Day Three: Natchez Trace Parkway, Sardis Dam

Tally: Days- 1.5, Girls-1.5

I know the tally above looks odd, and I’ll admit that today was off to a roaring good start at beating us into a flat quivering mass of girl colored goo, but late in the day a couple of things went right (in between moments of “Seriously, WTF already?”) so I decided that today was a draw... but since I don’t like math that doesn’t add up, I split the win instead of confusing myself or my readers later on with bad math. 

First of, let me say that Google Maps had an epic fail day, not once, but TWICE. 

Epic Fail Number One: we are headed from Gadsden, AL to Sardis, MS. 

1. Google Maps are programmed with a destination 
2. Mute is NOT on 
3. Volume is turned up
4. Google has been giving directions within this program
5. I currently have two bars of LTE Verizon signal

Google Maps, somewhere around Muscle Schoals, AL-has stopped directing- and I happen to notice about fifteen miles into it that she hasn’t said anything in awhile. 

I look down at my phone and there’s no blue line to be seen. 

Now, if you ever use Google Maps, you know that if you stray from course, the program will reroute you immediately. I re-centered my map and I still had a blue line but I was not being recalculated. I have no earthly idea why. 

I exited the program and re-started it and was able to get back on course but I still don’t understand what happened. 

Epic Fail Number Two (same day): Detours... they happen to every one and we all know that summer is construction season. 

Google sent us down a country road in MS that said the road was “Closed in _ Miles”. No number of miles was listed on the sign. 

Whenever crews close a road they offer a detour, so we weren’t worried, but we were relieved when we saw a construction sign, a road patch and and end of construction sign. We were certain that they had finished up early for Mother’s Day weekend and we were in the clear. 

Imagine our surprise when we saw a close road, cold equipment and no way through- with no detour- twenty miles down the road with no cell service. 

We were forced to turn around and Google couldn’t re-route us. 

Fortunately, our map was still up on the phone, and we were able to backtrack about two miles to a small road, follow it north a few miles, then east on a dirt road about three miles, then south about four miles with our fingers crossed that it would come out somewhere behind the construction crew and where do you think we pulled out?

 Not fifty feet behind the crew! HaHa!! No detour, my patootie!!

Best of all, we saw the most spectacular field of wildflowers on one of the tiny roads that we never would have seen had we not gotten creative.  🌹

Even though Google failed us most of the day, we scored a couple of big wins on the Natchez Trace Parkway this afternoon after a brief heartbreak that was quickly mended. 

We followed the Trace for a few hours, certainly not the entire length, which I would like to do one day, but I couldn’t find the passport stamps anywhere and when we arrived at the visitors center at 4:03, we found out that the have all of the stamps and they close at 4pm. 

Two other girls were there as well, for the same reason. I did find a geocache and I decided to do the cache so the trip wouldn’t be a complete bust. Katrina and I sat on the bench and talked a little bit and we’re just about to get up to leave when the ranger came out with an ink pads and ALL the trace stamps!  They all had tomorrow’s date but I didn’t care! I was able to do the ones that I had and it totally made my day. 

It made me happy enough to deal with the hummus that leaked in the cooler and ruined all of our ice for drinking and also made the inside of my cooler smell and feel like a cheap, Greek discotheque. 

On the upside, Katrina made chips and guacamole again for dinner, and I bought extra avocados so we don’t have to stop again tomorrow 😋

Also a win for tonight, we had planned on staying at a state park here in Sardis that would have cost around $14 per night with my discount. We accidentally turned into the wrong campground and ended up staying at the Army Corps of Engineers Campground called Oak Grove (no clue why it’s called that- every tree in this place is a Loblolly Pine 🙃). Each site has water and electric for our fans and phones, a concrete picnic table and benches, a fire ring, barbecue grille with tall concrete bbq table and a lantern hook. With my National Park access pass we paid $9 to stay here tonight. 

$9 also gets us free use of the boat ramps at the dam (upper and Lower lakes), swim beaches and shower house (which we used more than our fair share of hot H2O). 

We sat in our free beach chairs on our paved pad, ate chips and guacamole, played with out cat and dog and had a grand old time. 

Not it’s bedtime and I’m being lulled to bed by the sound of my fans. 

Tomorrow, we hope to make it to Hot Springs, AR. 

We only seem to go there in the summertime. 

I’d love to go when we’d really enjoy hot water. 🙃

Day Two: Noccalula Falls- Gadsden, AL (Day 1, Girls 1)

Two days on the road and it’s already laundry day... we could have gone longer if the two parks we played in today didn’t smell so swampy. Our towels (including Callie’s) all smell like sweaty butt-crack. 

We are in the coolest park tonight and I can’t wait to get pics of the falls tomorrow. 

Our neighbors this evening are a lovely couple in the neatest old Warrior RV. They are a retired couple named Harold and Suzie from Boone, North Carolina and Suzie and I sat and talked forever. I love campgrounds!!  ⛺️ 

Katrina made dinner on the road this evening- homemade guacamole- and she was really excited about it, with ample reason. It was delicious!! We ate two avocados between the two of us (with chips) and I was stuffed. We are not eating out, cooking or buying prepared food (other than the odd rotisserie chicken or lunch meat) as much as possible while traveling. 

