Tin Can Travels

15th – 19th Oct

The city of Memphis is jammed into the south west corner of Tennessee and the urban sprawl spills over the border into Arkansas to the west, where it becomes West Memphis and into Mississippi to the south, where it becomes Southaven. We headed south a few blocks and within minutes we crossed into Mississippi, and so began one of our most anticipated sections of this year’s  journey. The Mississippi Delta.

After all the excitement of the past few days we needed a bit of down-time so we only drove a leisurely 35 miles to the town of Tunica, and booked two nights at the only type of RV park that exists in this town: one attached to a casino.  Tunica used to be one of the poorest towns in the USA until someone had the bright idea of building six or seven casino hotels nearby. These are legal in Mississippi as long as the land of the casino borders the river. Now Tunica is no longer so poor. The casino RV parks are cheap, well maintained and very handy for gambling, eating and drinking. The one we chose, The Hollywood, had the added bonuses of being less than 1/3 occupied, it bordered a nice golf course, had the use of the hotel’s indoor pool and most importantly: had a fabulously cheap laundry. Sometimes it’s the little things….

Two nights became three as it was so peaceful and we had time to kill. It rained a bit. We swam. We did 27 loads of laundry (give or take). We only lost $50 in the slot machines. Once it stopped raining we went for a wander. There was nothing to see except another casino hotel with its own RV park. We concluded ours was better and came home again. Our route brought us to the edge of a cotton field. It is such a familiar material but I had never seen it up close and growing before. Just like cotton wool. Who’d have thunk it?

Fully rested, fully clean and with savings mostly intact we hit the road again and continued south. This was a rare day. A day that I managed to wrestle the drivers seat from Hampson and be captain of the ship. It’s not that I don’t enjoy driving or that I am no good at it, it’s just that Hampson is an insufferable passenger. He gets bored, and is overly ‘helpful’ with the process of driving. We usually stick to our strengths. He drives and I let him.

We spent the day wafting down Highway 61 and then the the old Highway 1. It was flat as a pancake, and surrounded by fields and fields of cotton in various stages of harvest. There seemed to be more churches than homes and a level of rural poverty that we haven’t seen up until now. The history of  slavery marinates this area and after a century and a half since its abolition, its descendants live with its aftertaste. The Delta gave the world the Blues, born from the songs the slaves sang to ease their misery. Considering this road follows the Mississippi fairly closely we didn’t clap eyes on it once all day. This is because it is hidden behind  a massive levy. 1927 saw a catastrophic flood of tens of thousands of square miles of land bordering the river, the level of which rose to 10m above it’s usual level.  This saw a massive movement of refugees and was the trigger for a lot of the migration of black people up to the northern cities like Detroit and Chicago. The levy, and lots of subsequent tinkering by the Corps of Engineers, has helped prevent a flood of this magnitude happening again.

Our journey took us through a town called Clarksdale, a hub for a lot of music, but still a poor town with its associated problems. We quickly bailed on the idea of stopping for lunch here after turning down a dodgy back street looking for a diner, coming up against a low bridge and having to escape via a smaller dodgier street. So much for trying to eat local.

Our next roost was at a park between the towns of Greenville and Lelend. It was a residential trailer park which had a few spaces for touring RVs. As we pulled in we hurriedly decided amongst ourselves that we would only stay one night rather than the planned two. It felt a little odd. Not rough. Just a bit odd. Also, it was in the middle of nowhere with no options for walking or biking anywhere. Of course it was fine. The park was quiet and orderly and the bathrooms (always a good barometer of quality) were lovely. But the next day we rolled onwards.

Now Leland is ‘famous’ for one thing. It is the birthplace of Jim Henson. Creator of one of the biggest influences of any American or British human born in the 60s and 70s who had access to a TV, The Muppets.  He moved away from here pretty early in his life, but Leland has labelled itself the ‘birthplace of Kermit the Frog’ and even has an unofficial museum to commemorate this moderately fabricated fact.  When I say museum, I mean it has a small wooden building at one end of the town, filled with some photos of Jim and numerous Kermit effigies, manned by a slightly batty (but very pleasant) lady who insisted we had our photo taken with the frog himself. We didn’t argue.

About 10 miles down the road from Leland is the town of Indianola which is firmly on the tourist map by virtue of the fact that it was the birthplace of, and now the site of the eponymous museum of Blues legend, BB King.  This is a fabulous place with its exhibits intertwining the history of slavery, the civil right movement and history of Blues music with BB King’s own life story. He truely was a son of Indianola, returned every year for 40 years to perform a free concert for the townsfolk and was a great benefactor to local causes. On his death, at nearly 90 years of age, his funeral cortege travelled from Memphis back to Indianola to lie in state. Highway 61 was closed to all other traffic for the journey and his body lay in state in an old cotton gin where 5000 people paid their respects. This gin (a big shed where cotton was historically processed to remove the seeds) was the first place BB ever worked as a teenager, and is now the site of the museum. His grave site is also here. He was a supreme talent and seemingly a thoroughly nice bloke. With a greater appreciation of the Delta and the Blues we hit the road again.

Just north of our next stop, Vicksburg, we stopped at the Winterville Mounds. There is a whole trail of these up and down the Mississippi and they are mounds. Built by various generations of native tribes to live upon, and around. Handy if you live in a flood prone swamp. Some are big, some are small. Some are preserved and open to the public. Some are overgrown with trees and shrubbery and are on private land. One was mildly interesting. We don’t need to see any more.

And so to Vicksburg.

