Moochdocking Tennessee

In less than three weeks I hope we will find ourselves crossing the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo on the Columbia bridge into the state of Nuevo León in the United States of Mexico. Right now we are parked in the middle of the Volunteer State about as far from a Mexican state of mind as it’s possible to be.  

Variety is the spice of life right? Well here it is about as various and spiced as it can be. Here today, in a friend’s driveway and there tomorrow, in a Pemex truck stop in the highlands of the Sierra Madre. Golly, I hope we are ready. 

GANNET2 is as ready as possible though Rusty is greatly enjoying Barbara’s sewing room for some peace and quiet.  This morning he saw off a full sized white tailed deer though with much caution as they are twice as large as the Key deer he was used to. 

As usual he refused to pose for a picture so I cursed him for seven generations and then gave him a chicken strip, his favorite treat and not found in Costco Mexico so you can imagine what he thinks of Latin America.

While I was having lunch with Webb in Chicago Layne left rusty at home with her cousin for a couple of hours. Apparently he howled, inconsolable the entire time. So as Layne puts it he likes being in a home but he’d rather be on the road with us. 

I of course enjoyed the drive down the mountains to I-40 towards Knoxville and then west over the Blue Ridge mountains past Asheville and even though the boss decreed we take the freeway and not the Maggie Valley backroads the scenery was still splendid. 

There were quantities of traffic of course in and around the cities as we made our way toward Nashville though we did take pleasure in gaining an hour as we moved back into central time after we passed the Oak Ridge secret government facility handily signposted on the freeway offering tours to the public. That one’s going on my list. 

So here’s a lesson in offering to let us moochdock at your place. 

First: expect a pile of parcels to land at your door before we arrive.  Two: access to hot showers. Three: laundry facilities would help. A trash can and a water hose are nice and if the weather is extreme, access to a household plug would be nice to keep warm or cool if sleeping aboard.  We are happy to sleep in the van if your neighbors won’t start creating. 

You have been warned! We have a moochdock planned in Pensacola, an Airbnb in New Orleans and a campground in Houston on our way west so there is some variety in our next three weeks. Texas has no public lands so wild camping is not possible but they do have a lot of rest stops for travelers. 

I can’t say I miss living in one place and reading of one hundred degree waters in the Keys was not encouraging. I had my eye on St Petersburg as a place to settle down eventually but I’ve had enough of Category Four hurricanes, rapid intensification and non existent winters. That’s a bit too much repetition for me. Fires and drought and flooding and burning hot summers.

We did well this summer traveling at high altitude but our comfort was pretty cold when looking at the country as a whole. I wonder what we’ll see traveling south. 

Walking Celo

I’m not sure if it feels like summer or if it actually is summer at my wife’s sister’s place in the woods outside Asheville. We saw some signs of changing leaves in West Virginia but none here. 

Rusty and I went walking with Geeta and Bob first thing. I apparently have made a name as a walker in the thirty years I have been visiting so off we went.

There are ponds and streams and the Toe River with swimming holes and rapids and spots where Bob can sit up to his chest in invigorating mountain water. 

Celo community has increased the number of families seeking rural peace and quiet during and since the Covid epidemic and this is the sort of place where passersby wave and some children play unsupervised. 

The forest is cool and damp but it’s t-shirt weather in the shadow of Mount Mitchell the highest point east of the Mississippi. 

In Celo incomers have to apply to join the community which in the spirit of the Quaker founders has to reach consensus on the application. Neighbors know neighbors and Geeta is aware of which residents don’t like people walking through their yards. And which don’t mind. 

I have got lost here as the trails look alike and wind for miles through rhododendron forests deep in the middle of nowhere. It used to be cellphone signals didn’t penetrate but now they do and I take my phone if I plan to visit parts not known to me. I can read the map on my phone as well as I used to read paper maps. 

Rusty’s pretty good at finding his way home. His first visit was his first time out of the tropics and he stayed in the house listening to the lifters  crunching and the red leaves falling and he was scared. Now he’s an old hand. 

He doesn’t swim but he likes to rinse off in a fresh water stream from time to time and then take off running through the woods leaving me to pick my way, which I do slowly, stopping to look at the light and the trees and the plants as we go. 

West Asheville

I get sucked into camping spots far too easily. I could have stayed several more days parked next to the north fork of the Cherry River, lost in the middle of West Virginia. 

But we have what I consider a punishing pace of places to go and people to visit as our time in the US is running out. The first of October should find us trundling across Nuevo León state in Mexico if the stars align as we hope. And you can’t go abroad without seeing The Family one more time. So here we are.  

We left near noon and arrived around six and I took one toilet break while the van took one gas stop ($3:60 for regular). Layne made sandwiches in the back for lunch and we pressed on. Rusty laid on his pillow the picture of irritation at being swept away from another excellent grass patch. 

I enjoyed the winding roads, the asphalt track through narrow valleys, and these odd little red sentry boxes along the roads. I forgot my camera was in black and white mode unfortunately but these one person outhouses sat alongside the roads through the valleys. I thought perhaps they are bus stops but whatever they are we never actually saw anyone using them. 

