Stay Frosty

I have long been an early riser, partly because of work and partly also because I enjoy being up early while the world sleeps but these days I am loathe to get out of bed at all. I took the photo below at ten in the morning on Friday, our last morning at the winery harvest host shortly after we got out of bed.

We ran the engine for fifteen minutes until the interior of the van was warm enough to feel like a sauna and then got dressed and I ventured out with the ever impatient hound. Our machinery said it was 28 degrees, four degrees below freezing and the coldest we had ever had the van in, so it was all new.

It was new for Rusty too, who seemed utterly unfazed by the temperature or the crispy white grass. I will say he is just like us and is utterly disinclined to get up early on these cold mornings. He stays curled up on a corner of our bed snoring happily and apparently not the least bit cold. I have tried to put a blanket over him and he gives me a pained look before shaking it off. I guess despite his south Florida upbringing he is a wild dog all the way, any climate anywhere.

We walked for a while and I made some pictures because, let's face it, this is the new and different world I left the Keys to see and photograph. My dog walking through white stuff.

Just another morning hunt for interesting smells for the Carolina Dog in the family. Apparently this non breed of arcane American bloodline lives in the wilds of South Carolina and I have no idea how cold the wild packs of Carolina Dogs have to survive but my dog was quite happy to sit out on the gravel and watch the late morning develop.

He looked at home in the woods above the winery but don't be fooled. He prowled around a short bit and decided he wasn't interested and preferred breakfast among humans.

I had my tea, Layne had her chai, Rusty had his chicken strip and then we left the winery, Midnight Magdalena in Yadkin Valley.

 I drove Layne into Jonesville and dropped her off at her sister's Hampton Inn where she went to the gym. Rusty and I had other plans.

We went to Elkin, a pretty little town next door to Jonesville where I planned to walk Rusty through downtown but as I drove across the bridge toward the urban area I saw evocative mists rising off the waters and a sign pointing to a riverside park. Oh well, change of plans: let’s go there instead! 

The park was of course empty at that hour on a weekday in the cold crisp winter sun. I am of the opinion that winter travel in the eastern states may be cold but public spaces sure are under populated, a compensation of sorts. the grassy area below is designated a tent camping area, one night only and as far as I could tell it's free. Pretty decent of the town, and the business district is but a five minute walk away.

The Main Street was my original destination because we had visited it briefly the night before while getting dinner from Southern on Main, a restaurant with a deserved stellar reputation. However the park the next morning  kept us away from Main Street by daylight. 

I drove with brother-in-law Bob in their Prius to get dinner which Layne and I were paying for in Elkin. I told Bob to get the food and handed him an American Express and just in case a Visa card, if they didn't take AmEx. They did and two large dinners cost just $33 which was amazing for someone from Key West. Beat that Square Grouper!

The problem I later discovered was that by removing two cards from the holder on the back of my phone when I used the phone as a camera the remaining two cards were so loose as to slip out onto the sidewalk roughly where Rusty is standing in the picture above...I didn't notice at the time. My First State Bank debit card and my driver license with my new mailing address were left lying on the ground nearly an hour I'd say.

Anyway Rusty and I went on our merry unaware way and enjoyed this very pretty very quiet (Thank God!) town and I snapped a few quick frozen pictures. The old Tribune newspaper building above.

On we went enjoying the cool night air and left over Halloween decorations.

I like Elkin a great deal one way and another and of my photographs are a bit scattered I can only blame my frigid fingers for a less than decent job of capturing the old fashioned and beautifully kept downtown.

Small town America, I want to get my medications here not at a chain:

Bob the Bandit hauling away our crab bisque and fried trout and all the rest of it:

When we got back to the hotel and aid out the feast I put the cards back in my phone holder and of course the others were missing. I went downstairs to check the car and found nothing so impulsively I jumped in the Prius and gave myself a five second class in learning how to drive a hybrid.

Starting it was confusing as pressing the button got no sound at all and then I realized the little live action drawing of a car driving over a hill was the message that we were live. The gear box was a weird little stump with some side action required to get the thing in gear and off we went. I object to being told how to drive by a machine as I've been doing it long enough for me to make my own mind up how I want to drive. This thing fires off statistics and beeping noises like nobody's business but it got me back to Elkin rapidly enough. The glint of plastic on sidewalk showed me where I was as lucky as I ever deserved to be and I got back in the yelping Toyota and sped back to my congealing yet excellent dinner.

Back to the park where Rusty and I walked and wandered along the riverbank. I have a feeling if I took hormone pellets, whatever they are, something dire might take place but I'm not exactly sure what. The faces on the billboard were smiling though so perhaps I am overly cautious.

On the road with no deadlines I find these spots to be gifts. An hour spent here with my dog for company was as good a way to start a frosty day as any I can think of.