 

10th – 15th Oct

Our journey continued west to take in Nashville and Memphis. These two cities are only about 200 miles apart, both in the same state of Tennessee, of similar sizes (pop 650-700,000), but are very different in their character.

Nashville: mostly white, thriving, expanding at a rate of 100 people per day, home of Country music.

Memphis: mostly African-American, still struggling economically, home of the Blues.

For this portion of our trip we were joined by Lori, our good friend who lives near Seattle. She had arranged to fly into Nashville and out of Memphis and come along on our adventures in between. Tin Can, although spacious enough for two, is very cozy for three and we decided that we wouldn’t inflict 5 nights of communal living on Lori.

Having examined all the various options for some nights on dry land in Nashville the best compromise in the end was booking two rooms in a medium quality airport hotel. This gave us affordable accommodation (Nashville is surprisingly expensive), close enough to town to make getting around by Uber very easy,  with plenty of parking for the rig (or so we had assumed).

We arrived mid-afternoon to the hotel which did have plenty of parking, but  mostly either underground or around the back which could only be accessed under a 11ft archway. We are 12ft tall. After a tense 15 mins of shuffling around the small area at the front of the hotel a solution was found. We could park next door in the petrol station. It was wasn’t ideal, but at least there were plenty of security cameras and we were pretty confident that we parked far enough from the pumps that the pilot light on the gas powered fridge wouldn’t cause a moderate petrol explosion.

We chilled out for a few hours and then just as we were planning to head out for dinner, the heavens opened. There was a half decent restaurant less than 1km down the road, and of course we walked. The expression ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen…’ should be altered to include: ‘…try and walk anywhere in the USA where the car is king, there are no pavements or pedestrian crossings across 4 lane highways, and it is dark and raining’. We arrived a little damp, but intact, and had a lovely, albeit oversized, meal and drinks at a very packed family owned restaurant. Very worth the minor adventure it took to get there. The walk home was drier, but no less exciting. Lori didn’t get in until late, long after we were abed, so we caught up with her at breakfast. This was a fiesta of disposability: cups, cutlery, bowls and plates. A buffet-style affair that fulfilled its primary function of breaking our fast, but without any frills.

We had two full days in Nashville. We started day one with the first of many Ubers and headed to the Country Music Hall of Fame. This is to Nashville like the Sagrada Famillia is to Barcelona. A cathedral of country music worship, a site of pilgrimage for the faithful, (although it is finished, so my comparison is imperfect.) We had a guilty secret as we walked through the hallowed portals of the main entrance. None of the three of us actually liked country music. We kept quiet and kept moving. By the time we left two hours later we were much the wiser and had a new found appreciation for the genre. I think it’s the miserable, warbling-type of country that we dislike. It was a very good museum with some great displays. Well worth the visit. After the Hall of Fame we wandered up to the madness that is Broadway. This is the party street of Nashville and is about 4-5 blocks of nothing but restaurants and bars, interspersed with a few cowboy boot and cowboy hat shops. Almost everywhere had live music all day. It was 12.30pm and already buzzing. We found a cool place for lunch (without music), Acme Feed and Seed, and then escaped the tourist craziness by wandering up to the state capitol building. It still amazes me that these are open to the public and you can just wander in and look at all the chambers. Mid afternoon we headed back to the hotel for a recharge and change, then headed back to town for the evening.

Now, we had made grand plans to join the crowds and do a ‘crawl’ through some of the well known and popular drinking, eating and music venues of Broadway. You know. Suck it up. When-in-Rome and all that. But what we ended up doing was spending a very grown up evening in an out-of-the way venue called ‘Skull’s Rainbow Room’. This is a legendary and iconic Nashville establishment located down a back lane called Printers Alley. It is a stylish atmospheric place that over the years has hosted big names such as Elvis, Johny Cash, Bob Dylan and Etta James on its small central stage. We secured a rare table and ended up doing our drinking, eating and listening to live music without having to move. And our second guilty secret? The live music was jazz.

The main event of day two was tickets to The Grand Old Opry that evening. Now this really is a Nashville country music institution. It started 93 years ago as a radio show featuring multiple country artists recorded in front of a live audience. Except for scale and venue it is essentially unchanged to this day.  Most big country stars past and present have trodden the Opry boards at some point in their career.  It was to be a true test of our newfound appreciation of country music.

The Opry, which used to be hosted in an old theatre just off Broadway called the Ryman, now has its own purpose built ‘Opry House’ out of town. This is flanked by a big shopping Mall and cinema complex, ‘Opry Mills’, and the most enormous hotel and conference centre called ‘The Gaylord Opryland’. This is one of the largest hotels in the world with more than 3000 rooms. The central courtyard areas, 9 acres of them, are covered with huge glass domes giving the place a bit of a Disney type vibe.  The whole area is home to numerous other hotels and the usual entertainment options. The Opry is a phenomenon.

We started the day by introducing Lori to the fabulousness that is mini-golf. She whipped our behinds. Mind you, she is a proper golfer and has been receiving lessons from our favourite golf pro, Cal. We ignored her glorious victory and, as I beat Hampson, we are now 2:2 on the overall mini-golf scoreboard.

Second activity of the day was a trip to the cinema to watch First Man on IMAX. Quite amazing that all that happened with 1960s technology. If it happened at all…….

Next to the Gaylord and a late afternoon drink and early pre-show dinner. Our waiter was an ageing hippy from Hawaii who was charming but very forgetful. He seemed happy though, probably for all the usual hippy reasons, I imagine.

