We Ran All Over North Carolina!

Since our last update, a lot has happened. As far as sleeping goes, we stayed one night in the campsite where we showered (we showered twice because it was just so nice to get a good shower), then found a free place right on the water. Look at how close our bed was to the water!

We even saw an alligator on our final night along the coast. We stayed deeper in the Croatan National Forest at a primitive camping area and, sure enough, right as we sat down to eat dinner at the side of a river we saw a medium-sized alligator just kinda lurking out in the water. It never got closer than about 100 feet, and that was OK with us.

Our next stop was Asheville, North Carolina. Everyone told us that we would love Asheville because there's lots of good hiking, lots of good vegetarian food, and lots of beautiful views. Normally when someone tells me I'll love something I kind of assume that I won't actually love it because sometimes I like to be contrarian, but I couldn't resist Asheville. We did a self-guided chocolate tour one night, so it'd be impossible to dislike the city. There were at least 3 chocolatiers within 2 blocks of each other in the center of Asheville. Can you imagine anything better? I cannot.

We also ate vegetarian biscuits and gravy more than once, which we did not know was a thing at all. Normally gravy is sausage-gravy, but Asheville had all kinds of goofy gravies (that word looks wrong - never had to pluralize "gravy" before) that were incredible. And then there was the hiking. 

Not bad at all. I started taking photos of all the USGS markers we come across on top of mountains, and at some point I'm gonna put those into a little album, but they're not actually that interesting to see 1 at a time. However, as we climbed Mt. Pisgah, I couldn't find the marker. I looked all over, but then a family (full of kids with weird names) showed up, immediately found it, and then sat directly on top of it for 20 minutes so I couldn't go see it. I was maaaaaad. 

But whatever, I got over it. 

Our Asheville time also included a trip to the wildly expensive Biltmore Estate, which is surreal. They bill themselves as "the largest house in America" but it's really more of a museum-vibe than a house. You can read about it on their Wikipedia if you want, but the point is that an unbelievably rich guy built an unbelievably huge (and fancy) house on an unbelievably huge plot of land. It was so big that they needed to build a brick foundry onsite in order to make enough bricks to build the house.

So whatever. It was a really cool visit. There was a wine-tasting included with your entry-ticket, and we both hate wine, so that was a funny thing to partake in. Wine is gross, but we tried 5 different ones. Turns out we were right and yes they were all gross.

One last night in rural North Carolina meant that we would drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway until we liked a spot to pull off and sleep. We were pretty deep in the woods down a gravel road, which could be a little spooky if you're susceptible to spooky-settings, but it was a nice place to stay. We made a fire, roasted some very old and stale marshmallows, and called it a night.

In the morning we went for a hike, and since we were 30 miles from the nearest town, I had the privilege of pooping in the woods for the first time. It really wasn't as traumatic as I'd expected, so that's exciting. I mean, I'm not going to choose it when I have options, but it was not the worst experience of my life.

But the strangest part of all of this is that woods-pooping kind of signaled the end of our first stretch of wilderness. We descended from the mountains and went into suburban Charlotte to stay with some (vaccinated) friends for a couple of nights. We've actually been sleeping in REAL beds for the last 5 or 6 nights. The freedom to like...move my arm at night without hitting a wall or window is very exciting.

It's the little things, guys.

OK. More to come later about some of the things we've done at friends' houses and some hikes we did and whatnot, but that's all for the camping part of North Carolina. I was thrilled to find out that the mountains of NC are actual mountains and not just a series of rolling ridges like they are in Pennsylvania. Knowledge is power, I guess.

We Made a Hasty Decision!

(This was written on the evening of the 14th but we didn’t get to a place with reliable internet for a week)

I don’t really know what day it is. It didn’t take long to reach this point, and it should tell you that things are going well. Since I last posted, we’ve had some pretty cool experiences, not least of which was that we got to shower in a real shower. It was so nice that we each showered twice within about 9 hours. So let’s get caught up.

On...uh...Tuesday, I think? Yeah, Tuesday. We headed off from New River toward a place called Caldwell in hopes of riding the Greenbrier River Trail. Jenna loves few things more than bike trails that used to be railroads, and this one ran alongside a river for 75 miles. My skinny little bird legs and delicate undercarriage couldn’t handle that many miles, so we planned to just ride for an hour or so and then turn around. Little did we know that the town near Caldwell, called Lewisburg, would be a little slice of heaven.

When you pull into a town that boasts a sign “Voted coolest small town USA,” you’re either in for a treat or a colossal letdown. Lewisburg was a treat. (Although we should note 3 things: 1, it didn’t say who voted in this poll - it could’ve just been Lewisburgers for all we know. 2, we don’t know what year this poll took place. And 3, we saw another town claiming they’d been voted coolest small town in the USA a mere 1 day later, but at least they gave the year. It was 2014.)

