Early October, 2024: Sticks and Stones May Break Our Bones, but Spiders and Snakes Really Creep Us Out

New Bern, NC

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I’m going to jump ahead in our story to now (sort of like this clip).  This jump is also sort of a metaphor about how fast summer slips by.

Axel ponders a jump of his own

We left Stafford and spent a few days in Suffolk, VA, a bit south of Newport News and on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp.  It was a little odd to be at a campground again after weeks of moochdocking, but other than the occasional feeling of being surrounded by cultists, it was pleasant enough.  We went up to Smithfield for their “Vintage Festival” where vendors hawked old McDonald’s style drinkware – featuring the Smurfs, Star Wars, and Snoopy – from folding tables set up on closed streets.  Other “antique treasures” included Corning crockery, Fisher-Price toys , and the other bits of detritus that can often be found skulking about in dark paneled basements with high-pile shag carpets and stained pool tables covered with macrame supplies. 

Center of the Swamp

We also went into the ‘Dismal.  It was a bright sunny day, there’s a giant lake in the middle, and it was incredibly peaceful.  Apparently they used to keg the peat-stained water from the swamp for trans-oceanic voyages because it was so clean.

From there we overnighted at the Morris Farm Store (a Harvest Host) in Barco, NC.  We could see the ocean from the parking lot and bought a 2 pound bag of peanuts in the shell that were the most flavorful we’ve ever had.  I also bought a coffee cake that, while tasty, wasn’t nearly as good as what my aunt makes.

From there we moved into the Croatan National Forest for a couple of weeks.  We stayed at Cedar Point for a few days during our shakedown last March.  This time we’re on the north side at Flanners Beach, just outside of New Bern.  It’s quiet, functional but deteriorating – proof if anyone needs it that nobody thinks they’ll get reelected by funding our national parks.  To be fair, I’d prefer more funding for highway maintenance… but still.

The Neuse River from Flanners Beach

Anyway, we’ve enjoyed the stay and the punctual squirrels who start chucking nuts on our roof at 0700 every single morning.  It was funny for a couple days, then not so funny, and now it’s coming back around.

The squirrels have multiple arcs of fire

What’s not funny and hasn’t been funny and won’t ever come around are the giant spiders a local referred to as a “banana spider” that are huge.  HUGE.  And everywhere.  Ubiquitously everywhere.

Even less funny was our trip along the Beach Swamp Trail.  I had to use a spider web stick again and there were a lot of spiders and my wife feels about spiders the way I feel about snakes and we almost didn’t take the hike because walking through the grassy field at the parking area for the trailhead I almost stepped on a fat green snake.  But we’re brave people and walked the trail along the high ground watching for spiders and waving the stick.  Renee said, “Jon!!!!!”  I stopped, took a step back toward her obvious distress, and she screamed, “GO!!!!”  So I went.  

Then she told me about the long (4 feet or so), fat, dirty, black/gray/green snake with the thin tail that was laying across the trail that I stepped over then (when I turned) straddled as it began slithering into the underbrush and fortunately went away.

Then she saw another smaller one slither off a few yards further along.  It was a long half mile back to the road.  I have not been excited about hiking any of the trails since.  Turns out that in addition to the water moccasins we saw, copperheads, coral snakes, and 2 different types of rattlesnake are also COMMON in the area.  And to think I started the walk more concerned about alligators.

Birthplace of Pepsi

We opted to go into town after that, enjoying a Pepsi at the building where Pepsi was born and having a nice conversation with a retired teacher from Guilderland.  We also visited with the bears, fed the ducks, got swarmed by pigeons, and gave directions to the local hospital to an older-than-us man who stopped and asked for them.

If you add a scoop of ice cream, Pepsi is almost as good as Coke

In a separate conversation, Pam and Steve invited us to stay with them on their sailboat in the Bahamas this winter.  We just need to get there, and bring our own food.  I wonder if they’d like a keg of Dismal Swamp water?

Nothing spooky about that

Cypress shoots reminiscent of Bamboo

Renee baked cookies

Jon made fried rice

July into August, 2024 – Olean, NY

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We packed up and moved out of Stafford after being parked for a month.  I was a little concerned about getting back behind the wheel but other than sending a forgotten candle shattering to its doom, the trip out went very well.  We even got the car properly positioned on our first go.

We drove a zig-zagging North Westerly route of interstate and four lane highway to Bedford, PA – home of the “Coffee Pot” for an overnight.  It was comfortably scenic once we’d cleared the sprawl of DC and readjusted to the rounded hills of the East from the dramatic volcanic shape of Hawaii.

