Month: July 2022

On June 8th we temporarily left our itinerary thru North Carolina for a short stop in Gaffney, SC. This is where Freightliner has their main production facility for the chassis that our RV is built upon. The chassis includes the foundation, the engine and the generator. Like any machine and related parts, this needs a good annual inspection and regular work and we figured it would be good to visit the factory service center for the work. We made an appointment and pulled in the afternoon before to park behind their service center so we’d be ready at 8 the next morning. Nothing glamorous but they did provide power.

All worked out well with the servicing, no problems found so we were able to leave after work was completed and drive about 1 1/2 hours north to the small town of Marion, NC. where our next week would be spent at a nice little campground on a creek with some shade and views of a huge open field.

While in the area , we visited Linville Caverns. We had previously visited this area last year, camping north of Linville Falls but never made it to the caverns so this was another chance to visit. It wasn’t really much to see, run by a private company that tended to run lots of tours thru so things backed up and it was hard to hear the guide at times. But it was still interesting and a cool place to be on a warm day.

The following Sunday, we travelled over to Tom’s Creek Falls which was an easy walk to a very nice waterfall. We were greeted with some wonderful views of this 60 foot waterfall.

After a relaxing week along the creek, we headed further west to one of our favorite places, Maggie Valley. We stayed at Cross Creek RV Park with a great view of the field and woods next to the campground. We’ve visited this area for the last several years so not a lot to report at this stop. We made our regular stops for fresh produce at Christopher Farms, a beer alongside Jonathans Creek at BearWaters Brewing, and a great meal and drinks at Boojum’s in Waynesville.

Although much of the south was experiencing temps in the 90’s and above at this late part of June, we were lucky to have cool enough weather to leave our windows open at night and even get in a good wash and wax on Lola 2.0

With regards to entertainment, it was pretty quiet at the campground. We did, however have some native visitors. On one occasion, a turkey wandered thru our campsite. One evening, the campers behind us were unlucky enough to be visited by a skunk. What made it way worse was that their dog attempted to chase the skunk, got sprayed, and then ran into the RV and jumped all over the furniture! Needless to say, they had a lot of work to do in trying to get the smell out of their dog and their RV!

On one of our last nights, we treated ourselves to a local production of Steel Magnolias which was put on at a very small intimate theater in Waynesville. It was very well done!

Our next and last stop was not officially in the state of North Carolina but still counts as we would complete our trip to the end of the state from this campground in North Georgia. We returned to Bald Mountain RV Resort in Hiawassee at a spot along the creek with some great shade. This was a busy week of meeting up with friends.

Over the course of the week, we met up with a lot of Jill’s friends from back when she lived in Lithonia. This included sisters Linda and Cheryl (and Cheryl’s husband Bob), Bill Mays, and Donna Moss (and her husband Jack). Linda and Cheryl just happened to have planned a family camping trip at the same campground at the same time so we were able to hang out at each other’s campsites. Donna and Jack had recently moved nearby to Hayesville, NC so we were able to see their new place as well as join up with them at a local winery. And not to be left out, we were able to meet up with our wonderful friends Bob and Sonja Short who we have known from way back in our whitewater paddling days! Overall, a great way to spend a week in the mountains!

Finally, it was just about time to wrap up this journey. To make it official, we travelled west to the very end of the state, reaching the state line at Tennessee.

As the sign indicates, we were now standing 563 miles from Manteo having travelled the width of the state of North Carolina. But, we didn’t take a straight line in making this journey. Here are some bits of data related to the trip:

• We departed April 25th from Dallas, GA and arrived back at the same location on June 28th. This totaled 64 nights
• We camped at 11 different campgrounds along our journey
• We travelled a total of 1,669 miles in the RV plus additional miles in the car
• Including our quick step across the line into Tennessee, we visited 4 states

We’d return to our friends’ property outside of Atlanta where we would remain until near the end of July when we’d make a few short trips. More on those plans with the next update but this gets us pretty much up to speed on our big trip for the year. Hope you enjoyed traveling along with us and see you down the road.

Dan & Jill

On May 24th, it was time to bid goodbye to the Atlantic coast until 2023 and start heading west across the state of North Carolina. Our first stop would be a wonderful campground south of Raleigh in the small town of Fair Oaks. Given we’d be staying over the Memorial Day Weekend, there were lots of activities planned including several food trucks and fun at two pools!

This was going to be a pretty laid back week after so much activity while on the coast with only a couple of trips scheduled out of the campground. Before the long weekend, we drove into Raleigh to tour the History Museum of North Carolina. It was a very educational (and free) 3-level museum located downtown. The most amazing artifacts on display were two complete buildings, one from the 18th century and the other from the 19th. The Moore-Whichard house is the 4th oldest known dwelling in North Carolina and it was lifted into the museum thru the roof during renovations and then preserved to show how it would have looked when first occupied in the 1700’s. A restored building that once housed enslaved African Americans has also been installed and restored and again, shows how the building may have looked when occupied in the 1800’s.

