June | 2017 | CasaRodante - Our House on Wheels

We made it to Roxie’s cousin’s house. I met her many years ago and cannot remember but I had not met any of the others in the family. But it didn’t really matter as we were treated as family. It was wonderful. This gave Roxie, and her cousin (technically her 1st cousin, 1x removed) a time to catch up and reminisce. It gave me a chance to get to know a new side of the family. Here is Roxie and Angelique:

We stayed in the trailer by Steve and Angelique’s house for a few nights. It was weird, and nice in a way, to get back to a house and just sit in one. We also did some visitor things, like seeing the lighthouse in Edenton:

We were even able to sneak into the top lighthouse portion with Roxie being a real trooper to get up there:

The time came to move the trailer down to where the wedding was going to happen. We were ‘moochdocking’ at Steve and Angelique’s for a few nights like this:

But it doesn’t really compare to the ‘moochdocking’ locale where their son lives:

It was amazing, initially cool and even rained pretty heavily one night! The rehearsal was performed right in the yard at their house also:

The next day was the wedding at MCAS Cherry Point. We had to get clearance to attend this wedding and we just have newly issued Texas drivers’ licenses. I got a bit of a shock the week before when someone at the base said my clearance did not go through. Roxie immediately was suspicious and asked what I had done. I told her I would be the most surprised if something came up. We gave them my full SSN as they had only asked for the last 4. Once that was checked, everything came up clear. It appears there was another person with my same full name, same birthday, and same last 4 of the SSN in Colorado and had Grand Larceny and other charges. I find that pretty far fetched but was happy I could attend the wedding.

The happy couple after being pronounced:

Steve Jr and Jenny Baxley

This is Steve Jr dancing with his mom, Angelique and Steve’s niece Stella making it a trio (it was getting dark):

We were going to stay another day by the water but it was going to heat up drastically and there was no A/C there. We headed back to Steve and Angelique’s for a few more days of visiting before we headed north. It was good for both of use to see some relatives after such a dearth of it on the road.

We left Lake Sinclair in Georgia and got back on the road heading to North Carolina. My initial thought was to go, via back roads, to Spartanburg SC. We were well into the drive and Roxie starting looking through Passport America as we had just recently joined. She found a nice park in Northern SC so we called them up. They had a spot for us but we had to be there by 7 pm! We thought we could make it but according to our Nav unit, we would be 15 min late. I looked at their website and it specifically said no campers after 7 pm. Change in plan again. We looked for something close to where we were and found Table Rock State Park that was close.

We pulled into the park and talked to a camp host about spots and he seemed unsure if there were any spots available even though we could see numerous ones. He contacted the ranger and were told any spot other than 57. The camp host recommended spot 8 as it was long and level. We took it. It turned out to be a great choice!

The spot was right next to a creek that was loud enough for us to hear all night. We opened all the windows in the back just so we could hear it. Here are some shots of the site and creek.

We also had some visits from the local insect population. The first shot appeared to be some type of dragonfly but the wings were a dark color and much more fluid. The next two shots were, what I thought to be, a stick on my tire but turned out to be some type of stick walker insect.

Before we left we stopped off to take a quick hike to one of their numerous waterfalls:

Time to push on the next morning. North Carolina is a horizontal state. Wider than tall, unlike some of the vertical states we breezed through earlier. It would take a bit to get across and we also were shooting to get to our current destination on Saturday. We left SC and into NC. We dumped our tanks at Table Rock but didn’t fill up the fresh water tank. My 50′ hose developed a leak and was ‘decommissioned’ but I wanted to get another one. There was a Camping World on our path. We stopped there but they did not have the hose I wanted and I was also able to fill the fresh water tank! We stayed the night at a Walmart in Greensboro, NC.

The next day was one of the work/down days you get when traveling this long. We had to do laundry and Roxie was lucky enough to get a dental appointment for a cleaning. She was overdue by a month or two. We took the trailer all around Greensboro, or so it seemed, to take care of all this. Since we were so busy during that day we only went 80 miles to Durham NC and another Walmart parking lot (actually an Ashley furniture):

We were only about 200 miles away now but still were shooting for Saturday. We worked on getting a wedding gift and headed out only 90 miles to a campground with hookups. This enabled us to get the trailer all ready for extended ‘moochdocking’ at Roxie’s cousins.

For you unleaded fuel fans I found this in SC: