Tin Can Travels

30th June – 7th July 2023

Fuelled by mince and cabbage stuffed bread pockets from Runza we hit the road and this was a big moment. I was behind the wheel. It’s not that I am not perfectly capable of driving but usually Nick does it all. The difference is that I am also perfectly capable of being a patient, self amusing, relaxed passenger. ‘Nuff said. Today was going to be a slightly longer journey than usual and it seemed a good opportunity for me to get a few hours under my belt and keep the skills fresh. We were leaving Nebraska and heading into Wyoming – a state that we had visited before on our first trip in 2017 but one that we felt that we hadn’t got a good sense of yet. We had a ‘small town tour’ planned, one stop of which was going to coincide with that hallowed day, The Fourth of July.

Wyoming. The last state in the alphabetic list. The tenth largest by area, nearly half of which is federally owned. The second least densly populated, after Alaska, and the state with the fewest inhabitants. Only about 575,000 people live here. It is half ‘high elevation prairie’ on its eastern side, the lowest point being at 3100ft and its western side is made up of the Rocky Mountains and its rangelands. Its highest mountain, Gannett Peak is nearly 14,000ft and its average elevation is 0ver 6000ft. It is the driest and windiest state. Hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The people here are mostly tough, self reliant, conservative, country folk that are used to sorting out their own problems, are in touch with the rythmns of the land, make their own fun, carry guns, and live in tight knit communties. The rest seem to be rock climbers.

We had an amazing drive up onto the plateau, a wild, windswept prairie with nothing except the odd small settlement. The I-25 took us towards Casper, our first stop on the ‘WY Tour’. This road was magical. The views were epic and the traffic light. By the time we arrived in Casper it was pouring with rain and our spirits were moderately dampened, literally and metaphorically, by the apparent grimness of our RV park. It was only about 1.5 miles from town, and a featureless gravel pit full of longterm residents. The rain did stop, we set up, the sun came out, we found a picnic table to commandeer and we were happy again. We soon realised that the park bordered a small nature reserve on the river and there were deer, wild turkeys and rabbits milling around. This slightly made up for the lack of trees and grass.

Casper, population about 60,000, is Wyoming’s second largest city yet still feels like a pioneer town. It was established on the site of Fort Caspar, a military outpost and owes the slightly different spelling of its name to an error when the town’s name was officially registered. A river crossing and trading post for migrating land seekers on the Oregan, Californian and Mormon trails and a nearby oilfield cemented its position as an important town in the area. There are a few museums here, but we didn’t go to any of them. We had had our fill of ‘pioneer and settler history’ recently and they mostly seemed to be located up steep hills. We cycled to town on the very lovely dedicated cycle trail that meandered around the riverside golf course and up into the old part of town. It ended at a newly renovated town plaza that had a ‘splash pad’ and there were plenty of kids (and grown ups) in their swim wear, getting soaked and keeping cool in the heat. We were jealous.

Town was full of old buildings, many restored and re-purposed but also many empty and sad looking, awaiting their revival. Both the theatres were closed but the cinema had been revitalised as a microbrewery. The new entertainment for the masses. The jewel in the retail crown of Casper is ‘Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters’ which had been selling Western wear in an original 55,000 sq ft historic downtown building for over 100 years. This we had to see. It was cowboy heaven. There were boots, jeans, shirts, belts and hats as far as the eye could see. It’s a great functional style here, in situ, in the rural west, but one has to resist the purchase of said garments if one is an out of country tourist who resides on the English/Welsh border. One sales chap pulled out this beautiful, brown, felt hat (as seen on Yellowstone, the series, he said), carefully set it on my head and showed me a dozen ways to style it. It was lovely and I was tempted until I saw the price tag of $250. He must have seen the look on my face as he then said “You’re not buying this hat are you?” Nope. We retreated.

Next stop: a small kiosk that sold ‘cream sodas’, a delicacy that we had yet to experience. For those that also have not sampled one before, this is a mixture of ice, flavoured syrup, ‘half-and-half’ (a cream/milk combo) and soda water. Terribly delicious, delightful and refreshing whilst sat on a shady street corner in a warm breeze on a hot sunny day, people watching and car judging. A bit more mooching heated us up again and we headed home for a few of hours of downtime before we came back out for beers and a burger. A tried and trusted evening’s entertainment that did not disappoint. The backwards and forwards saw us clock up 13-14 miles on the bikes without even thinking about it. Incidental exercise is king.

The next day the furthest we went was the showers. Some days are just like that. It does amaze me how we are able to pootle around in such a small space and not go mad. It is a dark art that we have been perfecting over the years. We weren’t entirely idle, however, and we did achieve something on this day. We listed Tin Can and Big Dave for sale. Quite a big deal. Tidying and decluttering was done, cleaning happened, photos were taken, blurb was written. They are now officially for sale and who knows if anyone will buy them before we leave in September. Fingers crossed that they sell, but not too soon. Here is the link if you are interested.

https://www.rvtrader.com/listing/2014-Lance-1172+LONG+BED-5026899780

After a few nights here we headed off further in to the high praries of central Wyoming. Destination Lander. Our drive took us across miles and miles of grasslands, mostly divided up into gigantic ranches, dotted with cattle and Pronghorn antelope.

In the middle of nowhere was a massive slab of granite called Independence Rock. We stopped briefly at the co-located rest stop/visitors centre to wring out a kidney each and found out the origin of the name. The settlers left the area of the Missouri River in the East and they trudged across the prairies in their droves, following the Californian, Mormon and Oregon Trails. The emigrants used this rock as an important landmark on their travels, hoping to reach it by Independence day on the 4th July. This meant that they were likely to arrive at their destination in the West before the cold weather of winter arrived. Now we have highways and cars and campers and hotels and rest stops and running water and electricity and we have no idea how hard these people worked for their new lives. Many of them carved their names into the rock itself as a tangible record of their existance in this place at that time. Many of them didn’t survive their journeys. We stopped at a pullout with an overlook called ‘Beaver Rim’ for our picnic lunch and then dropped down into Lander.

Lander. Population 7500, elevation 5300 ft. A much smaller place, basically a main street with surrounding houses. It was previously a place for ‘cowboys and miners’ according to an older, gnarly chap we met at a bar, but now tourism has come to town and I’m not sure he was too impressed with the changes that had brought with it. The ‘interlopers’ are outdoor sporting enthusiasts and mainly rock climbers. Situated at the base of the Wind River Mountains, Lander is very close to Sinks River Canyon, a world class rock climbing area. The climbers are easily distinguishable from the locals. Gathering in loose groups in the town’s biggest bar in the evenings, they are lean, muscled, tanned and tattooed. How can one tell? Because they wear small clothes designed to show off these attributes. Cut away singlets for the boys, crop tops and small shorts for the girls. The beauty asthetic is ‘towseled simplicity’ and for some strange reason many of the boys had neon painted fingernails. They are the surfers of the mountains, travelling and living in small vans, free camping wherever possible. You can see why the average Wyoming bloke is a bit bemused by it all.

We arrived on a hot 3rd of July as the town prepared for the next day’s festivities. The forecast for the next day was not good. Cold and wet weather was predicted. It didn’t seem possible. We found our site on a park only about half a mile from the main street. It wasn’t so much RV park as mobile home park. There is a distinct difference as you might imagine, but it had some nice trees. Just as we were finishing BBQing our dinner the hot sunny weather rapidly deteriorated into a short-lived, rainy gale, chasing us inside and bringing down many small branches from the trees. A few made an ominous clatter as they hit the roof and we had our fingers crossed than no bigger ones decided to make a leap for it, which luckily they didn’t.

The next day dawned and not long after we were up for the first of the day’s planned activities: a 5km fun run that I had entered. I was perfectly fit enough to run 5km back in March, but had done no running since we started the process of packing up the house before we came away. That coupled with the altitude, I didn’t have great expectations of this being much fun. And I’d paid to do it (for charity, of course). It started at 6.30am. This seemed like a very good idea when you know that the temperatures on the 4th of July routinely hit 35 °C (100 °F). Today, bizarrely and most unseasonally, is was going to top out at about 13°C (55°F). At 6.30am it was considerably cooler than that. We made tea and set off to the start on our bikes. After a bit of milling and a weird staggered start that managed to dampen the buzz which is the entire point of the exercise, I was off. Slowly. It was a plod, but I didn’t feel too bad. Except on the hills which were bad. I came in at 32 minutes which is quite good for me, until I realised that the course was only 4.5km long. So not that good! This was the last time that I was warm the whole day.

We nipped back so I could shower and change and after a breakfast at one of the cafes in town we found our spot just before 10am to watch the parade. Now the American public go a little bit loopy for a street parade. There had been lawn chairs saving preferred pavement/sidewalk locations for at least 24 hours and many people arrive with coolers of drinks and snacks and really settle in. The parade itself was ok but even we sensed it was a bit subdued and quiet.

It was cool but everyone got really cold because they had all underdressed, just not being able to quite believe the forecast. The ususally brilliant blue sky was grey and overcast, leaking a fine drizzle every now and then. Being British it didn’t feel unusual for a summer’s day but we got chatting to a rancher/archeologist chap called Todd, a cowboy type who was sporting a fine grey handlebar moustashe and he remarked that this was the worst weather of any 4th of July parade that he could remember. Ever. The locals were all stunned. Staying hydrated and avoiding sunstroke are the usual goals of the day. Not staving off hypothermia. Despite having a few layers on I got really chilly. My exertions probably catching up with me too. As soon as the parade was over we went home, put on our small heater and I crawled into bed fully clothed under 3 blankets. I just couldn’t get warm. It felt ridiculous as we’d run the aircon the day before. I was just about feeling human by about 5pm when we were going to decide whether or not to cycle up through town to go to the rodeo that evening and watch the firework display afterwards, or stay in. Our decision was made for us as the heavens opened and torrential rain began to fall.

Lander has a firework problem. On July 4th, for one day only, from 12pm through to midnight the town relaxes its restriction on private fireworks. This is like taking a group of recovering alcoholics to a bottomless brunch. They go mad en masse, setting off hundreds of thousands of dollars of fireworks consistantly throughout the day and considering that its not even remotely dark until 9.30pm, much of that is in daylight, and they were not deterred by the rain. They just like the bangs. It was mindless and relentless and happens every year apparently. Lots of locals (the non-firework addicted population) leave town to escape the cacophony and madness. We were just hoping a rogue rocket didn’t come our way. At midnight it stopped and we could finally get some sleep. It had been a long day.