First of all, Lewisburg had the biggest and nicest local visitor’s center I’ve ever seen. Huge. Tons of pamphlets, clean bathrooms, nice displays, and a woman named Dee who you just wanted to have follow you everywhere and tell you nice things. She was like an extra grandmother. I liked her. 

Anyway, we got an incredible breakfast at a place called Corn and Flour Bakery and then hit the trail. It was beautiful and featured lots of creek-waterfalls that would flow under the path into the big Greenbrier River. The weather was outstanding, but it was slated to turn for the worse Tuesday night and all of Wednesday, so we joked about driving 6.5 hours to the beach.

We went back into town after our ride, walked around a little more, looked at some Civil War history markers, gawked at beautiful flowers, and then ate crazy-good tacos. It was the first time I ate in a restaurant in 15 months. I didn’t actually feel that weird! Being vaccinated is awesome.

So as we sat there eating tacos we talked about where we could go to find good weather, but it seemed like the entire eastern US was gonna be dreary and chilly Wednesday.

But Jenna’s Accuweather app apparently sucks, because when I looked at the area near Emerald Isle, North Carolina, it looked excellent.

We finished our tacos and made a beeline for Pegasus. At 3:20 p.m. we headed east. We made a plan to stop near Raleigh for the night since we hadn’t really driven Peg at night and we were sleepy (note: sleeping in Peg is TOUGH so far), and that would give us ~2 hours to go in the morning. 

Turns out the western end of Virginia is absolutely breathtaking. Never would’ve guessed. You come down out of the mountains but still have these beautiful ridgelines all over the place, rivers winding through, and rolling hills between the ridges. Highly recommend driving through that area. 

As luck would have it, we switched seats and Jenna started driving...right as the route mysteriously involved narrow 2-lane roads that meandered through rural areas in the middle of nowhere. It was really strange and went on for like 40 miles. We looked over and over to make sure we were really going to end up in the right place, and eventually we made our way to a real highway again. Of course, by that point she was an expert driver and the wide open space of an interstate felt like a cheat code.

By nightfall, we reached our destination: Cabela’s in Garner, North Carolina, just south of Raleigh. We went into the store, got grossed out by all the hunting gear, used the toilets, and pulled into the corner of the parking lot for the night. Our first parking lot sleep.

It was pretty OK! I mean, we didn’t sleep well, but it was not intimidating or scary or whatever. 

So at 8 a.m. we went to the Starbucks nextdoor to use the bathrooms. It was closed for renovation. But gas stations exist and we got on our way to the coast!

By 11 a.m. we were at a campsite in a national forest, 1 mile from the intracoastal waterway and about 2.5 miles from the actual, honest-to-goodness beach. We called the camp-host and found that there were 2 open spots but they were double-spots and weirdly we were supposed to pay for both halves if no one showed up to take the other one. Strange policy, but whatever. We said we’d call back after we offered to pay for a shower, and the woman let us just go in and use the shower house. 

My god. If I’d showered there after a month in my old house I would’ve said it was a 7/10 shower experience. After 5 days of body-wipes and a splash-shower though? 10/10. Heroic. 

We got the camping spot, threw some stuff on the area to make it look occupied, and took off for the beach.

We parked about 100 feet from a sign that said no parking within 150 feet and quite literally ran down the boardwalk to the public access beach. The sun shined. The beach was a beach. The wind blew. The birds flew. 

We made it.

Emerald Isle, North Carolina.

More to come in the next few days about what has transpired since then, but it involved a lot of ice cream, a lot of chocolate, a lot of hiking, and a lot of fun.

We Did Something Dumb In the First Two Days!

Day 1 in the van was pretty straightforward, with minor hiccups. We finished final packing and loading from my parents’ house around 9:30 in the morning and bid a very emotional (temporary) farewell to our dog. Our cat was too busy licking his butthole to care that we were leaving.

We hit the road with a lump in our throat - about the dog, not about the cat’s butthole - and felt the unfettered excitement of the unknown that lay ahead of us. About 45 minutes later a pebble popped up and cracked our windshield.

But we pressed on, undeterred. We reached Marietta, Ohio, around 1:00 in the afternoon. I had gone to college there my freshman year and hated it. I transferred after that year and had minimal nice things to say about the town. Turns out I was just a dumb teenager, because it’s lovely. We sat near the Muskingum River and watched a high school rowing competition (sort of - they took like 30 minutes between races so we didn’t see much), grabbed some frozen custard from a little shop, and read some plaques about how Marietta was the first permanent settlement after the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Kinda cool.