Most of the day was an assortment of four  lane  highways,  including  free interstates, toll interstates and Federal Highway 19 winding awkwardly through valleys, around ridges and under mountains with a couple of tunnels included for good measure.  

I find myself wondering why people keep pushing belief. In the fullness of time we shall all find out what’s next, if anything, and we shall have to cope just as we have to manage right here and now. I find the thought of death invigorating as it pushes me to get things done like driving to Patagonia before I lose the ability. 

Decrepitude is all around, time passes. 

But the mountains abide! And they look good as one approaches the Blue Ridge. 

I-26 to Asheville through the Tennessee countryside up to the summit and the state line. 

And then the moochdock, a driveway, laundry services, hot showers, conversation. 

And a happy dog, that homebody Rusty who Esther be in a house than a van I think. 

Monongahela National Forest

If you listen real hard to rumor mongers they’ll tell you there is no free camping, wild camping, or boondocking, whatever you want to call it, east of the Mississippi.

They are wrong and no surprise there I suppose as what some people equate to “difficult” for others comes out as “impossible.”  But if ye seek ye shall find as the good book has been insisting for thousands of years. It’s good advice as free camping is simple when you know where to look. On Google Maps the dark patches of green are often a hint indicating public land of some sort. 

Another app I use is Free Roam which doesn’t show many boondocking spots individually like iOverlander, but it does show rest areas which we sleep at very often when traveling, and it also has green and brown overlays for National Forest and Bureau of Land Management land respectively. 

And you can imagine when we finally figure out the spot Rusty gives it his seal of approval.  

Our back up camera had started acting up shortly after we got going due south, so Layne called Kip the Promaster guru back in Barberton and we ended up returning three hours for a quick lesson in radio removal from the dashboard. It’s actually quite simple prodding a spike into four holes to release the retaining clips. 

I’ve ordered a lightly used replacement on eBay for a hundred bucks and it’s scheduled to arrive at Gary’s place in Tennessee next week just to cheer him up because he likes being kind and helpful. I’m hoping a replacement will solve the problem and get us through South America with a functioning back up camera and radio. If we were staying in the US I’d just put up with the glitch till the whole thing implodes. The cost of stupidly ambitious travel! 

Meanwhile we arrived a day late at “our” spot in the national forest and thus will only get to spend one night here but we are making the most of it. 

Hot tea, sunshine, cool temperatures and my eReader. I’m as easy to please in my own way as is Rusty. Layne has been cooking up some road food and in the background we have some traffic noise from state highway 39. We’re parked on the North Fork of the Cherry River so that’s also the local name for the highway. It’s a pretty stream too at this time of year. 

I guess at other times of year it can get boisterous.

There are only three spots here but up the road iOverlander shows a forest road with several boondocking spots. We are out of season so we didn’t expect to find this place full but if it hadn’t worked out for any reason we’d have driven a couple of miles further for more choices. Back up plans are important when living and sleeping on the road! The town of Richwood:

And what roads these are in West Virginia…I-79 towards Charleston:

State Highway 39 is getting paved bit by bit so the highway tar snakes which are ribbed and extremely annoying are slowly getting covered over:

West Virginia was created by the Civil War when the western piece of the state composed of hills and valleys wanted to separate from the land owning more populated side. Happily for their leaders this plan coincided with the President’s need to keep the confederacy away from his capital so the deed was completed in two years, by June 1863. 

I think about that sleight of political hand when I drive through this beautiful but impoverished state. I am reassured when I look at the state of the contemporary nation and remember that some pretty weird shenanigans have gone down in history and the union has survived. 

The constitution requires the residents of any state to vote to split their entity and I guess in the middle of the civil war when most of the state didn’t recognize Federal authority it must have been easy to get a majority vote from those that did! 

I see grumbly residents of remote Northern California pushing for the creation of “Jefferson State” but I can’t imagine the population of say Los Angeles voting to let them go. Ownership of territory is a weird thing and people get real fussy real fast about it.

I don’t suppose West Virginia would rush to vote itself back into prosperous Virginia but when I look around I see poverty that reminds me of Belize or Chiapas and I wonder where that pride of place comes from, speaking as a nomad. The state motto is mountaineers are always free and I guess that must ring true. Not wealthy necessarily but free and freedom is a catchphrase that means everything and requires no explanation, I’m told. 

All that aside West Virginia is stunning. After a few miles of winding mountain roads through perfect lush greenery she remarked on the astonishing diversity of the countryside we’ve seen. Can’t fault her on that observation! 

It isn’t our first visit to the Mountain State but each time we see more we like. And Rusty does too. 

Trucks roll by close to our camp site but somehow they don’t bother us. The peace of the mountains forgives all sins. 

Just as well really as there’s a church hiding behind each and every tree. 

It’s not the south properly but it is the country.  Men went to war to make this state free 160 years ago so I guess it’s up to us to show our appreciation by not forgetting and enjoying what they left behind. 

We’ve done our best. 

Too bad we have to rush off to do some moochdocking in Asheville with the family. I can’t wait to come back.