Good evening Campers! It’s Silver Cliche’ writing to you tonight from the “Redneck Riviera”... the Alabama Gulf Coast.
They say that being a writer is all about honesty. I wish they’d stop saying that. If they stopped, then I could tell you a story about a long drive through the rural South, the people we met along the way, the historic sites that dot the landscape and the stark distinction between America as viewed from rural roads versus America as viewed from the Interstate system. Maybe I’ll get to that, but first I need to tell a tale on myself.
When we started the trip a day early (on Friday) and stayed two nights in Georgia, I cancelled our original reservation for night #1 (O’Leno State Park, Florida) and planned our departure for this morning to get to our reserved site for night #2 (Meahan State Park, Alabama). When we arrived at Meahan at 4:00 this afternoon the office was closed but the sign that was left out instructed campers with reservations to head straight to their reserved spot. Easy, right? What happens next requires you to understand that I plan these trips in meticulous detail. I build a spreadsheet that includes each day of the trip as a row. The columns include the day number of the trip, the date, the day of the week (weekend reservations are hardest to book... I frequently do them first), the state, campground, campsite number, confirmation number, amenities (electric, water, pets allowed, etc.) at each campsite, any notes, the driving distance between campsites and the driving time. It’s detailed and it’s essential (in my mind) to plan a long trip this way even if you know you will divert from the plan occasionally. The challenge comes if the tool is used for planning but not consulted for travel. After a 7 hour drive today I opened my spreadsheet to look up the site number for Meahan State Park tonight only to learn that on Sunday April 18 we have a reservation for Site 17 at Falling Water State Park, Florida. Meahan is booked for tomorrow night. Several phone calls and web searches indicated that Meahan was full for tonight. Fortunately, an understanding travel companion (or maybe an exhausted one) and a nearby WalMart with a policy to allow overnight parking solved the immediate problem. Our Gulfside campsite (#33 by the way) awaits tomorrow. We settled in to Wally World. We even tested out the new big screen theater in the trailer to watch a Netflix about RVing through America called “Expedition Happiness” (I kid you not... after all, this is an exercise in honesty, right?). The setup is a portable projector onto a 60” screen hung at the foot of the new bed. It’s driven by a laptop PC. Here’s a pic showing a Cliche’-eye view of the setup...
So, tomorrow we pick up where we should have been. I promise this is my last screw up until the next one.
Back to our travel today... we were up and at ‘em... went out to breakfast and hit the road just after 9:00. The planned route took us through Macon and Columbus, Georgia then Auburn and Montgomery, Alabama and into Meahan in Spanish Fort (or WalMart in Daphne as it worked out).
The story of the day turned out to be a lesson in state road travel versus interstate travel. As luck would have it, the first half of the trip through Georgia avoided interstates except for a short jog down I75. The second half was nearly all interstate. The interesting sites in Georgia were plentiful. The interstate segment was featureless and could have been in any state east of the Mississippi.
So, what did we see? Well, we passed near the most notorious prison of the US Civil War... Andersonville, Jimmy Carter’s peanut ranch at Plains and Franklin Roosevelt’s retreat at Warm Springs. We drove past a National Park Service site called Ocmulgee Mounds where early native tribes built earthen mounds that are up to 55 feet high. The largest was estimated to take 10 million baskets of earth to build (I had no idea, either). As promised yesterday, we stopped for barbecue. Bad news... the particular shop we stopped at doesn’t run their smoker on Sundays. What? I’m not known for my bible scholarship, but I don’t think there is a prohibition on smoked meats on the Sabbath. Maybe it’s a Georgia thing.
We drove for three hours through beautiful “americountry” on the state roads of Georgia. You could see it, smell it, interact with the locals and learn about their peculiar views on the relationship between God and barbecue. It was everything a road trip should be. The pace we had to move prevented us from actually seeing the things we learned were out there, but the knowledge we gained may just call us back. The unique feature of this piece of americounty is the pecan grove. Miles and miles of stately trees that have just now brought forward their new leaves to restart the cycle. Today’s “Silver Cliche’ driving experience (and the first in over 4 years) is the view I had of one such grove.
One final event tells the tale of the day. For this trip we added a tacky travel accessory to the rear window of the Airstream. I talked about that a couple of posts ago. I didn’t mention that we also added a large QR code that links to this blog. As we were driving between Columbus, Georgia and Auburn, Alabama a grey GMC Sierra pickup pull-up alongside while we were doing about 40 MPH. I feared I had cut them off and they were coming for me or maybe they were about to alert me that my right rear tire was billowing smoke. Nope... the woman in the passenger seat was waving her cell phone that displayed the current view of “Silver Cliche’ On the Road”. Welcome aboard! We hoped that might happen one day on our 100 day trip. The fact that you found us on the roll on Day 3 is encouraging.
We saw absolutely nothing of interest from the Interstates. Well, there was a giant brown sign alerting us that we were near the Tuskegee Airman monument. That might be worth a return visit.
It’s getting late. Time to turn in. We’ve got a 10 minute drive ahead of us tomorrow.
Later...
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