Saturday 6 August 2011

A Very Modern Grand Tour - Day 14, Saturday

I was up early, as is my wont, and sat outside Towed Haul putting my blog together whilst the DeSoto Caverns playground came to life. First it was the piped music, banjo laced country, which gave the place a surreal feel given that the park was themed on the Spanish explorer DeSoto, although maybe DeSoto liked his Bluegrass, who knows? Then it was the customers, arriving at 9am on the dot, no doubt to avoid the heat of the later day. The rest of Team Toad were a little slower in moving but it was a short driving day so that didn't really matter.

We discovered that we'd been overrun by ants and that they were everywhere. I'd seen people spraying their stablizers the night before and now I knew why. A bit of retrospective spraying, inside and out, helped a bit but I think we were a tad late. We were eventually away by midday, chucking out time, and headed back to Childersburg against the wishes of the Sat Nav. I'd seen some of the back roads here and the torturous route it had planned wasn't going to be great for us towing the trailer. Even on the fairly major road it was narrow and twisty, making the going slow but at least it afforded us the opportunity to look at the countryside. We'd already seen that a lot of Americans live in very old trailer homes, that is the sort of thing that you might get in a static caravan park, only they were about 30 years old and usually plonked down in a field. These homes ranged from reasonable to something that would make your garden shed look palatial, and all looked as if they'd taken root over many years; in rural Alabama they were everywhere and served to remind us of the contrasts again.

Heading north we entered Pell City, nice enough but the sort of place that young people want to get away from, then moved into a hillier, more wooded area that had fewer but more affluent homes. The drive was actually very pleasant and the fuel consumption went from “Aaargh!” to just “Ouch!”, which was a bonus.

We eventually reached the highway and made for Knoxville, passing through Alabama, a tiny bit of Georgia and Tennessee on the way. The road surface north of Birmingham was hideous, Towed Haul jumping about more than I like, which was then compounded with a 15 mile section of single line roadway, on the southbound side of the freeway, where I had a concrete barrier on one side and slight dip on the other. I found that if I ran a safe distance from the barrier then the trailer kept dropping into the dip and pulling the car about, but if I ran close to the wall I could avoid all that movement. The lesser of the two evils, close to the barrier, was chosen but I still emerged from that section with my hands and neck aching badly from the extra concentration. I knew that all my shirts would have jumped of the wardrobe rail by the time we were through for the day. As an aside, we saw quite a few dead armadillos on the shoulder, some squashed and some just laying on their backs with their legs in the air. Armadillos are not, of course, indigenous to North America but they have thrived since escaping from zoos and private owners. I say thrived but I don't think that those living near the highway were thriving.

We were making steady progress when we crossed back into the Eastern Time Zone and promptly lost an hour. Then we stopped at the redoubtable IHOP (International House of Pancakes) for supper. Now IHOP occupied a special place in my heart as on a work trip to the US a few years ago I'd eaten many pancakes and waffles in an IHOP outlet at ridiculous times in the early morning. I had no idea if IHOP had thrived, maybe it had gone the way of the roadside armadillo, but here was a chance to find out and into a vacant parking lot next to the restaurant we rolled, fortunate that it was there as we'd never have been able to get Towed Haul into the IHOP lot. Copious amounts of drinks, waffles and pancakes later, we all agreed that whilst not great cuisine, it was cheap and cheerful and that view was clearly supported by the steady stream of locals in and out of the place.

We were only about 40 minutes from the campground, so it was a gentle run through, heading straight towards the Smoky Mountains, looming up ahead of us. The Smokys are a part of the Appalachian chain, an ancient range stretching from Southern Georgia right up into Maine and even Quebec and New Brunswick in Canada. The Appalachians were once as high as the Himalayas but time has eroded them to rounded, tree covered hills; still high and still large but on a smaller and more agreeable scale. They looked wonderful in the evening light.

Our campsite was nestling in a narrow gap between two mountains and stood by a neat little river. It was a commercial site so the RVs were lined up in fairly close proximity, but the facilities were good with a pool, games room and WiFi, all designed for the Tadpoles' enjoyment. By the time we were set up, it was getting dark so a short swim for the Tadpoles and a bit of planning time for us, saw us settled in and ready for bed. All this in the comfort of temperatures only in the mid-twenties, which was a welcome relief after the Gulf Coast and Florida.

Tomorrow will see us visiting my Aunt and Uncle in Knoxville, which should be good. My Aunt still has a broad Dorset accent, even after 40 years over here, so I'm looking forward to talking to her! Catch up tomorrow for tales of familial cordiality, or something like that.

