Date:         Fri, 8 Sep 1995 11:10:01 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Tobin T. Copley" <tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca>
Subject:      Big Trip Report [part 8, long]

*** Hey, kids!  Photos of the Big Trip are now on the Web!  
      Surf along as Tobin and Christa drive!  Check it out at:
        http://www.teleport.com/~des   (Schwarzemeister's site)

      If all this travelling is getting you stoked for something
      more, how about joining us on a trip up to the Arctic Ocean
      next summer?  Read all about it at:
	http://www.chaco.com/~coyote/trek/   (Ron Lussier's site)
  

           Part VIII: The Carolinas and Virginia
   (or, Televangelists, Moonshine, Stock Cars, and T'bacca)


This week: Tobin and Christa check out the weird world that is the 
South.  And things can get pretty weird!  It's a different world, 
and their happy Westy takes them there.]

February 25, 1995
  
We got up in the morning in an unfamiliar bed: ah, yes, we'd accepted 
our friends' invitation to sleep in their guest room.  Our friends, Lynn 
and Andy, were pretty well off, and had the kind of huge house where 
they could refer to the "guest room" in an off-handed way.  I got out of 
bed and wished I could just reach over and turn on the stove to boil 
water for tea, but realized that I would have to walk all the way to the 
kitchen for that.  Hmmmph.  They should design houses more like our 
camper, so that all the amenities are close at hand.  At least the 
"guest room" had a bathroom with a shower "ensuite," and we had to admit 
bathing in the westy sink was a little difficult, but then again, we 
understood that Martha would be coming up for an "encamper" shower 
design any day now so the last advantage houses held over campers would 
be eliminated.

We got up, waved to our camper sitting outside covered in early morning 
dew, and ate a breakfast of bagels and herb cream cheese.  We talked 
with Lynn and Andy until mid-morning, when they had to go off to work.  
They run several businesses in that part of the state, and impressions 
seemed to indicate they did all right.  

I guess I forgot to tell all you folks about the disaster that befell us 
on our last day in New Orleans.  I'll give the context to the story 
first: Two very good friends of ours gave Christa a hand-decorated 
journal and a purple pen to write in it for Christa's birthday, which 
happened to be the day before we left on our trip.  Christa had been 
writing an entry about the trip in the journal nearly every day since 
we'd left.  Our last day in Mexico, we'd bought a large (!) bottle of 
tequila, which we'd kept in a cardboard box between the front seats, 
along with maps, guidebooks, and other stuff.  

On the fateful night in New Orleans, I'd noticed the faint smell of 
tequila as I drifted in and out of deep sleep.  By morning, the smell 
was distinct, but I initially thought it might be an after-effect of all 
the hurricanes and margaritas I'd had the night before as we wandered 
around the French Quarter.  The scent drew me to the cardboard box, 
where I discovered that the tequila bottle had split down the sides and 
was leaking steadily.  The bottle was less than half-full, and there was 
at least an inch of tequila standing in the bottom of the box.  "Oh 
no!," I cursed, and I lunged for the journal, which I could see had been 
sitting in the tequila soup.  As I opened the pages, I saw that 
capillary action had drawn the tequila halfway up the pages, and I 
simultaneously discovered that the ink from Christa's purple pen was 
very water soluble.  

The bottom half of every single page was so blurry and faint it was 
almost completely illegible, and it seemed that the ink was becoming 
increasingly indistinct before my eyes.  We quickly separated the pages 
and placed the book in front of our blasting forced-air electric heater 
to dry the pages quickly.  Christa cried, and cried hard.  Our only day-
to-day, personal record of our trip of a lifetime was destroyed.  I felt 
just sick myself, but comforted her as best I could.  Once the journal 
was dry we could see that we could just barely discern the words in the 
damaged journal if we combined our efforts on it.  So we started the 
long process of transcribing the journal, word for word, into a new 
book.  We'd worked on it together ever since New Orleans: scribbling 
away in the camper on the road and at campsites, at Joel's place, and 
now at Lynn and Andy's.  

So this brings us to our first day at Lynn and Andy's: they went off to 
work, and we spent the entire day transcribing the journal, trading off 
who read and who wrote when the writer's hand cramped up too badly.  By 
the end of the day, we were close to completing the recovery process.  
Christa finished the job the next day.

Our second day at Lynn and Andy's was a lot more fun, because we got to 
drive our camper again.  We took the back roads up into North Carolina, 
and went to visit Davidson College (in Davidson), where my step-
grandfather used to be the Dean of Students.  He'd died years before, 
but we went to the library and looked through the archives to learn more 
about him and his work.  This was a fascinating exercise, and we 
actually ran into several people who remembered him and spoke warmly and 
highly of him.  Both Christa and I left the College feeling fulfilled 
and connected to the past.  To mark the occasion, we stopped at the Ben 
and Jerry's in town, and treated ourselves to really big, really yummy 
ice cream cones.

