Atlanta Georgia

May 12 2018

After a day of scurrying around repacking we left home for the 2^nd time this week. Our destination is Fort Rucker Alabama, but we will make a couple stops along the way.

Our first day is our longest travel day; we traveled just shy of 400 miles from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta Georgia. It was a boring all day interstate highway trip. We passed the time listening to an audio book called “The girl on the train” by Paula Hawkins. By the time we got to Atlanta we were about half way through it. It’s a strange story.

Our campground is on the east side of the city in Stone Mountain Park. The temperature was in the 90’s on Saturday afternoon so we decided to wait until morning for our planned visit to the carvings of the Confederate generals. 

The centerpiece of the park is Stone Mountain, a dome of exposed granite. It rises sharply over 600 feet above the surrounding terrain and is known for its barren sides. On its northern face is a large carving.  It depicts three Confederate leaders of the Civil War: President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

It is known as the Confederate Memorial, but there are no public displays of any kind mentioning the Civil War. Stone mountain Park has been transformed into a kind of amusement park and it is blatantly obvious they are downplaying the carving.

We rode the cable car to the summit of the mountain and walked among the other tourists on the barren rock. We took the obligatory picture of ourselves with the Atlanta skyline in the background. You may notice the crude editing on the right side, we got photo bombed by a giant woman caught pulling spandex out of her butt crack. I erased her from the picture but the image will be with me for some time, lol.

In the afternoon we drove into the city and took a 90 minute bus tour of the major attractions. It was just as obvious on the tour that Atlanta is attempting to forget about the Civil War. There was no reference to any militarily historic sites, or any prominent people from that era. 

Our tour guides, one black the other white were painting such a rosy picture of contemporary Atlanta that we never asked them about the erasing of history, specifically Civil War history. I am of the assumption that the citizens, many who have ancestors who were slaves or confederates coexist here by not mentioning it. Maybe that’s the best way for them to move forward.

Martinsville Virginia

May 8 2018

We took a short trip up to Virginia to visit Millie’s brother. We took our regular route up thru the North Carolina cities of Rockingham, Asheboro and Greensboro. 

Our campground of choice in Martinsville was full, which took us by surprise. Unless there is a race at the NASCAR track, there's not a lot to attract visitors to Martinsville. I think most of the campers are pipe line construction workers. Luckily, I had phoned ahead and learned of the no vacancy, so we secured a site nearby in Reidsville North Carolina just below the NC/VA border.

Millie’s brother was just home from the hospital, his very first ever admittance to a hospital! I won’t go into details but it was age related. He’s home and doing pretty well, in spirit anyhow. Millie’s sister and husband drove over from the western tip of Virginia, so we had a family gathering of sorts.

The Bray siblings, L-R Lucille, Millie, Betty, Front-Earnest

Earnest said he enjoyed his hospital stay and all the people he had to talk to. He is a happy and easy going country boy and I’m sure the nurses and attendants all enjoyed his humor and pleasant personality.

On Thursday we drove back home to Myrtle Beach. It will be a short stay; we are leaving this weekend for a road trip to Georgia and Alabama.

The blog is back

Once again I stopped writing to the blog without explanation, it's a good thing this is not a real job! It seems to be a habitual lapse every time we near the end of a trip. My only excuse is we seem to be busy all the time when we get home. I’m going to go with that one, because it’s true, we have many things going on with the new to us old house. We've also been on the road twice since returning from Delaware. I have a few posts in the can and will put them up one every couple days.

The whole time we were in Delaware for my mother’s funeral we had a heater running in the compartment where all the water tanks are located. The temperatures were going down into the 20’s every night and we were concerned about freezing pipes. Inside the motorhome we were warm with both the gas furnace and electric heater running, but we were watching the weather closely. Few Recreational Vehicles are made for winter climates, ours certainly isn’t.

We stayed a few days after the burial to help my brother Dave and his wife Lois with anything we could. My parents stayed in their home right up until their deaths, which is remarkable but they couldn’t have done it without Dave and Lois. They did everything for my parents in their final years and went well beyond what any children would be expected to do, we owe them a debt of gratitude.

Classic Nor'easter

With another nor’easter bearing down on the coast and snow and ice predicted, we decided we better get out while we could. We secured the bus for travel and at 0 dark thirty on the morning of March 19^th we pulled out of Lums Pond state park.

Our normal leisurely route down the Delmarva Peninsula didn’t seem like the prudent way to go, so we planned on the dreaded I-95 route. I don’t know why everyone hates 95 so much, probably because of the heavy traffic from Delaware to south of DC. 

Blue is I-95, Orange is 301 route to Carmel Church

We used the 301 connecter to avoid all the big city traffic. Through the eastern shore 301 is a down right pleasure. Traffic picks up some approaching the Bay Bridge where route 50 joins 301 at Kent Island, but it’s all going in the same direction! We are now south the Baltimore traffic and before we reached the DC congestion 301 splits off and travels thru rural Maryland and Virginia.

We intersected I-95 at Carmel Church Virginia, stopped for fuel at the flying J and then joined the south bound traffic on the nations first interstate highway (I think it was the first anyhow) I know we stopped again somewhere because we had a half tank of fuel when we got home, but I don’t remember where it was. FYI, it’s 550 miles from Lums Pond state park in Delaware to Myrtle Beach. We burn about 85 gallons of gasoline to make the journey. We weigh just shy of 26,000 lbs pulling the truck, are 57 feet long, have 10 wheels on the ground and get 6.5 mpg.

Our modified I-95 route from Delaware to Myrtle Beach.

We arrived home in Myrtle Beach at about 5pm; our total travel time was 10.5 hours. That’s not bad at all, considering we made two stops and I never consciously exceed the speed limit. Actually my preferred top speed for our flying circus is 65mph. Things can happen too fast above that speed and then there’s the sometimes thrilling feat of bringing the whole contraption to a stop when a traffic signal changes unexpectedly!

It sure did take me a long time to thaw out. Besides leaving Florida early this year and driving north to Delaware, winter just would not let go. It was unseasonably cool down here in March and April. I was wearing long pants in Myrtle Beach for gosh sakes! 

We toughed it out and worked on some our home projects, spring finally came, it lasted for two days and now its summer…..I’m not complaining!  Not even when the $80 worth of southern grass seed dried up and burst like miniature kernels of popcorn! I could write a play about my education with southern grass, it would be a landscaper’s Greek tragedy!