29th May -6th June 2023
We bade farewell to the marshes, wetlands and sandy islands of the coast and headed inland. The landscape filled with trees again and there were occasional swathes of cereal crops and pastures with a cow or two in them. The roads in the USA are really designed to get you from A to B to C to D with minimal fuss. Long, straight, four lane roads carving through the distances, the need for many corners removed due to the unfathomable amount of space in this massive country. It is easy to do many, many miles in a day on the road here. We generally choose not to and this day was about 170 miles, a moderate journey for us. It brought us to a town called Wilson. Pretty non-descript but a place to be.
Some wise man somewhere along our travels once said to us that we should, as far a possible, stick to the ‘Rules of 2’ when touring: Don’t drive more than 200 miles in a day. Don’t arrive at your destination after 2pm. Stay 2 nights. Following these rules takes a lot of the fatigue out of travelling when rushing about is unecessary due to being time-rich. They were wise words and we try to stick to the ethos.
So we were here for two nights. The RV park was an older, spacious camp with lots of mature trees, set back from one of those aforementioned four lane main roads. It had a small lake, some resident donkeys and a selection of long termers in the back section living in crumbling rigs covered in leaf debris. The newly renovated pool looked lovely but it wasn’t warm enough for us to consider using. The town centre was about three miles away and on our middle day we broke out the bikes and set off to see Wilson’s premiere (and arguably only) attraction. The Whirligigs. ‘The what?’ I hear you ask. Well a chap by the name of Vollis Simpson lived near here and was farm machinery engineer by trade. His hobby was building ornamental windmills out of scrap materials. This became his major activity in retirement and he created an impromtu tourist attraction on his farm, filling it with wind powered contraptions of all shapes and sizes. He also did commissions for galleries, cities and museums. As he got too old to mainatain the pieces himself the town of Wilson bought his windmills, now called whirligigs, lovingly restored them and re-sited them on a sweet, multi-purpose community park in the centre of town. This has helped return some of the vibrancy to this deprived town that was once fabulous wealthy due to it being a major centre for tobacco trading in the past.
We arrived at the Whirligigs in one piece having had to navigate a one mile stretch of the main road on our bicycles before we could turn off towards town. Luckily there is little antipathy or disregard for cyclists in this country, as far as we have experienced. Motorists alway seem to give us masses of space or slow down when passing us. Perhaps that is due to the terror of litigation. Perhaps they are just so bemused by seeing people using bikes as a form of transport. Whatever the reasons, we generally feel quite safe.
It was a perfect Whirligig day: bright with a moderate breeze. They were bonkers. The photos obviously don’t capture the noises of their clattering and rattling or their complex moving parts, but trust me, they were delightful. There was a small free ‘museum’ next to the park that we went to afterwards. There were three members of staff in the one-roomed venue that was mostly gift shop, and we were the only visitors. There was a video presentation about Vollis, the story of his creations and their relocation to the park and we watched this, slightly self-consciously, sat on two tiny stools in the middle of the room. We then left without buying anything. Terrible tourists.
Back in camp we met our new neighbours, a delightful older couple called Phyllis and Ron. They had travelled a massive 20 miles from home to do a shake-down trip in their new aquisition, a very cool 2013 RoadTrek 190. Unfortunately it did not come with an owners manual and they were not entirely sure how to work everything. This was majorly complicated by neither of them being particulary techically minded and by their eschewing of the digital age. ‘Checking the internet’ was not in their repertoire of problem solving strategies. So we helped them set up, worked out how the water system functioned by finding an online manual and I even printed out the fifteen or so relevant pages for them. (Yes, we travel with a printer. Yes, this really impressed them.) We spent an hour or so chit-chatting our way through getting them sorted, mutual camper appretiation and general conversation and then, after our respective dinners, sat with them by their camp fire, toasting a marshmallow or two. In the morning we bade our farewells, shared contact details (blog site and email for us, landline and physical address for them), took a momento photo each (iphone for us, 35mm film camera for them), and headed off. They have bought a very cool little van and I’m sure they will be very happy in their travels. Perhaps just need to find someone to print off the rest of the manual for them.
