Eastern Divide

March 26, 2024 – Day 11

Henderson NC to Lake Powhatan Recreation Area, Arden NC

News flash: North Carolina is a big state. It’s not Texas big. That’s just BIG in all directions. NC is “tiny big.” When traveling from the east side to west side it’s 503 miles.

Back to the morning. Paul was startled awake around 7AM by a loud BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!!! Around 8:30 p.m. the night before we looked at our coach batteries. They were way low, dropping faster than we’d have liked and definitely wouldn’t make the night. We did a quick google map search. (susan here: how the heck did we live without Google?) It showed only 1 neighbor and 2 horses so we figured a generator was quieter than a parking lot full of teenagers at the drive-in blaring their FM-radio. We ran the generator for half an half and stopped promptly at 9pm. That seemed reasonable. We flipped the circuit breaker for the fridge and moved some ice packs that we keep from the freezer to the fridge to keep the food cold.

So, about those loud beeps at a way too early hour? Paul lept up, went to the control panel to see the bad news. 12.5 volt? That was the good news. The beeping was coming from further forward in the coach. Our TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) was telling us that the Jeep had low tire pressure. (susan here: I was blissfully asleep, earplugs firmly in my ear and heard pretty much…nothing.) We’d forgotten to turn it off when we arrived. This is not the first time we’d done that. You’d think we’d learn by now! Why was it low? It was 27 degrees out! By the time we hit the road it had warmed up enough that the monitors were happy again. We could safely set off on today’s journey. (susan here: it was 1 pound under the optimum pressure so we would have been fine. It’s there to warn of a sudden blowout. Which would be bad. One pound low? Not very much bad.)

The first thing we noticed was that the trees here have leaves. Small young ones, but they are leafing out!

They also leave the trees in the middle of the highway, it was gorgeous.

We also saw these great pink trees. We think they are redbuds. Paul’s brother has spoken of them, he intends to return to French Creek to hike when the redbuds bloom.

Paul googled, since Susan was driving, and redbud images look just like that. We both would love to see these trees at home in our yard, but then then would be invasive. We’d cut them down with extreme prejudice as we do with all things that are invasive. We give slack to non-natives that are not invasive. Invasive plants deprive native critters of food and shelter. If you’d like something more than the 30 second elevator talk hit us up. We’d be happy to tell you (uhm, bore you to death?) about it.

We’re chugging along at a blistering speed of 63 mph and the Garmin GPS chimes in with a “40 minute delay”. 40 minutes? There is an alternate route, through the little town of Graham, NC. Yes, please. Sign us up!

It was such a cute little down, we’re glad we made the detour. We love doing roads off the big highways but given that we’re traveling thousands of miles it’s not feasible to do all the journey that way.

(susan here: What you’re not seeing is the teeny tiny bit of pavement to the left of the monument. Clearly that monument was there before the paved roads were. Also, it’s clear that they will “bang a uey” to grab parking as demonstrated by this Google overhead.

And it is good to know that Paul has a Pastry shop named in his honor!

So we’re driving down the road, too early for lunch, and driver Susan says, when do you want lunch? A rest area was right there. But neither of us were hungry plus it was too early for a driver change. She asked, “Where’s the next rest area?” I pointed to a blue sign and said “Right there!” She was not amused. The next was too far away at 58 miles. (susan here: I was good for another hour, or six days. At least. Really.) Paul Googled around and found a Cracker Barrel. It had a big parking lot, RVs are almost always welcome so we wouldn’t stick out. We set out to enjoy their wonderful home Southern cooking. (susan here: actually it was to grab some of their pavement for a half hour.) Susan had leftover turkey tacos and Paul chowed down on the last of the ham for a ham sandwich and one of the few remaining Grillo’s pickles. He won’t see those again for months. It was certainly better than the (excuse us) pig-slop they serve. (susan here: We’ve been to a few now and as my cousin Donna says, “The food is intolerable.” We wholeheartedly agree. We removed the giant yellow mustard from the dinette window that said “No Cracker Barrel take-away here.” Didn’t want to push our luck.) We’re probably never going to eat in a Cracker Barrel again. Susan hates them. Paul used to like them for breakfast. It’s kinder to say “Bless their heart. They tried.” (and move on) when describing their food. It was actively bad. I don’t know how you can mess up eggs, salt and fat, but they do. Worse? It’s not a one-off, you could almost forgive that. We’ve had a string of them that are bad and we’re just not willing to spend the time or money eating at one.

We’re almost there! Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right!? We’re probably 30 minutes from the campground. What could possibly go wrong. What? Oh what could it be!!! (back of our hand placed onto our foreheads for extra effect!) Oh what?

What is that vertical thing on the right? Why is the pink line so squiggly? It is the Eastern Continental Divide. (susan here: You thought there was only one? HAHAHAHAHHA! No.)

Until Susan mentioned it Paul had no idea we had more than one. We distinctly recall crossing the Great one several times. (susan here: honestly it seems like every five miles there’s another one!)

It started off just plain steep and twisty. We were doing about 45-50mph in most places.

Then we drove into the clouds.

Visibility got worse. I know you don’t watch the videos I post, I can see the view count on YouTube, but watch this one. It accurately portrays the nastiness of this climb.

We were happy to descend and see the clouds we had just driven through.

The road into the campground was tight, but pretty. But it makes one wonder, just what do they do in an Experimental Forest? Especially a “bent” one??? (susan here: it must be for Bentwood rockers.) (paul here: or maybe it’s where Home Depot gets their 2x4s.)

So we’re one mile from the campground, and this? It was weird because there were a red light and a yellow light but no green light.

Oh, but it gets better. Our light goes yellow, which means not red. But it’s not green. We sat there for a moment or two wondering if there was another cue to set off. We started off and there was a pickup truck coming towards us! He pulled off before the green thing on wheels. A worker bee doing worker things. But yeah, they could make it less confusing.

We finally made it to the site. Paul was standing out there, in the rain, with his radio, unhooking the Jeep. And she’s busy griping about the trees. Then messing about with her camera taking pictures. She claims this was the view through the windshield, that, oh scary, the trees were close. (susan here: that’s seriously not the windshield! But the trees were really close as demonstrated by the photo.)

We got settled, had some cheese and crackers, and Paul went over to the Jeep to play radio. It turns out he talked to a ham who knew two of his friends back home, KC1EIJ and KC1TRY! He was also aware of the message we sent to our friend Jenn at McMurdo Station on Antartica a few months back. She’s been working down there since the Fall. “OH! You’re the penguin people!” he said when he put two and two together and was quite amused that he “bumped into” the penguin guy.

Months ago, Paul had sent a radiogram to our mutual friend Jenn who is working in Antartica. One rule of ham radio is that the messages must not be encrypted and they were wondering why Paul and Susan were complaining about their penguin. BTW, the penguin still refuses to play canasta. That part really had the radiogram people confused. Hint, it is just a joke.

Dinner was had. Blogs were blogged. And we called the day done. Time to turn in and head off to the next leg of our adventure.

Daily: 272

Total: 1,045

Driving Miles/Day: 209

Overall Miles/Day: 95