Pennsylvania - South Carolina

Since we are traveling in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter; leg one of our journey took us south to some warmer weather in the southern US states. We spent the whole past weekend packing and saying goodbye to family members. On Monday, we finished packing our trailer, thankfully everything fit!, and went out to one last dinner with some friends at home. As we discussed how bad traffic would be around DC, I jokingly said "Chris, let's just leave tonight." He brushed it off and we continued the evening discussing plans and old jokes. When we were driving home from dinner, we were both feeling pretty amped so I went inside and began doing our final apartment cleaning while he straightened up some things on the truck setup. Chris came inside and said "wow, look at you cleaning everything, you really want to leave!" We spent the next hour and a half cleaning, loading up the last couple items, and boiling some eggs for the road. Somehow we pulled it off and left town before 11pm!

This portion of the drive took us down 95S to 85S. We drove through Pennsylvania in less than an hour, moved on the to Delaware, Maryland, DC, and Virginia. Once we got past Arlington, VA, we decided it was time to sleep for the night since we made it past the worst rush hour areas. We started looking for a rest stop and the first one we pulled into had NO spaces left to park in the truck/trailer area. Has anyone ever tried to park in those areas? It was surprising to us that it was full. Anyway, we went on for another 24 miles to the next rest stop and found just enough of a spot there for us to fit! There was an SUV with a tow dolley parked in the front of a spot and we just pulled in behind them, locked up, and went to sleep in the truck bed around 2am.

I woke up just before 7am and stumbled out of our set up to take myself and the dogs to go to the bathroom (separately). It was probably about 30 F outside so we all woke up real quick and I decided we could get back on the road. But breakfast first. Small disaster #1: I go into the trailer and find our rack of clothes pulled out of the wall and no surprise a bunch of other stuff had settled (read: fallen all over the place). I decide we can reorganize when we get to our next destination and go about finding my food to make some fuel for us. After some minor struggles, I get everything together and Chris gets up and sets up the camp stove to boil water for me. He walks away to check something out and I start making a matcha latte with all my hippie powders and spices. I left my cup with all this good stuff by the stove while the water was still heating and begin putting away some of the things I had pulled out. After shutting the truck door, I hear a terrible shattering noise! Small disaster #2: Looked back at the stove and see my cup (tea, spices, and all, had fallen to the ground and shattered. I guess on the bright side, it was one of the silicon coated ceramic travel cups so it only halfway shattered...but still SO not cool. I quickly grab Chris' cup from the truck and try to salvage what I can from the broken cup. Chris walks back at this moment and is thoroughly confused about what I had just done but helps me clean up the mess and makes sure I don't drink any ceramic bits. Good guy, right? Anyway, I got a hot drink, and some fat bombs I had made at home, and we shared some hard boiled eggs while I drove the next leg of the journey.

Now this whole driving with a multi-thousand pound trailer is new to me. (Note: we are moving all of our own stuff including Chris' large mechanic toolbox ourselves with a modified F-150 and a 7'x12' box trailer.) So I pull out of the parking lot nice and easy, no stalls, and get onto the highway with a bit of coaching from Chris. Basically you have to under-steer to keep it straight, brake early, keep the RPMs above 2 grand, and rarely use overdrive gears. Two hours later, I totally got the highway thing down. During that two hours I had to survive southern Virginia traffic but it's all good. I drove three hours total while hubs and the puppies slept. Then, we had to stop for gas and a bathroom in some crappy part of North Carolina. Next, we drove on to find a rest stop outside of a city to get some food, do some yoga, the works. We chose to stop at a homey looking barbecue joint further down 85S in North Carolina. It had a pretty big field next to it for us to pull up in the train and then we got takeout so we could sit out in the lovely southern weather, enjoy our food, and give the dogs time to run around.

Puppies hanging out by the foster train, Ratchet was worried about some trucker leaving.

I ordered us a salad and a family of four meal to get extra meat for leftovers; it came with a pound of pulled pork and accompanying BBQ sauce, wayyy too many deliciously fried hush puppies, and some nasty ketchup based slaw. The salad was a classic sandwich place salad and it had some nice dark meat rotisserie chicken. The pulled pork was awesome! The hush puppies were different than I've had before so I think we're doing them wrong in the north. These were like onion rings but extra puffy and a better consistency. Overall, not a bad choice for highway stop food. PLUS! We got to eat it picnic style with the puppies running around and I got some yoga practice in before we left.

From here it was about three hours to our campsite in Sadler's Creek State Park, SC. We arrived just after 5pm, checked in at the ranger's office, and drove the train over to our site. There were only a couple other people in the whole park and we got a spot right on the water looking out on the Savannah River at sunset.

Sunset in Sadler's Creek State Park, SC.

We spent the rest of the evening setting up camp, walking the dogs, cooking dinner, and showering (there's a fully functioning, very clean bathroom here for all my modern amenity people reading this). I think my favorite parts of the night were seeing this sunset and going to bed in the peaceful forest with no screens, just books and snuggles.

Chris reserved this spot for two nights, so we planned to use the 28th to reorganize our mess of a packed trailer and go for a hike but we woke up to rain showers. We did catch a break in the rain to make breakfast and then began organizing the trailer despite the restarting rain. It is a big improvement so that we can actually use the items near the door in the trailer. Next, we realized our ventilation fan in the truck was leaking. We had installed it a few months back and thought it was water proofed but learned it still begins to leak after many hours of rain. We fixed it by sealing the area around the bolts and it seems to be good now. Finally, as the rain continued we decided to dry off and hang out in the truck bed with tea and snacks. Anyone have any good movie or TV show suggestions for the road?

We think we will stay here tonight and set off west tomorrow. Still deciding where we will stop next. Hope everyone is having a lovely day!

For my geology buddies: check out these sweet conglomerates and feldspar granites in the oxidized soil!