After a Harvest Host overnight at a Bedford church (pleasant and surprisingly peaceful despite its closeness to the highway - and they gave us cookies) we continued north through the mountains of Western PA to the border town of Olean, NY.  We both grew up in NY, spent decades there, yet had never ventured into this corner of the state.  If I hadn’t gone through a brief period of wanting to go to St. Bonaventure, I probably wouldn’t even have known the town existed.

We had a site along the Allegheny River at a quiet and clean private campground.  It’s a big muddy thing (the river) that reminded me a lot of the Schoharie Creek, but with water.  The far shore was all woods so we were treated to deer, ducks, a beaver cutting and collecting saplings, and even an eagle that swooped in for some fishing one morning.

We settled into the day 1 routine of exploring town – finding a decent coffee shop, the local grocery and dry goods place, and getting a feel for the local vibe.  That last was challenging in Olean, it’s a town that seems to be unsure of what it wants to be when it grows up.  And what’s with all the giant statues of squirrels?

For the rest of the week we relied on tourist brochures and the internet.

First up was Rock City, right on the PA border.  The pull off from the road looks promising.  The parking lot is ok.  The gift shop/office/theater/museum looks like the set of a horror movie, the low budget kind that has such a well written story you can’t sleep for a week.  It’s okay, press on.  There’s a walk reminiscent of Bear Town that we thoroughly enjoyed, an easy hour wanding through boulders and eroded channels with one that looks like a perfect map of NY – Long Island isn’t part of it.  The trail isn’t long but is uneven and there are stairs at both ends.

We drove out to the Kinzua Bridge State Park rising through the Allegheny Forest’s gentle mountains and narrow glacial valleys (not gorges).  The park is situated at the National Engineering Landmark of the Kinzua Bridge which, a few years ago, was blown over by a tornado.  The remnants have been repurposed as a pedestrian walkway with a platform (including 1” glass floor) out into the valley where you can, as my Father poetically put it, look down on the flying birds.  Enjoying the views and nice hike, and feeling lucky, we continued on to the “Serenity Glass Park” in a town about 20 miles away.

Don’t go to the Serenity Glass Park.  There’s a reason it doesn’t have a website.

On our last day, Renee discovered we were only an hour from the Lucile Ball museum.  She is a huge fan so we had to go.  It was definitely worth the drive.  It was split into two separate downtown buildings, one about “I Love  Lucy” and the other about Lucy and Desi.  A few blocks away was the National Comedy Center (interactive museum) which was also a lot of fun.  This may not surprise many of you, but we played a contest where we told jokes trying to make the other person laugh and I didn’t win.  All three museums were accessible with clean restrooms and places to sit and rest.

Saturday was our travel day, but we were able to just beat most of the rain and it went smoothly.  Even the part where there was no turn around for the road our site was on and I had to back out.  Then turn around.  Then back back in to get the tow dolly.  But we got the car on the dolly first try so there was that, and an easy drive to Ithaca.

View from my dining room window

Absolute blast

Why yes, that is us on Lucy's sofa

[Heavy sarcasm] Oh no!  What happened to Long Island?

Bring me your children

New plan, let's all walk on the only part that didn't fall down

What's left of the "engineering marvel"

Walking on glass

Birthday Party Road Trip

Big Stone Gap

The first song I learned to play on the piano was “Birthday Party” (taught first by Marian during an evening I spent at her house while my parents were out, and then formally by Thema as we worked through “Teaching Little Fingers to Play”).  The words and tune ran through my head as we drove out of Nashville, moving with purpose toward Stafford and a very important birthday party.  

Here we go, up the road, to a birthday party.  (Yes, yes, I know.  The actual lyric is up a row, but that’s not what I was humming.)

We did the drive in one shot back in February when we bought the RV and it was brutal so we planned the trip back with 2 stops at Harvest Hosts and one more at a no-frills campground so we could arrive relaxed and with plenty of daylight to spend with the kids of both generations.

Our first night was in the parking lot of a huge church campus near a Burger King.  It was quiet, smelled good, and a great place to play fetch with Axel.  Our second night was at the town of Big Stone Gap, VA.  The actual town was the host, with concrete pads at their riverfront park specifically to welcome us.

The drive off I-81 to Big Stone Gap was through the same mountains as Watoga but more scenic than scarry this time.  The village itself was quaint with a bustling downtown.  We arrived as they were setting up for their weekend beach party – complete with a shutdown street converted into a sand beach.  It was a neat place with an active community, lots of festivals throughout the year, and a decent meal at a local place called Big Cherry Brewing Company.  There was also a tangle of low wires hanging across the entrance of the park - I only managed to snag them once.

