Off the Grid, or at Least Off the Interstate - First full day

The first full day*
Having packed Wednesday night, I was able to get up this morning and go! I hugged Stacy and promised to be safe, petted the cats goodbye (they did a good job hiding their heartbreak) and hit the open road!

And I drove all the way to Panera Bread, 5 miles down 288, where we were holding our weekly-but-more-like-biweekly-if-that-means-every-other-week family breakfast-sometimes-lunch-occasionally-dinner-but-most-often-breakfast-these-days – my mom and siblings Kathy, Ken and special guest Linda who was in town for work. The meal was fun as always – mom and dad did an amazing job creating a family where the siblings are also all best friends.

But soon the moment had arrived: I had to go to the bathroom.

If you know what I mean.

And that was my first realization that spending any time on the road means ALWAYS being alert to available (preferably well-kept) facilities, which you must ALWAYS consider in light of how long it might be until you found the next facility.

Over the course of the trip, I became as alert to available bathrooms as a lion is to prey, and sometimes pretty questionable prey at that. I learned a beggar can’t choose and, honestly, I think my decreasing aversion to increasingly gross facilities was my biggest area of personal growth during my walkabout.

In any case, I was in a PANERA BREAD, so no issues.

Then, after hugging the family goodbye, I was back on the road!

The first leg of the trip was to Franklin, N.C., 400 miles southeast, where my good friends Morgan and Melonie Stewart live in a beautiful home so high up on a hill that at night you can watch the satellites zip by below.

Fig. A: HIGH in the mountains of North Carolina

I spent most of the morning in phone meetings as I drove down Rt. 360 to Danville, then south on Rt. 29 into North Carolina to Greensboro. As morning turned into afternoon, I rode 40 west, well north of Charlotte, past Asheville (I could smell the patchouli as I went through), then onto Rt. 74 west past the Eastern Cherokee Reservation then south onto Rt. 28 into Franklin. [Retroactive note: As I mentioned, I took this trip last year, so this was before the heartbreaking devastation of Hurricane Helene.]

In the map further along on this page, you can see that Franklin is so far down in the southwest corner of the state that the “North” in North Carolina is actually ironic. It’s in the state constitution. Look it up.

My road trip philosophy is simple: avoid interstates as much as possible, opt for smaller roads over bigger ones, and always take the business route through a town instead of the bypass. Google Maps is by far better than Waze for this sort of driving – I’ve had Google give me options for roads so small they had grass growing between the dirt tire tracks, crossing farm fields and occasionally ending deep in the woods in front of a new gate blocking through traffic. More than once I’ve had to drive backwards up a dirt path a quarter mile because there was no room to turn around.

But as much as I look forward to taking the back roads… once I’m in the car, I find myself fighting the urge to JUST GET THERE.

It’s a two-way no-win situation. I feel guilty for “wasting” time by taking the scenic route. But if I take the interstate, I feel guilty for not stopping to smell the Rose’s Discount Stores that inhabit so many little towns’ historic districts.

If guilt had physical volume, I’d need a way bigger car than my Pilot; but that’s the beauty of guilt: it folds up nice and compact, fits in your pocket or at least in your head, and goes everywhere. EVERYwhere.

Fig. B: First leg - no interstates, no cornfields, no problem…

I was also happy to get to stay with Morgan and Melonie. I told my brother-in-law Lee that I expected I would get tired of myself pretty quick on this trip. He responded with a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

Yeah, well, solitude might be nice but being locked up in a car with just this idiot for the next 10 days would drive Thoreau to civilization.

Fortunately, I got to spend the evening with these two wonderful people, enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal, and got a great night’s sleep.

Fig. C: M&M

Tomorrow night, the car camping begins, in a remote set of woods, behind a little house, next to a private airstrip, somewhere near Richlands, Ga. All of those words are true.


* Moment of Truthiness: I’m already back from my walkabout. In fact, it occurred LAST January about this time. I was going to post about it after the trip, but I sort of ran out of steam. So now I’m going to pretend I’m posting about my walkabout real-time, just like a reality show pretends to be reality.

Take the whole trip! I’ll even cover the gas!

TravelChuckTravel, Georgia, Blue Ridge4 Comments