After two long days of driving from Indiana to North Carolina, then two busy days playing tourist around Mount Airy, followed by the drive to Kinston, Miss Terry and I needed a day to just relax and recharge our batteries. So yesterday we slept in, and then spent most of the morning just cuddling in bed and talking. I cherish these quiet times with the love of my life, and I believe they are one of the reasons why, after being together twelve years, we still feel like we’re on our first date. 

When we finally got up and in gear, we didn’t go very far for most of the day. Instead, we stayed inside catching up on e-mail, cruising the internet, and catching up on some of the RV blogs we read on a regular basis.

I see on our friends Jan and Greg White’s Our RV Adventures blog that they are hanging out in southern Indiana visiting family, though I secretly suspect that Greg is just hiding out in case I need anything else fixed. Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour have been kayaking and diving in Florida, and are getting ready to visit Google’s headquarters in California.

According to their Gypsy and the Mariner’s RV Adventures, our pals Don and Sharon Del Rosario are back on their lot in Benson, Arizona; and also in Benson, Jerry and Suzi LeRoy report in their Our Life On Wheels blog that they are having computer woes.

In Texas, Mike McFall wrote in his Mike and Pat’s Travels blog that his lovely wife Pat had a surprise birthday this week. I love reading blogs, because they help us keep up with our RVing friends.

If you’re not a fulltimer, you can get a good insight into the lifestyle by reading some of these and the many other RV blogs out there. As you can see, sometimes we have days filled with adventure, and other days are pretty routine, just like folks living in sticks and bricks homes.

Eventually I wandered outside, where I took a few pictures of the campground at Neuseway Nature Park. Our RV site backs up to some trees, and I wasn’t sure our rooftop automatic television dish would be able to pick up a signal, but after a couple of false starts, it managed to lock onto a weak signal. If we were parked across the road, facing our present site, we’d have had no problem, but since those sites back up to the Neuseway River, they are in demand and were all taken when we arrived.

One thing that mystified me was why the campground electrical hookups were mounted on tall poles that my stubby little legs barely allowed me to reach. When our friend Patti Ivey came by to visit, I mentioned the strange electrical hookups, and she explained that they are that way to keep them above the high water level when the river floods. I made a mental note to myself not to be anywhere near here if the water starts rising!

We spent the evening with Patti and her two sons, having a fun dinner at Pizza Hut, and then going back to her townhouse to visit for a couple of hours before we returned to the campground.

Not a very busy or exciting day, but one that will give us pleasant memories of a quiet day in the life we enjoy so much.

Thought For The Day – A true friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out

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We really enjoyed our time in Mount Airy, and we know it’s an area we’ll return to again. The people are friendly, the scenery is beautiful, and there is a lot to see and do.

Mayberry Campground is one of the nicest places we have stayed, and if you are passing through the region, put it on your list of places to stop. The park is laid out in a terraced design, with roomy full hookup pull through and back-in RV sites, and the Passport America rate of $12.50 a night is a heck of a deal.

The only drawback to the campground was that our Verizon air card was on National Access, instead of the high speed EVDO signal, so our internet connection was pretty slow. The campground has free WiFi, so most people wouldn’t have a problem, but I don’t have a WiFi adapter on the desktop computer I use, so I had to put up with sluggish service.

As much as we enjoyed our stay, we had places to go and people to see, so yesterday we hit the road and took U.S. Highway 52 to Winston-Salem, where we hooked up with Interstate 40 eastbound. For the next 120 miles or so, as we passed Winston-Salem, then Greensboro, and on past Raleigh, we were in moderate to heavy traffic most of the way.

From Raleigh we took U.S. Highway 70 east to Kinston. Except for all of the traffic, it was an easy driving day. We covered 220 miles, and according to the Silverleaf engine monitoring system, we averaged 7.9 miles per gallon. Except for a few short climbs, most of it was downhill. The elevation at Mayberry Campground was 1175 feet, and the elevation in Kinston is only 37 feet. 