The next day it was warm again and we walked the main street, our only purchase being a physical For Sale sign and a black marker pen. It couldn’t hurt to have one taped to the back of Tin Can for the rest of our travels. I spied a music shop too and called in to see if they bought second hand instruments. I have a nice soprano ukulele that I bought on our first trip, when I was a bit keener on playing, and I was starting to think about selling it. The owner of the shop said she’d look at it and I brought it back later. She liked it and a deal was struck that I was happy with. She then confessed that she was going to keep it herself rather than sell it as it completes a set that she owns. Win-win. The spoils of the deal paid for our dinner and drinks at the liveliest bar in town – the one with all the rock climbers. Our usual habit of sitting up at the bar got us chatting to a group of locals including a couple who were about our age and their 30 year old son, a really interesting guy called Zac. He was a native of Shoshone descent and as neither of his parents were native we assume that he had been adopted. He earned his living as a non-contracted softball player, getting picked up by different teams throughout the season and travelling all over the country to play. Nick had seen a sign advertising ‘Speedgoat Rugby’ and was curious. Our new friends informed us that ‘Speedgoat’ is the local name for the Pronghorn antelope and this was the local rugby team, which also had a really cool logo of an antelope’s head. Nick wanted a jersey badly. It transpired that although the shirts are not on general sale they had a nephew and friends who played on the team. A flurry of texts was sent to try and procure an old, unwanted jersey and we waited. Unfortunately is was not to be, but it was a fun exercise.

The trailer that was our neighbour during our stay here provided us with some unsolved intrigue. It was obviouly a long term resident, an older style, relatively small with its curtains permentantly drawn. There seemed to be a constant coming and going of a core six or seven people – ranging in ages from mid twenties to mid forties, – sharing two cars, with several bizzare behaving visitors that came and stayed anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. At any one time there seemed to be at least four of the core group inside with different people staying overnight and any time the door opened we could see a large pile of detritus filling the corridor, further reducing the space inside. At first we were convinced it was a drugs den, but then there just weren’t enough odd comings and goings. In the end we settled on the scenario that it was an overflow space for an extended family who had another place nearby. Whatever was going on in there it must have been snug and cozy, ‘coz a few of them weren’t small people and who knows what the sleeping arrangements were.

On our last day here we heeded the recommendation of several people and took the 10 mile trip up to see Sinks Canyon. Again we just unplugged and headed off without offloading and made the short trip up into the hills. The canyon gets its name from the fact that the river, the Popo Agie, flows down into a cavern and disappears underground, surfacing in a pool about quarter of a mile down the canyon. Dye tests have revealed that the water takes over 2 hours to make this short journey and that far more water surfaces at the ‘Rise’ than enters the ‘Sinks’. It is a mystery as to what happens down there.

Whilst up in the canyon we found an interesting walk up to an impressive set of cascade falls of the river further upstream and this was the first of our walks this trip where we have shared it with a significant number of other people. Even saying that, it wasn’t busy.

So that was Lander. Not seen in its best light, but charming and beautiful nonetheless. Our next journey was reasonably short. Destination Thermopolis.

25th -30 June 2023

If I were to describe the landscape of Nebraska in a few words they would be: gently undulating, mostly corn growing farmland. Great swathes of it. The lack of high ground means no distant views and the wind direction matters. We descended from our loess hill perch, crossed the Missouri River, entered Nebraska and set off westwards, into a stiff headwind. This day was a tiring battle against a Westerly that reduced our fuel economy from terrible (9 mpg) to very terrible (7-8 mpg). We had an ‘Interstate Day’ today, joining the I-80 at Lincon and staying on it until we got near to to our next stop, Grand Island. This approx 140 mile stretch of highway is in a dead straight line, exactly east to west, as if the engineers just drew a line with a ruler and said “Yup. That’s where we’ll put it”.

Grand Island, named for a French fur trappers settlement on the ‘La Grande Isle’ in the nearby Platte River, was orginally touted in the early 1800’s as an alternative capital city for the new country rather than Washington DC. This obviously didn’t happen. Instead, aided by the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad, it positioned itself as a supply town for those heading west to seek their gold fortunes and to pioneer homesteaders, thus cementing its position as a centre for trade and settlement. Now it has a population of just over 50,000 and is Nebraska’s 4th largest city.

Its chief attraction is the stylish Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. Named for Leo Stuhr, a local farmer and politician, whose family were early settlers to this area . He donated land, money and artefacts to build the museum which consists of a very stylish and somewhat out of place architect designed building at the centre of a circular island in a circular lake, and a mock-up living history pioneer village made up of many relocated original buildings ‘inhabited’ by period costumed players. It also had an exhibition of historic farm equipment including many steam engines and tractors in a seperate shed.

This had a very elderly chap manning it with the reception desk set up like it was his study desk at home, piled high with papers and magazines. A combination of him being hard of hearing and us being British meant that he couldn’t understand a word we were saying but we had a nice chat nonetheless. We managed to do a quick whip round the exhibits before he shut it for the day at 3pm. Having only opened at 11am, this 4 hours of ‘museum work’ was possibly a perfect distraction from retirement. There were other buildings with exhibits detailing the history and interactions (some may say skirmishes) with members of the local native tribes.

There were some very chatty docents who I think were obviously quite bored and the chap who was demonstrating in the noisy woodworking shop spoke so quietly that we have no idea what he was on about. There was also a small buffalo herd. Interesting factoid: In the 1500s, before the arrival of the white settlers there were approximately 30-60 million bison on the prairies of the continental USA. By 1884 this number had dropped to 325. In total. Now there are approximately 500,000. Here are six of them.

Our camp was located in a lovely town-owned park next door to the museum. It was well maintained and quiet with some much needed shade cast by lots of mature trees. Payment was by stuffing cash into the honesty box and spaces were on a first-come-first served basis. This always gives us a degree of anxiety as we arrive, hoping that the place isn’t choc-a-block, but there were plenty of pitches free. Two nights here gave us a full day at the museum on the middle day and the rest of the time we chilled out in the shade, the Nebraska breezeless summer heat being quite sapping.

The next section of road from here has been billed as one of America’s top ten scenic drives: The Sandhills Journey on Nebraska Highway 2 is 265 miles of single lane road through one of the great widernesses of this country: 19,300 sq miles of grass covered stabilised sand dunes. These were created by the sediment of the Rocky Mountains, ground down by glacial activity and then washout out onto these plains. They are the largest sand dune formations in the Western Hemisphere, and no, I’d never heard of them before either. The soft undulations of the dunes went on as far as the eye could see, but with no high points for a far reaching vista, the photos don’t really do them justice. Back in the day, when the pioneers were granted ownership of 160 acres of homestead land in order to encourage the settlement of the Mid-West they had to rethink the land allowance in this area. The soil quality of this area was so poor that the allowance was increased to 640 acres. One settler remarked that she was glad that the allowance had been increased to 640 acres as now one could starve to death in style. These were hardy people living very tough lives.

We stopped halfway along the route at a National Forest Park called Bessey Recreation Area. This was named for a chap called Charles Bessey, a Nebraskan botany professor who hypothesised that this area had been covered by natural forest in the past and in 1902 he convinced President Roosevelt to set aside 222 sq miles of sandhills to recreate it in a small way. The creation of a tree nursery and many years of hand planting native Ponderosa pines led to this being the largest hand planted forest in the world for a while until the title was lost to a forest in China. In October last year a wildfire called the Bovee fire destroyed over 19,000 acres of forest in this area, destroying one camp and coming perilously close to the camp we were staying in. This camp was very picturesque with the sites slotted between the trees giving some much needed shade. It was mid-week and mostly deserted, the majority of the sites only filling up at week-ends with Nebraskans that come with their ATVs to use the trail network here.

Our two day stay gave us a middle day to do a good hike. This ended up being about 7 miles of reasonably poorly signposted trail through the forest up to a fire lookout tower. Ironically this took us through a big swathe of the fire ravaged land, including the fire tower surrounds. It was beautiful but ugly all at the same time and it was slightly unsettling to imagine what it must have been like to have been staying here when the fire hit and having to evacuate. It was also boiling hot and we were a bit cooked by the time we got home.

Here the scenic highway followed the Middle Loup River, as did the railway line and getting to the recreation area involved a railway crossing. In most areas the trains sound their horns as they approach crossings, even if there are safety barriers deployed, so despite us being IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, the frequent freight trains made their presence known day and night. This is the soundtrack of much of our travels.

After two nights here we hit the road again and the view was all sandhills for the whole journey. They seemed neverending until they ended, which was quite abruptly just before our our next stop in town call Alliance, a classic utilitarian prairie town. Here there was the spectacle of Carhenge.

Like Stonehenge, but made out of cars. The brainchild of a chap who decided to build it and the sort batsh*t crazy thing that puts an otherwise fairly nondescript place on the map. Well on some maps, anyway. We detoured 3 miles to see the marvel. Saw the marvel. Took a few medicore photos of the marvel and left. Most people did exactly the same thing. There was an RV park right next door, but we were booked into a place back on the other side of town. Our place was run by a 80-something year old Woody Harrelson lookalike who had two man-mountain sized sons who ran a lawn mowing business from the same location. We were breaking the rules here and were only staying one night. Our plans for a stroll out to get dinner were skuppered by the weather. The sky started to look very dark and angry and the internet yet again warned us of meterological perils. High winds, flash flooding and possible tornados. I had another calm and relaxed freak-out and sought out our host who was oblivious to the forecast. I enquired as to our ‘options in case of an imminent tornado’. He said we could shelter in the basement of his (on-site) home, which had an external entrance. I got him to show me where the door was, we put away everything that that we had just got out, made sure our go-bag was packed again and kept our eyes on the radar and the updates. In the end, again, it was a reasonably big storm in a teacup. Just a lot of rain and lightning and thunder. As I said my goodbyes and thank yous to Ol’ Woody in the morning he looked at me wryly and asked if we were going to stay any longer to perhaps ‘catch a real storm’ instead of just ‘the bit of rain’ that we’d experienced. This worldly old soul has lived in tornado alley his whole life and can’t quite fathom how terrifying the concept of a twister is to this Euro/NZ gal. The next morning, in lieu of our missed dinner out we stopped at ‘Runza’ for our breakfast. This Nebraskan-centric, Mid-Western darling of a fast food chain is named for its most famous offering, The Runza. This is a German-inspired, seasoned mince and cabbage bread pocket. It has variations and comes with fries. It is not a classic breakfast food but this was our last chance to sample one before we left ‘Runza territory’. We were there as the doors opened at 10am and yes, they are very tasty.