We stopped at a darling farm stand in Georgia today and bought two pints of peaches and a quart of the most delicious strawberries I’ve ever eaten, so for lunch we had sliced avocado with lime and pepper, peaches and strawberries and a small 100 calorie pack of raw almonds. 

We also fashioned a harness for Norm tonight ad he seemed to enjoy himself for awhile exploring our campy before deciding he’d rather spend the rest of the night hiding under the truck. 

Perhaps we will make an explorer kitty out of him, yet. 

As of now, we are showered, laundered and plumb tuckered. Tomorrow is another adventure to who-knows-where. Till morrow friends! 😴

Day One: Ass-Kicker, (Day 1, Girls 0)

I’m forty-five years old and I’m lying on an air mattress in the back of a pickup truck under a canvas camper shell as  rain pours down outside. I’m with  my wife, our chihuahua, and our thirty pound black cat in the middle of the woods- by my own choice- and I’m already missing the home I left in Myrtle Beach. 

I’m ecstatic to be on this adventure and to see all of the incredible places we’re visiting, and all of the friends and family that we are finally going to see after two years of my being ill, but after being able to return to Myrtle Beach three months ago, we both realized that, though many of the people we adore are scattered across the country, and even the globe, our hearts and some of our dearest friends are right here in this tacky little beach town. 

So today is Day One of a fourteen-ish week countdown to our return home, and Day One whipped us both like a couple of wet noodles. 

Really, the last week was a frenetic orgy of panic, periodically interspersed with fun visits from friends and nightmare filled night of four-hour sleeps...

The RV is in storage for the next three-and-a-half months (Yes, we put a perfectly good camper in storage to travel the land in the back of a pickup. No, the irony is not lost on us) and the truck is full to overflowing with crap that we think we need for this adventure. 

I won’t be surprised if we make it to Utah and mail stuff to Houston for my Dad to put in the back of the Jeep for storage until August. 

We were supposed to leave MBSP at noon today. We left at 2pm. 

We called ahead yeasterday to make sure the storage place was ready for us. They were yesterday- but today, not so much. 

They fortunately found space for us and I, fortunately, previously drove eighteen wheelers for a living and am an accomplished backer, otherwise we would not have made it into the space the cleared for us. 

It took us about forty-five minutes to secure the camper and attach our hitch platform, cooler, gas can, porta potty and beach chairs to the truck. 

We were hot, hungry, tired and very grumpy.  Neither of us had eaten breakfast this morning and it was now 4:10. 

It was Bo-time! A little Bojangles fried chicken, biscuits and unsweetened iced tea (sweet tea beats all but I’d be as big as South Carolina if I drank it) and everyone was in a good mood again. 

On a separate note: I started sweating today! 

A short explanation- I haven’t sweated since my bone marrow transplant and they said it would take about two years. I’m around eighteen months- Yay! 

You may think not sweating is wonderful- if you live in places like Texas or South Carolina, I can assure you- it is not. It is dangerous and unbelievably limiting and uncomfortable. 

I’m only sweating in my forehead and scalp so far, and it’s not much to speak of, but as summer approaches, it’s a huge relief. 

We knew we wouldn’t make it too far today, so we focused on our South Carolina Ultimate Outsider goal, as we are rapidly approaching our goal and will be completing it before the end of the year.

We made it to Santee State Park around seven tonight and will assuredly be returning for a longer visit in the future. 

Not only are our friends Graylon and Debbie hosting there (we didn’t see them this trip), but this is a gorgeous park. 

Situated on the shores of the enormous 110,000 acre lake Marion, which boasts a mid-lake Cypress forest, it also has yurt-like cabins built out on piers  overlooking the lake. 

It’s absolutely breathtaking and the road into the park is nicer than any SC State Park road I’ve ever seen. I kept teasing Katrina that we must be lost and on the wrong road because this couldn’t possibly be a park road in SC. 

Our next stop, and where we knew we would end up spending the night tonight, was Aiken State Park and we made it here just about 9pm, coincidentally at the same time as the torrential downpour and lightning storm. 

So far, there are only a few things I can tell you about Aiken State Park, since it’s midnight and the rain has just recently stopped and I’m already in bed:

1. It smells like steer manure. I don’t know if it’s proximity to pastureland, a dairy or indicative of the park itself, but it’s awful. 

2. It’s very buggy. This can be said for most inland SC parks in mid-May, so no surprises there. 

3. The campsites are packed sand and are wooded and level.

4. In the dark, the campground slightly resembles Croft State Park in feeling, with a little less charm (I am biased, so please take that into account. 

5. Our site has electric and water, which is nice because we have fans for us and Norm for ventilation. 

Tomorrow, we go to the visitors center and get our stamp and then we will visit Hamilton Branch State Park. Score crossing the border into Georgia. Then we will have to wait until August to finish up our Ultimate Outsider. 

We did see a few interesting gems today in Orangeburg, SC:

1.  Trumps Inn- Read the reviews online. Pretty funny. I’ll say no more. 
2. Git-er-Done Tires- pretty unsurprising in the same town as above...
3. Gagsta Auto Detailing- apparently a town divided. 

Best part of today was after dusk when we saw lightning bugs  in the fields and brush. Katrina calls them ground stars and we haven’t seen them for two years. It was as if they were saying goodbye and reminding us to come home soon.  

Trumps Inn in Orangeburg, SC