The Bucket List & Traveling Below The Mason / Dixon LIne

Alright; where did we leave off? We were getting ready to leave Ruckersburg,Virginia after spending the night at a safe & quiet Wal-Mart. During our visit, we met a woman who worked there named Bajinder (pronounced Buh-gin-da), who was an absolute sweetheart. She was quite taken with us because we actually took the time to ask her how her name was pronounced. We saw her more than once in our 18 hour stop-over and she remembered our names as well. "Dave is a common name, like Tom", she said. She had a harder time with Jill. First it was "Jo", then "Gill". She finally ended with "J-ill". Close enough - it's all good! We gave her an A for effort as she was originally from India.

Once again, our Nomad attracted a great deal of attention. Numerous 18 wheelers spend the night there, but apparently not many RV's. Just as we were about to leave, a couple named Sue & Lee chatted with us for a bit about our Nomadic lifestyle and ended up giving us coupons to eat at Hardee's, since they are popular here in the South. They thought if we could save some money during our travels, all the better.

We meandered through Charlottesville, which is also the home of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, then headed southeast around Richmond, and saying goodbye to the Shenandoah Mountain range. We then went south on I-95 to the Rocky Mount KOA campground. Just before exiting Virginia, we captured a glance at our first of many cotton fields. Ditto with our first tobacco field when we ventured a short distance through North Carolina. We reached our destination mid-afternoon and then the irony hit us - this campground is actually in Enfield, North Carolina - and was nowhere near Rocky Mount.

Enfield is a tiny farm town that can be described in two concepts - flat & nothing but huge tobacco fields. If you wanted anything to eat, see any attraction, or mingle with any civilization; you had to drive the 18 miles south to Rocky Mount. The only things we saw were 18-wheelers, large farm tractors & equipment.

The campground was nestled in a sea of pine trees. Even though it was fairly warm, most of the bugs had gone into hibernation. We couldn't imagine what it would be like from Spring into early Autumn. We pulled into our site, but had a little problem with our electrical hook-up. With a little help from the manager Jim, we were good to go in no time. However, we wished the wi-fi worked out as well as the electrical snafu did. We had some writing & blogging to do, but the signal was so poor, we had to go outside on our picnic table to connect... and we were only about 75 feet from the office.

We managed to finish some of our work before sunset, eat a nice hot dinner and called it a night. We were thrilled that we didn't need several layers of blankets for a change. Our sleep, however, was interrupted by an ever increasing rain that set in by 3am. The drops off the pine trees added to the symphony and at times sounded like hail. We drifted in and out of sleep, depending on how hard it was raining. By 7am, we were not only ready for some breakfast, but also a nice shower.

After those tasks were accomplished, we went into the main office, which had a small table off to one side, and Jim was gracious to let us use it to complete our work. We had to change our next nights' reservation, due to the fact the campground we were going to stay at in Beaufort, NC, had a "slight flooding problem" due to 2-3 days of rain. We grabbed a sight at the New Bern KOA. On the two hour trip down, we passed more farms, towns named Short Pump, Scotland's Neck (who comes up with these names?) as well as the town of Farmville. Was this the inspiration for the Facebook game? We also got another realization that we were no longer in New England, when we saw a license plate that said "GOT-HOG?"

We are currently in New Bern (pronounced NYOO-burn depending on who you talk to) which is part of the Crystal Coast of central North Carolina and also includes the Outer Banks.

While writing this, we came up with the first part of the title - Bucket List. The first item on the list is exploring new ways to live. For example, camping. According to Websters, it means, "Live for a time in a camp, tent, or camper". The people we've surrounded ourselves with are our age and slightly older, friendly, and are enjoying themselves. We can see why - we are composing this on the edge of the Nuese River (pronounced ny-oose - again depending on whom you meet), where apparently Blackbeard the pirate sailed into spending time here as well as in Beaufort. Rumor also has it, while he and his crew were on some brief R&R, they buried some of their treasure in these parts as well. It is currently 75 degrees with passing clouds and a gentle breeze. We have missed the ocean tremendously - so glad to be back near it!

We're going to check out this area for a bit and see what else is here. We are also in the process of making our 3rd You Tube slide show so we can show more photos we've taken. Stay tuned!

Until next time,
The Happy Campers,
Jill & Dave