"When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention." – Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
Louisiananana-na-na-na-naaaa, you can’t catch us! Ok, maybe Snowball isn’t that fast… but she was faster than that hibernating/maybedead gator, am I right? That’s fast enough for us. It’s two days till CHRISTMAS and that means it’s time to say goodbye to the Gulf.
We took another ferry over a shipping channel in Cameron Parish, because apparently that’s another theme to this trip.
Dried out from the rain and sad our Broncos lost, we had a simple breakfast and packed up the tent. We bid farewell to our RV neighbors and made our way to the panhandle of Florida.
South Carolina and snow do NOT get along. But we have Snowball, the trusty Land Cruiser, so we got along fine. Time for some tropical weather! No hot hot heat? Fine. We’ll settle for some tropical trees. We decided to stay at a City Park near Charleston and holy cow did they have a Christmas light show. A driving loop with a hundred little scenes like these:
On our way to Virginia, we intended to camp somewhere in Kentucky, but when we got to the place Tony had scoped out, we heard metaphorical banjos. As anyone who has seen Deliverance knows, that doesn’t end well. I knew I wouldn’t sleep so we went continued on a quest for a new place and came upon Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia. The camp spots were fabulous, with new bathrooms, and easily accessible hiking. We rolled in at twilight, set up, had some dinner, and called it a night. We woke up in the morning and hiked down to this natural wonder.
We’re very lucky to have friends along the east coast willing to host us while we run from the cold up north. Once Snowball was finished with Fifth Avenue (“Oh my god, like, who needs Tiffany anyway? She can totally go have breakfast, like, by herself for all I care.”), we strolled down to the Philly area and caught up with another of Jess’ teachers for lunch. We left with happy bellies and a smattering of suggestions for nosh in the south, which until then didn’t have much going on in the planning department.
As we made our way back south to warm up again, we stopped by LL Bean’s flagship site and explored the Maine coast.
Upstate New York has been a blast so far. You wouldn’t normally consider a surprise downpour in the middle of a hike to be fun, but for some reason we were giggling like little kids. President Fillmore should be thankful he has such a pretty place named after him. I’m just glad they didn’t name it “Millard Glenn”. Who names their kid ‘Millard” anyway?
Now I’m excited to get to some free camping! Not because I’m a cheap-ass (though that’s probably true) but because it’ll be the first time since the UP of Michigan that we’ve camped without a campground.
*To all of our lovely readers – we have been having technical difficulties with the new Word Press platform. Tony updated the last post to try and clean it up. If you were having trouble reading it, you should be able to revisit and enjoy now. Oh, and happy belated turkey day, I hope you stuffed yourself. Bahahahah.*
As we left Kelley’s Island we found a great farm stand to pick up some apples and pickles and then made our way to Elyria, Ohio for some seriously delicious pizza. With full stomachs we could finally focus on the task at hand: jumping into Lake Erie, oh, and finding somewhere to sleep.
I clearly don’t understand these Michiganders. They have a deep french influence …but it only impacts the spelling because they still talk all midwestern-like. Gratiot is “Gra-shit”, Hamtramck doesn’t have enough vowels to be pronounced “Ham-tram-ick”, maybe it can borrow some from Grosse Pointe.
By far my favorite is this whole Mackinac/w thing. Great place for some R’n’R, but linguistically confounding. It’s either a hard c, or not! Nobody calls the car company “Cadillaw”!! [pulls hair out of head]
Also, I’m pretty sure this Traver guy musta been pretty cool for them to name a whole city after him.
After a lovely pit stop with a Colorado friend in Wisconsin, we were bound for my cousin’s stomping grounds: northern Wisconsin. She had tons of suggested places, hikes, and activities, listed for us by region and in order. Remind you of anybody? 🙂 She obviously shares a passion for both the organized and the outdoors.
"Purposefully Unrushed" 