Escape to Cheraw

Loaded!

So we haven't taken LibraryAnn II out with the boats yet. Cheraw is an hour and a half from home, 45 minutes for Ben & Sydney's new home. 

We were there a day or two after Hurricane Delta drenched the south. The Pee Dee River across town was cresting at flood stage but it was nothing but serenity on Lake Juniper--except for an extraordinary dynamic sky. I've never seen the lake so quiet or the sky so full of drama as the last remnants of the hurricane raced to the east. 

Ben & Sydney came for the day. Ruthie and I stayed a day longer, soaking up a respite from a too-busy fall. Enjoy the pix. The best ones are Sydney's.

Bridge to Somewhere

Amanita--lovely but deadly

 

Watch dog

Atalaya

 

Portable Home Sweet Home

Anna Hyatt Huntington was a famous American sculptor who lived in the early and middle 1900s. She was the wife of a wealthy businessman who built her a winter home on the South Carolina coast when she developed tuberculosis. She was enormously successful at a time when few women were recognized in the arts and her husband established Brookgreen Garden across the road from their home to display her work. Their home and grounds, Atalaya, is now Huntington Beach State Park, just south of Myrtle Beach near Murrells Inlet. 

When the kids were young, I would do a fall craft show held inside the ruins of Atalaya. The kids loved it and have asked to go back. Unfortunately, the time I could reserve a spot, they weren't free to come. And neither Brookgreen nor Atalaya (the house) allow dogs. So I will be back again WITH the dog crate and better bug spray and hopefully, the young'uns. 

Fortunately, Ruthie was free to come and we had a grand time exploring the park and historic Georgetown just to the south. I also need to bring along a real camera with a telephoto lens. The park is a bird sanctuary and full of amazing water birds I'd never seen--all at a distance beyond the range of my phone camera. And neighboring Garden City is also the home of a dear chum from my Pittsboro days. Kathie, a former Scout leader, joined us around the campfire for S'Mores and happy memories. Enjoy the pictures. I'll get the things we missed when I go back.

 

Atalaya--Moorish influence

Atalaya Courtyard entrance

Beach path from the front door

Atalaya from the park

Boardwalk into the salt marsh bird habitat

Automatic dishwasher (I just wish my cooking justified all her hard work...)

Historic Georgetown

South of the Border--where my first husband and I eloped. Sigh.

G'night!

Return to the Stone Mountain

 

The Stone Mountain

We had a birthday party camping at Stone Mountain a couple of years ago and Jessie has been wanting to go back. The campground there is one of the newer North Carolina State Park campgrounds and actually has electricity AND water at each campsite along with nice concrete pads and generous, level platforms for picnic tables and additional tents. I have been camping with Jessie's dog, Franklin, and I've been camping with my dog, Odie, but this was our first trip with both pooches sharing a space. They both, of course, expect to be the center of attention, so there was a little jockeying for space and pats, but in the end, we all managed a good time. 

The Stone mountain itself, according to the state park website, is a 600 foot dome of igneous rock formed from molten lava during an early geologic age. Softer rock on top of it has weathered away, exposing the dome

Top of the waterfall

 and the wet weather springs that continue to erode the surface, which result in a number of dramatic waterfalls. One historic marker noted that there was an attempt to mine the granite, but the miners found the rock so hard, the operation was abandoned. 

Jessie and I hiked to the top of one of the waterfalls (Jessie, having made the mistake of starting the trail from the bottom end on a previous trip, exercised good planning--we left a car at the bottom and drove to the top and hiked DOWN some 300 steps that ran alongside the waterfall) and enjoyed the deep woods and dramatic falls on an extensive staircase running downhill beside the falls. 

We stopped counting at 300  

The days were cooler than the week before but the humidity was epic. The campground existed in a mist and the woods were dank. However, literally thousands of species of mushrooms are found in the North Carolina Mountains and conditions were perfect for them to put on a show. Jessie decided to photograph each different type she saw and it seemed like she was stopping every other step--a walking pace that suited me just fine in the thick air.

So we hiked past the Hutchinson Homeplace with it's sturdy log cabin and generous barn, abandoned in 1945 but preserved by the park. We enjoyed an evening bonfire and S'Mores. We watched the Full Corn Moon rise and slept cozy

Misty campground

in our (air conditioned) bunks. We felt safe and appropriately isolated, and it felt great to be on the road again. In some respects, it's now pretty late in the camping season, but Escapes are designed as a year round camper in Canada. I plan to test their claims with some November and December camping near home this year. Stay tuned.

Hutchinson homeplace

Magical trails

Happy Camper: book & s'mores

Happy Camper: feet up

Full Corn Moonrise

The last embers

Solo Maiden

Awning unfurled

The weather is finally getting a taste cooler and I've settled into my new job with the Tourism Development Authority. I'm now a part time "Tourism Counselor" (read: Greeter) at a highway Welcome Center near Seagrove, NC filling my pockets with travel brochures and my head with destinations. So it was time to finally book some camp trips with children and friends, but first it was time to take the new girl solo and learn the controls. 

