Meeting Friends in Fayetteville NC, then on to Georgia

Tuesday, 22 September 

What an amazingly quiet and secluded place to stay last night. With a chilly morning, we were uber leisurely in our morning routine. At about 10am, Darrell said goodbye to our host and we headed for Fayetteville to do a bike ride.

Today's bike ride was the Cape Fear River Trail, a 5-mile trial that runs along the Cape Fear River for a short period. Unlike some of our other trail rides which run along the river for their entire length.

From TrailLink: "The 5-mile-long Cape Fear River Trail winds through a mix of woodlands and marshes on Fayetteville's north side, offering stunning views of the Cape Fear River. The trail is relatively flat but with some hills. You will encounter boardwalks and bridges, even one covered bridge." https://www.traillink.com/trail/cape-fear-river-trail/

Parking was available at the northern terminus, or near the southern end. We chose the northern end at the Jordan Soccer Complex adjacent to Methodist University.

The Cape Fear River Trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a series of urban greenways that will eventually extend from Maine to Key West, Florida. Along the ride, we also learned the Cape Fear River basin is the largest river basin in North Carolina.

As we left the Jordan Soccer Complex, where we parked Sprinty, we saw a golf course off on the left. Then we saw the sign that dampened our brief enthusiasm - it is a private golf course reserved for golf management students at Methodist University.

Early in the ride, we had a covered bridge to cross as the trail went under the railroad bridge. With some water falling in the creek below, it was a interesting point on the ride.

Based on the trail description and the trail signs, we expected the trail to be 5.5 miles long. 5.5 miles is not normally a distance we seek in planning a bike ride, but the trail was the only choice in the area, and we initially entertained riding it twice. When we got to about the 5 mile point, we came around a bend and were treated with barrier prominently marked "Road Closed".

The ride was winding and quite hilly for a Rail Trail - no doubt it was not placed in the original rail bed. We both used pedal assist level (PAS) 3 on a couple of the hills. We think all but the hard core cyclists would not enjoy the steep (albeit fairly short) hills. Mostly we saw walkers and runners. One family who were riding the trail were walking their bikes up one of the hills as we passed. Another reason we enjoy having some assist on tap to enjoy unknown terrain.

Although the ride was pleasant, both of us were blasé about riding it a second time. After the bike ride, we made our way to Fayetteville RV Resort, Wade, NC for the next two nights. Sprinty's friend Harvey (a Tiffin Allegro Bus), his two humans Jan and Doug, and their dog Jake were staying at this campground on their trip north. Longtime blog readers will recall we met Doug, Jan and Jake on the caravan to the Canadian Maritimes. And we got to spend some time with them at the FMCA Rally in Lakeland, FL last winter, and at their home in Lake Placid, FL.

When Doug shared their travel plan, their Fayetteville, NC stop was a point of intersection to get together while we headed back to Georgia from Maryland. So our meandering through Virginia and North Carolina actually had a specific date and location in mind.

We arrived at the campground and did a contact-less checkin. Sprinty drew a nice, large pull-through site in the shade. The campground wifi was adequate for email and light internet activity. The campground was quite nice, with many long term campers, and nice pull through sites for overnighters.

Lisa and Jo D arrived first in their Newmar Dutch Star RV towing a Ford F-150 as their toad. Lisa and Jo D are friends of Doug and Jan who also live in Lake Placid and were traveling with them. Doug and Jan arrived a little later.

After giving them time to set up (one of the RV etiquette rules is to not distract someone setting up, or packing up, their RV), we got together with them as Jake, their Golden Retriever, gave us all a tour of the campground.

We then social distanced relaxed in the shade of their Tiffin, which throws a much bigger shadow than Sprinty.

After dinner, we had a nice campfire and enjoyed the evening until time to turn in. Darrell tried the color stick trick in the fire he learned on the Canadian Maritimes trip.

Wednesday, 23 September

As of when we turned in last night, we had no definite plan for the day. After our morning routine, we wandered down to come up with a plan. After some discussion, it was decided to tour the Cape Fear Botanical Gardens in Fayetteville (https://www.capefearbg.org/).

As we assembled to head for the gardens, Sprinty had a brief play date with Harvey before he was put to work transporting his humans to the gardens. Both Doug and Lisa were towing a vehicle, and we each traveled independently (COVID safety) to the gardens.

The gardens was a large area (80 acres) with almost 3.5 miles of trails according to the staff. We wandered most of the trails. Being late in the season, almost nothing was in bloom. The walk on the grounds was fun, and provided an outside, safe activity.

One of the items on exhibit was a large piece of petrified wood estimated to be about 90 million years old found near the botanical gardens.

After the gardens, Jan, Doug and us returned to the campground for lunch, while Lisa and Jo D went out for lunch. After lunch, we showed off our eBikes, and Doug test rode Darrells's bike around the campground. He and Jan have two Rad eBikes on order and were expecting delivery while they are away on this trip.