(This is where I would insert a photo if we had good enough wifi, but we don't.)

As rain approached we hopped back in the van and headed for West Virginia in hopes of finding  campsite before dark. Luck was on our side, and our campsite had one spot remaining when we pulled in. We cooked on our stovetop, set up our tent to show that the site was taken for future days, ate, and went to sleep in what was pleasantly uneventful circumstances.

But the real story here is day 2. 

It was a rough night of sleep for both of us, but that’s not a big deal. We got up and decided to try a couple of small trails at the campsite. One simply disappeared in the woods about 1000 feet in and the other disappeared close enough to the New River that we were able to sit on the banks and watch the morning fog lift into nothingness for 20 minutes or so. The bluebell wildflowers on the way back to camp were icing on the cake. 

We got into Peg and headed for a visitor’s center. There are two in New River NP - a northern and a southern center. We were 28 minutes from each of them when we got cell signal, so we randomly chose the southern one.

Closed indefinitely due to covid.

We then went to the Grandview area, as the signs outside of the closed visitor’s center suggested that it was nice for hiking and scenery. It was really nice for both. We did a lovely hike that took us along the bottom of a cliff-face for a bit over half-a-mile and then flattened out to follow a crest out to another lookout point. It was just delightful, and a really nice way to start our advanture. 

By the time we got back to Peg we were about 6-7 miles into our day and felt like that was sufficient for our out-of-practice legs. We decided to go to a place called Tamarack, which was something of a craft fair/flea market that was advertised as one of the finest shopping destinations in West Virginia. I was hoping we could spend an hour or two perusing its stalls. It was basically a circle of maybe 10 shops, most of which were selling very nice and insanely expensive artworks. A wood carving of an otter? Cute as hell. Not worth the $4500 price tag. Tiny jams and jellies were $5 a jar, glass figurines abound, and the “cafeteria” was sold out of the only decent vegetarian items, so we lasted about 8 minutes at Tamarack.

Not to be defeated, we hit the travel center nearby for Quizno’s. It was closed. Permanently. 

OK, so it’s been an up and down kind of day. That’s OK. We were now faced with the decision of what to do: it was 3:00 and if we went back to the campsite, we’d have no cell signal and commit to just relaxing the rest of the day. That seemed like a decent option, so we headed back, but passed our campsite to see the one at the end of the road and find out what was down there.

It was a 20 minute drive to get to the next one along this gravel road. We were...surprised. But upon arrival, it was really lovely. There’s a lightly-graded 5 mile trail along a stream, a pleasant bridge overlooking said stream, and a campsite down near the river, which the stream feeds into. We decided that we’d come back here in a day or two, but as it was nearing 4:00 we wanted some food.

Back along the gravel road, we got to our campsite, Grandview Sandbar. But the driveway down to the campsite was kind of parallel to the road we were currently on, except in the opposite direction we were coming from. That turn was going to be really tight. Unfortunately I didn’t realize this until it was too late. 

Basically we had a Y shaped situation where we were turning from the right-arm of the Y to the left, and it was slightly downhill. Beyond the left arm of the Y was about 25-30 feet of more or less straight down. Not really where you want to be in your van, particularly not on day 2 of a months-long adventure. 

Simple, right? Just back up and try again.

Nope. The two portions of gravel road diverged just enough where I got caught that the gravel was loose and steep and...we got stuck. 

Getting stuck is rough, yes, but getting out is usually as simple as rocking back and forth to build up the momentum needed to get out. Unfortunately when there’s only about 2 feet between you and a small cliff, rocking back and forth is not a great option. I did it one time and thought I’d created enough space to continue my turn forward, so I let off the gas, despite Jenna’s urging to just plow backward. This was a mistake, as I just settled back into the same problem. 

(This is where I would post another photo, but again, not enough wifi or cell service. Bummer. You can trust me though, it was ridiculous.)

(Actually, this might work. Just imagine it's me driving and it's a van.)

Some kindly strangers arrived in a small pickup truck and asked how they could help. They had a tow-chain and tried to yank us out, but to no avail. They did, however, pepper the back of Peg with gravel. I will never understand how none of our windows shattered. 

More people showed up: the two girls from the Grand Canyon, a mom and her son of maybe 9 years, the two girls who were with the two guys in the small truck, the two older women who were coming up from the campsite. Now we started throwing sticks and floor-mats under the back tires, trying to get something - anything - to give us a little traction. We still just kept rocking back and getting almost nowhere. 