17th June – 25th June 2023

Reminder to subscribers: I’ve still not sorted the issue of the photos not coming through on the automatic email. You can either go directly to the website at tincantravels.net, or follow the link at the bottom of the page.

Many RV people that we meet during the course of our travels drive insane distances in a day in order to get from A to B in the shortest time possible. 12-15 hours on the road can be entirely normal and then they get up early to do it all again the next day. But, as you know, that is not our style. We do have the luxury of time and we also can’t bear to fill up with petrol twice in a day. Tin Can Travels Trip Planner (aka Nick) has done some forward planning so that we are booked into places in Wyoming for the silly season of 4th of July celebrations and another town for their rodeo weekend. Now we had an itinerary in place we knew our timeframe to get across the mid-west and so we commenced our slow and steady plod. The under 2oo mile drive, arrive by 2pm, stay 2 night plan was implemented.

First stop: Mount Vernon, Illinois, is a small town that services I-64 traffic and we stopped at a camp that mainly hosted the aforementioned longhaul driving overnighters. It was just across the road from a great hardware store called Tractor Supply Co. and a short walk from a Walmart Supercenter. Big D and Tin Can needed a proper clean, a few minor things fixing and sorting and some general maintenance so we decided the next day was going to be a work day. We set off to get some supplies. In the heat. On foot. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that. Neither establishment see many customers arrive without the aid of a combustion engine, but the Hampsons like to confuse the locals. The next day, with a storm forcast for mid afternoon, we set to work early. I borrowed a set of tall stepladders from the RV park so we could reach the high bits and we washed, polished, filled paint chips, fixed a chair, lubed the slideouts, trimmed some old putty sealant, removed some tape residue and generally spruced. At about 3pm the sky blackened so we finished up and put everything away about 2 minutes before the rain started. A good day’s work.

The next day we headed off after a tank washout during which I discovered our septic pipe had acquired a hole. Not a big one, but no hole is a good hole in this department. It was not a fixable hole either, so we factored in a visit to an RV store on our onward journey. Its amazing that we have been doing this long enough now that things are starting to wear out. We also needed to replace a broken gutter spout (again) on the front right corner of Tin Can. This is always the one that gets broken or lost as it get caught on low hanging branches en route (I think the Blue Ridge Parkway ate this last one). Of course while we were there we did some window shopping and had a nosy at some new RVs in the sales area. We often wonder how different our travels would have been with a different rig.

We pootled on and arrived in Missouri. Our second stop of the day was in a very elegant town called Fulton. This is noteable for its small but influential private liberal arts college and The National Churchill Museum. Sir Winston Churchill came to this college in March 1946, as the post war, ex-prime minister of the UK, to deliver its annual guest lecture. His invitation was a bold, optomistic move by the college but because a college alum, a military man, was high up in the administration of Harry S Trumans’s government, Truman agreed to endorse the invitation and offered to introduce Churchill. Churchill accepted and thus Fulton, Missouri became the site of one of his greatest speeches and one where he coined the term ‘The Cold War’. This would be bizarre enough, but the museum is housed in a church that was built by Sir Christopher Wren. He designed and rebuilt St Mary The Virgin of Aldermanbury church after it was destroyed in the Great Fire Of London in 1666. Unfortunately the church took a direct hit during the Blitz in 1940 and was ruined. In 1965 the church was purchased by Fulton College in order to create a memorial to Churchill and to commemorate the lecture. The (mostly) pile of rubble was dismantled, transported to Fulton, rebuilt, restored and opened as the museum on the college campus. Interestingly, not long after it was completed, the college’s own chapel collapsed and St Mary’s became the college’s chapel too. (Here’s one I prepared earlier…) The museum was actually really interesting and mapped out Churchill’s life and work, obviously with a focus on the War, in a very informative way. We were impressed.

Our next two night stop was a wooded camp accessed by a 5 mile gravel road. This really undid our days work of cleaning and polishing and the bikes were just a mess. This camp was almost deserted and had a small pool which was great as it was pretty hot on our days here. Apart from the excitement of using our new sewer hose and fitting the gutter spout by standing on a step ladder atop a picnic table, there was not much to report about this place.

Onward! Westwards! In a very straight line through Missouri. The road brought us to the metropolitan area of Kansas City, but our destination was not the city itself – or it’s neighbour across the river, Kansas City , Kansas- instead it was the historic city of Independence on its eastern outskirts. Before we arrived at camp we took a short detour to find a self service car wash place to knock off the dust. This was a quick affair as there were a couple of questionable looking locals hanging out nearby, looking shifty and definitely not entirely devoid of mind altering substances. I guess if they had approached in a threatening manner Nick could have ‘jetwashed’ them to protect me. They probably could have also done with the power shower but it didn’t come to that. Finding ourselves in uncomfortable situations like this during our meanderings is very unusual so we don’t let it bother us too much. Trusting a gut feeling goes a long way. Happily the carwash was in an entirely different part of town from the handsome and historic downtown of Independence which was where we were going.

Our two nights here were in a church-owned town camp only a stone’s throw from the centre of Independence. It was spacious and well maintained and managed by a nice lady with two friendly siamese cats who hung out with her in her office. The land that the park was on had a colourful past. Initially it was the site of an impressive home owned by a business man. After he died, leaving a widow and seven children, his wealthy batchelor brother moved in with the family. A while later, in 1909, he and another couple of family members died in mysterious circumstances and the family physician was the prime suspect. Dr Hyde (yes, really), who had suspiciously recently married one of the daughters of the family, was accused of poisoning them. His motive was deemed to be to reduce the number of heirs of the fortune, thus increasing his own potential share. He was convicted at trial but this verdict was overturned on appeal. His reputation never recovered, he divorced his wife and he maintained his innocence for the rest of his life. Years later the house fell into disrepair, was demolished and the land was finally sold to The Church of The Latter Day Saints. Independence now serves as the World Headquarters of The Community Of Christ, a branch of the LDS church and they have built the most beautiful and crazy looking temple. We cycled up to it, but unfortunately couldn’t get inside for a look around. It is quite magnificent just from the outside though.

The other thing that Independence is noted for is that it was the home town of President Harry S Truman and is now the location of his presidential library and museum. We also paid a visit to this on our bikes, first passing his old home on the way. The museum and library was the first of its kind and its inception and creation was Truman’s retirement project. He had an office here and he, his wife and his daughter, are all buried here. This museum also did a really good job of mapping out his life, both personal and professional, detailing how his presidency encompassed a significant slice of world history and how his character influenced his achievements and legacy. He seemed like a thoroughly decent bloke who did a good job of being president, even if this was thrust upon him unexpectedly. Interestingly the ‘S’ doesn’t stand for anything. His parents gave him the middle initial S to honor and please both his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

It was definitely time for haircuts whilst we were here and on our first evening’s foray into town we happened upon a salon that was still open and called in on the off chance that we could get appointments for the next day. Amazingly, due to a recent cancellation, the answer was yes, and we had back to back bookings for 7pm the next day. We also had a recommendation from the hairdresser for somewhere to go for food and drinks and thus ended up at the local brewery on the main square. Here we sampled a few pints of the local brews, ate a very delicious couple of flatbread pizzas from the co-located food kiosk and listened to the offerings of the ‘open mic music night’. These were pretty much all ‘man-with-a-guitar’ acts and most did a pretty good job. One was questionable. Our haircuts the next day were both very satisfactory and finding ourselves back in town at 8pm we went back to the brewery for another drink. Be silly not to, we reckoned.

We headed north from here and managed to sneak a stay in the very south-west corner of Iowa, a state that we didn’t think that we would get to visit. Iowa has the Missouri River as its entire western border and the Mississippi River as its entire eastern border. A unique situation in the USA. The landscape to get here had been very flat and mostly given over to the growing of corn. We had found a small campsite in Waubonsie State Park. This was situated up on some bluffs, a geological curiosity of this area. The bluffs are called loess hills and are formed by the heaping up of wind blown fine soils over past millenia. There are loess hills all over the world, but only in China are they found higher than in Iowa.

At this camp we met a group of men who were four brothers in their late 50s and early 60s. They were here for their annual family reunion that was happening at one of the park’s big picnic shelters in 2 days time. Their surname was Churchill, which was topical for us. They all lived about an hour up the road in a town called Council Bluffs, all were with their respective wives and were all camping in either an RV or a cabin. They looked nothing alike and spent very little time talking to each other as far as we could see. They did, however, all engage us in many conversations seperately. They were all very pleasant, although the youngest of them, who was also the tallest of them by some considerable margin, was a bit weird. He knocked on our (very much closed and locked) door at 10.30pm at night to give us a present of a crocheted dish washing pad that his wife (who we never clapped eyes on during the entirety of our stay) had made for us. Admittedly our lights were still on, but this is a significant departure from ‘normal and acceptable behaviour’ in any situation, and especially in the RV world. What I thought was “What time do you call this ????? The only valid reasons to knock at night are medical emergency, imminant tornado or a rapidly rising river situation, but otherwise go away and it can wait until morning, you freak. But of course what I said was “Oh, thank you very much, that is very thoughtful“. So very British.

There was a great sunset lookout a short stroll from the campground. The plains to the west of here are so flat that it was like watching a sunset over the ocean, without the blinding reflection off the water. We walked up both nights, beer in hand, and shared it with a photographer chap the first evening and two younger couples the second evening. Both of the couples had driven from the campsite. I swear this was only about 350m away. (About 1000ft for our US friends). One couple even brought their big, bouncy dog in the car, made it sit to watch the sunset, then drove it back again. I despair!

The next day was hot and windless again, as it has been for days now. We waited until late morning so that the temperature had easily reached about 28 °C (82 °C for our US friends) and then set off for a nice long walk. Mad dogs again and all that. It was a beautiful route, mostly shaded through woodland with a short segment in the blazing sun along an open ridge that had that great westerly view. We marveled, as we sweated, about how we had the whole walk to ourselves, not meeting a single other person along our route of about 6 miles, the reality being that everyone else had more sense, of course as the temperature was now about 35°C. (The Americans can work it out).

