Anyone who reads this blogs knows that I took a road trip last week with a friend and two teens. It was an old school road trip with many stops and lots of driving. My trip meter reset near Baltimore when it reach 2000 miles, so my guess is we came in around 2250.
It was also a budget trip. It's summer and I'm barely working. I shouldn't be spending money on travel. We planned both free and paid activities. Though I must admit that paying for national parks/sites is odd. As a child, one reason why we used national parks is because they were free.
One goal I had was to make it as eco-friendly as possible. I failed miserably. Why? We didn't have a single to-go meal. (Oh wait, we went to Subway at the truck stop.) Yet the bulk of our meals were served in styrofoam takeout containers or on/in foam plates and cups. Even at the hotels. The south must be drowning in styrofoam. Plastic flatware as well.
We bought little water. I filled three 2-liter bottles with water and froze them. We had water for 2.5 days. Then we bought some water at the dollar store and froze the small bottles over and over so that they fit in the freezer compartment of our rooms. We mostly drank from the cooler and filled water bottles, filling our bottle with ice before leaving the hotel. Next time I'll be sure to take freezer size bottles to make ice.
Except at rest stops and the Publix market I didn't see any recycle bins. Not even at the hotels.
On television they show kids glued to devices and screens. Not our kids. Sure they were on their phones a little but they also played games, took silly quizzes, played "would you rather", read, scrapbooked, sang and other old school activities. They thought the "alphabet" and "licence plate" games were fun. The later being challenging since Virgina and Maryland have about 25 plates between them. Though my neice was writing all the states down, Angel found an app. Actually there are many for most of these games, including one for "Hang Man". But the goal was to unplug.
The girls are fish. It was hot. The first stop at nearly every hotel was the pool. All were outside. One was crowded, one had one other group, and the last one was just us. I did not swim. As you all know I don't even own a suit. The girl's were puzzled.
On the way down the girls wanted Dairy Queen. There is one at nearly every exit. We told them we would get it at a local joint in Savannah. Leopold's was it. Best. Ice cream. Ever.
About 85% of our meals were local. Angel had a Trip Advisor App and she'd find places like Chicken Licken, a double wide trailer that had seen better days behind two gas stations. Yep. I'm pretty sure it would make an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. They dropped our chicken after we placed our order. No heat lamps. We waited about 30 minutes for our food and it was worth it. There was minimal grease.
We also tried local beverages. I don't have a picture of Tybee Lighthouse, Angel's beer choice. The Cheerwine tasted like A-treat Cream soda. Angel thought it tasted like Dr. Pepper.
We tried NC BBQ. This restaurant was a buffet so the girls tried most southern cuisine -- several BBQs, collards, okra, some sort of stew ... you get the idea, in one stop. I think I'm a Memphis BBQ kind of girl.
Angel also found Grandpa's Kitchen on the app. Food was delicious and served with a side of religion.
We stopped three times for fast food. Once was at this Cook-Out, a North Carolina chain. Angel's colleagues told her she must stop. (Also on Angel's food bucket list was Waffle House and IHOP.) If you like fried food it's a good stop. The chicken is way better than KFC. We also had the hoagies from the truck stop and salads at a Wendy's. The food choices were extremely limited in some areas.
Angel had two apps for finding cheap hotels/motels. One was Trip Advisor and the other Hotel Tonight. She saved us poop-loads of money.
Both girls had birthdays while we were gone.
On day two we left the highway to go to the bird santuary. And I noticed something very odd. All the trees were the same size. A half-mile, big, then a bunch of medium, then a bunch of small. Some forests had groups of trees mixes together, but planted like corn. Close together, with many rows of the same thing. Same species were together. It was so noticable we started talking about it. Forests don't grow this way. Then we saw a sign that said "logging trucks entering road". Then a whole section clear cut. It was then I had my aha moment. These are sustainable forests. Trees planted, harvested and replanted for making lumber and paper. The santuary was closed, but when we went past the cleared area a week later, seedling were planted. The ground doesn't stay bare for long. This scenario played out over and over in North Carolina.
While I was helping hoist the flag at Ft. McHenry I felt proud to be an American, if but for only 30 seconds politics vanished. Concern about stupid policies and ignorance also vanished. It was simply a rush of pride.
But it was no all was not sunshine and roses. The girls were great 95% of the time, but they were together 24/7 for a week. By the end of the week they were acting like sisters.
We had three near-misses with the car. The first was barely two hours into the trip on 95. Someone cut off the guy in front of me and he slammed on the brakes and so did I. Thankfully traffic wasn't heavy and we were all spread out. The second one I can't even remember. The third one could have been horrible. The person coming toward us decided to make a left hand turn and I don't even think he stopped to look. I slammed on the brakes and lost control for a second, and skidded to a stop BEFORE t-boning him. I don't know how fast I was going, so I don't know if I was speeding. It was a country road, but straight, and I tend to get a lead food on straight roads. I was trying to obey the speed limits the whole trip because there were other people in the car and checked my odometer frequently. (And the cops were out in full-force!) My niece was in charge of yelling out the speed limits when she saw signs. That's the near-miss that will haunt me.
2 comments:
What a great summary! All of our hotels came off hotel tonight. Most of the restaurants were found on google maps and I used yelp to find out more. And Trip Advisor to tell me what was available in the area
I just went back and added about the sustained forests. I remembered when I was cutting the grass.
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