My destination was Deep River Campground, not 10 minutes up the road near

View from my campsite

Franklinville, NC. Though not visible from the camp sites, the campground sits within earshot of the Deep River directly across from Sapona Manufacturing in Cedar Falls. There are hiking trails, including along the river, and a fishing pond just outside my camper door. My sense was that about 80% of the trailers there were owned by fisherfolk who make this their summer home and a cozy one it is. The campground is a peaceful place, not overly expensive, mostly shaded, and just what I needed to tackle traveling alone. It was also close enough to town that I was able to invite a couple of girlfriends to dinner and an evening campfire one night and do the same with my children the next. 

Ruthie and Odie at the river

I managed to unfurl the awning several times without incident, something Ruthie and I did not undertake coming back from Washington--we'd heard malfunction horror stories and were not up for equipment failure so far from home. The rest of the operation here went smoothly as well. I have a couple of trips coming up with my daughter in September and I feel ready to go. 

As a little indulgence, I had this tire cover made just to make it all official. If the carport guys ever come so I can keep her clean, I'll give her a bath and a wax job. We are dressed and ready and have places to go...

So you'll know us on the road!

A last challenge

I am happy to report we are safely home. We've had remarkably good weather and minimal traffic. But there remains one challenge and not the one I feared. I managed, thanks to some new gravel and grading delivered while I was away, to make the sharp turn from the house next door into my driveway. What I did not expect was that the carport that housed my Scamp was too small for the Escape, which SHOULD only be 7" taller and 4" wider. Somebody is fibbing about their specs. And I will need a taller carport. Considering all that we've been through, and all that could have gone wrong, this I can live with. 

Oh, and Ruthie and I are still friends so you'll hear from us on the road again.

Back across the Mississippi

Synchronous fireflies?

Saturday morning we got the oil changed at the Nissan dealer in Billings, MT, then headed out across several Indian reservations on two lane roads through eastern Montana and finally into South Dakota. It was an enormously long day. Sunday was spent crossing South Dakota on the Interstate along with everyone else headed home from their weekend or holiday week. 

We'd left the mountains and not quite entered the rich farmland further east towards Iowa. It's a very open landscape with little population evident from the road. For miles in advance, though, "tourist attractions" made their presence known with eye-catching billboards. One local brewery paired each sign with an antique fire truck. There must have been 30 of them. They were interesting to see but it made me sad to see them weathering rather than being preserved.

Because we were not near population centers, we saw almost no churches (we

clearly were not in the south...) but someone had built this tiny meditation chapel on private land bordering a rest stop. You can see we have left the Rockies and are clearly deep into the Great Plains.

It was another long, hard day of driving. We were headed to our campsite in West Des Moines, IA when we drove at dusk through one of the many extensive wind farms. The vanes were all turned away from us and large red lights mounted on the backs of the rotors were all blinking in unison. It looked like I imagine the synchronous fireflies look and I was almost as excited to see these lights as I would be to see the firefiles. They were everywhere and eerily beautiful. Ruthie tried to catch a picture, but this gentle blur is all she could get.

We have only driven a couple of hours today. We got groceries this morning and at 2:30pm, met our old friend, Barb Swanson, in the historic village of Amana, IA. Amana Colonies includes 7 villages, Amana among them. They were founded as a communal colony of Lutheran "Pietists" who were driven out of Germany by mainstream Lutherans. They first settled in Seneca, NY, then migrated to Iowa in search of a larger, more isolated location. Their communal tradition ended in 1932, but their

None of us are good a selfies...

corporation still holds the original 26,000 acres of land they lived on and many of their communal buildings are preserved as part of the Amana National Historic Landmark. And yes, Amana appliances are part of this history, though the business has been sold several times. 

We had a great time enjoying each other, catching up, and checking out the lovely shops. Of course, we had to visit the local bakery, a chocolate shop and a shop selling goods made at the Amana Woolen Mills. My holiday shopping is now complete...

Electric clothes dryer

We left Barb around supper time and headed further east, finally crossing the Mississippi River near Rock Island, IL where we are camped for the evening. We are still exploring aspects of our new camping set up. Washington and Montana were so cold at night, we learned to use the propane furnace. Tonight we are trying to master the air conditioner, which is wonderfully cooling but loud as a jet engine. We are also trying out a new contraption I purchased to deal with wet towels. It is a portable electric clothes dryer. I have no idea what my camping neighbors will make of it but it has saved us a trip to the laundromat and we are pleased. 

Two hard days of driving ahead of us and we are home. The last challenge will be getting our new friend into my narrow driveway. Ben has been trimming shrubbery and Jessie says the gravel person did a nice job of improving the grade and the surface. I'm hoping the last picture of this trip will be LibraryAnn II parked cozy in her carport (undamaged). Until then, this is how we ended today.