We survived our exploits and made it home with only mild heat exhaustion and dehydration. Nothing that a cold shower and drinking 3.87 litres (a gallon) of refreshing water couldn’t sort out. The next morning we bade our farewells -seperately – to the band of Churchillian brothers and headed across the Missouri River to Nebraska.

12th June – 17th Jun 2023

A few hours cruising west through Kentucky brought us to the oddly named town of Bowling Green. This city of 80,000 people is the third largest in Kentucky after Louisville and Lexington and is best known as ‘Home of the Corvette’. Production of America’s best loved sports car has happened here since the assembly plant opened in 1981 and it has produced over 1 million of the 1.5 million Corvettes ever made. You can pay to do a factory tour of the plant and there is a museum. So of course we were stopping here. We stayed locally the night prior and headed off to the factory the next morning.

The rules for the tour were simple: wear closed toed, flat shoes and bring nothing with you: no bags, no cameras, no phones. After arriving, walking a considerable distance from the carpark to the entrance and checking in, we were given eye protection and an audio tour receiver and sat in a waiting area. Here a wall of large screens gave us our safety briefing and then our group of about 10 were taken into the factory. This was not a tour from behind glass windows or up on balconies above the action, this was a walking tour of the actual factory floor and it was fantastic. Partly it was interesting because the Corvette is now actually a half decent sports car (after the lows of the 80s/90s & 00s) and it was great to see it take shape from all its various components, but mostly the tour was so good because of the experience of being so up close and personal with a modern factory production line.

The factory has a current target of 94 cars per day and each shift in each zone has its live stats visible on a board. Each car takes about 65 hours to manufacture and this includes the painting and curing of the body panels. The place is an absolute ballet of slowly moving production lines – both floor level and overhead – humans fitting parts, robots fitting parts, robots delivering parts around the floor, humans driving forklifts to deliver parts around the floor. Body panels for each car are sprayed together in the new $450 million paint shop, then after curing are split up and transported to all different corners of the factory to be reunited on the same car at various stages of the build. The computers know which car has which different options and these are all perfectly assigned to each vehicle along the line. The technology was incredible. It was also strangley quiet and no-one needed any hearing protection. There was one amusing analogue safety feature. The corners of the windscreen frames of the cars have a small sharp nubbin on them and the workers were hitting their heads on them as they bent over to fit items into the car’s dashboard area. At great expense, the Chevrolet engineers designed a special cap to clip onto the nubbin, but it kept falling off. The solution? A tennis ball with a cut fits perfectly. The factory gets these as seconds from a tennis ball factory and all are happy. As you might expect, a lot of Corvette owners come to see the factory and the carpark was heaving with shiny, sporty machines and if you have ordered a Corvette you can come and do a VIP tour to see your actual car being made. If you want to come and collect your new car yourself, rather than have it delivered, then you can collect it from the museum site where they do a full handover. All very exciting. We went over to the museum after our tour, saw the things and read the blurb. It was good, but not a patch on the tour. We saw a few of the cars being handed over and then watched this guy drive off in his new pride a joy.

Next stop: Mammoth Caves National Park. Two nights in a quiet camp run by a religious couple where the rules specified: discrete alcohol drinking only and no bare chests or beach wear. This set us up for a visit to the caves on our middle day. We couldn’t be bothered to off load Tin Can for our 8 mile drive to the park’s visitors centre so we just unplugged and all went together. The cave system here is enormous and formed by underground rivers dissolving the soluble limestone. It is the biggest cave system in the world, with over 400 miles of mapped caves. We booked onto a cave tour which took us underground for a 2 hour, 2 mile guided walk with lots of historical facts and figures from our two rangers (who were both called Kelly). I kept my mild claustrophobia at bay and knew that I certainly wouldn’t have been exploring these caves 150 years ago with just an oil lamp and a laissez faire attitude towards safety. No sir.

And onward we rolled to Louisville, Kentucky’s biggest city with a population of approx 630,000. In fact our roost was to be across the Ohio River, in Clarksville, which was actually Indiana. From here it was an easy 3 mile cycle along a riverside path and then over the river on an old railway bridge which has been repurposed as a pedestrian and cycle crossing, then into the riverside park on the Louisville side. This was only a short distance from the heart of the historic downtown of Louisville and several key areas of interest for us: Bourbon, Baseball and Bats.

All bourbon is American. 95% of bourbon is made in Kentucky and 40% of Kentucky bourbon is made in Louisville. This is the heart of the operation! The water here sourced from underground aquifers and is particularly tasty. We had booked onto a tour of a distillery called Angel’s Envy and headed there on the bikes once we had set up camp. (I have said it before and I will say it again…it is such a joy to be able to cycle safely into and around a city!) The tour was very good. All brewing, distilling and bottling happens there on site, with only the barrel maturation happening elsewhere. We had a taster of the rough corn mash beer brew-complete with chewy bits and a proper tasting at the end. I learnt a lot and actually have acquired a taste for bourbon. Well the good stuff, at least.

We obviously had to have a bourbon cocktail at their bar before we left and had to buy a bottle of the brew to take home. Of course! On the way home we stopped on the Indianna side of the river for dinner at a brewery. This had a great view of Louisville and its bridges and served a good burger. It also served us a jug of full strength IPA when we had ordered a lighter, lower alcohol one. That explained why it had tasted so good and why my head was a little fuzzier than expected in the morning. I should sue!!

The next day we hoofed it back across the river again and having parked up the bikes we strolled the historic main street. This is dubbed ‘Bourbon Row’ as many of the distilleries have a presence here. Our strolling took us down to the museum and factory of another famed export of Louisville: The Slugger baseball bat. Another tour was attended and again, we learned stuff. The Slugger bat makes up 15% market share for the MLB. They make about 1.8 million bats annually, 3000 of which are made in the factory here. That was suprising to us as the factory seemed to be awfully quiet and unproductive whilst we were looking round. After the tour we both got a free ‘mini bat’ which are too small to be useable and too big to be practical souvenirs. I carried them around for the rest of the day, like every other tourist in town.

The latter part of our afternoon was spent in the shade outside a nice bar slowly eating a meal and drinking weak ‘happy hour’ beer whilst we waited for the evening’s entertainment: a baseball game. Our thouroughly pleasant sojourn was was slightly marred by a father and son who were standing on the street just near our table, drinking beer out of cans and smoking big fat cigars, by virtue of the venue being smoke-free. This we could tolerate. But the spitting. So much spitting. One drag of cigar…One spit. We couldn’t see the ground where they were aiming it, but there must have been a pool of it developing. If there had been ducks they would be paddling on it. Surely a cigar shouldn’t trigger such waterbrash, and if it does, just swallow the flaming stuff. Or ditch the habit, it’s obviously not agreeing with you. Rant over.

To the baseball. The local team are called the ‘Louisville Bats’. Bats for the Sluggers homage and the mascot is….yes…a bat. The small furry winged type. The team play in the minor leagues but have a great little stadium in the heart of the historic district. They were in the middle of a week of games against the St Paul Saints. We bought tickets (The slightly fancier ones with padded seats, upper tier, access to air conditioned bar.) and took our seats at 7pm in time for the anthem. This was belted out by an 11 year old girl who did a much better job than many a well known artist. Now baseball itself is fairly boring, which is why they serve beer and snacks, but our view was great and a ball did fly very close to our heads at one point. which was a bit exciting. After sitting through 2 hours and 7 innings by which time the score was still 1-1, we bailed. Partly due to boredom, partly due to the fact that dusk had arrived and we had no bike lights. Our route home initially took us past ‘Funk Fest’, a music event in full swing on the riverside park. Hundreds of people had paid the $65 for a ticket to get in, but thousands of others had just pitched up with lawn chairs to sit outside the venue and listen from the nearby park, bringing their own private parties with them. It was quite a spectacle. We had noted that the baseball crowd had lacked Black faces. Here they were, having a much better time, for free! Sensible people. We stopped for a few moments to listen to ‘Slick Rick’ but as darkness waits for no man, we pushed on. The rail bridge was lit up with colourful lights and the city looked great behind us. We cruised home, marveling at the displays from the fireflies along the riverside, trying not to swallow the myriad of other bugs that were out in force, arriving back safely before it was pitch black.

7th June to 11th June 2023

We cruised out of our hilly campsite back onto the hilly Blue Ridge Parkway. After about 7 miles we left the Parkway and headed down the ‘hill’. Jeepers. What a hill. It came with numerous hairpins, a 15 mph speed limit for big vehicles, a plethora of warning signs about using low gears, several pull off areas to allow trucks and larger vehicles to stop and let their brakes cool down and at least two escape lanes. We are not a large rig, but we are heavy. Seven tonnes. That’s alot of momentum. Luckily one of the numerous things that we had done on our very expensive trip to the Chevy Service Centre in Nov 21 included new rear brakes, so we were hoping they did their job. We reached the valley floor without incident and carried on. Before long we started climbing again, the I-40 highway winding its way into the Great Smokey Mountains, a subrange of the Appalacians. The hilly theme continued. We crossed the state line into Tenessee and before long arrived at our next stop, a small riverside camp wedged between the I-40 highway and the Big Pigeon River. This area lives and breathes white water rafting and aside from several outfitters, a petrol station and a couple of cafes, there was not much else on offer. Except a moonshine distillery. We were only here for a night, had not planned a rafting trip here and thought we would walk out to find a food before sampling the local distillates. When we arrived it was unfortunately pouring with rain but this did ease enough later to tackle the half mile walk along the grass verge of a suprisingly busy side road back to the ‘village’ centre. We soon discovered that nowhere served food after about 5pm which was when all the rafters were done and gone. So early evening moonshine sampling on an empty stomach it was to be then!

We had a great tasting (drinking) session with the very personable lady manning the fort -whose name neither of us can recall for obvious reasons- and ended up buying a jar of Jalepeno moonshine which makes a very cheeky Bloody Mary variation. We rolled home and cooked pasta…I think!

This section of Tennessee is very narrow and the next day’s drive took us quickly into Kentucky, another new state on our travels. Today we had a lunch destination, the original KFC retstaurant and museum. We don’t often buy lunch when we are out on the road, usually making a picnic if needed, but this was an opportunity to worship at the temple of ‘fingerlickin’ fried chicken’y goodness’. We were powerless pilgrims and made a 20 mile detour to this fairly unprepossessing establishment. The museum exhibits line the walls of the restaurant with a few mock-ups of the original kitchen and several statues of the big man himself. Much of the history of the place was a summary of Colonel Sanders’ life and entrepreneurship. The man was a hardworking genius and latterly a philanthropist. And made very good chicken. The fries are also spectacular. We resisted the urge to get a family sized bucket, ate our modest lunch and headed to camp.