And so to the Opry. We went prepared to be bemused by the whole thing, but it was fantastic. We deliberately chose seats high up to get a good view of the whole auditorium and do some people watching. There was a disappointing lack of cowboy boots and fringed leather. Each of the acts did 2 or 3 numbers, including a bona fide Hall-of-Famer, the octogenarian Charley Pride. They were all very good. No-one did any depressed warbling and we loved it. It is still a live radio show and the acts were broken up with the MC doing announcements and adverts for the benefit of the listeners. You can find it at opry.com if you are interested.

The next day was road-trip day.  We reclaimed the truck from the Shell garage (all in one piece, no explosions), packed our bags and Lori into the back seats and headed to Memphis. Unfortunately it wasn’t the most interesting of drives to share with Lori. The two cities are linked by an interstate highway, door to door. We did, however, introduce her to the delights of a couple of truck stops along the way. Three hours, two coffees, a Subway lunch and a bag of sweets later we arrived in Memphis. Here we had booked an RV park which had a self contained cabin for Lori next to our site.  The park was about 10km from the centre of town, but only 2 blocks away from Graceland, a place we were definitely going to visit. There are two RV parks in this part of town: The park which is actually at Graceland, co-located with the Graceland hotel and enormous visitors centre, with security and part of the Graceland ‘machine’, and then there was the one we were staying at. Ours, chosen because it had the cabins, was a bit more ‘rustic’. It backed onto some dodgy looking housing and had no security. Graceland aside, this area of town can be rough but Lori was very brave and still went running in the mornings having been advised that she would be fine as long as she didn’t stray off the main road. She didn’t.

We had two nights here. The first evening it rained cats and dogs, but we hung out in Lori’s cabin and cooked dinner. It was very cozy and we sorted out most of the world’s problems over some wine.  The next day we took an Uber into town and started with a visit to the Nation Civil Rights Museum. This incorporates the original Lorraine Motel which is the place Martin Luther King was killed. It was amazing, blending the events surrounding his assassination with the history and overall timeline of the civil rights movement in general. It was sensitive and incredibly moving and I left with a hugely improved understanding of the situation. I took two main things away. 1. Civil rights in the USA have come a long, long way, but issues of colour still divide this country. In the major 25 metropolitan areas there are more racial divisions today than when in the 60’s. 2. Martin Luther King was a rare human being. His murder (50 years ago this year) robbed the world of a great leader. It left me thinking that the world could really use a few of his calibre right now.

We emerged sombre in mood to a sombre sky. The cure? Lunch and cocktails, of course. We found the place, ate and imbibed and then, in much improved spirits, wandered down to the river for our first glimpse of the mighty Mississppi. They were right when they called it that. Blimin’ massive.

Our next stop on the tourist trail was the Peabody Hotel to see the ducks. For some reason this fancy-pants hotel has an ever-present flock of about 5 ducks which sit around in the fountain in the main foyer/lounge/bar area. Each morning they are escorted down from their home on the roof by a  uniformed doorman. They travel down in the lift and waddle their way along a special ducky red carpet to the fountain where they float around all day, posing for photos. Then at 5pm they go back up to the roof. Bonkers.

And so to Beale Street. This is the Blues version of Broadway, Nashville. Bars and live music all the way. Except not at 3.30pm on a Sunday afternoon, we were a few hours ahead of the wave. The only place with live music was BB King’s place, so in lieu of afternoon tea, we had a few beers sat at the bar, soaking up a live set by a very good band. Now we were Blues fans too. We headed home late afternoon and later had dinner at another local institution, a BBQ joint about 1.5km from camp called Marlowes. It had a courtesy shuttle in the form of a pink stretch Cadillac limo, which we ordered, which went to the other RV park and which then sailed on past us when it couldn’t find us.  We walked, a bit anxiously, through the twilight but arrived without incident. After eating our own bodyweight in delicious pork we did manage to get the limo home.  ‘Don’t stray off the path’ the driver warned us as he dropped us off at the gate. We didn’t.

Lori’s flight home was mid afternoon which gave us the morning for Memphis’s main event: The Graceland tour.  Even as non-Elvis fanatics, this was a must. We walked the 10 minutes down the road to the welcome centre, got our tickets, and joined the throng. Now this really is a pilgrimage site. You could tell the super fans. They were wearing their Elvis T-shirts. They were bristling with anticipation. They had probably paid the eye watering $170 for the full VIP ‘experience’.  We stuck to the plain old mansion tour, collected our iPads and headphones and waited to get on the shuttle bus. This took us the short distance across the road to the house where we got off the bus and waited to get in the house. Once inside we joined the slow shuffling line that snaked the very short distances from front door to lounge, to dining room, to kitchen, to party room, to basement TV room, to billiard room, to garden, to raquetball court to memorial garden. Amazingly, considering he was ‘the King’ it was quite a modest home. This concentrated the crowds and made it irritatingly busy. Out of respect for the family, the tour did not include the upstairs at all. This is obviously the location of the bathroom where he died, at aged 42. Hard living and prescription medications caught up with him far too early. It is sobering. He is buried in the memorial garden with his parents and grandma, and near a small memorial stone for his stillborn twin brother. Just think. There might have been two Kings. Oh, and we now like Elvis a bit more too.

A shuttle bus took us back across the road and we walked back to TC. Lori collected her things and headed off to the airport. It was great to share a small slice of our life on the road with her, even if it wasn’t all shiny and perfect. This few days has been all about the music and a few important people of this country. Urban USA is very different from small town USA and the vast swathes of wilderness that we have seen and crossed. I know which I prefer.

