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Published: March 15th 2011
Written by Rachel and Ken
Sunday – Left at Noon – drove to Virginia (which I hear is for Lovers.) Rain, rain, and lots of traffic. Five hours of driving got us a whopping 200 miles. Stopped for a lovely little pizza shop, and taught the restaurant a new concept: eggplant pizza! Like eggplant…as a topping…on pizza. Crazy! (That’s what happens when people travel – culture spreads) Bought a half gallon of ice tea at wawa which really came in handy four or five days later. But wawa really doesn’t know sweet tea. I’m not sure anyone north of the mason-dixon line is licensed to say they really know sweet tea. It’s a southern thing; import some.
At some point on Sunday, Rachel successfully pumped gas for the first time. Thankfully, this was a task that did not need to be performed too often, thank you Prius!
Stopped in Petersburg, VA – a Quality Inn, and realized that hotels outside of Bos-Wash are darned cheap.
Monday morning – Breakfast, and Ken discovered breakfast meat. Some kind of sweet sausage thing, but it was surprisingly good. On the road, covered lots of miles, and those miles taught us one valuable lesson: we need more billboards. North of exit 97, it was all about “JR” – a junky retail mecca full of dolls, Christmas paraphernalia, jeans, and cigarettes, none of which was even partly assembled in the U S of A. I’m sure there’s a subtle connection between these items, but all we learned was that porcelain dolls can get scary, and that there’s a brand of jeans that fit Rachel quite well.
Oh, and one other thing – we asked the concierge service (staff spread around the many football-fields worth of store) where we should eat. They all said the same thing: Robbins Nest – with two b’s. I’m pretty sure the B’s stood for butter and fat. We were the youngest pard’ners in the joint except for the waitress. The food was excellent – burp! The buttermilk custard pie – well, Ken couldn’t finish his slice, it was that rich. Rachel, naturally, nommed without limits. We got through fried stuff, boiled fried stuff, fried fat. No seriously, you take the fat “fat back” off the pick, and fry it in…fat! There was salad, but what’s the point, really?
Drove for a while, and planned to camp at a lovely little park one of the Carolinas – not sure which one, ‘cause we couldn’t stop there anyway. The policy down south is not to trust campers to pay, but to padlock the gate and give registered campers the combination. We didn’t know this, showed up (nobody was answering the phone), and just stood looking at the gate for a while. Eventually, we asked a trucker who lived nearby, and when he didn’t know anything, we got back on the highway. As a consolation prize, decided to find a hotel with a hot tub. Much to our surprise, the only “hotel” at our exit with a hot tub was the KOA campgrounds. We pulled in and made camp around midnight. Hot bubbly water = totally worth setting up camp. All in all, a lovely campsite, although a bit like a mobile suburbia. We were perhaps the only tent. People don’t seem to see each other much anymore, as they’re all in their mega-campers watching Dish Network. In the morning, we skipped the Pizza, and went straight for the Jacuzzi. Which was.. cold. Brrr.. cold. Rachel is a trooper, and Ken is a wimp. This will be demonstrated multiple times throughout the vacation.
Breakfast was a gem – Waffle House! Go ahead and laugh – yes, we were excited by the excellent hole-in-the-farm franchise whose specialty resembles sneaker treads, but tastes waaay better. Nike Air’s got nothing on these babies. Yum! Waffles stuffed with Pecans. Three eggs and grits – mix ‘em up, and sssaauussaggge graaavvyyy bussskitttssss. The beverage section says “add vanilla or cherry to any beverage” so Ken (pain in the butt) orders vanilla coffee – after convincing the waitress he was serious, it turned out really tasty and refills were plentiful. The supporting lead was hashbrowns capped, topped, chopped, spread, and all sorts of other not-quite-double-entendres = actual translation – mushrooms, sautéed onions, and really good chili atop a big plate o’ shredded taters. So good, we had to repeat the feat – see Friday.
The Koa owner had a whole spiel on where we had to go. This included a little cider store which cider-ized everything they got their hands on. Peach cider, blueberry cider, strawberry cider, and some grape which the cashier said is the kind you find along the side of the road. They boil their peanuts, and these were really good. They fry peanuts in the shell! (don’t tell Robbins Nest) You eat the whole thing, including the shell. Not bad, really. We need more shell in our diets. Hey, Jerky! No, not you. Jerky, jerky. Every kind of jerky, except beef. Venison, alligator, duck, roadside squirrel(?). Bought some random stuff, and pressed on to destination number two: the ruins of Old Sheldon Church. Which were actually the ruins of a church build on top of the ruins of the original Church. Wash, rinse, repeat. It resembled a Christian western wall, although here men and women could enter together. In fact, but for the gravestones, it seems like a lovely place to have a wedding.