We got Sprinty ready to depart by dumping the gray and black tanks, and filling the fresh water.

After dinner, we enjoyed another campfire by the Tiffin. We said our goodbyes as we planned on an early start to take advantage of another Harvest Host golf stay tomorrow.

Thursday, 24 September

An early start this morning as the Harvest Host location for tonight was near Columbia, SC, almost three hours away. We wanted to arrive there early enough to play a round of golf before the sun got too low. In addition, the weather forecast was for an increased chance of rain in late afternoon. Being a Harvest Host location, we would enjoy the benefit of not having a drive to a campsite after golf today.

Google Maps really wanted a Sprinty to stretch his legs in the Interstate, but Kris and Darrell kept overriding Google to do over a hundred miles on US highways where we enjoyed light traffic and very few big trucks before joining up with I-20. We did encounter a wreck that closed down the highway, and Google Mpas did a fine job efficiently rerouting us.

Today's golf (and Harvest Host location) was Charwood Golf Course in West Columbia, SC. The Columbia area has two golf Harvest Hosts. We made this one our first choice because it was located on the west side of Columbia, so no morning rush hour traffic tomorrow having to go through Columbia. And a review of the satellite view showed it was more remote than the other one which had the possibility of more road noise. And, Charwood Golf Course is a family owned and operated golf course - which we like to support as much as we can.

A call yesterday confirmed our being able to stay and we made a tee time for 12 noon.

We arrived just after 11am, and Amanda told us where to park Sprinty in a grassy area off their maintenance road. One soft sand spot had us concerned for a moment, but Sprinty managed just fine.

We warmed up on the driving range and putting green to get some of the kinks out from 3-1/2 hours of driving this morning. Darrell is dealing with some hip pain which may be sciatica (back) related. He is moving more gingerly than usual, and is starting to shuffle and groan like an older man.

Darrell's opening drive went right, while Kris hit the fairway (as usual). Darrell was able to make bogey to take a one stroke lead - which did not last long. Kris tied it up on the third hole. Kris' birdie on the 7th hole put her ahead, and she carried the lead into the turn.

Darrell tied it up on the 12th hole, and Kris came right back. As we got ready to hit our tee shots on the par 5 18th hole, Kris was up by one stroke. She sank her putt for a bogey, and Darrell had a 15 foot put to make par and tie up the game for the day. He curled it in to make par - and we finished the day tied. Kris got bragging rights having made two birdies, while Darrell had none.

The course was nice to play, with large sand waste areas like a desert course. The course is showing its age with cart path asphalt in rough shape - which did not help Darrell's hip/back. The fairways and greens were in good shape.

After golf, we relaxed in Sprinty enjoying the unusual (for Sprinty) of not having to travel free golf to a campsite for the evening. Darrell tried to fly the drone to provide aerial photos/video of our "campsite", however, the drone geofence would not allow the drone to fly - we were too close to the Columbia airport. Being close to Columbia provided adequate cell service to take care of a few chores and stream some YouTube video.

As forecast, we started getting drizzle about dinner time.

Friday, 25 September

With light rain forecast for most of the southeast today, we decided to just head home. The combination of a day of rain and trying to arrange campsites for Friday and Saturday nights seemed to outweigh the benefits of extending the trip a few more days.

The forecast rain was lighter than expected, with most of the trip being dry. Traffic was okay until we reached the Atlanta area and was Atlanta-typical, including drivers passing us at over 80mph in a 55mph zone. One scary moment was when we created a hill to see brake lights - only a moment earlier someone had spun out in a middle lane and was stopped facing in the wrong direction. Sprinty exercised his anti-lock brakes like the champ he is, and the semi truck barreling up behind us was able to get into another lane else we would have had a multi-car pile-up with Sprinty being the baloney. Whew.

So ends our 36 day adventure, traveling in 8 states, driving 2,953 miles and riding bikes 331 miles. The highlight was getting to see our sailing friends at Deep Creek Lake, our Florida based RV friends as they passed through North Carolina, and unexpectedly seeing Roadtrek friends at a small, out of the way Corps of Engineers campground in the boonies of Virginia. We enjoyed being of assistance at the lake with the two on-water rescues, the committee boat project, and some lawn maintenance.

We logged a number of adventuring memories. Some adventures included oops, like Google Maps routing us down some Kentucky hollow (Blog "Welcome to Kentucky") and Darrell's tumble on the bike (Blog "37-mile Bike Ride in Western Maryland, Got 18 miles per Oops"). Others were more normal adventures like driving Skyline Drive again, seeing the Chained Rock, spending the night in a Sasquatch/Bigfoot Sanctuary, playing a variety of golf courses, riding bikes with friends, completing more segments of the Great Allegheny Passage Trail, enjoying two Harvest Host stays and a Boondockers Welcome host, and getting new shoes for Sprinty. Sprinty sure knows how to pack a lot of adventures in a short trip.