 

 

 

3rd – 10th October

The Smokey Mountains National Park and the nearby town of Pigeon Forge were plucked from the guide book to be the rendezvous spot for us to meet up with the Family Thelen for 4 days. Our friendship began when we met them in that bastion of social interaction, a large public laundrette in Upper Penisula Michigan last year. We spent a fun July 4th with them that week  in Copper Harbor and then spent a weekend camping on their driveway in their home town of Detroit in late August. We had made grand plans to meet up somewhere on our return this year and we actually pulled it off!  They heroically drove their large trailer, 2 kids (KJ 11 & Coen 12) and the cat (Kim, age unknown)  more than 500 miles to meet us at an RV resort in Pigeon Forge where we had booked neighbouring sites.

Pigeon Forge. We knew it was going to be touristy, but we had no idea the heights to which this touristy-ness would soar. It’s name suggests a cute little historic town that might have organically expanded to accommodate and amuse the folk coming to visit the Smokey Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the country. No sign of this. The town is essentially a 3 mile strip of newly built hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, cowboy boot stores, dinner show venues, outlet villages, go-karting, mini golf and moonshine tasting rooms.  It is also home to Dollywood, a theme park done in a country style endorsed by, and named for, the area’s most famous daughter Ms Dolly Parton.  It is obvious that the reason this national park is so visited, is that the hoards now make the pilgrimage to the entertainment, shopping and eating mecca that is Pigeon Forge also pop into the park whilst they are here.

It is bonkers. Like a mini Vegas without the casinos. A temple of consumerism and hedonism serviced by the combustion engine. It was unseasonably hot and crazy busy. We were not going to be bored here.

Our camp site was tucked about half a mile behind the strip and was a peaceful retreat from the melée. We spent our first evening around the camp fire, catching up, eating barbecued chicken and planning our activities for the next few days.

Day 1: DOLLYWOOD!

Luckily Todd and Keta’s truck has 6 seats, so we all piled in and were in the park by 10.30am. Today was Thursday, so it made it a bit quieter. Based on the size of the car park, it must get unfeasibly busy on peak days.  The park has about 6 big rollercoasters and we had done 5 of them, without any significant waiting by 11.30. The park was beautifully decorated for ‘Fall’* with pumpkins and autumn leaf garlands everywhere.  After dark there are ‘pumpkin illuminations’, and lots of folk come specifically to see them. We walked, lunched, rode the steam train, did the rides (dry and wet), got hot, and generally had a lot of fun. There wasn’t really a huge influence of Dolly Parton here except the piped music around the park and her old tour bus is here and open to look inside. It cost $750,000 in 1994, did more than 600,000 miles and is decorated inside all in shades of rose pink with gold accents. It even has a teeny tiny bath so that she could have bubble baths. She upgraded to a new bus in 2010 for $2.4million and donated the old bus to the park. At 72 years young she is still touring and living on the road for 6 months each year.  The woman is a legend!  By mid afternoon energy levels were waning so we headed back to camp for a couple of hours and returned to the park at dusk to see the pumpkin decoration light displays. Very impressive. They used to use only real pumpkins, but found that they kept rotting before the end of the display (not so decorative…), so this year the park spent nearly $1.5 million on fake pumpkins. We managed to sneak in a couple more coaster rides and then headed home again, picking up some pizza and wings on the way.

Day 2: Pigeon Forge Excursion

Today we surrendered to the greater might of HOLIDAY FUN IN PIGEON FORGE. Late morning we caught the ‘Fun Time Trolley’ (a normal bus disguised as an old time tram with uncomfortable garden benches where the seats should be) from our camp to the strip. We started our day with a round of mini-golf. With 6 playing, this killed nearly 2 hours. It was baking hot, with minimal shade and some holes were more about surviving from heatstroke than holding par. Some enjoyed it more than others (Sorry KJ) and some were better than others (Another victory for Hampson over me). We then cooled down by sending the kids to get ice-cream whilst we did a moonshine tasting session, the lesser known cure for mild dehydration…Our host at the tasting room was comically bad. She was either having a bad day, or was having a good day in her poorly chosen profession of hospitality and customer service because neither was evident in her repertoire. When we asked for a glass of water, she harrumphed and gave us each a 20ml offering of tepid tap water in a plastic tasting thimble. Mmm. Refreshing. Hydrating. We smirked our way through our rapi-tasting of 7 or 8 shots of moonshine and by the end of it, much merrier for the duel effects of booze on an empty stomach and Miss Grumpybritches’ amusingly distracted  behaviour, followed it up with a mid-afternoon moonshine cocktail. Our next stop was our our 5 pm booking at a dinner show, Hatfield and McCoy’s Dinner Feud. We arrived at the requested time of 4.30pm (basically still mid-afternoon) and had to join the queue which cleverly was engineered to snake us through the gift shop. Then we had our group photo taken with hillbilly props before being seated at our table.  Here, we were served an all-you-can-eat-in ten minutes fried chicken dinner with all the trimmings served at-table prior to the hillbilly themed show. It was gloriously cheesy and very entertaining. There was music, dancing, slapstick comedy and crowd participation. All the things I normally avoid if I am looking to be entertained. One scene involved the stage floor disappearing into a 10m swimming pool and the cast doing various jumps and dives into the water. They even had 3 performing dogs doing the same. Quite impressive. The show was finished by 6.45pm and having easily resisted buying our group photo, the DVD or anything from the gift shop, we caught the trolley back to camp for another campfire and some beers.