“Me Too”, said the Colonel.

We were staying in a small park co-located with a watersports outfitters in the Daniel Boon National Forest (I love how many of these places are named after people), and was called the Sheltowee Trace Adventure Resort. The main reason people come here is to see the nearby (6 miles away) Cumberland River and its falls, the self proclained Niagra Falls of the South. After setting camp we headed to the office to see what river trip we could do during our stay here. The only trip that had transport directly from the camp was an all day rafting trip, the most expensive option. This was more than we had planned to spend, but we couldn’t be bothered to off-load TinCan from Big Dave, so booked onto it for the next day. Once back at Tin Can our solitude and peace and quiet was ended by the arrival of a group of local Kentuckians away for the weekend from their home town 90 minutes away. Three large camping trailers containing three couples, Levi & Mary, Curtis & Tiffany and ‘Homer’ (not his real name) and Kelly. All lifelong friends, a bit younger than us, with an assortment of offspring (Aged between 19 and 10) and some of their friends. They occupied the spaces either side of us and set up a bit communal party area with a shade gazebo nearby. It was a situation that might have turned out badly but we got chatting and thus commenced our assimilation into their weekend of fun.

They were one of the most genuine and friendly group of people we have met on our travels. Their easy, relaxed and deep-rooted relationships with each other enveloped us too and for 3 days and we were part of the family. There were many hours spent sitting and chatting, mostly with a drink in hand, and a significant number of those around a raging camp fire. There was food. Almost none of it ours. Freely shared. There were marshmallows toasted. There was singing, mostly by Mary using a piece of ‘2 by 1’ as a fake microphone. There were some hangovers. There was a hiking trip to a waterfall that involved chucking some of the kids into the back of a pick up so that there was room for us too. There was a restock shopping trip to the liquor store as the beer supplies had taken a beating. There was some zipline spectating as all the kids, and Mary and Curtis, dared to hurl themselves off a tall platform at the on-site zipwire. There was reciprocal male grooming when, after many drinks, Levi and Homer gave each other buzz cuts. It’s tradition apparently. There was also attempted ‘gigging’ by Kelly. This is the act of catching frogs in the dark by stunning them with a bright torch and them stabbing them with a long sharpen stick, or ‘gig’. One then cooks and eats the legs. She was unsuccessful for several reasons: It was late and much booze had been consumed, rendering her less ‘stealthy’ than necessary. Her ‘gig’ was a short marshmellow toasting fork. Her ‘bright torch’ was an iphone. Frogs 1, Kelly 0.

In amongst all this fun we did our rafting trip, co-incidentally with Levi and Mary and their 2 kids, Blain and Hallie. Despite the heat of the days it was a cold morning and we met at the office reception at the ungodly hour of 8.30am. There was the usual safety briefings and kitting out and we were bundled onto an old yellow school bus which took us to the start of the trip. Our group had five rafts and we had a 40 year old guide called Amy on our boat.

(Side bar: Amy showed us the scar of a gunshot wound on her left thigh. This was a through-and-through injury that had been self inflicted. She said that she had started sleeping with her loaded 9mm handgun in the bed with her for security as her ex had been threatening her. She accidentally discharged it somehow -in a dream???-and woke when she heard the shot. The bullet missed all major blood vessels and nerves, thus she lives and can still walk. Only in America…..)

The trip started with a paddle up to the Cumberland Falls and then headed down river from there. The river was quite low and this was not the high octane, gnarly rapids navigating experience that it might have been, but it was amazing. The river was beautiful and mostly clear and calm, the rapids were fun rather than scary and there were frequent stops to jump off rocks and swim. As the river flow was low it was safe enough to navigate some of the rapids out of the boat and at the end of the trip, once we had descended to lake-level, were met we by a larger pleasure cruise boat to take us the rest of way to the finish point. Once on the boat we were served a ‘build it yourself’ sandwich lunch which was very much needed by then and at the finish the same bus took us home again. Well worth the wonga!

On Sunday morning our new friends all packed up and headed off. We were sad to see them go but not sure we could have managed a fourth consecutive evening of merriment. We said our goodbyes and then were were pretty much by ourselves in the park again. The weather was turning and a storm was forecast. Late afternoon we had a message from Levi: Keep our eyes on the weather forcast. There had been alerts. The storm that was headed our way had ‘potential tornadic activity’ within it. It was about 30 minutes away. We were immediately online and checking ourselves. He was right. I hustled over to the office to check where the storm shelter was. They hadn’t seen the alerts but agreed that it could develop. They pointed out the shelter, the stone built lower floor of one of the larger cabins, and unlocked it. We then packed a small ‘go bag’ with passports and electronica and I quickly door-knocked the three other RVs in the park to make sure they had seen the alerts and had clocked the storm shelter. None had. It was a slightly tense half hour but happily the tornado alert was removed before the storm got to us. No twisters, just a crazy amount of rain and thunder and a great lightning show. I’ll take a storm in a teacup any day over the alternative, Dorothy.

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.

19th May to 22nd May 2023

Our continuing cruise up the very pleasant US-17 took us into North Carolina. Our next big ‘destination’ was to be The Outer Banks, a long thin set of sandy barrier islands that sit off the mainland, but we had a few stops along the way to get there.

First stop was a small beach town very grandly called Surf City. This was also on a barrier island called Topsail Island but we were booked into a park on the other side of the bridge that connected it to the mainland. The park was massive, tired, shabby and inexplicably expensive for what it offered. Most sites were occupied by long term RVs obviously being used as holiday homes with only a few spaces given over to journeymen like us. It had been raining heavily and our grassy site was half underwater as we set up. Squelching around in our flip-flops spirits were a little low but as soon as we were established, the food shopping was unpacked, the awning was out and the stuff inside was all set up for living again, things didn’t seem as bad. In fact we had a really nice view of the marshes out of back window and no near neighbours. The sun then came out and soon the standing water all drained away leaving us with quite a nice little pitch. We had a great impromptu chat with two North Carolinan chaps who were long term buddies and both had holiday homes here. They and their families had been coming here for decades and they spent their time either fishing (the park did have its own boat ramp) or hanging out together in a golf cart, cruising the park roads, drinking beers. They were mighty jolly and seemed to have life sorted.

We had stopped here due its proximity to ‘The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue Centre’. It was set up by Jean Beasley and named in memory of her late daughter, Karen who died of cancer and who insisted that her life insurance payout was used to fund the project. The centre does guided tours to help fund its work and the volunteer docents were really knowledgeable. Part of the work is protecting the turtle nesting sites on the seaward side of Topsail Island and the other part is rehabilitating injured or ‘cold shocked’ turtles. The predominant turtles on this coast are Loggerheads and this area is on the northerly edge of their range. The sex of each embryo is not predetermined when it is laid but is dependant on the ambient temperature in the nest as it develops. Cooler temperatures create more male embryos, warmer temperatures more females. To that end, the cooler temperatures of this more northerly area means it is important in supplying males for the species. The organisation has volunteers that patrol the beach early every morning to mark, cordon off and document new nest sites. A single egg is removed from each nest to send for DNA analysis and further research and when it is time for the eggs to hatch the volunteers dig a shallow trench from the nest towards the ocean to give the hatchlings a clue which way to go. Beach property residents are asked to turn off all porch lights during the nights of breeding season so the baby turtles don’t confuse them with the moonlight, which they need to follow to get to the water.

The hospital side of the operation had turtles recuperating in large aerated containers of water and most go on to be released back into the wild. Snooki was a large turtle that was a longterm resident who had bouyancy control issues. She will never be able to be released back into the wild and is looking for a forever home in a protective facility. It was very interesting and great to see some big turtles so close up.

After seeing the turtles we cycled over the bridge to the town of Surf City to find it abuzz. Again we had happened upon an event by accident: A community fair and concert on the green. ‘The Bridge Jam’. There were lots of market stalls, food trucks and music by a well known North Carolina Beach Music band, The Embers. We obviously were clueless as to their fame but there were a whole heap of folk on lawn chairs who were very excited to see them come onto the stage. We watched for a bit and then headed to the beach which was far more chilled and less developed than the horrors of Myrtle. There was a kids surf competion going on and loads of local looking people knocking about. There were surfers, walkers, runners, sunbathers. There were the amusing groups of teenagers trying to look cool but terribly self conscious of how cool the other insecure teenagers might think they are, or are not. Remember those years?! There were ‘beach cops’ patrolling for illicit drinking, smoking and vaping. There were juice bars, ice cream shops and the obligatory hotdog stand. Nick succumbed to temptation and had a mid afternoon chilli-dog which I might have shared with him. It felt like a relaxed beach town and we liked it a lot.

The next day we headed off. Initially we stayed on US-17 and this took us past the home of the US Marines Corps, Camp Lejeune. This is a 250 sq mile facility, home to 35,000 personel. The camp incorporates lots of beaches to allow for amphibious training and its location between two deep water ports allows for easy deployments. This whole area is saturated with soldier types and as we cruised down the road alongside the base every second business was a barbershop. No hair on the head of any Marine in this town shall touch any collar. Soon we turned off the main drag onto a single lane road that headed out to the end of the land, a promentary called Cedar Island Point. The route took us through beautiful marshlands that were almost deserted save for scatterings of dilapidated homes and sheds. It reminded us a lot of the west coast of Northland NZ for those of you who know what that’s like. Cedar Island point consists of two things: an RV park on the beach and a ferry terminal.

The ferry was our route to the Outer Banks and we were booked on the 7.30am the next morning. Camp was quiet, basic and again, a bit over priced, but staying here meant that our early start in the morning involved a journey of about 50 metres to get to the ferry check-in kiosk. We took a stoll on the deserted beach which was lovely and if it had been warmer might have invited a swim and we watched the last ferries of the day go and come.