Next stop on our westerly trajectory was a place called Clemmens, just south of Winston-Salem. Here they have an amazing park, owned by the town, that is a magificent temple to recreation. It is over a thousand acres in area and contains three standard golf courses, a ‘soft-golf’ course, a stables and equestrian centre, an aquatic centre, a tennis club, a dog park, a hotel and restaurant, an aboretum, a botanical garden, cabins, BBQ pavilions, function halls, forested areas with hiking trails, a paved multi-use path around the circumference and…an RV campsite. It was charming and made even better by the fact that there was a really good supermarket a ten minute walk away. Our 2 days here were like a mini health retreat as we took advantage of all the facilities on our doorstep. We cycled, walked, swam (Ok, played on the slides and the lazy river at the pool complex) and even had a round of ‘soft golf’. This is played on a roughly mown field with 9 large diameter holes using a grapefruit sized soft ball, a reasonably conventional driver and wedge and a fat putter. It can be played at twilight as the hole markers and balls all glow in the dark although we played in the blazing sunshine of 4pm. It was a lot of fun, and even a non-golfer like myself could thwack a respectable round. Nick won, which was reasonably inevitable. We were sorry to be only stopping here for two nights here but onward we rolled, in a northwest direction…
…into Virginia. But only just. When I say ‘rolled’, I mean ‘climbed’, because now we had arrived in the Appalacian Mountains. The first mountain range of this trip. Our second trip in 2017/2018 had brought us down the inland side of the Appalacians but we hadn’t spent any time in the hills themselves really. There is a scenic route along the central and southern Appalacians called the Blue Ridge Parkway. Its about 470 miles long in total and is one of America’s great scenic drives and longest linear park. (Factoid). We had headed a trifle more north than was necessary for our overall journey in order to take in a good section of the drive and we had a rare single night stay near a town called Galax. This would give us a 109 mile drive along the parkway the next day. Our campsite for the night had promised us nothing of note except a spot to stop and plug in, but what it delivered was a little feast for the eyes. We had accidentally coincided our stay with a group of about 15-20 Airstream trailers who were camping in a bloc for 3 days whilst on a caravan rally along the length of the parkway. They are such handsome things, almost pieces of art, and to see them en-masse was a sight to behold. Big Dave and Tin Can lurked on the outskirts of the gathering, trying to look as cool, but not quite managing it. We still love them though.
The Parkway is a single lane, windy road that has a very sedate speed limit of 35-45 mph. It climbs and descends as it meanders its way through the thickly forested hills with frequent lookout stops suddenly revealing jawdropping distant views of more hills and mountains, all uniformly covered with equally dense forests. There is little evidence of human existance here, save for the road itself and the other sightseeing vehicles. We thought that this would be the entirety of our Parkway experience, but no. Every road needs fixing now and then and we unfortunately encountered a long detour which meant that half of our journey was actually along the more frantic, far less scenic normal roads through the hills. Once finally back on the Parkway, and back into North Carolina, we stopped to do a short hike (as the longer one that I had planned was in the middle of the bypassed section) and then stopped at a lookout to eat our packed lunch. Another hour or so on the windy road brought us to our next destination.
This next place was a massive sprawling hilly camp set into the forest. It had seemingly hundreds of pitches and cabins but was almost deserted. This is unusual for a weekend but I think we were in the thin sliver of the calendar between a long weekend and the schools breaking up for summer so most people were staying home. Whatever the reason, it was very peaceful. It didn’t have a pool but did have a small duel purpose swimming and catch-and-release fishing lake, the sections demarkated by a rope with floats. The water was too murky to tell, but I had visions of all the fish hanging out in the swimming half, having long since learnt that frequenting the other end led to a faceful of fishing hook and all that followed. We did brave a swim on the first day (the only day hot enough to justify it). It was brisk and refreshing and suprisingly quite pleasant considering!
Camp also had this inflateable trampoline type thing, designed for children, but fun for grown ups too. We couldn’t resist a few minutes of unbridled glee, whilst trying not to pull a hip, rupture a knee or slip a rib. Luckily there were no other witnesses to our shenanigans and we got away without injury.
We had three full days here and were keen to do some walking. There were three different hikes that headed out directly from the camp, all well signposted, and all advertised at about 3.5-4.5 miles each. We decided to do one per day; no point overstretching ourselves! This was hilly terrain so we were prepared for some climbing but the 2nd of the walks had a near vertical scramble (or so it felt) for one stretch. At this point there was some very ripe language coming from my hiking partner. He was suffering from calf cramps and finds the utterances of a continual stream of expletives a useful self motivational technique to help him push forwards and enhance his enjoyment of the challenge. Or he might have been having a massive whinge. One or the other.
The trails were otherwise well trodden although we barely saw another living soul whilst out and about. There was a lookout, a waterfall and many, many trees. This area is rich in pyrite, a crystalline iron sulphide. It is everywhere, sparkling in flakey rocks of various sizes and sometimes just as a dusting amongst the leaf litter. It’s other name is ‘Fool’s Gold’ and I can see how easy it would to be seduced into thinking it was it’s far more valuable doppelganger. The lengths of all three walks were all fairly significantly overestimated and having packed a daypack with plenty of water, snacks, waterproofs, first aid kit, bug spray and suncream we felt a bit silly arriving back at camp an hour and a half later. I’ve been on longer walks around shopping malls.
We had another lovely evening around the camp fire in our private deserted campsite and the next morning we were off again.