Day 3: Smokey Mountains National Park

After the excesses of yesterday, today was our day to get into the national park and stretch our legs. We were on the road at 9am with a picnic packed and plans to escape the mayhem of Pigeon Forge. Our first stop was Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee. You can drive to within 0.5  mile of the summit, where there is a large car park, then ‘hike’ up the beautifully paved path to the summit and lookout. We arrived in time to secure about the last free space in the carpark and joined the crowds in the pilgrimage to the top. The famous Appalachian Trail, the 2200 mile/3500 km walking trail comes through this spot and there were a few very serious hiking looking people interspersed with us ‘strollers’. The leaves are just starting to change up here but the fantastic display of fall colour of the trees is still a few weeks away and unfortunately the summit was shrouded in cloud so the view from the very stylish spiral observation lookout was about zilch. As we drove down from the summit the queue of traffic waiting for a space to park was about 1 mile long. The perils of popular tourism. We then hunted for a trail to do that wasn’t too steep or too long or too busy. The options were limited, but we found one after a bit of a drive. We had our tailgate picnic and went for a ramble.  En route we introduced the Thelens to the art of panoramic selfies.

We took the long way home to avoid the traffic and  back-tracking, stocked up at the supermarket for dinner supplies, stopped at a souvenir shop with a live alligator display for KJ and headed home for another lovely evening of campfire, beer and talking rubbish.

Day 4: Goodbyes and then not much.

In the morning we sadly had to say goodbye to our companions who reloaded the family and trailer and embarked on their gruesome 11 hour drive to return to Detroit. We really appreciated the effort it took to get down here, and are glad to have spent some quality time with you all. You are also legends, my friends. You and Dolly Parton.

We had decided to stay another 2 nights here and spent the rest of the day in a state of ‘first gear’. We went nowhere.

Day 5: Gatlinburg, nearly.

There is a town about 7 miles from Pigeon Forge called Gatlinburg. It is equally touristy and busy, but smaller and with a different vibe. We decided to go there today. It was too hot and there was too much traffic to safely cycle so we decided to take the trolley again There is a trolley link between Pigeon Forge and the Gatlinburg Welcome Centre which connects with the Gatlinburg trolley bus into the town. Easy!

Easy? It took us 80 minutes and 2 trolleys to get from our camp to the Welcome Centre where there was a queue about 70 people long waiting to catch the trolley into Gatlinburg. Each trolley only takes 30 people and only arrives one per 30 mins. There was no way of walking. The maths was done. The will to live was lost. We called an Uber and went home.

We had failed at tourism today and we were much happier for it. We spent the afternoon doing a bit of a sorting out of TC in preparation for getting back on the road tomorrow and then had another dunk in the pool. Having met our new neighbours, Stom and Katherine from North Carolina, they joined us for a few drinks that evening around our campfire.

We left the mayhem of Pigeon Forge the next day, headed for a ‘halfway to Nashville’ single night stop in Crossville. En route we stopped at the town of Oak Ridge to visit the newly opened American Museum of Science and Energy. Oak Ridge was a town entirely manufactured from scratch during WW2 as one of the three sites of the Manhattan Project for the development and manufacture of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan. It is still a very important site worldwide for nuclear energy research and as a safety and storage facility for nuclear material from decommissioned warheads. The small museum was a bit technical and dry, but interesting nonetheless. Our night in Crossville was unremarkable except for it being alcohol-free with a vegetarian dinner. Remarkable!

*Fall: I think this needs a whole seperate post!

 

 

28th Sept – 3rd Oct

We left the hills of Western Pennsylvania and the interstate highway took us through a bit of (reasonably hilly) Maryland into West Virginia, the Mountain State. The whole of the state is situated in the Appalachian region and poor Big Dave continued to earn his keep by either hauling up hill, or doing controlled hurtling down hill.

This whole area is beautiful. Forested hills as far as the eyes can see with very few urban areas and the highway just keeps going and going through it all.  The autumn colours (or ‘fall colors’ for my American friends) are only just starting. The warm wet summer means that it has been a great growing season, the trees are not stressed at all and the colours will be late this year. I think I will miss the full display again.

Our next stop was in a odd campsite tucked in a hollow behind, and part of, a Days Inn, one of those amorphous roadside behemoth hotels with a conference centre. It was actually quite lovely, quiet and peaceful. By mid afternoon when we arrived it was hot and sunny so we could open all the vents and windows and dry everything out. Bliss.

In the evening we walked up to the hotel for a drink in the bar and to have dinner.  The bar was a very small civilised carpeted nook incongruously called Mad Annie’s. Named for a 19th C crazy highway woman called Annie who had immigrated from Liverpool and terrorised the local area, it was majorly less spit-and-sawdust than the name suggested. The clientele was a mixed bunch: two business travellers who were both ‘fuller bodied’ drinking multiple shot glasses of apple liqueur and lemonade and couldn’t finish a medium sized pizza between them, a chap that looked like a lumberjack (by virtue of his size, clothing and facial hair) and was drinking rum and ginger, a chatty blind chap and us. (We were probably the most out of place if truth be told).  It transpired that there was a group of blind people using the conference facilities of the hotel and the blind chap was a breakaway from the herd.  One of his compatriots came to (unsuccessfully) round him up as he was making quite a good job of eating a huge basket of messy chicken wings by touch alone. Respect.

