3/30/23

Good Morning Friends!!!!

There’s so much news to tell you! It may take more than one post.

First of all, the hubster and I had our caramel rolls yesterday and today. Now, normally this would not be news, but when I had a hankering for such a sweet treat one week ago, I could not find it in the huge bakery section of the equally huge grocery store. What I did find was three trays of apple fritters.

This is the first clue.

The second clue is this: Delaware, New Hampshire, Idaho, North Dakota, Hawaii, Utah, Wyoming, and Massachusetts.

The third clue is 3103 miles.

Yep! You guessed it! We were on a road trip, camping with the cats. I filled up an entire steno pad with notes, we used up every nugget of dry cat food we had, and neither of us ran out of prescription drugs, which seems to me, as I get older, to be a BIG determinant of how long you can be gone!

And we’re still married!!!!!

We had terrifically good weather for the days we drove, considering the fickle storms that March can throw at us. We wanted to visit the Smoky Mountains/ Blue Ridge Mountains area for the warmer temperatures and definitely different scenery. It’s gorgeous!!!! And we will be back!!!

We wanted to camp in national forests, for the solitude and gosh darn it, for the price! We stayed along side a clear rushing trout stream in the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee for $5 a night. The price at Pisgah NF in North Carolina went up a bit to $6.50 a night, probably because they had showers, although they weren’t open until the day before we left.

There was no fee on top of Bear Gap Road in the Daniel Boone NF in Kentucky because the campground was jointly supported by the state and the local dirt bike/ATV association. And we never found a place to pay at Big River, IL just south of the Quad Cities.

Cindy B., the peepers were vocal in both!!!

That leaves us with the highest camp fee we paid at a whopping $13 at the Monroe-Morgan State Forest in Indiana.

We did run into problems with the early spring dates. The road we wanted to take through the Smoky Mountains National Park was closed due to ice, as was the Blue Ridge Parkway, the clear day we tried to drive it. We were undaunted, though, and with great info from the travel center in Black Mountain, drove further on flat land before we accessed the BRP. It’s a day by day forecast; we all know ice comes and goes. It’s all probably open now. It could have been open the next day.

We also ran into fresh water not being turned on at rv dump stations. But Fast Fingers Janet would find a solution on the Internet.

When we had Internet. That is a drawback of camping in the NF’s . Driving through backroads which are so interesting is also dicey for Internet.

It’s helpful to have a hubster who creates his own database of 12,000 public campgrounds which does not need Internet.

So, the 3103 is the total miles traveled and the states listed were those license plates we did not see. I will say this, the license plate game is not as much fun and much more difficult with all the various plates that one state can have. We even saw a plate in Tennessee with Dolly Parton’s likeness! I remember playing the game in the 60’s and you really just looked for background color. Now, you gotta read the fine print of the state!! Each travel day, my eyes were so tired because try as I might, when a car passed us, I couldn’t help but check the plate.

I will also say this, the people in Florida and Michigan do not stay home!!!!!

And the absence of caramel rolls and the abundance of apple fritters? We were just south of Asheville, NC. And the apple fritter was marvelous.

We did have trouble with GPS sending us to the coordinates of someone’s cabin instead of a NF, but, in that case, I had seen a sign in town that pointed us toward the opposite direction for the NF, so we just retraced our route back to that sign.

I did point that out when we first saw it, but the hubster strongly supports the validity of GPS over the eyes of the love of his life.

I guess.

We also drove up the dirt bike path that GPS said was a road in KY. We had to move trees that the last storm had broken over the road. And the ruts? Ufda. We found the actual road down from the NF the next day.

Which brings up another learning-from-taking-a-trip-together tip: we have no problem with division of labor when camping. The hubster cooks and I clean up. However, division of decisions has yet to be decided.

It’s no surprise that we attack problem solving with different methods, we are, after all, different people. That the difference should be such a wide crevasse is a surprise, compounded by the fervor with which we stand by those decisions.

Yep. Trying to decide where to stop and camp on the way home was difficult, even with egg bake, apple fritter, and coffee in the very large grocery store in NC.

A caramel roll would have helped.

You see, I am a map person. The hubster is a GPS person. He wants exact driving times and I go by the mileage chart. He wants the quickest way to get there. I want to trace where we’re going with my finger over the page of the atlas.

Yeah. Uh hunh. I have no words of wisdom here if you have this same problem. I had to take a break from the lively discussion about where to camp on the way home and call my sister while stalking through the frozen foods aisle. Thank goodness she was there. Thanks, again, Judy.

And so I bring you to the end of the first post about our trip with this story. It happened in the six site campground near the trout stream in TN. Tellico River. Beautiful, clean vault toilet with a cement floor. Still cold enough to be wearing my MN winter boots to visit the outhouse to, as my Dad would say, “do my business.” And as I sat and did just that, a splash came up and hit my rear end. I’m talking about three cups of fluid.

Let’s just say I cleaned off the best I could and then stiff legged it to the camper to finish the rest with bathing wipes, then changed pants.

And then used the camper bathroom for the next week and a half.

Okay, get that out of your mind’s eye any time soon.

Other than that, a good trip. Hahahahahahahahaha!

Spring is coming, the snow is leaving, hug those close to you, and have a wildly wonderful weekend!!

Love,

Janet