Coming to the End

I'm at what I think will be my last stop. I plan to drive home from here - Lancaster, PA. If I can't take the driving I'll probably stop at Wally's just to sleep the night, and get home on Tuesday.

I had a great visit with my friend Penelope in Charlotte, NC. Penelope and I worked around the country when she was 24 and I was 23 - west of the Mississippi. That was 41 years ago. And Penelope looks the same. She said I was lying when I said that, but, I tell you, she sure looks the same to me. I spent a few days there, with Penelope, her husband, daughters, grandkids and father. I got my baby fix, holding Madeline for long periods of time. Four years ago I had gotten my baby fix by holding Aiden for long periods of time. I told the kids I'd probably be back in 2 years, so they better get busy, because I'll want another baby fix.. Penelope and I reminisced about our year and a half. One of us would remember something the other hadn't and we relived the memories. Penelope even called someone to whom she hadn't spoken since San Francisco. It was a great deal of fun. I wish she were free and could travel around with me.

The next campground I stayed at was in Lynchburg. There were some things I wanted to see, so Gypsy (my GPS) and I took off in the late morning. I had addresses, and assumed all were in Lynchburg. After landing in a mobile home park, I tried another town, and "voila," I got to this pottery manufacturer out in the "boonies." I opened a factory door and asked where the store was. I was directed back to where I had passed it, but was told it was closed. So, I just peeked in the windows. Then, the next address was many miles away. I think I was going from 1 side of the town to the other, twice, and I ended at a house on a busy street, so I circled around and got the same thing. All this in the rain. I gave up and headed back about 4 hours after I left. When I left the next morning I turned the wrong way, and started looking for a turnaround. Gypsy suggested one, but it looked like a cart path to me, and I kept going. I turned up a road, and very quickly wished I hadn't. I wasn't afraid I'd lose the coach in those massive puddles (yes it was still raining), but I wondered about the car I was towing. I also had visions of getting stuck in the mud, and "calling" for a tow service (no cell phone reception either). I didn't want to knock on the doors of the houses on that path.  But, thank You, God, I came out the other end with no damage except another layer of mud. Last night it poured all night and washed that mud right off my vehicles.

Twice on this trip I pulled into a campground I had visited 4 years ago. I haven't known until they put my name in the data base. Four years ago I pulled off the road because they predicted snow, and stayed at a campground for 3 days. It was kind of fun coming back. This time the ground was clear and I could use the water and sewer. And.... I had neighbors!!

This cat of mine is SOOOO naughty. She scratches the screen, and everything else. I punished her by putting her in her carrier. When I let her out, I told her if she scratched it again, I'd put her back in the carrier. She immediately walked over and scratched. So back in the carrier, let her out, scratched the screen, ran away and hid, back in the carrier. What?  Does she think this is a game?

So today I visited Intercourse (It's been a while) and other Amish towns, did laundry, read, and am getting ready to hit the road for home tomorrow. It's been a good life. I can't wait until Alaska.

An Oasis?

I pulled into this campground yesterday, which is named ....Oasis. The pictures and the description on the internet were great. There was another campground I was considering, which was on a lake. But their message box was full, and the internet didn't give a lot of information, like rates. But, when I pulled in to the ....Oasis, I questioned the oasis part, and was afraid I might experience a "Deliverance" part. The place was really messy, small, and didn't have but a few RVs. Most of them looked long-term, which brought more thoughts of "Deliverance." There was a hose hooked up to my water, which rambled "through" the campground, as far as I could see. There was a barbeque grill with a supply of burned wood on my picnic table. I thought "Oh boy." It had taken me a while to get there. None of the roads in the area were on my GPS, and I had to call for directions. A small item was not included with the directions, which meant I drove about 45 minutes out of my way, until I realized I was on the wrong road. No way I wanted to start looking again for a campground.  ...... And it's fine. The owners' dogs and cats are running loose, but Skittles has stayed on a leash. I've had to protect the dogs from her. She humps her back just like a Halloween cat, and has a fearsome hiss and yowl.          I really feel like I'm out in the sticks. I tried to use my GPS for some of the sites I wanted to visit, with no luck. None of the roads are on the GPS. But then I pull into a town, and it has all these chains - Walmart, BestBuy, Chili's, even a Panera lunch place. And traffic. Where did these people come from and what are they doing? I only saw trees and fields on my 75 miles of sightseeing.       I did visit a house built in the 1700s, which was the location of a skirmish between Whigs and Tories in the American Revolution. The house still had bullet holes in it - on both floors. The mother had pulled a table into the fireplace, to have the children stand on to avoid being shot. Through all these years why hadn't those bullet holes been filled? In New England they would have, just to keep out the cold. Perhaps in NC they welcomed whatever breeze the bullet holes would bring in to the house.

