Lawd, I Was Born A Ramblin' Man!

Finally escaping North Carolina!

Our stinky little menagerie left Highlands with a soaking camper and a car full of trash, molding laundry, and a discarded roll of goat-stained carpet. The original linoleum lends itself much easier to clean, especially after the sick goat incident, so the carpet found a new home in the local grocery store dumpster.

There are a number of songs and books that have always awakened in my the urge to travel, and in times when I had to work and save money instead of heading out on the highway these works serve to keep me inspired and focused on my goals. One of my favorite songs to jam out to on the road is Ramblin’ Man. I love to roll down the windows and belt it out with the wind blowing in my hair and the dogs hanging their heads out the side of the car. The song just provides a sense of freedom, and I wanted to be a part of that. The song goes “I’m on my way to New Orleans this morning, leaving out of Nashville, Tennessee,” so that’s exactly what we did. We headed west from Highlands and drove all day just to reenact a song. I’ve been to Nashville before and didn’t really care to stay in the city, but I just wanted to do that to set off our trip in the first state outside of North Carolina.

We stopped at a Walmart near Knoxville to pick up activated carbon (in case of further upset goat), a cat collar for Frankenstein, and Dan’s daily gallon of soda. As always, walking the cat and goat got us a bit of attention from the locals, and we were just in time to watch a glorious sunset over the mountains before going into the store. I snapped a few pictures, but it’s really a shame that we don’t have a better way to capture the majesty of the sky that we experience every day on the road.

Fantastic Tennessee sunset over the mountains

It may seem a bit wonky to drive four hours out of the way just to drive through a place without stopping, but hey, we can do whatever we want. That’s the beauty of living on the road. There’s nowhere to be and no time limit on getting there. I wanted to fulfill the song’s line and drive out of Nashville at sunrise, but it ended up happening at exactly midnight, which worked for me. I plugged in the iPod and cranked up the volume as Dan and I caught our second wind and felt a keen sense of exhilaration at living up to the words that had so long been a “one day” wish. We were indeed on the way to New Orleans.

That night around 3am we stayed over at a truck stop, halfway set up the camper enough to let the canvas dry, and slept with the dogs in the camper and the goat and cats in their own little car camp. The Element is the perfect vehicle for our trip, other than the fact that it is a four cylinder and tends to side with gravity on any inclines. The interior and completely plastic and rubber, the back seats can be completely removable (we left one at home) or fold up flat against the wall forming a truck bed in the back, it’s got real0time 4 wheel drive, plus we generally get 17 to 22 mpg when towing the camper fully loaded. The back windows and sunroof vent open enough to let a breeze through but not wide enough to have any escaping little ninjas, and there’s generally no problems with rain coming in the open windows either. The thing was made for animal lovers, and I can’t figure out why Honda discontinued the model. If they had made a 6-cylinder version it would have been a big hit with pet people and outdoor enthusiasts even with the decline in gas mileage. I digress, but I do love this car.

Onward to Mississippi!

Our next adventure was at a free campground on Airey Lake in the De Soto National Forest of Mississippi. It seems that the majority of free campsites are along long dirt and gravel roads in the middle of nowhere. As our convoy made its way down the three miles of dirt to the site, we couldn’t help but think that it looked like we were on a Mars expedition. It was quite barren and covered with bright red dusty dirt. 

We didn't see any Martians, though.

Then we began to pass news vans coming from the opposite direction. I was thinking that maybe we could walk Rosie around the background of wherever they were filming and get a kick out of it, but soon it became apparent that it was a much more serious newscast. About ten news vans and a number of police and other emergency vehicles were parked on either side of the road and it looked like we would be unable to pass. We stopped and asked some bystanders what was going on and if we could get through to the campground. They said that we could make our way through slowly and the place was a mile down the road, but there had just been a helicopter crash and there would be emergency vehicles cleaning up for a couple days. Definitely not the time to try to get the goat on the news. A mile down the road we did find the campsites and took a little break by the water before setting up camp.

Happy to be out of the car!

Dan: Master of Fire

The campground was situated overlooking a large lake that seemed surprisingly little-used. The three days we were there we saw maybe ten boats. It seemed as though the campground hadn’t been used in a while, as most of the trailer sites were overgrown with weeds. There was a parking area with a boat ramp, pit toilets, picnic tables, and some trash cans. We managed to work the camper into a site that had a beautiful overlook of the lake down below and the surrounding mountains. It would have been nice to spend more time outside, especially because of the oppressive humid heat, but the bugs were incessant and out to get us. There wasn’t a single other camper there in three days, and the only humans we saw were the emergency vehicles using the turn around parking lot at the end of the day. At night we could hear fox calls all around the camper, and once when Piper took off into the woods after some unknown creature in the darkness we decided that all animals are to be corralled before sundown. It was a nice spot but after three days we decided to move on and attempt to escape the heat and bugs. Packing up we came across a MASSIVE spider and a scorpion holed up in our vinyl camper cover, and a plethora of ants to boot. That place did not seem to like us very much.

Kindly leave us alone, Sir Spider.

Rosie's on the lookout for any woodland deviants

I would say that the worst part about traveling with animals and no electrical hookup is the lack of air conditioning. Luckily the dogs, Rosie, and Frankenstein can all go outside to relax in the shade and are used to living outside in the North Carolina summer heat. Oscar and Bartleby are indoor temperature-controlled cats who also reside in a plastic crate when unsupervised. It’s difficult to keep water in the area without it being spilled, and there’s little interest in hydration to begin with. 

Oscar can only keep this position for so long without causing a tsunami.

Our vehicle does a fine job at A/C while driving, but it burns gas and also has issues any time we’re at idle. A quick stop for food or wi-fi becomes dangerous when the car won’t cool, and even with the windows and doors open the animals are treacherously hot within three minutes. We have no way of making ice packs to carry around, and no method of cooling them besides wet towels, a misting waterbottle, and a couple of pathetic battery-powered fans. Another sweltering day at a free campsite in Alabama made us uncertain about our journey further south into the peak of summer. This was how we decided that we should just go ahead and pay for a site with electrical hookups in New Orleans.