This is a good time to mention how stupid I felt. Very very stupid. Jenna was terrified, obviously, and most of the people watching/helping were having a really good time with all of this.

After a solid 15-20 minutes of this nonsense, we rocked juuuuuuust enough to get free and get the van straightened out enough to safely continue down the road to the campsite. No one let us pay them back or cook them dinner or anything like that. The only favor we were allowed to return was that the guy with the truck - who was basically the godsend in all of this - needed some electrical tape to fix his brake line. We had some, so I told him to just keep the whole roll.

What a day.

Turns out that both the truck-group and the women from Arizona were coming to this campground.

For SOME reason, neither group chose the site next to ours.

Weird.

We Found Some Problems!

A lot has happened over the course of the last month. Many of those things can be categorized as "we moved," though others are moderately interesting. Fitting a 3 bedroom house into the upstairs of a garage-attic is certainly one of those things that may fall into both categories, but the fact of the matter is that we've been busy.

Around the 30th of March we were out of our house and shacked up with my parents until we hit the road. In a delightful twist of fate, the weather over the last 10 days has been obscenely wonderful, so it's been a really nice time to kind of get ourselves in order. However, it turns out we were a lot more out of order than we anticipated. 

See, my dad is a handy guy - he knows how to fix things. He also knows how to find things that need fixing and what sorts of things we (we who are...less experienced with cars, and that's about the most generous way I can describe us in comparison to my dad's handiness) wouldn't think of. So it was really nice to have him around to throw some extra tools our way and come up with ways we might be able to circumvent a problem.

Our water pump stopped working.

On the one hand, we weren't planning on using it for drinking - we have a 5-gallon water jug plus another gallon or two of more typical water bottles. On the other hand, we didn't want to have to use our drinking water to wash our dishes or wash our hands at the end of a day on the trails. So what do we do?

We ask dad. 

One of the difficulties with a campervan is that in order to make everything fit in the van, you have to...make everything fit in the van. It's tight in the utility-area. There's a water pump, two marine batteries, a voltage converter (or is it an inverter? Who knows), a furnace, and a jack within about 5 square feet. So when you need to take one thing out, you need to take a bunch of things out.

In any case, after an hour or two, dad figured out that there was a faulty grounding-wire in the pump so it wasn't getting consistent power. We went to a store, got some wiring, got some odds and ends, and came home to fix it. Everything worked great.

Until we put it back in place, at which point it stopped working again.

Turns out there was still just a loose connection and it really wasn't that big a deal to fix from there, but it was a pretty aggravating half-hour. The upshot is that for several hours we thought our sink was going to be decorative. Then two days later the sink was leaking anyway.

That's right, Jenna discovered a leak under the sink. Remember how I said things are really packed into a small space in the back with the furnace and whatnot? It's arguable even worse under the sink. And after hours of tightening everything I could possibly tighten and realizing there were tons of tools that wouldn't fit into such a confined space, I ultimately had to just try Flex Seal spray. And I'm not sure if you know this, but Flex Seal on your hands is a real bummer.

In the midst of all of this, we were packing the van, organizing the garage, and trying to figure out how to keep our bedroom from reflecting the mess that was reflected...everywhere else.

We had planned to leave today, Friday, but after the stress of not getting everything done yesterday (due to the sink leak, which is...maybe fixed? Hard to say just yet), we decided to put it off til Saturday.

Why is that important? Because it took until today, Friday, for any of us to realize that MAYBE we needed to get new license plates on the van. That's right, we had talked about tags and plates before, but apparently neither of us realized that it was something we actually had to take care of before driving away for a month. Not our proudest moment, but it was brought to our attention at like 2:00, which gave us 3 hours to get it done, and we did just that. 

We also learned that the thing we were told was a gray-water release valve is actually NOT a gray-water release valve and is instead the fresh-water tank release. That is, if you wanted to empty the water tank in order to winterize the van (or whatever - I don't know what any of this means), you could empty that tank with this valve. The thing on the driver's side of the van that says "drain outlet" is the actual gray-water release valve, though we were told that was incorrect. It's not incorrect. The sign is right.

Let's recap. This week we:

• Found a leak under the sink and maybe fixed it
• Had a faulty water pump and replaced wiring in order to make sure the water pump (mostly) works
• Used flex seal for the first time
• Packed a ton of stuff into a campervan and have a shocking amount of room to spare
• Slept in the van for a trial run. I slept well, Jenna didn't
• Got new license plates
• Learned that we can just use the fresh-water tank release to wash our dishes if we want to
• Did a trial run of changing a tire - turns out breaking the hubcap is the real part I'm concerned about
• Delayed departure by one day

So...we're leaving tomorrow.