Although we have been Thousand Trails members for four years, we encountered a new park entry procedure here that we have never encountered before. Upon our arrival, Peggy was shown a document with a listing of available spaces and asked to choose. Actual, eyes-on perusal of the RV space was not allowed so Peggy made her choice and, fortunately, we were placed into a nice, shady spot with full hookups and superb wifi. There is an ungrouted concrete block restroom across the road for dying in when the tornado comes.
There is a neighbor across the road that seems to be operating the Church of the Internal Combustion Engine with many worshipers that arrive and depart at odd hours. The pastor has, as his flock, not less than two golf carts with gas engines and defective mufflers, a four-person sand rail with a Volkswagen engine but no muffler whatsoever, a couple of cars and two pickup trucks with aftermarket exhaust components intended to piss off the elderly. The last visitor departed from his place last night at 12:30 AM, a bit after the park’s shut up time of 11:00. The departing visitor also had exhaust system components apparently purchased at the same place. There are also some Harley guys nearby with nothing other than straight, short tailpipes that rev their bikes a lot but never seem to leave. However, the trees around our campsite are beautiful.
Yesterday we woke up late, moved slowly and were all-around loafers. We took a short walk to the scummy pond they euphemistically refer to as a “lake” and found some nice seating at the shoreline. From our vantage point we spotted many exotic and happy shoreline plants, pollywogs, lots of birds and many varieties of unidentifiable insects dining and having sex. The dragonflies seemed particularly randy.
Today we were a bit more mobile and we took a drive through nearby Lexington and surrounding communities. There must be a shitload of Bible-thumper types in Lexington because the place is lousy with big churches about two blocks on-center. Other than the handsome churches, most of the remainder of the buildings in town are less than two stories but there are many grand old residences lining the streets. The downtown area screens two abandoned factories and one partially burned manufacturing complex that look like the jobs left town some time ago. We spotted some fiberglass or gelcoat hogs with strange decorations in the center of town, one standing and the other seated. Strangely, one of them was directly in front of the courthouse.
After getting an eyefull of great residential architecture, we took off northeast for a while before turning off on some back roads to check out the sights. There is an abundance of really handsome estates along the back roads in this part of the world. All the plants and trees along the way look very happy and about the only descriptor that comes to mind is “overgrown” since the only things that are not green are the sky, the road, some buildings and scattered recently-harvested fields of crops.
We eventually found our way back to Forest Lake Preserve only missing a couple of turns and performing a couple U-turns which is really quite good considering the layout of roads in this convoluted terrain. We found very few straight stretches on our drive today and none longer than about a half mile. Other than major highways, all the roads we drove today were quite narrow and our F-250 barely fit between the double yellow line on the left and the white fog line on the right. Most of the trip I could look in the right mirror and see the back right tire covering the white line and my driver’s side mirror over the yellow stripes. Passing oncoming traffic is exciting in these conditions. Sometimes we noted the oncoming drivers were on the phone which made us feel completely safe.
We got pictures of a satisfied squirrel, some nice houses, fiberglass pigs and a state-of-the-art North Carolina building foundation that you can see if you click here