Our next three nights were in a town called Fayetteville, voted coolest small town in America by someone at sometime. This area is dominated by the New River Gorge, an old river in a deep gorge.  Its past mining industry has been replaced by whitewater businesses and the area is littered with rafting companies, outdoor shops, outfitters, basic campsites and people driving around in Subaru Outbacks festooned with kayaks and lifejackets. The gorge has a rather magnificent single arch span bridge which opened in 1977. It is apparently the longest/largest bridge of this kind in the western hemisphere. Every year in October the fairly major road over the bridge is closed to traffic for a bridge birthday party weekend. About 800 base jumpers hurl themselves off and lots of folks flock to the area.

Here we offloaded TC in our nice wooded campsite and spent a few days exploring the area by truck, foot and bike. We drove over the bridge, drove under the bridge, hiked to bridge look-outs and sat under it having a picnic. It is safe to say that short of jumping off it, we ‘did the bridge’. We had hoped to do some white water rafting whilst we were here, but no-one was doing trips. At this time of year the river is usually at its best for rafting at about 3-8 ft deep. The commercial rafting companies don’t take out clients if the river is deeper than 14ft. Due to the wet summer the river is currently 17ft. Whilst watching the raging torrent of brown water go by as we picnicked, we were happy to be staying on dry land.

Nick a bit too circumspect to get any closer to the edge.

After Fayetteville our journey took us through a corner of Virginia to Tennessee, where we had another single night stay in a campsite near a town called Bristol. Although Nashville claims to be the home of country music, allegedly Bristol was its birthplace. Bristol is officially two cities, one in TN and one in VA, where the city line and thus the state line runs down the middle of one of its downtown streets. How complicated.

In the past week Trump had given one of his fan-club rally speeches near here. 97,000 people attended. The campsite had been chock-full of faithful supporters. Happily, not so much on our night here.  There was a games room and a half decent pool table so Nick did his customary trick of beating me fair and square by about 5 balls.  My defence is that I spent my university years actually attending lots of lectures and working hard. Nick played a lot of pool.

Next stop is Pigeon Forge in the Smokey Mountains to meet up with our friends from Detroit, the Family Thelen.

 

27th – 28th Sept

Our extended stay in Gettysburg meant that we had needed to cancel our plans to visit Fallingwater.  This is the weekend home designed by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright built teetering atop a waterfall in the wilds of rural Pennsylvanian hills in the mid-1930s for the wealthy Edgar J Kaufmann. Wealthy because he owned the large and successful eponymously named ‘Kaufmann’ department store in Pittsburg. In the wilds of Pennsylvania because he happened to own 1700 of hilly wooded acres a mere 43 miles from Pittsburg. Teetering atop a waterfall because the Kaufmanns requested the home to be built near the waterfall so that they could see it from the house and Wright decided that he could do better than that.

As could be expected the project went mostly the way Wright wanted it and cost five times the amount of the Kaufmann’s money than he had originally quoted. Luckily Kaufmann was in a position to keep writing the cheques and what resulted was a sublime piece of architecture and design that has oft been cited as one of Wright’s greatest works.

The Kaufmanns both died in the mid 1950s and their only child, Edgar Kaufman Jnr, who had no children of his own,  gifted the home and most of the land to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in the early 1960s. The house is maintained almost exactly as it was when it was built and has now hosted more than 5 million visitors for tours.

Visiting Fallingwater was something Nick has wanted to do since ages ago, so we booked our tickets (again) online, (Re)booked a nearby campsite and headed west from Gettysburg.  It was raining. Quite a lot. And hilly. So very hilly. Poor Big Dave schlepped up hill and down dale for several hours to get us to the little corner of nowhere where the house is situated.

It was definitely worth the trip.  Despite the rain (which actually enhanced the waterfall and the gave the house cool, moody ambiance) and the slightly laissez-faire attitude of our guide (who I suspect would rather have been somewhere else even though she told us that she ‘loved coming to work’ and that we had been ‘such a fun group’ – both blatant untruths), the house was amazing. Lots of cantilevered terraces that seemingly defied gravity, quirky design features like steps from inside the living room down to the pool at the top of the waterfall and lots of beautiful joinery and custom Wright-designed furniture.

It was actually quite modest in size considering the huge importance that it holds in the world of architecture. It is fantastic that it has been preserved so intact but it made me a little sad that it has now been a museum piece for nearly 55 years, a good 30 years longer than it belonged to the Kaufmans. Wright’s design of the house has almost completely drowned out the stories of the three people who called it home.

After our tour we headed off to our roost for the night, a Core of Engineers campsite on the outflow river of a dam and small hydro-electric plant. It was still raining. I wasn’t sure if this place was more likely or less likely to flood than your run-of-the-mill riverside spot. In the interests of actually getting some sleep that night, I went with less…

Striking camp in the wet was a trifle miserable but soon done. We shut the door, changed into dry clothes and had comfort food for dinner: Pan-fried scrapple *, beans and mash. With a fried egg.

The incessant rain stopped at about 3am, the campsite didn’t flood and we woke to sunshine and a power cut.

Breakfast and packing-up were accompanied by the dulcet tones of our LPG generator and by 10.30 am we set off on our hilly way to our next state, West Virginia via Maryland.

 

*In case you were wondering:

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name Pannhaas or “pan rabbit”,^[1][2] is traditionally a mush of porkscraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then pan-fried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as an American food of the Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia). Scrapple and panhaas are commonly considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Mennonitesand Amish.

(Thanks Wikipedia)

 

 

21st – 27th Sept

For the non-Americans, and the non-civil war enthusiasts in the rest of the world, Gettysburg was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. Fought over 3 days from 1st – 3rd July 1863 this was a pivotal meeting of the Unionists and Confederates and the preserved historical detail of the battlefields and military manoeuvres over those days is impeccable.  The whole area is dotted with countless military memorials.