Another interesting and historic display was an entire recreation of David Marshall “Carbine” Williams’ workshop. Williams was a firearms designer who invented the floating chamber and the short-stroke piston. Both designs used the high-pressure gas generated in or near the breech of the firearm to operate the action of semi-automatic firearms like the M1 Carbine (and now you know where that name came from). These inventions helped in developing weapons that helped the US to victory in World War II.

The last display of interest was restored portions of an old fashioned Drug Store including various medicines and an original soda fountain bar. Some of the items found in the medicine display were quite interesting…

After finishing up at the museum, we traveled over to the original Raleigh Train Depot. Built in 1912, it is a wonderful example of restoration and reuse of an historic building. It now houses a coffee shop and, more importantly, a chocolate factory! We toured the small facility and bought some of their wonderful product for later consumption…yum!

We enjoyed several days at the pool, getting our meals from food trucks and just generally relaxing. But before we could move on, there was a friend of Dan’s from back in the early 90’s when they worked at the now defunct Hayes Microcomputer Products (if you don’t know who this was, look them up – basically the founding father of communicating with computers over phone lines back when 9600 bits per second was considered blazing fast!). Lisa Smallwood and her husband Tal live in Raleigh and we were able to catch up with them for a nice afternoon lunch. Again, one of the best parts of traveling is reconnecting with people we haven’t seen in years!

Our next stop was Winston-Salem. This is a wonderful town with lots of history and places to discover. Our campground was a real gem, Tanglewood Park. This is a county park that rivals most state and even national parks. The campground featured long sites with lots of shade. We had direct access to several paved bike trails and if we had wanted, we could have also gone to the county pool, taken a horse ride, or gotten a meal at the inn located within the park. Quite an impressive little park.

Our first day out, we visited a restored Shell gas station originally built in the 1930’s. The Shell Service Station in Winston-Salem, was a filling station constructed in 1930 following a decision in the 1920s by the new local Shell distributor, Quality Oil Co., to bring brand awareness to the market in Winston-Salem. It is no longer operating, but has been restored to its original condition for all to admire.

Next stop was Körner’s Folley. It was built in 1880 by Jule Gilmer Körner, and is a 6,000 square foot, 3+1⁄2-story, eccentric brick dwelling with a shingled, cross-gable roof. It measures 48 feet on each side, with four bays. The house is said to have served originally as combination dwelling, stable, and carriage house, and featured an open carriageway running through the center of the house. Körner made his fortune by spearheading one of the first national advertising campaigns by painting murals of Bull Durham Smoking tobacco bulls on buildings and barns across the American east coast. In the 1870s he moved back to his hometown Kernersville, NC, to build Körner’s Folly and start an interior decorating and design business. The 22-room interior features unusual architecture and many examples of Victorian furniture and interior decoration since Körner used the house to showcase his business.

The third floor of Körner’s Folly contains “Cupids Park,” which the museum says is the oldest private theater in America. Jule and Polly Alice Korner built the theater as part of their “Juvenile Lyceum,” which was a philanthropic project providing local children with access to the arts. Today, the theater is used by local theatrical groups and by the Körner’s Folly Foundation for a puppet show, which is performed several times a year for children and visiting school groups.

You can see in a couple of pics where Jill and I seem to be giants in the rooms but in actuality, when he had children he took some very high-ceiling rooms and split them horizontally for children rooms. Just the right hight for small kids, a little low for adults! There were also many passageways and corridors where family and help could get to different rooms without having to pass thru “public” rooms.

Continuing our history tour, another day we travelled to Old Salem. Old Salem was originally settled by the Moravian community in 1766. This small city features a living history museum that interprets the restored Moravian community. The district showcases the culture of the Moravian settlement in North Carolina during the 18th and 19th centuries with communal buildings, churches, houses, and shops, many of which you can tour.

The town’s restored and reconstructed buildings, staffed by living-history interpreters, present visitors with a view of Moravian life in the 18th and 19th centuries. The features include skilled interpreters such as tinsmiths, blacksmiths, cobblers, gunsmiths, bakers and carpenters, practicing their trades while interacting with visitors. Approximately 70% of the buildings in the historic district are original, making this a truly unique living history museum.

This area of North Carolina is also a great wine making region. Taking a break from our history lessons, we spent a day visiting three different vineyards.

Our last stop was at Mrs. Hanes’ Cookies where the wonderful art of making Moravian cookies continues. Moravian spice cookies are a traditional kind of cookie that originated in the Colonial American communities of the Moravian Church. The blend of spices and molasses, rolled paper thin, has a reputation as the “World’s Thinnest Cookie”. Today they have flavors such as black walnut, butterscotch, chocolate, and lemon as well as the more traditional sugar and ginger. We bought several bags for our travels…yum!

The remaining days at this wonderful park were spent relaxing as well as riding our bikes on the many bike trails across the park. In additional to wide paved trails, the park also features many dirt bike and horse trails.

Our next leg of the trip would take us on a short detour to Gaffney, South Carolina for some annual chassis maintenance work before continuing into the western mountains of North Carolina. More on that with the next update!