Today was a travel day so we loaded up our stuff, stopped by the dump station and departed from Stone Mountain State Park. It is a gorgeous place.
We fiddled around on some skinny NC roads for a bit before getting on I-77 southbound for about 10 minutes. Our F-250 has a great air conditioning system and it was greatly appreciated today because the humidity was greater than 80% and merely moving one’s eyes generates blooms of stinky sweat from armpits and other even worse locations. Long before we got near Charlotte, we turned eastward and followed NC-601 and US-64 through beautiful green countryside until we got to Forest Lake Preserve, a Thousand Trails facility. We were here in 2015 but, due to my faltering geezer memory, it seemed all new.
This TT facility seems to be different than other TT sites because here we encountered a pudgy curmudgeon at the gate who’s function was to make everybody wait in line and sweat. When we initially arrived, there was nobody at the kiosk. After a few minutes, the little turd arrived and started taking care of the RV in front of us. After moving at glacial speeds filling out simple forms and getting license numbers that they don’t need, he disappeared in his golf cart to lead the folks ahead of us into the park. We have never encountered a kiosk troll before at a TT park and I can now suggest to Thousand Trails that trolls are unnecessary. We have never been led into a TT facility by a dedicated gatekeeper previously because that, too, is unnecessary. The little hobbit would not even speak to us until he had finished the business with the folks in the RV ahead of us in line and even then he was a grumpy midget.
After about 20 minutes of sweltering in the nearly underwater conditions, the gate Nazi took down our information in longhand despite all the information already being in the Thousand Trails data base. We were finally allowed access to our reserved spot in the facility but the insignificant squint deemed us bright enough to find our assigned space and his sloth-like efforts were, therefore, unnecessary when it came to leading us into a place plainly shown on a map. We have never had an assigned space in a TT facility previously but with an access guardian like they have here, someone has deemed it prudent, if misguided, and perhaps the creator of this plan and his lieutenant can be boiled and eaten by orcs.
I was dribbling from everywhere by the time we made it to our spot and after setting up the trailer utilities outside, my shirt looked like a well-used dish towel. Fortunately, we have a good 50-amp electrical hookup and we could run our air conditioning. Some time later after climbing into our trailer, I quit sweating copiously. There is no cable TV or satellite reception in our RV space but a fine wifi connection is available so I suppose we will be getting a lot of Amazon Prime and Netflix movies during our stay.