The drive out of town was wide and steep with sweeping views of valley farms, railroad tracks, and mountain streams.  We passed a Rural King.  We drove under a monstrous coal conveyor belt kind of thing.  We descended through overwhelming greenery.  And then we were at I-81.

The no frills-campground was within spitting distance of a truckstop and not configured for rigs our size.  Ironically, the potholes were so big that anything smaller than us would probably have been lost forever.  But none of that mattered.  We slept well, dumped the tanks that needed dumping and filled the tanks that needed filling and it was an easy drive to Stafford for afternoon coffee with the grandkids.

I’d say we spent the next few days catching up, but anyone with experience with an “about to be three”-year old knows there’s no catching up, only endless chasing around.  That was fine with this PopPop.  We helped out around the house in preparation for the party, watched the annual fourth of July parade, wrestled with how to plug the RV into the house without tripping any circuits (reminded me of the scene in Apollo 13), and packing for our trip to Hawaii.

The Birthday Party itself was grand, so many little kids.  More little kids than adults and there were a lot of adults.  Emily and Blake were great hosts and Sarah seemed to love every minute.  The days passed quickly, summer days filled with lemonade, ice cream, family and the shrieks and laughter of carefree youth and their grandparents.

On Monday morning we loaded up the car, sent Axel off with Renee’s parents, and said goodbye.  There was a plane to catch (three, actually) and an ocean to cross.

Grassy no-frills parking lot

The thingy

 

June, 2024 -- 3 Days in Nashville

I fit in here

Back in the pre-internet, pre-iPhone, pre-everybody’s a filmmaker, pre-everything’s gotta be a sequel or we’re too afraid to make it, 1990s, there were all sorts of quirky, sorta independent films with clever names and off-beat characters that made it into almost mainstream.  “3 Days in Nashville” could have been right up there with “Eight Heads in a Duffle Bag” or “Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead”.  But it wasn’t.  But it should’ve.  Or maybe not.

We enjoyed our stay, despite the now ubiquitous challenging drive into the campground and skipping out on the Grand Ole' Opry.  US Army Corp of Engineering campgrounds are awesome.  We weren’t waterfront, but it was spacious and quiet and an easy walk to a nice beach.  Axel approved.

It was also extremely conveniently located for everything Nashville including music, hot-chicken, and a must-see car museum.  The Lane Motor Museum’s collection of vehicles included conversions from airplanes, tiny 30 hp pickup trucks, a massively huge amphibious landing craft, Japanese drift machines, and dozens of motorcycles.  They claim a European leaning so I was hoping to see a Lotus or three.  They’ve 5 in their collection but only one was on display.  It’s okay though, it was one I never thought I’d seen in real life.

Renee is not a car person but enjoyed our visit describing several of the vehicles, especially an early Mazda, as “cute.”  Being able to live without being rushed has allowed us to enjoy many places we’d have skipped over previously because they “weren’t our thing” – there are so many stories.  It’s not just a fish, it’s trout.  It doesn’t just have scales, look at the detail, the color and patterns.  Right?

Speaking of not our thing, we also went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  We walked through the gift shop, found the nostalgia compelling, and so decided to not be cheap.  We bought the relatively pricey tickets and went to see the exhibits.  What an amazing place, artfully documenting the life and times of performers, the intersections and cross-influences of blues, folk, and rock with country, and the remarkably cooperative and nurturing professional musician community in Nashville.

From the set of Hee-Haw to Dwight Yoakum’s pants to the Bandit’s Firebird, there was something familiar around every turn.  At least until we got to the last part.  Other than Darius Rucker, I don’t know any of these new kids.

Back on the town, we strolled through Bon Jovi’s place, ate at The Assembly of Food (which was WOW), and listened to a lot of really good live music as we walked the streets and shopped for emergency sunglasses and an Alani Nu.  I even stopped in at the Bridgestone building to grab snaps of their Indycar static display and oversized tire mobile (the kind that hangs from the ceiling).

We ended up going downtown 2 days, parking at the stadium and walking across the bridge both times.  It’s hilly, but enjoyable in a county fair midway sort of way.  It seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but like so many of the places we’ve “lived” the past couple of months, we’re carrying away a comfortable familiarity and look forward to coming back.

Photobombed like a boss

He's a cowboy

A bike at a car museum.  But its a carbon fibre LOTUS!!!

It's a Fiat, not the Mazda, but still cute

This is the only one they built

Our cool beach

I would not go 200 in that

I would not go 200 in this either, even wearing that pink shirt