And … middle-aged retirees as well.  So South it is!

We find ourselves following the migrating birds to the warmer climes.  As we left West Virginia a few weeks ago, looking for adventure and more fall color, it was still warm and lovely.  We had many balmy days and pleasant, heater-less, nights. 

We visited Charlotte, North Carolina, with the intention of maybe picking up some tickets to a Panthers game.  That fell through.  It’s just as well, as the Panthers are having a really putrid year, and who wants to watch putridity in motion.  To digress, which I do EXTREMELY well, you probably know we are 49ers fans.  We find ourselves in a weird situation.  Last year, the Niners were on the East Coast often, and we would have been able to find several stadiums (stadia?) where we might have been able to get tickets.  But the league realigned the teams this year, and the Niners don’t come east at all.  So we can’t see them no matter how far we travel.  Frump.  But then…….the Niners are frumping along right now anyway; life is a bummer.  Life has always been hard on San Francisco baseball and football fans.

To undigress.  How’s that for a word!  My spell-check is befuddled.  Good.  Outfoxed him this time….  Anyway, we are really back in the South now, and we can sure see the difference. We’re back in the land of:  traffic jams; Chick-fil-A; y’all and soft voices; huge car dealerships, bank buildings, and roadside signage; year-round roadside wildflowers; towns with stately trees; and even Jack in the Box!  (We hadn’t seen one of those in many a month.)  This is also the land of the named road:  Solon David Smart Memorial Highway and Sgt. W. Dean Arledge Memorial Highway, to name but two of the multitudes.  They even name their bridges:  Peter Guice Memorial Bridge, would you believe!  Oh yeah, and kudzu…….

On the flatlands, (actually it’s called the Piedmont area, east of Charlotte and heading toward Raleigh) there is still cotton in the fields, although not much else.  In the Carolinas, we suspect it’s the leftovers from the picking (further south they are still in the fields) and will be plowed under (or burned?) at a later date.  Much like the fields along Highway 41 heading toward Fresno out of Paso – the fields themselves, that is, not the countryside.

We’ve enjoyed the Appalachian Mountains and wonderful fall color, crossing back and forth across the Blue Ridge Parkway, and up and down hill and dale through cute little towns like Cashiers and Brevard, each filled with “leaf peepers” having a ball. 

And a special treat:  we journeyed through Gaffney, South Carolina, the town with the water tower shaped and colored like a giant peach (surprisingly attractive, much more than you would think!), and the outlet that sells both firewood and peaches (probably at the same time – South Carolina is a little different…..)

You may remember we headed for Raleigh, North Carolina at one point, to visit friends and relations, and take care of business.  The business was medical, all routine:  we’ve decided that since we plan to be on the East Coast for an indeterminate period, we wanted to establish our medical connections in Raleigh, where we already have reason to visit.  So…..dentist, doctor, etc. are all being visited on a normal basis.  We have found this to be quite efficient, even though one office had forgotten to follow up on the appointment we had made; they fit us in after awhile.  The blessing of being retired is that you don’t mind sitting in the doctor’s office for a couple of hours; newspapers, magazines and books are all you need to keep you going.  And they even have bathrooms you can use!  So we did just fine.  The entire Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area is known for its medical facilities, and we felt well taken care of.  One day we were in Durham at Duke Medical Center, which is on the university campus.  What incredible buildings!  Very old, very picturesque, quite a sight.

We had an unusual experience while staying with our friends in Raleigh.  They are very involved in middle and eastern European activities, and from time to time have interesting people staying with them.  A few days after our arrival, we were joined by two Russians, men involved in the media in their country, and we had a grand evening exchanging views on all kinds of subjects, with the aid of an interpreter, over several glasses of wine.  It was great fun and a “first” for us. 

We left our friends in Raleigh at last, all wishing we’d had more time together but knowing we’d be back.  We beat feet back to the western North Carolina mountains, to enjoy highland games in the small town of Flat Rock.  It was fun and we enjoyed ourselves.  They had a really cool bagpipe band, sheep dog demonstrations, great Scottish food, and huge guys with great legs throwing enormous things around in a field.  Very crazy.  The weather was clear and sunny, but colder than the devil.  It was only the second year this group had put on a festival and they weren’t too well organized, but everyone had fun and there was a good turnout.  We’ve all been at (or in charge of) events during their infancy; they did fine.  Probably the most interesting part was the calling of the clans; each clan represented (and there were 10-15) paraded past the reviewing stage while the history of the clan was read out.    It was neat.