In the morning we made tea-to-go, enjoyed a rare sunrise and joined the suprisingly long queue for the first sailing. The nearest civilisation was 45 mins away so most of our fellow travellers had had very early starts. Our crossing was going to take us 2 hours and cost us….brace yourselves….$30. Such a bargain that I cannot feel that the service can cover its costs but it was amazing. A new boat, loads of crew and very efficient service. We arrived on the OuterBanks in a village called Ocracoke, on Ocracoke Island. This seemed like a nice cool little village but we weren’t booked to stay here so we headed north. Eventually the land ran out and there was another ferry to catch to get to the next island, Hatteras. This was an hour’s trip, but mainly because it had to take a massive loop to avoid the shallows. This ferry was a ‘first come-first served’ service and cost a massive…brace yourselves again…..nothing. Nada. Rien. Free. Crazy! It counts as a bit of road, so funded by the state tax dollars. We like.

The islands are all generally very long and thin with the atlantic on one side and the sheltered Pamlico Sound on the other and at some points the land is only about 50-100 metres across. The single road is protected from the seaward aspect by a large sand dune, which is largely manmade in an attempt to protect the islands from the atlantic storms that must thrash them on a regular basis.

Our chosen stop was in a village called Rodanthe, of ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ fame, the 2008 romantic drama starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. The original book was set in Rodanthe and the film shot here too. The homes here are mostly holiday homes or rentals and mostly built atop tall stilts to protect them from tidal surges. There are a few homes built right on the beach with their stilts below the high tide mark. They looked quite battered and I’m sure won’t last too many more seasons of winter storms.

We had high hopes for our stay here and had booked a whole week in which to soak up the sun and the beachy vibe. There really wasn’t any other reason to be here, or much else to do. Unless one is a kite surfer. Unbeknownst to us, this area is one of the top ten destinations world wide for the sport of having to wrestle a massive air sock whilst simultaneously balancing on a small board and then trying to go in the direction that you want whilst the wind is blowing at least 20 knots and trying to remove your arms from their sockets. It looks really hard work but does provide some spectatorial opportunities.

Our site was great, right on the sound with water views out of our back window. The only slight downside was the million watt security light which was situated on a pole right above us. It led to a blurring of daytime and nighttime and slightly messed with our circadian rhythmns.

Unfortunately our week here coincided almost exactly with a week of mostly shonky weather. It was cool and the consistant, strong, northerly wind nearly drove us insane. The bag of warm clothes that sits in the truck was raided for more layers and we piled the blankets back on the bed. It seemed crazy that only a few days ago we were sunbathing by a pool and sitting with a fan blowing on our faces. We did manage a few outings on foot to walk the beach and came back completely sandblasted with grains of sand filling our eyebrows and the fissures of our teeth. We also had a couple of trips out on the bikes. (An exhilerating downwind freewheel and a soul destroying grind upwind) One expedition was to visit the only nearby museum which was an old Lifesaving Station.

From here a team of federaly employed Life Savers formed part of a string of stations up the coast that kept lookout for boats and ships in distress. (A very common occurance given all the sand banks and storms.) When needed they performed rescues by rowing out in small boats or by shooting rescue lines to boats near the shore with explosive charges. The local family name Midgett features very commonly in the role of past lifesavers and pretty much every other local business even now is run by a Midgett. Another of the bike outings included the obligatory evening at a bar for burgers and beer. Our bar tender at ‘The Neptune Dive Bar’ was a very personable woman called Liz who had a Peruvian wife and a very suprising, and un-American, in-depth knowledge of European football and Grand Slam Tennis. She was a delight. She was also lamenting the unseasonal weather and said that it felt more like winter, a season that she and her missus usually escaped by spending a few months in Peru with their extended family.

This ended up being a real down-week for us so it was not a bad week to be ill. Nick was getting over a cold and I was in the thick of it with a hacking cough and feeling ropey. Our last RAST told us that this wasn’t Covid, but who knows. It wasn’t helped by having a two day hangover after our Neptune visit. I only had 3 beers but I think they might have been a bit stronger than I realised. My dwindling alcohol tolerance is very unfair.

The intermittant rain of the week deteriorated into torrential rain on our penultimate day. It lasted 24 hours and created lakes in the park and rivers on the road. It was so heavy that we couldn’t hear the TV – Never a good thing during a lock-in. It also was the deathknell for the mediocre wifi signal. We had to resort to reading our books. Good grief. It eventually stopped and the sun finally came out. Our last evening was glorious and hot and we could understand what we had been missing, finally appreciating the charms of this peculiar place. On our last morning we awoke to a flat calm day. There was not a breath of wind and the water of the Pamlico Sound was like glass. The kite surfers had been replaced by paddleboarders and we jealously watched them cruise about as we packed up and headed off. We navigated a few long swooping bridges that connected different islands on our northerly journey until we got to the bridge that took us back to the mainland. Now we left the ocean and started our long westerly trajectory across country. Bye Bye Atlantic.

16th May to 19th May 2023

Sometimes we search out events, festivals, interesting gatherings and obscure things to witness. Sometimes these things find us by happenchance. Our trip from Charleston to Myrtle Beach initially took us along a quiet back road through the very beautiful and peaceful Francis Marion National Forest and then we rejoined the more coastal highway US-17. It was here that we started to notice the preponderance of motorbikes. Mostly Harleys. All massive. All noisy. Overwhelmingly being riden by well nourished, bandana wearing, sleeveless jerkin clad folk who were either verging on, or well and truely arrived in, the grey hair years. A quick interrogation of the Googs informed us that our stay in Myrtle was coinciding with ‘Myrtle Beach Bike Week’. This was perhaps not a spectacle that we would have actively sought out but we were now committed and realised that it would provide an opportunity to do some mass wildlife viewing that ordinarily we wouldn’t be a party to. Like the migration of the wilderbeast. It also explained why we had found it tricky to find an affordable RV site anywhere near Myrtle Beach and why we found ourselves nearer North Myrtle Beach – not that this really made alot of difference to our experiences over the next 3 days.

The landscape and the character of this section of coastline is very American. There is an endlessly long beautiful white sandy beach, then there is a wall of highrise hotels and appartment buildings built right on the waterfront in order to take full advantage of the view at the expense of all others. There were no beachside cafes or prommenades or cycle trails. Then there are a few blocks of low rise vacation rental homes, then there is a busy four lane highway lined with strip malls, petrol stations, restaurants, massive ‘beach gear’ sales emporiums, mini golf courses and other businesses. Our camp was just on the inland side of this highway and so a half mile or so from the beach. It was also right next door to a big commercial development of shops and eateries that was also home to a regional theatre, a marina on the inland waterway AND one of the hubs for the Bike Week.

There were big spluttering Harleys everywhere. These bikes, as many of you I am sure are aware, are often specifically modified to be extra noisy. They leave the factory with a patented ‘potato-potato’ sound adhering to the 80 db noise restriction but many do not stay that way. A quick change-out to a straight exhaust sans baffles converts their characteristic throaty tones into brain-liquefying, internal organ rearranging din. Apparently the adage ‘Loud Pipes Save Lives’ works on the theory that if you can hear them coming then you look out for them, therefore they are safer. To be honest, given the fact that about 99% of the riders did not wear helmets, I think that the basic ‘motorcycle survival strategies’ employed by the Harley community are a bit mis-informed. They must all be deaf as posts as well.

The main activity during a motorcycle rally is cruising around in large groups of your fellow tribe members. It is blisteringly sunny and you shrug on your minimal sun protecting sleeveless Harley apparel (and short shorts if you are a female pillion rider) and omit the suncream – the tattoos look better on a red background. You don your protective bandanna and wrap around sunglasses. (A fly in the eye is bad news- safety first.) Your pillion rider loads her iced drink into the obligatory cup-holder and the miniture yorkshire terrier into its custom pannier and off you thunder, rattling the windows of the buildings and the souls of your fellow road users as you pass by. Where are you going? Sometimes nowhere. Sometimes to a park-up zone. The local Harley dealer will always host one of these. You arrive, you park up, you walk around. In loud voices you compare Yorshire terriers, brands of aftersun and hearing aids and then drive on. You might stop at an expo zone at a hub like the one next to our camp. There will be countless stalls set up selling merchandise, more Harley apparel and custom parts and there will be huge mobile workshops housed in eighteen-wheeler trucks where you can get your bike mods done.

All the while you are checking out every one elses bikes. Some are standard issue and handsome. Some are achingly beautiful custom designs with curves and swoops of their farings and gleaming, glowing paint jobs. Some riders will be towing a coffin on a trailer with a manequin in it which he says is his ex-wife. Some riders have moved onto trikes which make all the same noises, give the same ‘wind in the hair’ experience, but stay upright when you let go of them and are a bit more forgiving to older bones and wobbly legs.

Some riders will turn up on bicycles, feeling like they’ve brought a knife to a gunfight and then wander around feeling a bit out of place but enjoying the short term immersion in an alien world. These bicycle riders will be on their way back from a trip to check out the beach. They will have decided that the coast here has been a bit ruined by all the development and wonder why they came in the first place. They will wonder why Yorkshire terriers seem to be so popular. They will marvel at the array of denim clothing.

A some point in their short stay here the bicycle riders will find a good place to have a beer and a burger- an important travelling superpower- and they will have a round of mini golf. One of them (M52) will win and be irritatingly gleeful. The other (F51) will remind the winner that she was far more dignfied in victory after their last round. The course in question was the site of the 2023 Pro Masters Tournament. Fancy.

The weather will break, the temperture will fall and the rain will come. They will have to put socks on. They will leave Myrtle Beach a bit bemused by the place and with no plans to rush back. Thank heavens for the Harleys. They were the highlight of the visit.

10th May – 16th May 2023

Before we go any further I would just like to say that I think South Carolina has the coolest state flag by a country mile.

It is not very far (just over 100 miles) from Savannah to Charleston, another place on our ‘Definitely-Must- Go-There’ list, but we still had a two night stop along the way. The main reason for this was to line up our city bookings with the weekends so that Greg & Gigi had a couple of options for visiting us. Our stop was in a lovely wooded camp in a place called Yemassee, known nowadays mainly for its proximity to the I-95 highway and its role as a service centre. Back in the day it had something to do with a war with the local native tribe, the Yemassee, and then something to do with the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and a train depot here was the last stop for new recruits heading to Parris Island, the nearby Marine Corps training base for most of the 19th and 20th centuries

This was a fab park with an on-site bar and pizza oven, a nice pool and a walking trail around a nearby lake that contained alligators. (The blighters are everywhere.) Here we met Jason, a brave soul who was four days into a 4000 mile solo cycle trip from North Carolina to Oregan via Florida. We bought him a medicinal beer or two and vowed to keep in touch as his route may coincide with ours down the line.