On our way back to Lynn and Andy's place we passed through Charlotte, 
and were blown away by all the Evangelist Christian television studios / 
churches that lined the freeway through town.  We're talking at least a 
half dozen places that I recognized the names; there must have been many 
more along that stretch of road I missed, since I don't really now that 
much about that particular aspect of American culture.  However, even as 
an uncultured Canadian I'd heard of Jim and Tammy Bakker, their Praise 
The Lord (PTL) Ministries, and their failed "planned community"/theme 
park "Heritage USA."  Of course we'd heard of them: we had a well-
thumbed copy of Jane and Michael Stern's "Encyclopedia of Bad Taste" 
sitting on our book shelf back home.

So when we saw a sign to Heritage USA from the freeway, we just had to 
take the exit.  A few miles off the freeway, we found it.  We turned 
onto the winding streets of the Bakker's "Christian Community" (or 
compound?), passing side streets with biblically-inspired names.  Not a 
lot of Old Testament references here, I thought.  I was waiting for 
"Judas Lane," but didn't see it.  This place WAS big, though: we drove 
probably ten minutes or more across hundreds and hundreds of acres of 
housing developments, park-type land, a golf course, a half-finished 
amusement park (what do the teenagers say riding the tilt-a-whirl? "Gosh 
golly, Skip, this ride scares the... uh... stuffing out of me!"?!), and 
the highlight, the Heritage USA mall and hotel complex.  Talk about a 
sterile environment!  No cussin', no smokin', no drinkin', no dancin'...  
no people!  Empty!  Oh, OK, there was one older couple wandering around 
the very neat and tidy indoor mall looking in the windows of the closed-
up Christian-oriented shops.  I hadn't realized that it was possible to 
sell candied popcorn with a Christian flavour, but here it was.  The 
place was just so squeaky clean I started to get really paranoid and 
felt like I was going to freak out, so we had to bolt out of there.  I 
just wish I'd had our "DARWIN" fish mounted on the back of the camper 
then.

Hey, don't get me wrong: I've don't have a problem with Christianity in 
a general sense.  I personally think Jesus was a pretty cool guy.  He 
was a kind of grassroots activist, social justice advocate and drove the 
Romans nuts--nailed him to a tree for it.  What I can't stand is the 
institutionalization of the whole thing, the us/them stuff, where "we" 
are right and "you" are wrong.  There's something surreal about 
institutional religion when anyone who holds a different belief is 
ostracized and told they will burn in hell.  And when the religious 
fervor becomes so strong and the people themselves so weak that a guy 
like Jim Bakker can sucker so many people out of so much money... my 
mind just begins to bend.  If a DARWIN fish can shake these folks up 
just enough to make them really think about their beliefs, then I'm 
happy.  Hell, who am I kidding?   I'll admit it: I get a bang out of 
pissing them off.  ;)  All right, enough.  Social commentary mode off.

The next day we set out to get our picture in front of the Gaffney 
Peach.  We took the back roads again, and drove though King's Mountain 
National Military Park.  We found a nice grassy spot near the visitor's 
centre (parked next to a westy, the first we'd seen in a long while) and 
settled down to have a nice picnic on the grass.  About two minutes into 
our picnic, this guy came running out on the visitor's centre yelling at 
us.  At first we ignored him, figuring he was yelling at somebody beyond 
us who we couldn't see.  He comes closer, and screams that we can't sit 
there, can't we read the signs?!?!  No picnicking allowed!!!  We didn't 
see any signs.  We can barely understand him from the distance, so we 
ask for clarification, ask where we ARE allowed to eat.  Mr. Park-guy 
totally freaks out, and starts REALLY screaming.  I begin to worry at 
the back of my mind that he might pull a gun on us or something, so we 
start to pack up and leave.  Christa is starting to get upset herself, 
and I can see she's starting to shake in anger.  She yells back at him 
"Welcome to South Carolina!!"  That stops him.  The blank look on his 
face shows us her comment is totally lost on him.  Hell, we don't need 
their stinking grass anyway.  We have a camper.  We can eat anywhere.  
We drove off and found a spot in the forest, and ate our lunch 
undisturbed.

After a short drive to Gaffney, we pulled up to the peach and stared in 
awe at it.  It was beautiful, and very, very kitch.  We took lots of 
pictures, one of which is now on David's web site.  Christa stood 
against the base of it and her head didn't even reach the bottom of the 
"G" in "Gaffney."  The thing must have been 200 feet tall.  