Then on to Beaufort, South Carolina (bee-yuuu-fort, as opposed to Bo-fort, which is in North Carolina) We got stuck in “traffic,” and pressed on to the campgrounds, so we wouldn’t get locked out again. Destination: Hunting Island State Park. Along the way, passed the Gay Fish Company, “It’s a philly thing”, and the Foolish Frog – proclaiming “live music tonite” – meaning we had to return after making camp. Checked in “late” at the campgrounds because they shut down the cash registers at like noon or something. This came back to haunt us, as they somehow couldn’t run the credit card until the next day – and yet again we were known as the folks that checked in late last night – in this case – 5:30pm.
Back to the Foolish Frog, which Ken wrongly estimated as a grungy bar. It turned out to be a very elegant restaurant, and the live music was outside. This seemed a curse, but turned out to be a blessing. We enjoyed a lovely dinner of calamari, mahi mahi, oysters, collard greens, fried okra, and the best part was a “lemon aioli” made from mayo, sour cream, lemon juice, lemon zest, and then went out to “hear” the music. I put “hear” in quotes because we both ended up playing right along. Ken was handed the reigns of a washtub bass, and Rachel brought out her Jaw Harp. Eventually, the Djembe came out. Yep, we packed that too! It was an awesome night for bluegrass, and they were amazed that us random folks could keep up with ‘em. Very friendly bunch.
Stopped by the Publix (grocery store) for hot dogs and gigantic marshmallows. We had a grand plan of building a fire and cooking out (after dinner, mind you) but we got back and hit the pillows lighting quick. So breakfast included marshmallow roasting.
Until now, the plan had been to make good time to Florida, but we were having fun and moving slower than planned, mostly because of the initial rains. So Wednesday morning, we decided that Florida, for various reasons, was not worth the sprint. We committed to one more night at this lovely beach campgrounds and had a lazy day on the beach, almost took a hike, and burned more stuff. As we were heading for the hike, we noticed an incoming line of red on the radar animation, and raced back to our campsite for one last fire and and to watch the rain from our tent. Kaboom!
um... what?
Rachel, BTW, is an excellent fire-builder. Read that as you will, but unbelievably this was her first, second, and third camp-fires, ever! The girl’s got skills! Lookout Smokey, Rachel’s got your number.
Thankfully, the rain subsided before we awoke Thursday morning, and we packed up, burned more stuff, and hit the road to Savannah, GA. Our first (and only) real city stop!
We were advised to do two things in Savannah, check out River Street and take a SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) tour. Government signs on the highway directed us to the visitor center, so we followed them and pulled into the “Welcome Center,” which was deceptive as it was really only there to welcome you onto a trolley tour. However, it had some delicious pizza as well as chicken sandwiches that are apparently “the shizzle,” but to the fabulous seller’s disappointment, we only got the pizza. We never made it to the taxpayer-funded visitor center. After driving around unsuccessfully looking for the admissions office of SCAD, we asked a mailman who was very friendly, and knew exactly where the admissions office was, but it was the wrong location for the tour. After finding it and signing up for a tour, at which time Rachel had to pretend to be a prospective student, we wandered back to a Segway store that she had spotted. And by spotted, we mean “I swear, I saw it!” Three drives around a ½ mile radius, and Ken took over navigating, and led us right to it. Learning to ride these machines was quite nifty, though they were too pricey for a tour of the city. Interesting brand association with SCAD – the locals know and care that the university was created from dead buildings within the last 30 years – it’s part of the brand, possibly even credited with saving the city. The Segway lady offered specifically that they bought buildings for a dollar and fixed them up.
As mentioned by, well, everyone - SCAD took an old dying city, bought old buildings cheap and renovated them into a full university that spanned the whole city. Included were an old department store for the library and an old orthodox synagogue (that occasionally lets Jews back in to give talks) for the student center. It was interesting to see animators at work, what appeared to be a bicycle farm, and microwaves that turn off the refrigerator when they are running. (Rather like the effect when you learn a new word, and start noticing it everywhere, it turned out that every hotel we stayed in had this same microwave. Ha!) Rachel decided that SCAD must have discriminatory hiring practices; our tour guide was quite the pretty boy. However, he turned out to be a fairly unobservant pretty boy: at the end of the tour he directed Rachel to sit in a room and wait for an admissions counselor, and offered to tell her “dad” where to find her. Facepalm.
Orthodox synagogue -> SCAD student center
bicycle farm
After viewing the city from the bus, we decided to wander River Street. After finding the best (FREE!) parking spot by the water (without circling or anything!), we discovered we had wandered onto a tourist trap. The best find was a peanut store with a million samples; chocolate dipped peanut brittle and a peach marinade were the favorites. The open air market was fun to browse as well. Ever see one of those spinning metal art pieces that reflects light so it looks like repeated animation – imagine 100+ of them hung against the sunset – Ken's brain is still twitching.
