Heading to North Carolina

We left Stone Mountain and drove to Talona Creek Campground north of Jasper, GA. That drive included a stop at the Chewning house in Buckhead to deliver Easter goodies. This side trip was our first attempt at driving our rig through a residence area. A little planning, knowledge of the area, and lots of left turns made the trip easier than expected.

We spent the next day doing local chores like haircut, grocery shopping, laundry (thanks, Nancy!), and a trip to our storage building. Lydia spent a hour or so visiting with Leanne and the evening closed with a very nice dinner and great conversation at the home of our Bent Tree friends, Randy and Barbara Wise. Thanks, guys! It was so much fun to see some of the “old gang”, but we missed being with everyone.  Maybe next time we’ll be able to stay for a longer visit.

On Friday we packed up again and headed for North Carolina. A projected 150 mile, 3 hour trip became 170 miles and 5 hours through the mountains and our worse mileage to date. We discovered later that we picked to most difficult route to the Cradle of Forestry campground. But the drive was beautiful – along the river and through breathtaking forest and mountain vistas. However, we’ll try a different route as long as we’re pulling the rig.

We arrived at our new home about 3:30pm and began our setup. Almost immediately we had visits from our new campground neighbors. What a great group of folks! The bad news for the day was not the drive but that our cell phones do not work here and neither does our Virgin Mobile wireless broadband.  Yikes!!! Now what?  After several trips up and down the mountain (25 miles round trip) we thought we’d solved the problem by buying a Verizon phone. Our campground is at 3200 feet surrounded by 4000+ foot mountains and the only service is Verizon.

Lydia helped to organize an Easter Sunday pot luck brunch and we gathered at the volunteer activity center.  It was a great way to meet the other volunteers camping here. The evening ended sharing a campfire with our new neighbors, Bill and Jan. More about all of the volunteers later. Tomorrow we begin our training. ‘Til next time ….