A Very Modern Grand Tour - Day 13, Friday


A travelling day so the alarm was set for six, and as I sat and looked at my cell phone display I realised that it was still on Eastern time rather than Central and I was an hour later than planned, albeit that I'd woken up well before the alarm had sounded. Oh dear I thought. Well, not Oh Dear, but this is family reading so Oh Dear it is. I woke Mrs T, as usual, and made off for a shower. As I made my way down to the bathhouse in the semi dark, I did keep an eye out for alligators, there being a “beach” area on the edge of the drainage canal down at that end of the campground, perfect for the beasts to leave the water. I felt faintly ridiculous even thinking it but the “Don't Feed The Gators” sign was there for all to see. As I glanced at my watch I thought “Oh Dear” again. Apparently my cell phone was on Central Time after all and I was up about 45 minutes earlier than I should have been. It wasn't even six when I returned to the trailer to find that Mrs T had discovered my confusion. Oh dear!

Anyway, at least I had time to enjoy the marginally cooler time of the day and catch up with the blogs. As it happened, we did a bit more washing before leaving (you don't turn down a bank of washing machines lightly when you're two weeks into your trip) and were hitched and ready to go by nine. The Tadpoles were dopey and sat in the back of the Toadmobile in a stupor whilst we hit the I10, this time north, and set our course for Birmingham, Alabama.

The drive took us up a good road through Mississippi, then into Alabama. We stopped for lunch at a Waffle House in Meridian, Mississippi, and again enjoyed the ambiance of a small town diner. We'd managed to get Towed Haul neatly parked in the lot, and I even tried to run Mrs T over when she was directing and whilst tucked away at the back, I wondered if anyone would block us in. The food in these places isn't great but waffles, omelets, grits and hash browns were all consumed whilst the diner buzzed with life. There was drama when a group walked in and then walked out again and our young server seemed to get told off by the supervisor because she showed “attitude” to the turn arounds. I'm not sure why but she turned to Mrs T to explain that it wasn't fair that she should get the blame, looking most aggrieved. Then someone chose to park in front of the Toadmoble, this despite there being more than enough room to park elsewhere in the lot. I had visions of asking a toothless Mississippian, in my lovely English accent, kindly move his big white pickup truck but was saved from that ordeal when I realised that I could scoot out around him. Phew!

Back on the road, we seemed to be driving though an endless corridor of trees, set a way back from the edge of the road but offering no view of the surrounding land at all. Through Tuscaloosa, we branched off just before getting to Birmingham and went along the by-pass until we turned East towards Childersburg, up through a big mountain and down the other side, getting tied up in the Friday traffic escaping from Birmingham. We went through the town of Chelsea, which was nice, and travelled the pleasant, if hilly, road out to our destination.

We were staying at a place called Desoto Caverns, about 5 miles outside Childersburg, mostly because it was just a short hop to the covered bridge and grist mill at Kymulga. Desoto Caverns is a series of caves named for Hernadez DeSoto, a Spanish explorer who was influential in opening up the South well before Daniel Boone and his buddies were around. The trouble is that the Caverns have been somewhat commercialised and we were parked on the edge of a kid's playground; train rides, gold panning and goats, that sort of thing.

The actual site we were allocated was billed as a “pull thru”, which means we should be able to drive in then out again. Unfortunately that isn't possible because there's a motor home two pitches down, blocking the road and, after we'd set up, it looked very like the campground owners wanted a 35 foot 'Fifth Wheel' trailer to go into the small gap between us and the motor home. Very politely I explained to the people behind the desk that it wouldn't work and fortunately they relented, even though the guy in the fifth wheeler didn't have a 50 amp power supply where they eventually put him. “I guess I can get by on one air conditioner” he said.

We decided against a Cavern tour on account of it being vaguely religious, based of the Book of Genesis apparently, and headed off to see the covered bridge. Sadly that was all closed up but we did manage to get a few pictures, albeit that it wasn't in the Bridges Of Madison County league. We may go back tomorrow if we can scare up the required $6, but we might not! We gassed up in Childersburg at the world's cheapest, and busiest, gas station. It was significant that in a town that had hardly any functioning businesses, everyone was paying cash for their petrol; the financial problems of this country have hit very hard in the rural areas and credit, of any form, is so hard to come by (I read that somewhere and it looks to be correct).

We ate at home, going through the fridge and using up all the spare stuff, then went out into the dark to see the humungous frogs on the little pond next to us that were making the most awful din.

Tomorrow we travel again, this time to Tennessee and the Misty River Campground on the edge of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. It's Dolly Parton country and is as touristy as it is beautiful. It's also less than 300 miles so we get a lie in! More tomorrow folks.