luke told me about a hike to take and I attempted it, but there were portions of the trail that were steep enough to make me pant and feel a little weak. Guess I’m a little out of shape for mountain hiking and I’m determined to improve that so I can go back and finish the hike. The viewpoints from Skyline Drive were incredible, though.

I headed to niece Lizz’s house for dinner that evening. What a surprise to find niece Kenlyn there! Talk about kids who look like their parents! Kenlyn looks so much like her mother Judy did that I was amazed. Sadly, we lost my sister Judy last year. All the kids are still really sad about that. Kenlyn couldn’t stay, but last time I was in this area I missed her completely, so this was great.

I also got to spend time with Lizz’s daughter Angel and her boyfriend Austin. What great kids! And when great-nephew Bob showed up with his wife Bree and baby Benson, we had a laid-back and relaxed evening with some of the best cole slaw I’ve ever had. That Lizz sure can cook!

On Sunday evening, we headed just across the border into West Virginia to visit nephew Steve and his wife, Candy. For me, having even a sip of Steve’s moonshine is enough to knock me on my butt. But we had a great time, once again just sitting around a campfire in the evening and swapping stories and memories.

Memorial Day, Lizz, Angel, Austin, Bob, Bree, and Benson picked me up for a hike in the mountains. This was a little less steep of a hike than my attempt on Saturday, and we were out for a couple hours just enjoying the great outdoors. We finally got up to this stairstep falls where the kids spent time playing and splashing each other. They are so cute!

I swung back to Rony’s that evening for a bit of barbecue before I pulled out on Tuesday morning to head out of the mountains and into the wilds surrounding Washington, DC.

Tennessee

I crossed the border from North Carolina into Tennessee on Wednesday the 14^th and settled in for the weekend. There were two reasons for that. I imagined that it would take me a good bit of time to see the Great Smoky Mountains and it was raining. I didn’t want to drive.

By Saturday, I was sick of the rain and decided to go explore the Smokies anyway.

They are beautiful, but because of the constant rain and mist, the pictures are not spectacular. That haze of gray that hangs around the mountains, though, definitely earns them the title of “Smoky.” Perhaps the high point (literally) of my trek across the crest at New Pass was crossing the Appalachian Trail. I took a look at it and walked out along the trail toward Maine, exactly 100 steps. According to my calculations, I have exactly 4,125,424 steps to go. Someday.

After I’d crossed over the Smokies, back into North Carolina, I decided to travel along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had it in mind to head generally Northward along the Parkway when I broke camp on Monday. After seventeen miles, I decided this was not actually the kid of route I wanted to pull the trailer along. Some of the overpasses were barely higher than my trailer and I wouldn’t be in my own lane when I rounded a few of the curves. When I exited, though, I encountered some elk bedded down in the greenway of the cloverleaf.

As an alternative, when I broke camp on Monday, I just set the GPS to go toward the nephews and nieces in Virginia without using freeways. What a beautiful journey. Just before I crossed into Virginia, I paused at a NASCAR mecca long enough to take a photo of The Coliseum. So here’s to all my NASCAR loving relatives. I have made the pilgrimage!

And then there was Virginia.

North Carolina

There was something about traveling westbound across North Carolina that tickled boyhood memories. If you find this blog filled with boyhood memories, please understand that they seem to be flooding me lately. One thing has led to another and the fact that I am writing a serial set in Northern Indiana where I grew up has increased the number of memories.

This particular memory was of Indian Guides, a program of the YMCA in Mishawaka. We had a tribe. It was a good program in which fathers and sons met together to do crafts, tell stories, go camping, build crystal radios, and even sometimes watch TV. That’s what we were doing in October of 1959 when I was ten years old. We gathered at Craig’s house. Brian, Dennis, Mark, Mike, and me. Maybe Monte was there as well. The occasion on that Sunday night was the airing of Disney’s Wonderful World of Color premier, The Swamp Fox. It starred Leslie Nielsen in the days before “Airplane” made him a white haired comedy star. We met at Craig’s house because he had a color TV. The series was intermittent with two shows that October, four in January of 1960 and two more in January of 1961. I think we only met together to watch the first episode. By the end of that school year when we were entering sixth and seventh grades, the Indian Guides kind of fell apart. We each had our own thing to do.

So why would I think of this admittedly random memory? I was traveling westbound on Swamp Fox Highway through Francis Marion National Forest.

I ended up at a little campsite somewhere near Fort Bragg for Mothers’ Day weekend.

I have to say that I loved traveling across North Carolina. It seemed like every house, no matter how small, had a neatly manicured lawn, sometimes an acre or more. There were a lot of white fences and horses running around the gentle hills as I moved inland.