This small farming town accidentally became the meeting place for the two armies and was unfortunate to have some perfect topography for a battle of infantry, calvary and canons. (In my mind, infantry vs canons are a bad military combination from an infantry point of view.)

Here is my Gettysburg summary:

Tens of thousands of soldiers from North and South died. Thousands of horses who couldn’t care less about neo-natal American politics died. One unlucky civilian in the town was hit by a stray bullet that entered her bedroom and died. The Unionists won. The town spent weeks dealing with rotting corpses and months tending to wrecked humans. The town and battlefields were very quickly designated a site of historical importance and a war memorial, thus preserving it amazingly. President Lincoln came and did his famous ‘Gettysburg Address’ (-worth looking up). Now busloads and busloads of people come to visit and buy tat. And here we are too. We had planned just one night here. Just long enough to do a guided bus tour and have a mooch around.

And so to the ‘Low’.

As we arrived into Gettysburg early on a Friday afternoon Big Dave started to make some very worrying screeching noises. As we pulled up to the bus tour car park we noted he was losing some oily fluid from the engine bay. This wasn’t good. We cancelled our tour, limped the three miles to our camp and after half an hour of  anxious phone calls miraculously found a garage that could fit us in on a Friday afternoon to have a look. We quickly off-loaded Tin Can and screeched our way to the garage and waited. 90 mins later later we had news. Remember that nice new steering gearbox that we had replaced on Big Dave 10 days ago? It had failed and was leaking. Now we had air in the power steering pump (hence the noise) which would likely need replacing too.  It could all be fixed but not until Wednesday. Oh, and it was all going to be quite expensive. Those were the lows.

The highs:

1.  It could all be fixed!

2. If we had to kill 5 days somewhere, we were in a relatively interesting place and we had a nice campsite.

3. We weren’t to be wheel-less. Our new best friend, Denise from MikesKars, gave us a courtesy car to use: an elderly Volvo 850 saloon in an indeterminate colour that we named Mike.

Mike on Tour

We left the garage having also arranged to have the 2 new tires and realignment done whilst we were at it. In for a penny, in for several thousand dollars. That’s what I say.

We drove back to the campsite with lighter hearts and beer. The next few days saw many strange looks from passers by who looked at the camper down on its legs, looked at Mike, the Volvo, back to the camper, wondering how…. The powers of Swedish engineering we told them.

It is safe to say that we did Gettysburg. We rebooked our bus tour. We visited the visitor centre. We watched the film. We viewed the Cyclorama. (This is very impressive and enormous 360 degree oil painting mounted on the inside of a large circular cupola above the visitor centre). We toured the museum in the visitor centre. We drove part of the self guided AutoTour around the battlefield sites, revisiting and stopping at some of the sites we passed on the bus tour. We visited another museum which had functioned as a field hospital during and after the battle. (The sawing off of legs and arms seemed to be high on the job-list of the civil war army surgeon.) It was quite the educational experience. I think I could be a useful member of a ‘Civil War Re-enactment Troupe’ now.

Very small section of Cyclorama

We also found a brew pub and even found a swimming pool to do some lengths, so it was not all work, work, work. The weather during our time in Gettysburg could be described at best as ‘damp’. Our camp was another riverside gem, but on our second to last day the river rose quite worryingly. We seemingly had no quick getaway options if it flooded. Luckily the owner of the campsite was the only person we have met in the entire 7 months of USA travel in Tin Can who has an equivalent sized camper, and more importantly, a truck like Big Dave. He was on stand-by, but happily was not needed.

Wednesday came. Big Dave was fixed and had his new tyres. (Of course he did need a new power steering pump.) We paid our bill, donated flowers and donuts to the MikesKars team, went back to camp, loaded Tin Can back up, drove 10 km to a truck tyre service centre to get the wheel alignment, got back to camp, got sorted and on Thursday morning we were finally on our way.

Hasta La Vista Gettysburg.

 

Side note:

I just remembered the other ‘low and high’, that at the time were overshadowed by the whole “Big-Dave-is-stuffed-and-now-is-fixed’ debacle.

Remember Teeny Dave?

Low: On the day of the screeching he was unfortunately subject of an incident involving a moving part of Tin Can that luckily only irreparably redesigned him, not the important moving part. He also was stuffed.

But whadoyaknow???? The camp site shop sold replacements. High, high high!!

Behold Itsy Bitsy Dave.

 

 

 

19th -21st Sept

Go on. Have a snigger and get it out of your system. It IS a funny name, but honestly isn’t the reason that we used this as our base to visit Amish country…yeah, right.

It seems an odd name for a place that is home to a devoutly religious community. It is was originally called Cross Keys, and renamed in 1814. There are 3 main theories why:

1. There was originally a race course at one end of the town, the entrance of which was referred to as ‘enter course’. This might have gradually changed to Intercourse
2. The town is at an intersection, or ‘intercourse’ of several important roads.
3. The term ‘intercourse’ was historically used to describe ‘fellowship’ and ‘social interaction and support’.

Whatever the reason, it’s still amusing.