We arrived in Kinston about 4:30 p.m. and took a site at Neuseway Nature Park. Situated on the Neuse River, the park includes a 52 seat planetarium, museum, nature trails, fishing ponds, and a campground with full hookup 50/30 amp electric back-in RV sites. At $12 a night, it’s a real bargain. 

Soon after we get settled in, Patti Ivey came by to visit. We met Patti and her husband Mickey soon after they became fulltime RVers. Mickey developed the excellent RVer’s Notebook computer program, which is great for keeping track of all of your RV travels, equipment maintenance schedule, the people you meet along the way, and a ton of other information and memories. If you don’t have the RVer’s Notebook, check it out. It’s an excellent resource.

Unfortunately, we lost Mickey suddenly three years ago, and Patti is no longer traveling. She returned to her hometown of Kinston, and continues to market the RVer’s Notebook. We have not seen her since she got off the road, so a visit was very high on our agenda for our trip to North Carolina.

After giving Patti a tour of our Winnebago motorhome, we went to dinner at King’s Restaurant, a North Carolina legend when it comes to barbecue. The food was delicious, and we enjoyed talking with Patti about life on and off the road, and the curveballs life sometimes throws at us.

Meanwhile, Bad Nick was back at the motorhome, writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled It’s Called Humor. Check it out and leave a comment.

We’ll be here a few days, visiting our friend and getting to know this new area we have never explored before. 

Thought For The Day – Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Interstate highways are great for RV travel if you are just going from Point A to Point B. They are usually the quickest way to get where you’re going, but they lack any charm or character, so whenever possible, we love to travel the back roads, those two lane highways that take you through the small towns where you can see the real America.

Of course, some of the best adventures are found on back roads where an RV isn’t the most practical form of transportation. When we find a nice place to park for a few days, we leave the motorhome and go exploring in our van.

Mayberry Campground here in Mount Airy makes an excellent base for doing just that. The campground is very clean, has roomy full hookup pull-through and back-in sites with cable TV and WiFi, and the folks who run it are very friendly.

The campground’s owner, Benny East, is a great great grandson of Eng Bunker, one of the famous Siamese Twins, who settled in this area after a career touring in vaudeville. The twins died in 1874 and are buried a mile away, and yesterday we paid a visit to their gravesite.

Since we had played tourist in town on Tuesday, we wanted a change of pace yesterday. We set off down some narrow back roads where I’d never take an RV larger than a Class B van.

At the tiny village of Rockford, we stopped to check out the Rockford General Store, which has been serving the community since 1890. What a neat place! This cigar store Indian greeted us at the front door, and inside the owner welcomed us like long lost family members.

We loved looking at all of the things on display, from bulk candy to gourds, and after poking around in every corner of the store we had worked up an appetite. The store serves up delicious sandwiches that you’ll never find at McDonald’s or Burger King. I had the fried country ham and egg, and Miss Terry tried the thick cut pan fried bologna and cheese. Both were wonderful! We sat on rocking chairs on the front porch and passed the time of day with a local gentleman as we ate our lunches.

When we left Rockford, we meandered down a series of roads that crossed the Yadkin River several times, and eventually brought us to the Horne Creek Living Historical Farm, which was farmed by the Hauser family for nearly 200 years.

Since we visited in the off season, there were no costumed interpreters working on the farm, as there are other times of year, depicting farm life in rural North Carolina circa 1900.

We still had a good time wandering around the farm and the handsome two story house where several generations of Hausers lived and died. Terry and I always say that if we did not have to work, we’d love to spend some time volunteering as costumed interpreters at historic sites. Even adults like to play dress up!
Pilot Mountain, rising 1,400 feet above the surrounding countryside, is a major landmark in this region, and long before we had highways and GPS systems, explorers and settlers used it to navigate their way through the wilderness.

We have had a fantastic time exploring the upper Piedmont plateau of North Carolina, and we could easily spend a couple more weeks here. But we have lots more to see and do, and today we’ll be on the road again, heading for new territory in search of new adventures.

Thought For The Day – If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?