Our journey up into southern South Carolina took us within ten miles or so of a place that has been in my sphere of consciousness for the past two years. I manage my insomnia by listening to podcasts and one that had completely gripped me since 2021 is called ‘The Murdaugh Murders Podcast’. This has investigated and reported the case of the fraudulent 4th generation South Carolinan lawyer, Alex Murdaugh who stole millions of dollars from his clients and hundreds of thousands from his own law firm, manipulated justice using his family influence, is associated either directly or indirectly with the deaths of three people then murdered his son and wife to deflect attention away from his crimes before faking an apparent murder attempt on his own life to deflect attention from his potential involvements in his family’s deaths. It was bizarre to be driving through the area where this case played out and it felt weird to be seeing such familiar place names on sign posts.

On our way to Charleston we finally found a car wash which was tall enough to fit us in. Big Dave and Tin Can were still covered in a layer of dust courtesy of a couple of hurricaines that went over Orlando whilst they were in storage and the dust had since been joined by a layer of dead Floridian flies. It was a snug fit in the bay but we managed to reach most of the dirt. As we were washing another truck camper pulled up in the next door bay. He had seen us as he went past so knew he would fit too. These rigs are rare in this part of the country, so it was worth a photo.

Our camp in Charleston was not IN Charleston, and indeed this was a much harder city to camp anywhere near. The best we could do was a place 18 miles from the city centre, with no real public transport options. We were resigned to relying on Ubers to get backwards and forwards. The camp itself was quite nice with a scenic fishing lake and a small pool. There was enough to do in Charleston to warrant having two days in the city and Nick came up with a plan to reduce the money and time spent in Ubers…Spend it on a night in a cheap-ish hotel in town instead! A ‘night on dry land’ is always a treat and given how hot it was, it would be great to have a base so we could freshen up and change for the evening after a day sightseeing. A fine establishment was booked: a double, ensuite room in a hostel. Called the Not So Hostel, we were optomistic that this meant that it was of a better calibre than the usual youth hostel offering. We were left with a day to kill in camp and whilst floating around in the pool we met one our fellow campers, Erica. A Washington state native, Erica has been on the road full-time for four years, living in modest sized trailer that she towed behind an aging Toyota truck. She had spent the past month here and had decided to buy herself a brand new truck which she had just collected that day. Exciting times! When she found out that we were going to get an Uber to the city the next day she very kindly offered to give us a lift, a gesture mostly rooted in her spontaneous generosity of spirit, but I think also a little bit motivated by wanting to share the joy of her new purchase. I can totally understand that and I’m glad that we could be there to help.

In the morning our shiny Toyota Tundra Taxi scooped us up and wafted us into the city. It was a very impressive toy and made Big Dave look quite shabby and outdated. (Shhhh, he didn’t hear that.). She dropped us at the Not So Hostel and headed off to the indoor market. The hostel was a detatched, weatherboard-clad town house and definitely had a ‘student digs’ flavour. We had the electronic door code to get into the communal area, which was a small lounge/kitchen, and we let ourselves in to leave our overnight bag here for the day. The place was deserted save for a robo-mop diligently cleaning the floor. Our room had an external entrance for which the door code wouldn’t work until check in at 2pm, but there was an internal door that opened onto the communal area and it was wide open. It looked more than satisfactory for the sub-$100 price tag, even having its own small kitchenette area. The only slightly worrying feature – packets of free ear plugs on the bedside tables. Never a good sign! Bag abandoned in our wardrobe we headed off towards the centre of the city. Like Savannah, Charleston has a free shuttle bus system that offers transport around several different loops of the historic distric. The hostel was on one of these routes but we set off on foot for our first explore.

The focus of today’s tourist activities was going to start with a nautical theme. Across the river lies the USS Yorktown, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that is now a museum. The 873 ft CV-10 carrier was commisissioned in 1943 and it was named in honour of its namesake Yorktown CV-5 that was sunk at the battle of Midway in 1942. She saw significant action in the Pacific during WW2 and in the Vietnam war and in 1968 was the retrieval ship for the Apollo 8 Capsule and astronauts. Decommissioned in 1970 she was sited here in 1975 and now you can go aboard and explore lots of her nooks and crannies in self guided tours. There was a watertaxi service to get across the river to the Yorktown site and after a quick lunch (because who can do history on an empty stomach?) we went aboard. It was very impressive.

There were several plane and helicopter exhibits up on the flight deck and it wasn’t hard to imagine the carrier in full working mode with jets screaming off along the deck and hurling themselves off into the air. The hanger deck below was also enormous. It too contained many aircraft exhibits, a movie theatre and the obligatory snack bar and there was still tons of empty space. We took a less travelled self-tour to accomodation, galley and medical areas and although there were plenty of other people around on the ship, it was deserted. We even found the rabbit warren self-tour of the engine room, containing 4 steam turbines. We had it to ourselves which was odd and it felt like we were somewhere we shouldn’t be.

Once we were saturated with nautical history we took the watertaxi back across the river to the downtown area and started a slow stroll back up towards our hostel. Charleston seemed to have a lot of positive attributes as a city. It is small enough to be accessible but large enough to have an energy, amenities and inward investment. It felt like a youthful city and as the local university, the College of Charleston, has a 1:2 ratio of men to women, it had quite a feminine vibe. Although it lacked the massive quantity of mature trees groaning under the weight of tons of Spanish Moss of Savannah it had endless examples of well preserved and restored historic homes, sympathetically designed modern buildings, well maintained waterfront parks and many lovely nearby beaches. The people really do have a Southern charm and are friendly, welcoming and polite and no-one seems to be in any great rush to be anywhere else. There were many independant shops and businesses, a liberal dusting of designer stores, horse drawn carriage tours, and, the main reason that this has become a tourist favourite, lots and lots and lots of good places to eat and drink really well.

Despite the plethora of quality drinking establishments I am slightly embarrassed to admit, however, that our first alcoholic drink in this town was a ‘Booze Pop’, partaken at a bus stop. In our defence it was roasting hot, we were very thirsty and there was nothing else immediately available. We decided that we had walked enough and stopped at one of the bus stops to get the free shuttle the last mile ‘home’. There was a van parked nearby that looked like it would sell us a can of cold coke or similar. Nick was dispatched to procure said refreshing fluids and returned with the very adult version of ice pops. 200mls of 7% ABV, they were a frozen party in a tube. Just what our mildly dehydrated and overheated bodies needed at 4 0’clock in the afternoon! They disappeared fast and happily the bus arrived soon after to whisk us uptown, now reasonably merry.

At the hostel it was still deserted. If anyone else was here, they were hiding quietly in their room not hanging out noisily in the common area. We were hoping it was going to stay that way, and to be fair, it did. It felt like a private house just for us. We rested, rehydrated, washed, changed and headed out again. The free bus took us back downtown and we headed to a rooftop bar that we had identified earlier in the day. This had amazing 360 º views of the city under jaunty red canopies and umbrellas and we installed ourselves at the bar. The temperature had cooled slightly to that wonderful sweet spot where you are neither too warm or too cool and there was a soft warm breeze. Perfect! So why do they have to spoil perfection by serving good quality, healthily priced drinks in fricking plastic cups??????????????? Insanity. (I promise I will not hurl my empties over the parapet into the streets below…) Unfortunately any drinking venue that is deemed to be ‘outside’ is cursed with the same restrictions. It is a shame.

We had made a dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant but decided to cancel this to offset the increased expense of the night’s accomodation. Our plan was to have a more mid-range meal somewhere more relaxed. Now those of you who know my husband well will know that he has a man-crush on the late, great chef/travel journalist/tortured soul Anthony Bourdain. We have spent countless hours watching his various food travel shows, and following in his footsteps, visiting places he has eaten along the way has been one of the ways that we direct our own travelling. So a stroll to the nearby restaurant called Husk was in order. Tony had been there.

We knew that we couldn’t get into the main dining room but we also knew it had a bar next door where you could eat too. We secured a valuable spot at the bar and had a most excellent (but definitely NOT mid-range) meal and evening of drinking. Totally worth it. We wearily embarked on our walk back to the hostel (as the free buses had long since stopped for the evening) when halfway home we happened across a rank of waiting bicycle rickshaws. It was too tempting and a very personable business studies student called Jessica pedalled us home, chatting the whole way. With tip the 10 minute ride cost us more than half of what an Uber back to the RV park would have. You can see that our money saving ideas work in theory, but we are having trouble actioning them!

The earplugs, we discovered, were not for the noise of the people in the hostel, nor for the noise of the traffic outside the hostel. (Neither made a peep.) They were to muffle the din of the massive air conditioning unit that supplied the whole building which was situated on the veranda right outside our room. They mostly worked.

Day two of the Charleston adventure started with breakfast in a diner which did a good job of making us feel human again. Eggs and coffee (even the decaf kind) are like medicine. Then we walked around some more, looking at old buildings, streets, parks, tourist information signs.

We sat on benches and looked at views, soaking up the city and its waterfront from various vantage points. Time was filled, rather than killed, before our day’s only planned engagement: a boat trip out to Fort Sumpter. This is a fort on a small island out in the mouth of Charleston harbour. It holds the infamous honour of being the site where the first shot was fired in the Civil War. The fort, built by the government to protect the Union from foreign attack was mainly fortified on the seaward side and much weaker on the side facing the shore. The Union troops were occupying the fort as tensions were rising and they were trying to stop the Confederate forces using Charleston port to stock and supply their army, and shipping out commodities like cotton to pay for it. In April 1861 there was a standoff, push came to shove, a barrage of cannon shots were fired by the Confederates from the land at the fort’s vunerable rear flank and after 34 hours it was defeated. The Union troops surrendered, packed up their flag and were evacuated. Only five Union troops had been injured. No-one had died. If only the rest of the war could have been settled with so little bloodshed. It was to be four years later before the Union flag was hoisted back above the fort.

There was a 30 minute boat trip over to the island and its fort, which nowadays looks very different to its original design. We shared our tour with a school group of about sixty 10-11 year olds. There is a noise level associated with this number of humans of that age all together in the same place whilst hopped up on their post prandial sugar rush. Luckily the captain of the boat made them very aware how he felt about their din and made an announcement to this effect doing a much better job of shutting them up than the teachers did. Aye, Aye Cap’n!