I had work to do so I wrote an entry for this page sitting at my van desk then I emptied my portable potty into the public toilet in the blue building. That was quick clean and easy as the toilet tank comes with a discreet bag carrier I carried over my shoulder. Then I emptied our tiny trash can, swept the van and was ready to be recalled to family duties.

The call came too soon for Rusty or I and it was time to go make conversation eat cheese ands a little wine. We could have hung out all afternoon in this quiet unobtrusive spot. We made in a winery later:

Pilot Mountain

We left the home parked at the winery by prior agreement between my sister-in-law and the winery with whom she has  a more than passing acquaintance. Instead we took a day long ride in their Toyota Prius a vehicle in which I have never previously spent a day riding around aboard so it was an instructive day. Our target was the rocky pimple you see below called Pilot Mountain.

Before the mountain there was the river to cross, a river of wine in this case. Yadkin Valley is home to numerous wineries many of them advertised alongside the freeways that cross the area. The notion that wine can only be produced in California, Oregon and Washington  is long out of date and we have stopped by vineyards in Texas, Vermont, and New York and places I can't even remember off the top of my head.

Geeta and Bob are avid oenophiles and they study the form like baseball addicts. Like most things in my life I know what I like even if I'm not sure why and with wine, or beer, I seek out that which makes me happy. A puckered tongue, a bitter taste or similar does nothing for me. I know how to do the wine tasting nonsense of swirling and looking for legs and measuring sugar and all that stuff. In the end it's the taste that works for me.

After all that talk about plonk much of which actually tasted really good, we moved on to the main event which was lunch at the winery's restaurant. Lucky I was not to be driving as we had a bottle of white to deal with alongside the rather delicious food. Crab dip:

The fussier members of the team wondered why it was served with tortilla chips but I was too busy shoveling to worry about such niceties. It was excellent. My main course looked like this:

A delicious salad on top with a spicy oil and vinegar dressing and chunks of beef underneath with mushroom risotto at the bottom. It was   a really good lunch and I scraped the plate. Geeta and Bob belong to the denial brigade modestly averting their eyes from the dessert menu but Layne and I were made of sterner stuff and ordered four spoons with chocolate brownies and a lemon cake. Guess what? Even the deniers dug in.

Then the serious business of going for a walk. Check out these woods which have delayed changing color this year expressly to celebrate our retirement. Ask me later if I miss work or wish I could answer just one more 911 call.

The parking lot at Pilot Mountain had the usual smart aleck remarks on signboards everywhere for the less bright among us. I told Rusty it was lucky they had put this sign here else he would have gone overboard but he ignored me and declined to give me the subservience to which I am not accustomed.

Bob, stuffed full of fried goat cheese salad and brownie looked over the side and remarked it didn't look the least bit like the Bordeaux wine growing region of France, his latest craze, which was such a non sequitur I asked if it vaguely resembled Mexico? As usual my joke missed the mark. Mexico is next on my list of places to visit, where incidentally they also grow wine. We shall taste it and pronounce on its oak in the nose and sugar content, or something.

The mountain is 2400 feet tall and climbers like to haul themselves up the Knob, a rather rude nickname for the big pinnacle. Ordinary people  who fear falling off cliffs get to stumble unhandily up to the smaller pinnacle and admire the rugged emptiness of the big Knob covered with trees and apparently highly attractive to turkey vultures.

The colors are nice on the little pinnacle and the views splendid whatever they lack compared to Bordeaux.

My wingspan is five foot six with arms splayed so not too well do I compare especially as I have to walk everywhere.

Walking around here is actually a tad bit tricky if you aren't Rusty who leaped like the proverbial mountain goat. The trail is a winding path through rock formations which create natural steps which unfortunately aren't accurately measured to take into account the average length of the human stride.

The result is a walk that is half scramble, half shuffle and always looking where you put your feet as the surface is never flat and smooth, at least it wasn't where I followed Rusty's leash.

I was relieved to see some few people found love here. Apparently it was a place occupied by the unknown-to-me Saura Indian tribe before the rest of the world dropped in. They are a confusing bunch as they are most commonly known as Cheraw and they had their first contact with Hernando de Soto in 1540. He was the explorer who landed in Bradenton more or less, near Tampa and created his own brand of havoc thereafter. Wikipedia says the Saura/Cheraw have essentially been wiped out which may explain why I've never heard of them. They are now reduced to the status of "remnant people" which sounds desperately sad. 

The little pinnacle was filled with people and I was reminded how when Americans look at a dog they wonder about the breed for reasons not known to me. Even more mysterious are Mexicans who want to know the gender. Apparently dog penises are invisible to them. Anyway the answer is "Macho" for male (and you thought it meant something else), and "Embra" for female (which you also thought in English meant something else). If they are going to get personal with Rusty I add they he lacks balls (falta las pelotas) so they know the full story. Rusty doesn't seem to mind. He'd better get used to it where we're going. The other question they ask is if he's "bravo" which in Italian means good. In Spanish it means fierce which has led to some amusing (to me) misunderstandings as Mexicans leapt for the lamp posts when I smiled and said yes, he is fierce. Oops.