The fall color in Flat Rock was good; when we left, though, we headed south into northern Georgia, and there the color was FANTASTIC.  We really felt we’d arrived.  We spent two weeks at a camp in the mountains, about 2000 feet up, in the woods.  It was glorious, attached is a picture to show you: winding little roads, beautiful trees, quaint towns to browse in (we don’t do much of that, though; what would we do with anything we decided to buy???), tons of apple orchards and roadside stands, and friendly people more than happy to help.  This was the first time we’d spent two weeks without moving, and we wondered how we’d like it.  I got a little twitchy when I was stuck inside for 3 days in a row because of bad weather; otherwise it was just great.  We know we need to slow down; we cannot go romping back and forth and up and down lickety-split forever; we need to set a much slower pace.  So this was a good start.  We picked this campground because it is our “home park.”  A complicated explanation is in order, but you probably don’t care that much.  Suffice it to say that we belong to a membership campground group, and everyone has a home park; we can stay here for free two weeks out of any given month.  Ours is in this beautiful area at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, and we are delighted.  It’s called Camp Cherry Log, and it’s just up the road from Turnip Town Creek (how about that!); It’s a small park but with all the things we want:  nice laundry, great staff, e-mail access and digital phone access (although you have to climb up the hill a bit to get signal out of the valley the park is in).  And the motorcycle riding is just great.  There are lots of roads in great condition, the views are spectacular – what else is there? There’s lots of new money in these mountains; lovely homes on acreage, people coming up from Atlanta.  We know we’ll come back here quite happily a couple of times a year as we move north and south with the changing seasons.

Oh yeah, and they had ladybugs.  And more ladybugs.  The charming little rascals were swarming, and we had them everywhere.  Our coach was in a fairly good spot, but some people said they were killing hundreds every day.  It was very cold at night, sometimes below freezing; but as the sun would come out and it would get nicer, they would wake up and start.  A lively spot!

We took a day’s ride over to one of the most famous of the Civil War battlefields, at least in the South:  Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Battlefield.  This is the site of a pretty hairy battle over several days in heavily wooded terrain.  This is one where the South won the battle, but the North ultimately won the ground that mattered.  But so be it; the area is lovely and has been maintained much as it was at the time of the fight.  We enjoyed ourselves very much.   We also took a ride over to a nearby state park that has one of the neatest waterfalls anywhere; you can look down from the top, or up from the bottom, and the view is great either way.  We took tons of pictures.

Riding on back country roads has special treats you don’t see on the freeways, and one of them is how people choose to name a road that is their own road down to their own home they’ve built.  Many are very mundane, but some are whimsical:  Holiday Lane, Asbestos Road, Ta-Da-Dump Road, for example.  Some people will name the road after themselves, e.g., R.L. Patterson Lane, or my personal favorite, Bing & Bessie’s Road.  Isn’t that a great one!

Oh, yes, I almost forgot: we’ve had another mouse.  Now, you might think that since we also have two cats, a mouse would be no big thing.  WRONG!!!  For a couple of days we’d thought there might be one in the coach; the cats were attentive and I’d heard some rattling noises.  All of a sudden he appeared.  He scurried, Jeremy pounced, and the mouse was caught.  Yeah, for about two seconds.  Jeremy dropped him and tried to bat him around.  The mouse scurried; Jeremy pounced (round two), and the mouse was caught.  Repeat step one.  Then scurry, pounce and catch.  And drop again.  By this time Agnes has (finally) figured out she probably should be checking this out.  She gets in Jeremy’s way, and he loses the mouse again.  The mouse is behind the toilet doing the peek around one side at a time routine, there is a cat around each side when he looks, and Rick is now on floor with container to try and trap mouse.  Mouse no fool; mouse leaves the arena.  Just think of the Keystone Kops and you’ll have the picture.  Well, for several days we had traps laid out, but never caught the mouse.  We figure he quickly decided these folks were crazy and he would find a new home.