We had about an hour on the island and there was an informative ranger talk on the fort’s history and more specifically, the flag. The boat ride home was a bit longer, taking in a loop of the harbour and giving us more facts and figures on the sights. A very pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Back on dry land we called an Uber, called in at the hostel to pick up our bag and headed home. By now we were both exhausted and Nick was coming down with a cold. I nipped round to Erica’s trailer to say thank you again and we said our goodbyes. We were all heading off in the morning but her day was going to start much earlier than ours. Our slow boat sails late.

We loved Charleston and wouldn’t hesitate to return if the opportunity arose. I think it would also be a great place to live for ten months of the year. Spring was a lovely time to be here but I can imagine it is a bit sweaty in summer.

6th May – 10th May 2023

A visit to the alluring southern city of Savannah has always been high on our list of things to do during our travels around the USA. In general we try and avoid big cities as many of them are very car-centric, road-dominated, commercialised jungles with a preponderance of strip malls and no real historic downtown; no real individualised flavour. Then there are the logistics of finding an RV park close enough to a city centre and being able to use either our feet, our bikes, public transport or short Uber trips to complete our journey. Mostly it is visiting the tiny cities and small towns of America that fullfills these criteria and thus gives us the most joy. There have been a few noteable exceptions to these rather sweeping statements, however: like New Orleans which had an RV park on the edge of the French Quarter so we could walk to the action; like Chicago that has an enormous truck park that accepted RVs only a few miles Uber ride from downtown; like Sam’s Town Casino RV park in Las Vegas that has a free shuttle to The Strip; like Austin, Texas which was just across the river from the CBD. Savannah joined these ranks. We found a charming, underdeveloped, wooded, family run park called Biltmore, which was only about four miles from the historic downtown. Our transport solutions were to be a combination a bus ride to get into town and Ubers to get home.

I feel that I must insert some fun facts about Savannah before we go any further:

• Founded in 1733 it is said to be America’s first planned city, with its streets and public squares arranged in a grid pattern. This is standard today but was cutting edge design in its time. Of the 24 original squares, 22 still exist today. Full of mature trees laden with the ubiquitous spanish moss and a variety of statues, monuments and fountains thay are a massive part of Savannah’s charm.
• It is the USA’s fourth busiest shipping port and many of Savannah’s surviving original cobbled and stone streets are constructed from the ballast stones transported here from all over the world in otherwise empty ships. These were unloaded and exchanged for cargo. Reuse and recycle is not a new thing people.
• In 1819 a house in Savannah was the first in the USA to be fitted with indoor plumbing.
• The movie Forrest Gump was filmed here.
• Lastly, and not fun at all: In March of 1857, Savannah had the largest sale of human beings in the history of the USA. The auction of enslaved people lasted two whole days and took place at a racetrack in the city. During those days it was said to be pouring rain the whole time because the heavens were so sad. and so was named The Weeping Time’. For all its beauty, its wealth and success was built at the expense of many lives.
• There is a statue down on the riverfront immortalising Florence Martus, a Savannahian that lived from 1868 to 1943. The unmarried daughter and sister of lighthouse keepers she spent much of her life living with her family in lonely lighthouse outposts. She dedicated 44 years of her life waving farewells and welcomes to all the passing ships that used the port, using a hankerchief in the day and a lantern at night. Legend tells that she did this as she was searching for a lost love and likely waved at over 50,000 ships, many of which would reply to her using their horns.

As previously mentioned, we were going to be sharing our Savannah experience with our good friends Greg and Gigi who were flying in from New York. They were coming in on Sunday afternoon and staying two nights at a hotel in town, very keen to help us soak up the delights of this laconic and charming city. (When I say ‘delights’ I obviously mean mostly cocktails and southern cuisine.) We arrived at the RV park the day before, on the Saturday and checked in with our hosts, an older married couple who had inherited the site from her father. The reception office for the park was co-located in the on-site Antiques and Collectibles shop. This was a veritable warehouse sized establishment filled with an array of dusty and esoteric items and seemingly no customers at all. Our site was massive and shaded by some lovely old trees. It did not feel like we were in a city.

On Sunday afternoon, dressed for a classy evening of eating and drinking in town, we headed to the nearest bus stop which was conveniently located just outside the RV park. We were armed with all the relevant information on bus times, routes and stops and we had, as I had discovered necessary, the cash in correct change for our journey of 25 minutes – a whole $1.50 each. To say that we looked slightly out of place standing in our glad rags at a bus stop on a grass verge next to a barbed wire topped chain link fence alongside a busy four lane main road that runs through a depressed suburb of Savannah waiting for the Number 17 would probably be a reasonable understatement. It arrived on time, was new and clean and even had a display informing us of our stops. No complaints at all. It would be truthful to say that we travelled through some of the less salubrious and photogenic areas of the outskirts of Savannah to get to the historic district but we soon arrived at our stop in town. From there it was only a short stroll down some leafy streets lined with handsome town houses until we got to Forsyth Park. We were a bit early to meet Greg & Gigi at their hotel, which was on the other side of this park, one of the jewels in Savannah’s crown, so we looked for somewhere to grab a cold can and watch the world go by for a bit to kill time.

It soon became apparent that there ‘was something going on’ in the park. Something dogggy. Now the British minds can drag themselves out of the gutter straight away: I am being litteral here. It was a Doggy Carnival day. There were dogs everywhere. Dogs of all shapes and sizes and fur varietals. Dogs in clothes, dogs in strollers, dogs being carried, dogs in boots, dogs with fur paint motifs, some dogs were just normal looking. There were dog treat stalls, dog play areas, dog paraphernalia stalls, dog painting stalls. What I did not see was one single unpicked-up poop, or any impressive dog fights. Amazing. We plonked ourself on a wall to soak up the spectacle and automatically started a game of ‘Cool Dog, Fool’s Dog‘. Now this is a bit judgy and is from the same playbook as our airport departure lounge (or any other good people watching venue) game ‘Hit or Miss‘ in which we comment (quietly to each other – not out loud so as to cause tears or fights) purely on how people are dressed. Purile and very entertaining. Anyway. ‘Cool Dog, Fool’s Dog‘ comes from a place of a love of dogs and the starting position that ALL DOGS ARE CUTE. The game is more a commentary of an owner’s decision making when chosing a dog and how they present it to the world. So some examples of basic ‘Fools Dog’ criteria would be: Dog clothes when unecessary for extreme cold, keeping full/double coated dogs in hot climates, spending crazy money to buy puppies of breeds with significant health issues from overbreeding thus perpetuating the problem, dog body modifications, use of a fierce looking dog to make you look like a gangster, dogs so tiny that they can’t keep up with the slow walking pace of a human, massive or high energy working dogs kept in RVs or small appartments that never get to stretch their legs. You get the drift. You may not agree with our game, but it is our game. We had just picked out a rare ‘cool dog’ when it’s owner coincidentally approached us and asked if we could dog-sit his very lovely pooch for a few minutes whilst he popped into a cafe to use the loo. We were very happy to and here is Molly, a lovely therapy dog who visits the elderly and sick for her job. What a good girl!

Anyway, I digress. Having begrudgingly surrendered Molly back to her owner we went to find Greg and Gigi at their hotel and unsuprisingly located them at the bar. Here commenced the agenda for the next two days of incessent chatting, eating and drinking. A couple of drinks at the bar was followed by an unexpected free ‘glass’ (plastic cup) of fizz in the hotel lobby, a congenial freebie offered to guests between 5 and 6pm each day. We pretended we were staying too, obviously, and had two each. Then we slowly strolled towards the downtown area, visiting various establishments along the way. These had been previously identified by Nick as cool places to go and had been thus marked on a map. Our crawl included a brewery, a bar that served us some very satisfactory food and a speakeasy style basement bar that did some mean cocktails. At the end of the evening we made plans to return in the morning for brunch and took an Uber home.

Our bus back to town in the morning was at 9.30am, which felt very, very early given our mildly sore heads when the alarm went off at 8.30am. It was going to be a long, hot day so we packed a bag with swim suits (for our ongoing deception of being hotel guests where Greg & Gigi were staying) and fresh clothes to go out to dinner in. At the hotel we exchanged our bag for our friends and headed out to brunch, catching one of the free downtown city buses to get there. Fed and watered we commenced a slow, sweaty walking tour of the historic district. We took in squares, cemeteries, town houses, old buildings and the river walk. We even did a couple of laps of the free river shuttle just to have a sit down, get some breeze and see the town from the water. Another establishment that had been marked on ‘the map’ was a well known icecream shop. Our afternoon snack was far more ice cream than any of us really needed, eaten on a bench in a square. This wasn’t the actual Forrest Gump ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ bench, or even the same square, but in our minds it was.

We shuffled slowly back to the hotel via a church or two then decamped to the pool area. We had a couple of hours of much needed R&R with cooling dips in the water. There may have been some napping. Our pool time fortuitously overlapped with ‘free fizz for guests in the lobby’ time. Hoorah! The genuine hotel guests were kind enough to let us use their shower facilities and once we were all clean and changed we set off back to town of the free bus. After sunset drinks in a hotel rooftop bar we went for dinner in a riverfront restaurant that did not impress us much. Nick had done a lot of research on where to eat and it had good reviews but unfortunately it managed to overpromise and underdeliver on all fronts. A bit of a shame, but we had fun with the almost ‘Faulty Towers’ type experience.

A bit less booze was imbibed on this second evening so getting up to catch the 9.30am bus back to town again wasn’t so cruel. A second brunch was had in a great diner-style establishment called Little Duck. They served their brunch cocktails with a little yellow rubber duck floating in them. Cute, but not cute enough to get us drinking again at 11am. We’re not animals.

After brunch we spent another few hot hours stolling the sultry streets again. This place is beautiful but must be unbearable in peak summer. Having cruised across town to visit the renowned Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum and Gallery we were quite dismayed to find out it was open every day except on a Tuesday. Today. Rats. By now our bodies were in need of cool refreshment and we found a great air conditioned bar to have a last cocktail before it was time to head back to Greg & Gigi’s hotel to say our farewells. They headed back to the airport and we went ‘home’ were we did NOTHING for the rest of the day. The combination of heat, walking, socialising and moderate excess had broken us.

Savannah was gorgeous and aside from one mediocre eating experience, it had not disappointed. We loved sharing it with friends and really appretiate the effort they make in coming to find us on our travels. The next day, much rested, we continued north, crossing the Savannah river and enterered South Carolina.