I moved on Monday, as I often do, to a site about fifty miles south of Asheville. Everyone had told me that I had to visit Asheville, so I did. What a beautiful little town filled—in my experience—with friendly people, including the two soldiers who were walking my direction and said they were stationed there. I said I didn’t know there was a base at Asheville. One soldier said they were on special assignment. The other said, “We’re everywhere. Just lift up any manhole cover. You’ll find the United States Army.”

The Grove Arcade Public Market (above), I discovered, had been commandeered by the U.S. Government back before World War II and was walled off and closed for a headquarters building. It remained in the possession of the Federal Government until it was sold back to the City of Asheville in 1997 and has been undergoing a revitalization ever since. Very impressive architecture.

I’d been reading some stories over the past several years that were set in the mountains of North Carolina and other venues, but all the locations were cleverly renamed with things like “County Seat” and “The Swamp.” It hadn’t been difficult to figure out that the swamp referred to was the Great Dismal. It took me a long time, though, working through vague phrases like, “the Interstate on the north” and “the park” to the west and “forty minutes up to the college” to decide that the pattern for the places was based loosely on Hendersonville, about twenty-five miles south of Asheville. So, like I often do, I decided to check out the county seat of Henderson County. Nice little town with some of the best coffee shops I found in North Carolina.

Apparently, the town has as big a thing for bears as Seattle has for pigs.

I decided to take U.S. Highway 176 south out of Hendersonville—a route which took me back into South Carolina in order to get to my campsite. It was narrow and twisting and I decided not to take with the trailer when I headed out on Wednesday for Tennessee.

But the route and North Carolina in general were beautiful and relaxing.

Catching up a little at a time. What happened to May?

If you’ve followed this blog in real time, you  know that I didn’t really post this on May 8. I’ve been really behind as I’ve focused on some new writing. I have had adventures, though, and will  make a few short scene posts before I finally catch everything up.

You know that awkward moment when you look up from your computer and think, “Mmm. Something smells good. I wonder who’s cooking?” Then realize you are the one cooking? I’ve eaten several over-cooked meals the past month. It’s really disconcerting to look over and realize that the pot of coffee I started making only has an inch in the pot. Not because I drank that much, but because over the past half hour I’ve forgotten to put any more water on the grounds. I make it a rule to only use one coffee cup so I don’t have half-full ones lying all over the trailer.

What would be more logical to do after Savannah than go to Charleston? And what is to see in Charleston but Fort Sumter. There’s an interesting phenomenon in South Carolina and to a somewhat lesser extent other states in the Southeast. They are incredibly proud of their role as a primary battle front in the revolutionary war and the founding of the United States. They are equally proud of being the first to secede from the union and found the Confederate States. Equal pride in building it and destroying it.

Well, Fort Sumter is a symbol of both. After hearing about and reading about this landmark for many years, I finally got to pay my $18 (for the ferry, not the park) to go visit it. It was interesting and even moving. I spent most of the ferry ride inside where it was air conditioned. It started getting pretty darn hot by the time I got back at 2:30. That didn’t stop me from wandering around old town Charleston for a while, though. After finding an incredible coffee shop, I kept wandering and found a wonderful brew house. I had to stop and enjoy a little refreshment and some ribs.

This meal sparked a great memory of childhood. Not the ribs. The cole slaw.

Bizarre memory. I love Cole slaw. I'm eating at the Smokehouse in Charleston and with my ribs came a big helping of really good Cole slaw. I got to thinking about high Triton High School and the little cafe on the main corner on Bourbon, IN. Occasionally we would go there on Sunday after Mom finished preaching. I remember one time when I ordered a dinner-size plateful of their cole slaw for lunch. I thought they had the best.. Occasionally we would go there on Sunday after Mom finished preaching. I remember at least one occasion on which I ordered a dinner-sized plateful of their Cole slaw for lunch. I thought they had the best. Funny memory.

I ended my stay in Charleston with a real discovery. A little tobacco shop happened to have three tins (fifteen cigars) of my favorite Macanudo 1968 Courts. I bought them all and sat in front of the trailer that night with a glass of scotch and a great cigar. It was a little strange, though, to hear an ice cream vendor come through the RV park with its speakers playing Yankee Doodle!

I had planned to drive west from Charleston to Atlanta to see friend, GG. Alas, it was Mothers’ Day weekend and she went to Oregon to be with her daughter. Have to see her on the way back!  So I headed north to Myrtle Beach, instead. On the way I stopped at Brookgreen Gardens, a fantastic sculpture garden that my editor, Jim, turned me onto. I was impressed with the headless statue.

Oops!

Finally found a campsite a few miles north of Myrtle Beach that was beautiful, quiet and wooded.

I headed back into the town that was mostly a long strip that was a wanna be amusement park, but once you got downtown and to the beach it was really beautiful. I had lunch with Don’s son David at The Captain’s House restaurant and then took a walk on the beach in front of it. Both were exquisite.

And that was South Carolina!