June 15, 2010 – Day Thirty-nine

Before leaving Charlotte we met Nikki at 8am for breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants, The Cracker Barrel. This restaurant cooks hearty Southern-style breakfasts complete with grits. What is a grit, anyway?

Shortly after 9am we said our goodbyes to Nikki who was off to work just a couple of miles away. This would be the last relative we’d see until we get to Wisconsin in a month or so. Almost the entire trip so far, we’ve visited friends and relatives along the way, which made this part of our odyssey very enjoyable.

From now on we’d be truly on our own for a while, not knowing exactly where we’re headed next, but I still have that sketchy itinerary in my head of places on my bucket list to see.

So it was that we weren’t 100% sure where we were going to end up tonight, but after searching on a couple of our GPS programs we found a campground that looked interesting, a state park about 150 miles east of Charlotte on Jordan Lake.

Once again we drove through back roads to get there, seeing some interesting small towns. Since we didn’t have the actual address of the park, we ended up going down the wrong road, ending up in the park headquarters. I whipped out yet another GPS program, got my bearings, turned around, and drove to the campground, which was on a peninsula on the lake.

At the campground check-in station we paid our $25 and were told to pick out any campsite we liked. I was a little concerned that finding a spot may be tough, but it turned out that there was hardly a soul there, so we had our pick of the park. And we picked out a winner, secluded with no neighbors we could see, ½ acre of meadow outside of our door, everything surrounded by trees yet with a great view of the lake just across the road. I could have stayed here at least a week just vegetating but Marianne finds that kind of solitude torture.

Just outside the park is the hamlet of Pittsboro which had a sign proclaiming “Historic Downtown” on the highway leading into town. After I set up the trailer, walked the dog, and smoked a cigar relaxing on a log at the edge of the lake, we headed off the half dozen miles to town, sans dogs.

I must remind everyone that it is still Africa-hot here.

We pulled into town shortly after 5pm. Unfortunately the town wasn’t as impressive as we had hoped, the downtown area was a little over a block long, and a steady stream of highway traffic divided their main street. At the end of this street stood the hollowed out shell of what may have been the town’s pride, their court house. Now there were construction scaffolds climbing up the walls of this burnt remnant.

Against Marianne’s better wishes, I pulled into a parking lot and got her to reluctantly come into the first store I saw. She was pleasingly overwhelmed, for it was just the kind of store she likes – unique items, post cards, and knick knacks, with a clothing department thrown in. Marianne spent the next 45 minutes touching, feeling, and investigating each and every item that intrigued her.

Their stuff wasn’t cheap, so after all of that touchy, feely stuff, Marianne just bought a set of ball-point pens that appear to be from a diverse collection of very weird businesses. These funny pens will end up being gifts to a host of friends and relatives. You are forewarned.

We walked the rest of Main Street in the heat, but no other shops piqued Marianne’s interest except an old fashioned malt shop complete with a long soda fountain. In this heat, ice cream and root beer were the perfect staple, diet be damned.

We also stopped at the local Dollar store and Piggly Wiggly to pick up much needed provisions. Marianne hadn’t seen a Piggly Wiggly in a while so the storefront became another photo opportunity.

Heading east back to the campground the skyline was dominated by one of the largest thunderheads I have ever seen. I soared miles into the sky and was shooting bolts of lightening. I was guessing it would be time to batten down the hatches when we got back to the trailer, including retracting the awning to protect it.

Back at the trailer we turned on the TV to get a weather update, and it turned out that the storm that we were looking at in the east wasn’t the threat at all, but rather a storm that was coming from the west behind us was wreaking havoc with gusts up 58 mph and quarter-sized hail.

According to the TV news this storm, only about 20 miles to the west of us, was uprooting trees and downing power lines, heading southeast.

A few campsites away from us were a young couple from Brooklyn, New York with their large dog staying in a little two-man tent. I warned them about what I perceived to be the impending doom, and to batten down their hatches.

The gods must have been looking favorably upon us because the storm completely missed us and it wasn’t until 6am the next morning that we got a small sprinkle.