Well, with or without the mouse, we finally left Camp Cherry Log and headed further down into the state of Georgia.  A fun state.  The people are more seriously Southern in their speech than we’ve previously encountered.  Seems to us that the accent is always on the wrong syllable, and they swallow the end of the word:  LaFayette becomes LaFAITE; Albany is alBAINy, etc.  I find myself having to have about half of any sentence repeated to get the gist of it; I find myself nodding politely a lot of the time.  Tried to have a discussion about the weather with one fellow; we finally both gave up and just wished each other a happy day and good traveling. 

We went through Atlanta on a Sunday morning (the only time we would have tried it) without incident and settled for a few days in mid-Georgia in a campground in the middle of a pecan grove.  The countryside is quite flat; this is peach and pecan country; also peanuts.  We weren’t far from Plains and Jimmy Carter.  As with much of the South, the area is a mixture of prosperous and poor.  It’s a combination of nice if not special houses next to shabby mobile homes with junk cars in the yards.  We bought pecans, and I’ve made the most wonderful pie.  We’ll come back for peaches in the spring. 

We did do some riding around to see stuff.  Country roads were in good condition, although sometimes you’d come around a corner and your road had turned to dirt; but near at hand would be another, paved road.  We had fun.  In the northeast, when you go through small towns, the town square will have the courthouse.  And you go around it.  Further south, it may be a courthouse, but it also could be a water tower; we’ve circled around a few of those as well.  We also went through a wide spot in the road called Kathleen, Unincorporated; I felt that had special significance.  And we went to the little town of Fort Valley, where we toured the Blue Bird plant, where some of the biggest, fanciest, and most costly motorhomes were made.  We took the plant tour and were quite impressed; just a bit out of our price range however.

On two separate days we traveled to a really wonderful Aviation Museum at Fort Robins Air Force Base, about 45 miles away.   For two people who don’t even particularly like to fly, we both enjoy the aviation museums we’ve been to.  Kind of the same as our enjoyment of the various maritime museums.  This was the biggest one yet with some extremely nicely done interior displays along with lots of planes scattered around the grounds.  All the way from bi-planes to an SR-71 Blackbird, with a B-29 and B-52 highlighting the rest.  Rick got to see two of the planes he had flown in when in Viet Nam along with lots of other cool stuff.

But our goal for Thanksgiving has been the gulf area in southern Alabama, and that’s where we headed next.  So get out your maps, folks.  To get from mid-Georgia to the Mobile area (our destination), the best way is to get into Alabama and then cut across a corner of the Florida panhandle; so we did.  You bip in and out of Florida rather quickly, using the Ga-Fla Parkway (charming name).  We passed through Warwick, GA, home of the National Grits Festival, along the Willie Pitts Jr. Parkway through Albany, then onto the Peter Zack Geer Highway and the Harvey Jordan Memorial Highway (for the 17th time: WHERE DO THEY FIND THESE PEOPLE!!!), past the bait shop in Blakely that sells ice cream along with the crickets.  And Blakely is the town with the peanut monument in the courthouse square; monument was nothing special but the courthouse was very pretty. They’re harvesting pecans and cotton through here still, and the peanut cooperatives are busy. 

Crossing into Alabama over the Chattahoochee River, the land starts to open up and become a bit more rolling, and we are beginning to see some swampy areas (and Spanish moss again, YEAH).  The roads are still good, and we continue to see dirt roads right off the main highway (true throughout the South).  We passed through Opp (what a name!) and a little burg, Level Plains, which had a sign pointing to the business district, which was a flea market.  We took pictures of a monument to the boll weevil, in Enterprise Alabama.  You may know that cotton was wiped out in the south shortly after the turn of the (20th) century because of the boll weevil.  Enterprise is credited with being one of the most forward looking spots in the entire south, trying various kinds of crops until they found things that could thrive in their soil, peanuts being the best.  So they erected a monument to the critter that taught them they needed to diversify.  We spent the night in Enterprise, the night before the Alabama/Auburn game.  There were red shirts and jackets everywhere.  We enjoyed the scene. 

We had directed ourselves toward Enterprise because we knew there was an Army Aviation Museum on the grounds of Fort Rucker, nearby.  So we stopped there.  This was the first time we’d stopped to see something where we actually went on base to do so:  West Point, Fort Robins, etc. were just next to the military grounds.  And we were really frisked:  they looked inside the coach (including the refrigerator and our clothes drawers), had us open up the trailer, etc.  wow!  But they finally let us through the checkpoint, and we went on to the museum.  It was full of helicopters, including a Chinook, which Rick also had flown in while overseas.  This was much smaller than the Air Force museum had been, but was also very well presented and included beautiful examples of several WWI fighters along with the earliest military helicopters all the way up to the most current Apaches.