The deeply religious Amish, and Mennonite, communities that live in this area are fascinating, bizarre and confusing to the modern eye.  Many of them live such simple basic lives, devoid of technology and combustion engines, instantly recognisable by their clothing and headwear. Traditional gender roles are played: a hard physical day’s work in the fields is normal for the men and the women become wives, raise (lots of) children and keep the home. We didn’t see any overweight Amish. The close-knit communities sell foodstuffs like preserves, jams, cheeses and sauces, and homeware like quilts and good quality simple furniture. Light horses pull buggies around the streets (Black for the Mennonites, grey for the Amish) and mules and heavier horses pull carts, ploughs and slashers around the fields. And all this plays out surrounded by bus loads and bus loads of tourists who come to places like Intercourse to gawk at these people quietly going about there lives, minding their own business and to shop at dedicated emporiums of foodstuffs, homewares and tonnes and tonnes of tat. It seems it’s just not a day out without consuming a mega soda, a triple scoop ice-cream cone, a giant pretzel and buying a commemorative T-shirt with the logo “I ‘heart‘ INTERCOURSE”

Coming to a place like this as a tourist leaves me conflicted. I know that in many respects we are the same as the hoards that pour off the coaches, but I  comforted by the fact that we are definitely better dressed and we haven’t lost the use of our legs as a transport option.

The best part of our visit here was breaking out the bikes and spending a day cruising through the back roads between the small towns and villages. Away from the main roads this is a beautiful place to cycle. There are so few cars and trucks, and the ones that are around are very used to giving wide berth to non motorised traffic. It’s just part of life here.  The land is divided into one-family farms each with a large farmhouse, barn and grain silo. The men were cutting corn, dressed in shirt, slacks and their characteristic broad brimmed straw hats. (Seemingly skin cancer in the communities is very low due to this garb.) Women and children were travelling to and from school and chores on large wheeled push scooters. Girls dressed like their mothers in plain long dresses and bonnets and the boys little clones of the men.

Seeing people stubbornly carving out their existences free from modernity seems both bonkers and entirely sensible at the same time. I understand the low tech wholesome living, but struggle with the woman’s status and role in the society. Also, those dresses and bonnets are a bit too’handmaid’ for my liking.

Our bicycle journey had a destination 10 km away from camp: Lost World Mini Golf. A classic of the genre with pirate ships, waterfalls and caves. This was our second match of the trip. I omitted to write about my victory over Hampson in Nashua, NH. A victory with dignity and good sportsmanship. This day saw Hampson score two holes-in-one (Impressive), and beat me fair and square. He was insufferable. The scores are now levelled.

The 10km cycle home gave us time to reflect on the significant period of time that had elapsed since our regular bike riding of last year. This was manifest in sore ‘seat bones’. Very sore.

We don’t have any photos of any Amish people. It’s rude to take them. You can find some on-line if you are interested.

I did take a photo of this hot air balloon that passed by the campsite. It seemed to be slowly falling from the sky. I assume less trust was being put in the science of hot air being lighter than cold air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14th – 18th Sept

Just before midday on the 14th we rocked up at the mechanics shop to collect BD and TC. All was finished and fixed and they looked raring to go.  Big D had had a full service and the unplanned new steering gearbox. He needs 2 new front tires too, but we need to get that done at a truck tyre place. The full rig is 7 tonnes and too big to fit onto a normal car hoist and re-alignment facility. It can wait. TC had all his seams checked, the generator serviced and one of his slightly wonky legs straightened. We paid the bill and we were off. First stop: Manchester Airport, about 10 km away, to drop off the hire car. After that, we were really off.

Our first stop was a camp in Brattleboro, VT. A short 60 mile hop with a stop on the way for food, beer and a few bits and pieces. There always seems to be ‘bits and pieces’ to buy. There won’t be room for us inside the camper one day. We arrived mid afternoon and like a well oiled machine, we ‘Set Up’. It was scorchio hot. Despite the sweatiness, it was great to get back into the camper, unpack and get settled in again. It definitely felt like coming home.  We spent a very pleasant evening sitting out, cooking pork on the campfire and drinking the aforementioned beer. Bliss.

Our next stop was for 2 nights at a riverside park in Bainbridge, NY.  It was still very hot, but nice to have some water to gaze at. Florence is now tracking north and will be with us in 2 days There is no avoiding her. Luckily she is no longer windy, just very wet. It was hard to imagine that the weather was going to turn to custard as we baked in the 30+ degree heat and sunshine. Our next camp will be chosen to as to be within coo-ee of civilisation and on higher ground away from rivers and creeks. We enjoyed our last full day of nice weather by pottering about and getting a bit more sorted.  Rather preposterously given the heat we unpacked our winter and ski gear parcel that we had sent from ourselves in NZ to Greg and Gigi’s. We will need this later on in this trip. Behold the power of vacuum packing!

The camp had rental canoes and kayaks and we broke our ‘3rd rule of a happy marriage’ and in the afternoon took a 2-man Canadian canoe out for a hour. This comprised of a 45 min slog up river, including a five minute period through some deceptive mini-rapids where we definitely remembered why rule 3 exists, followed by a very pleasant 15 minute whizz home.

2 more evenings, 2 more campfires. Life is good.

Note:

The Hampson’s 3 rules for a happy marriage:

1. Do your own ironing. (Rule 1 is null and void when one party is working full time and the other is not) 
2. Shut the door for number twos. (No exceptions) 
3. Where possible, never share a double kayak or canoe. 

This seems to be working for us currently.

Our next 2 nights were in Whitehaven, PA.  A nowheresville selected as a good spot to sit-out the rain that was a’coming. We had plenty of food, beer, DVDs, and the site was close to the office and bathroom/laundry block. We arrived in the light rain, and were sorted just before the deluge started.  We shut the door and hunkered down. In the end it was all-over-rover in 12 hours. Noisy with the rain on the roof, but happily undramatic. The next day and second night were dry and we headed off on the 18th to our first real destination stop: Amish country.