The scraggly trees in the distance marked the Knob (not Rusty's). It looked a rather arid destination to climb  but climbers are weird.

In places not known to him Rusty is not of the explorer caliber of Hernan de Soto and prefers to stick close to the known and familiar. Me? I'm ready to wander off down any old trail but he prefers parking lots, outhouses and dumpsters. Lucky me.

They even have a kids program along one trail which I figured couldn't be too arduous for my outdoor dog but he declined and sat on the spot just like Track, until I gave up.

Then we did some people watching. Very companionable. A pretty good day and we had frost to investigate for the first time the next morning. Oh and I dropped my driver's license in Elkin. The day was not over...

Crossing The Carolinas

I have to confess I should have got up when I woke up yesterday and sat like a disciplined little essayist at my desk aboard GANNET2 and started typing. Instead I pulled the bed clothes up a little tighter to my chin and stayed where I was warm.  Rusty, the 5 am alarm clock wasn’t going anywhere, he stayed curled up next to me, if not sleeping then pretending total exhaustion.

We left the campground mid morning and took off for a winery some four hours away in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, the wine growing equivalent to the Napa Valley. To get there we started out avoiding freeways and taking South Carolina backroads to Gaffney home to a truck stop. Exciting eh? Everyone in vans  loves gyms and truck stops for a reason as we shall see. 

On the way we came across a traffic jam. Chaos.  Well, not really, as everyone kept their heads and figured out what to do as they waited for the tow truck…No cops, no flags no stress. The Prime truck had tried to take the corner and failed as it was just too tight and his trailer tires slipped into the ditch and would only come out with help. The logging trucks took turns with oncoming traffic one by one and when our turn came we followed the blue Google line to the right and off we went.  Five minute delay. Easy. The no stress accident. 

Why the truck stop? Because it was 55 degrees out and no way were we deploying the solar shower! For thirteen dollars we shared a shower and it was excellent.  The shower was clean the towels were thick and fluffy and now you know why we enjoy showering on the road with truckers. Anyone is welcome to use them no matter what you drive.  Gyms aren’t good for us yet as long as Layne has auto-immune issues in the pandemic but gym showers are another popular way to stay clean when wipes have outlived their cleanliness. That hot shower feeling!

After the Pilot truck stop we took I-77 past Charlotte to the Yadkin Valley and the winery selected by my sister-in-law.  It was perfect, a building on a hill with a gorgeous view to the Blue Ridge mountains to the north, no neighbors, clear skies and silence. 

A weekday parking spot just for us and the offer of two nights at what is in reality a harvest host stop. We had a wine tasting, then bought some wine. The place was ours for the night.

Rusty was free to wander at will and he did, nose down crossing the fields with me in distant attendance. Full sized white tailed deer popped out of the woods to graze at dusk and he watched  in fascination.

The deer are a problem for anyone growing what they view as food so the winery uses electric fences which Rusty seemed to recognize as he avoided it without getting a shock much to my relief.

For some reason the fall foliage is holding on later than usual this year according to our relatives and the colors are superb.

We broke out our puffy jackets.  We have a few days in North Carolina then we drive north to Rock Island and Chicago where temperatures are supposed to be what they are now here. The next test is our electric heater which we will try out and report back.  Our bed is warm and comfortable and made by RV Superbag, a kind of well built sleeping back with proper sheets. The van is well insulated so with fifteen minutes of engine heater we have a livable environment when it’s 40 degrees outside with our windows sealed with insulated covers. It’s actually quite snug. Rusty sleeps comfortably judging by the snores.

My in laws brought chicken to their hotel room and took us to a drive through for fries at McDonalds. This probably doesn’t sound so very radical to you but you have to understand my sister in law and her husband have followed an alternative path through life being annoyingly woke before woke was a phrase in common use. Age brings wisdom and who doesn’t like fries with that? I sure do as did the other old age pensioners in the Prius. I would never have believed it but here’s Bob, proof positive he was in line at a major corporate fast food restaurant overcoming a lifetime of rejection of fast food. 

Dinner was delicious and I scarfed my fries with chicken and wine and got a ride back to the winery for the night. This was where we did the tasting, ate cheese and crackers and caught up with the winemaker in attendance. It was all very decadent. I said to Layne “How long have we been on the road?” Nine days she said. “Oh,” I said, “about half a usual vacation…”  Imagine that and here we are, still going strong!

Wine tasting without driving.  Excellent retirement practice, and I recommend it. Cold yes but out of season means not many people. Thumbs up and bring your puffy jacket as you’ll need it.