Hungry and chilly, we decided to find some dinner. Rachel found a barbeque joint called Barnes Restaurants which was outside of the historic district, (read: out-of-town) but wound up being worth the short drive – the ribs were delicious. After dinner, Rachel wanted to see the “interactive water feature” mentioned on the tour. In searching for it, we heard some music, and discovered a 2 man band playing country tunes in a pedestrian square. After slow dancing to the music by the purty multicolored fountain, we wandered over to listen, and our 2 dollar tip garnered us 2 free CDs. We next discovered a basement bar with lots of board games, but decided not to stay and a spontaneous elevator trip took us to the back door of the Wild Wing Café, where a band was just setting up. The music was fun, so we stayed for a couple of hours, going deaf. A (presumably local regular) elderly gentleman wandered in, and was brought a chair and non-operational electric keyboard to play along with the band. It was very cute.
A short distance down 95 brought us to the Days Inn of Savannah (as opposed to the “Day Inn” of bumblefuck, which we skipped next day and carefully avoided), equipped with an indoor pool and communal, but empty, hot tub. The room had the interesting feature of the shower/tub in the bedroom itself… presumably so one could watch TV from the Jacuzzi, whose jets appeared to not have worked for a number of years. In the morning, after breakfast, we took advantage of the “real” hot tub, which did work (and was hot! Take that, KOA!).
YTF is the bathtub IN the bedroom?
Back on the road, we got hungry and went to our second Waffle House. Yes, we made it a destination. Our goal: get the same thing again. But our plans were trashed when the waitress clued us in on a secret: order an egg and cheese (or other similar breakfast combination) biscuit from the dollar menu, and pay just 35 cents for the addition of sausage gravy. Whereas one sausage gravy biscuit on the menu costs 1.60! So for 25 cents cheaper, you get…more food! Otherwise, we got the same food again, but strawberry waffle this time. Trust us: go for the pecan.
Our next stop had been advertised on the highway for at least 100 miles with a billboard every two…feet: SOB or South of the Border. Here was a smorgasboard of junk. Some edible, most not (and some we weren’t sure.) Tourist stores, fireworks, restaurants, minigolf, an amusement park, and a hotel – all satirical (I hope) “Mexican” themed. We tried on some crazy hats, bought some sparklers and a cool hot air balloon lantern, and Ken discovered the delicious heart attack which is a corn dog – on a stick!
After SOB, we hit the road again and got ourselves up to VA for the night. On the way, we stopped at a “Cook Out BBQ” which looked cute, but we were clearly foreigners as we didn’t realize it was a fast food chain. We must’ve seen signs for a dozen more as we drove north. The cashier was an awesomely friendly “dude” who strongly advised us against the BBQ – the not-so-specialty of the house. We are stubborn folks, we are. Ken agreed with the cashier, that it was kinda gross, while Rachel was pleased with it. Hey, different strokes for different fast food eaters. Oh, and the gift that kept on giving: a “Huge” Sweet Tea (as opposed to the only other choice – “large”). Well, that cup was more like a thermos bucket, and got refilled a half-dozen times and made it all the way back to Philly. Two insights learned about sweet tea culture: A) Styrofoam cups are good for cold beverages as they insulate and keep the tea cold longer, B) overbrew and oversweeten the tea and leave it at room temperature, and then add it to a cup full of ice when ready to drink - don’t forget to add the ice, or instead you’ll get sweeeeeeeeeeet tea.
We stayed in Emporia (is this the plural of Emporium?) in a Rodeway Inn. In the morning, we went to breakfast where Ken killed the waffle iron and we accidentally locked ourselves out of the room. After getting things sorted out, we hit the road for Colonial Williamsburg.
We got there with about two hours before everything shut down. We walked down the main drag, most of which is shops and things that you can’t get into without a ticket, which we did not have. However, we got lucky to catch a street re-enactment which included a trial, a love story, and an army recruitment for which Rachel volunteered Ken, and included a mini cannon. No, Rachel didn’t volunteer Ken for the cannon; I know you were thinking it! Ken had a lot of fun taking pictures at sunset (and at Rachel). For dinner we found a cute café and had delicious brie fondue. After dinner we went to a nifty harp concert in the church in Williamsburg. Rachel was really impressed that fifth graders were playing harps, and really enjoyed the last group which included guitar, fiddle, mandolin, flute, and tin whistle playing celtic music. Ken thought it was a beautiful sleep aid.
After the concert, we decided to cover the last leg of the trip to Philly. We stopped in DC to tour the FDR memorial, which was pretty, though unfortunately the water features were turned off, so Rachel will have to go see it again sometime. With the switch to DST, our trip was completed in Philadelphia at 4 AM. Crassssshhhhh!
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