Homeward Bound

Monday, March 18, 2013

Okay, here's the warning. I am about to whine! We are sitting in a county campground in Salisbury, North Carolina. A lovely, almost empty campground in the pine woods next to a lake. The facilities are really nice. The camp host was very welcoming, but... here it comes...it's 45 degrees, drizzly and overcast! We are not acclimated to this! At least in the desert southwest almost every day the sun shines, and the sky is blue and most days it is warm. The nights get cold, but, we huddle up inside our little house and stay warm after dark. No need to be wandering about in a dark desert, unless we want to see the stars, and then we only need to step just outside. Okay, we're spoiled already, I know.

We woke up yesterday morning to fog along the Tombigbee. We couldn't see the other bank. It cleared somewhat as we left. One of the camp hosts from North Dakota, made a point of stopping us as we left to wish us a safe journey back to Maryland. We have met so many nice camp hosts who go out of their way to look after their guests. We continued on Route 84 for a brief time and picked up I 65 towards Montgomery. Route 84 continues east and dips down close to the Florida border before ending south of Savannah, Georgia. After checking the weather forecast and looking at the time left to return to Maryland, we decided that we didn't want to drive I95 up the coast, and the farther west route would take us to higher elevations and possibly snow or freezing, so we are heading up the middle between the two routes.

From Montgomery we drove on through to Atlanta. Thankfully it was Sunday so we avoided their notorious rush hour traffic. After Atlanta we started looking for a place to sleep. Nothing around but WalMarts and truck stops. Not in the mood for “magic fingers” all night from the reefers and engines idling, we opted for a WalMart parking lot in Commerce. Georgia. We joined three other large rigs on the empty side of the parking lot.

Before settling in we had dinner at Sonny's Pit BBQ. Don't know where the pit was, it was just a regular restaurant. Greg ordered a beer and the waitress asked him for his ID to check his age! Greg looked at her and said, “Bless you!!!” while I chortled. Then she realized that it was Sunday and she would lose her job if she served alcohol on Sunday. So, no beer. But, she made Greg feel good! Guess this life is making him look younger and more refreshed. Who needs a facelift!

We came back to the parking lot, picked a spot among the other RVs and buttoned up. We closed all the curtains and blinds and used our headlamps. That is when we discovered that we were on the party side of the parking lot. There were low riders running around, scraping their rear ends, and vibrating our floors with their huge car speakers. Then the souped up pickup trucks showed up. We started opening blinds to see what was going on. The trucks were inside the group of RVs. Our neighbors from New York were sitting outside their coach watching and enjoying(?) the evening air. One of the pick ups was running around the parking lot without its lights on. The boys finally moved on and the girls arrived in another area of the lot. We finally decided that it must be spring break. We went to bed and it took a while for the noise to quiet down. We were surprised that there was no WalMart security, since judging by the beer cans we saw this morning, this is the usual party spot. Okay, we'll probably try Wally World again, hopefully the third time will be the charm. The first one in Midland, Texas was too close to the interstate. There are a lot of other RVers that use Wally World frequently.

This morning, after a poor nights sleep, Greg walked over to the WalMart store and bought a few groceries while I tried to wake up! Then we stowed and headed out. It was a cool drizzly drive across the rest of Georgia, and then South Carolina. The last two days, since we were driving the interstate and were bored, we cranked up the music. Luckenbach, Texas got us in the mood for The Outlaws, so Greg downloaded the album that we used to listen to when we were first together. What fun to realize that we still remembered the words and could sing along like we used to. After that we went through Steely Dan, Bette Midler, and James Taylor. The miles rolled away under our wheels.

Today the drizzle and the boring interstate made us glad to stop a little earlier. We stopped at Dan Nicholas County Park in Salisbury, North Carolina between Charlotte and Greensboro. We are one of about a half dozen campers scattered through the wooded campground. After hooking up we took a walk around the lake and checked out the attractions. Everything was closed today, but it is a great family park. They have a wildlife exhibit, where we saw a pair of bald eagles, a barnyard petting zoo, a railroad, a place to pan for rocks and minerals, a water play area, and a lakeside area with paddle boats. We saw a few ducks and geese, and a squirrel climbing in and out of a trash can finding popcorn and then dropping it on the ground for the ducks. We walked back to our campsite and then spent the next few hours riding out thunderstorms. The temperature was still in the 40's so we escaped the tornadoes this storm spawned in Tennessee.

Tomorrow we will head toward Richmond to spend one more night on the road before we arrive at Kaylin and Eli's for a visit with them and the rest of the Maryland family and friends!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

This morning finds us in the James River State Park campground. Forget Richmond! We couldn't take the interstate anymore and got onto Route 29 outside of Greensboro, NC and drove into Virginia. It was a lot more interesting and good dual highway, so we were happier! Late afternoon we took a detour from Lynchburg and went east to Appomattox and then north to this park. After a 7 mile dead end drive along the James River we arrived at an empty campground, except for the host. Without a tent to hike in to the river spots, we wound up in the woods. The wind was blowing and it got close to freezing last night, so no tent camping was okay. Greg managed to blow a circuit breaker on our campsite power pole running the electric hot water pot, the hot water heater and the electric space heater at the same time, so we are still warming up the RV. We bought a space heater recently when we realized that when we are hooked up to electric, using the campgrounds power that we are already paying for saves us using the propane that it takes to run our on board heater.

After posting this and heading out, we will be at Kaylin and Eli's and visiting family and friends for the next week and a half, so I probably won't post until we are on the road again. We haven't decided where yet. We will go south a month and then north to Atlantic Canada for the summer. Last night we started to research our reservations for the ferry to Newfoundland in July. Stay tuned!!!

 

James River State Park - one other trailer and 25 turkey vultures