As you head due south from Alabama into Florida you see places to go for turkey shoots, and you can buy Cajun boiled peanuts (why?); and you can tell as you get closer to the border.  Palm trees!  Mosquitoes!  Wooded areas with cattle!  Swamps with those little frond plants I like so well!  Then, right at the border crossing, is Florala State Park, a pretty little place.  (In the south it’s very common to have something that’s on or close to a state border be a combination of the two state names; I think it’s very common, but then, I’m a snob.)  anyway, the park was nice. 

We moved right on along through a corner of the panhandle and back into Alabama, to Summerdale, where we are now staying in a beautiful little park.  We are here through Thanksgiving and probably most of the following week, letting the folks get back home from their holiday down here.  We’re near Mobile, and have been to see the USS Alabama, an enormous battleship.  I was mostly reminded of the terms “battleship grey” and “as big as a battleship.”  We had a good time.  We are also equal distance (about 35 miles) from Pensacola, home of the Naval Air Station and Naval Aviation Museum.  That’s on the schedule for early next week.

It is cold here at night, even though we’re right off the gulf, but nice enough during the day to sit outside if it’s sunny.  We’re working on projects and enjoying ourselves.  We’re back in the Central Time Zone for the first time of any length since this spring.  It feels odd, but the football games do start at a more respectable time.  When we leave here we’ll head over into Florida where we expect to remain until mid-February.  We hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

Our new motto:  Blue Skies, Blue Water.

Rick and Kathy

PS:AN ODE TO LAUNDROMATS.  We love small town America!  We’ve been in and out of a zillion little burgs this last year.  Some of them are truly charming and lovely.  They are full of well preserved, old homes, many times with an American flag waving out in front; many, many have been converted to B&Bs, often with whimsical names describing the main attraction in the area.  The trees in the front yards are huge, and right now they are losing their leaves all over the grass.  The churches are white, with tall-tall-tall steeples; the town square has a splendid courthouse that’s at least 150 years old.  And there are no parking meters.

But we also have a fondness for those small towns that haven’t that sparkle; the homes may not be sporting recent paint jobs, the center of town isn’t quite so lovely and lively, and Wal-Mart has forced the closing of many a small shop.  But these are still working towns, getting the job done, without all us tourists spending our dollars buying the latest piece of kitsch.  And these towns have nice big laundromats that get used – a lot!  So here’s the deal:  it takes about two hours to do two weeks’ worth of clothes.  It takes three machines and three dryers, unless you do the towels, then it’s four.  The machines run from $1.00 - $1.50 per load.  (Oops, a huge $1.75 at the last place; gasp!)  Some of the dryers you can choose the number of quarters you have to put in.  Others you have to start with at least a buck to get the machine to take off.  And you have to be careful not to get them running too hot or they will fry your clothes.  (All this in case you haven’t gone out to do your laundry since you graduated from college.)  OK, I’d rather be using my trusty machines that we left behind in our house in Paso Robles.  But that’s not an option.  So here I am, meeting and greeting and mixing with mid-America on Saturday morning as we swish the suds. 

Actually, it’s kind of fun.  Rick wanders off to do something else, although he’d be happy to help me if I wanted him to, and I’m left exchanging heart-rending stories with the locals.  Have you ever noticed how quickly women share the most intimate details of their lives with strangers.  In about 10 minutes I can find out someone’s life history, including a rundown on each husband, where the kids are, etc.  But what’s the most fun is when they find out we hail from California.  You always get a story of when they were “out there,’ or someone they know who moved there.  You might be very surprised at the high opinion most people have of our funky home state.  They don’t see all the problems we know California has, or the silly kids wearing more metal than a 5-star general (and fewer clothes than a hooker).  California sparkles to them; isn’t it great!   We are often asked why we would leave there to come see their area.  We do our best to explain, but often can tell they don’t really believe us.

By the way, the kids all over the United States look the same as what I’m describing; we are not alone!

See more photos from 2002-2003

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