Skittles and the flying rat

In practically all the campgrounds, Skittles (the cat) has to stay on a leash. This, of course, drives her crazy, and limits her wandering. We sometimes go for walks which gives her a chance to explore, and, at the site, she chases leaves and other things blowing around, until the jerk of the leash brings her back to realty. Occasionally, she climbs a tree with the leash and I have pulled her down, or at least held the leash until she came down. At our last campsite there were a couple squirrels. Now, you see drawings of squirrels, and they always have  that big, fluffy tail in back of them, and they're cute. They don't really have tails like that, and they're not that cute, and they make a horrible noise - chi,chi,chi,chi,chi. I prefer to think of them as rodents.  They're also troublemakers. The squirrels at our campsite teased Skittles, getting close and then jumping up a tree. Well, of course, the leash limited how far up she could go.Then she got the leash wrapped around a branch. And there's the squirrel sitting up above her going chi,chi,chi,chi,chi. I unleashed her, and took off the harness. Up the tree she goes, and further up goes the squirrel until it is at the very top, and looking as worried as a squirrel can look.. Skittles is licking her lips and is pretty satisfied,  because she knows this squirrel is hers. And then the squirrel flies over to another tree top, and Skittles sees her prey get away once again, and listens to chi,chi,chi,chi,chi. I figure it was just as well, because the top of that tree may have held the squirrel, but I think Skittles would have had a rude awakening when she fell to the ground. And then she would have heard chi,chi,chi,chi,chi in nightmares for months.

Spring has sprung

I'm in North Carolina on March 1st, and all the flowering bushes are doing their thing - beautiful! Most activities have been on winter hours. Unlike Florida, winter is not the busy time for NC. The price of my site went up $15 today. I took a ride down to the end of Cape Fear, to Carolina Beach. I really wanted to spend a couple days here because of that Nick Nolte - Barbara  Streisand movie about a family from Cape Fear. Do you remember that? And... I am rarely a-feared about being alone, but today I was on a pier out into the Cape Fear River, and I felt uncomfortable, and had to go back. Thanks, Nick Nolte!! Driving down the river road was like the Cape with scrub pines and sand. New houses and mansions are being built. A lot of the existing and new houses are built on stilts, with the garages on the lower floors, since there is frequent flooding. And...I love the colors - purple, orange, turquoise, blue, green, pink - for the houses and the mailboxes.

I toured a couple historical homes from the 1800s and  one from the 1700s. Wilmington has a number of these. Quite a few have been made into Bed and Breakfast hotels. And quite a few have been used in movies. There were 2 movies being filmed while I was there - one for TV and ??? One of the homes I toured was previously used by Harpo Industries. They repainted a portion, which at some time the trustees want to bring back to the original. But it was well-worth the changes to have it used for a movie production. Another home advertises itself for weddings, and there's a brick placed in the wedding walk for every couple that does that. Hopefully they don't get divorced, since that brick is part of history now. Maybe they could just paint a big "D" over it, if that happens. It would be funny if a person chose that home for more than 1 wedding. She/he could have 3 bricks each with his/her name and that of one of the spouses. Ohhh dear, we could go on and on.

I also went to a great quilt exhibit at one of the museums. I had gone to see the play "Gee's Bend" in CT with friends. It was about women who lived in Gee's Bend during the civil rights movement, their strife and the quilting they did. A few of the quilters in this exhibition were from Gee's Bend. Although I'm old and can't remember her name, I think the main character in the play had quilts in the show. I think this because of all the places her quilts were exhibited. I had gone to a quilt show in Myrtle Beach. Most of the quilts were machine quilted or "long-hand" quilted. You voted for best in a number of categories. And generally, they were all beautiful. My favorite was the outline of three girls, each made from a dress of the grandmother, mother or daughter, hand-quilted. At the exhibition in Wilmington all the quilts were hand-quilted, a number of them told a story. A number of them were using scraps from old clothes, blankets or ??? My favorite there was one which looked like it was put together pretty randomly, as the scraps became available - a utilitarian quilt, a quilt made for practical reasons.