That night Lynn and Andy wined and dined us at one of Charlotte's best 
restaurants, and when we got back, Andy offered to let us try some 
Carolina moonshine, and I quickly accepted.  he showed how to look for 
the dispersion of small bubbles when you hit the bottle, so you don't 
drink something that will make you blind.  I tried a little bit, and 
wow, was it strong!  Very smooth, though, and frighteningly drinkable.  
Reminded me of Canada's equivalent, Screech.  Andy is also really into 
stock car racing, so we talked about stock cars, the drivers, and the 
racing scene.  He was really stoked about the upcoming race at 
Rockingham.  Lynn and Andy go see a half-dozen or more NASCAR races 
every year, sometimes driving all day to get to the race.  Andy used to 
work as part of the pit crew for one of the racers, and I guess he's 
just a good ol' boy at heart.

The next day we said goodbye to our friends, and headed up to Winston-
Salem, where we went to the library at Salem College to find out about 
my grandmother, who happened to be the Dean of Women at the college.  
Sadly, we couldn't dig up much, but I did get my picture taken next to a 
large portrait of her.  She'd died when I was very young, so I have no 
memory of her at all.  It was nice to be there, share her space, and try 
to get closer to my ancestry.

>From the college we drove across town to the RJ Reynolds Tobacco 
factory, where we took a free tour of one of the largest cigarette 
factories in the world.  The entire experience was completely surreal.  
As soon as we entered the building, we were bombarded with signs: "Thank 
You For Smoking"; "We Work For Smokers"; "Pride in Tobacco: Celebrate 
the Golden Leaf."  We signed up for a tour, and politely declined to 
sign an anti-non-smoking petition.  

Our tour leader led a tour group of two: Christa and me.  The factory 
floor was amazing.  The level of automation was at least as impressive 
as the scale of the operation.  The machines turned out something like 
285,000 cigarettes per hour, and they had a freight train at the back of 
the factory they were loading as fast as they could.  The tour leader 
told us that the company pays over five million dollars in tobacco taxes 
every working day, trying to make us feel that the government was 
gouging poor little RJR.  A little rough math in my head told me at 
production rates that that, the taxes must amount to pennies a pack.  
Hmmmph.  

We had unusually high readings on the Open-ended Weirdness Scale when, 
at the end of the tour, she opened up a cabinet and offered us each a 
handful of cigarette packages as free samples!  We declined, but took 
some RJR pens (cheap, ran out of ink days later) and a bunch of tokens 
for a vending machine dispensing Nabisco products.  We looked around the 
historical displays a bit, then took our free munchies and split.

We poked north through the back roads of North Carolina and into 
Virginia.  It started to rain, and we stopped in Martinsville to buy 
some food for dinner.  Then we putted along in the fading light through 
Bassett to Fairystone State Park on the Philpott Reservoir.  We wound 
along the meandering narrow road through the dark and rain towards the 
free camping area described in the guidebook the Schwarzemeister had 
lent us.  When we got there, the campsite was deserted, and the gates 
were locked closed.  I snooped around, but couldn't see an easy route 
around the gates that we'd have ground clearance and traction for.  We 
headed straight down to the lake and parked under some trees in the far 
corner of the boat launch parking lot.  We didn't see a single soul 
until we left the park the next morning, and we slept cozy and warm in 
our westy as it rained hard all night long. 

It was a little cold when we awoke, so we fired up the gas heater and 
put some water on for tea to warm the place up.  Within minutes it was 
well above 70 degrees inside our cozy camper, and we looked outside to 
see it was still pretty wet, but at least it had stopped raining.  We 
ate our usual toasted bagel and cream cheese breakfast, stretched out on 
the back seat with our steaming mugs of tea, and perused the map 
together to plan the day's drive.  

We again took to the back roads, and headed along very twisty, narrow, 
slow roads that wound lazily through the hills, followed streams, and 
passed through towns with names like Charity, Endicott, and Ferrum.  We 
found a dead-end wooden bridge over a stream so picturesque that we just 
had to back up and take a picture of the camper on it (see David's web 
site for a photo).  We headed up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains, with 
it raining off and on, and turned north on interstate 81.  

We passed a few hours cruising along the interstate, amusing ourselves 
with the constant barrage of bill boards along the road.  We turned off 
and headed to Luray, passing lots of wonderfully tacky tourist traps 
along the way.  I just had to stop for a picture of our camper next to a 
"Dinosaur Crossing" sign.  I also got a picture of the camper seemingly 
in the jaws of a giant alligator.  Yikes!  What fun! 

We turned north up a little highway to a free campsite near Bentonville.  
We found the turn-off as described in Schwarzemeister's book, but after 
crossing a concrete-slab one-lane bridge so low that the surface of the 
Shenandoah River was actually brushing the underside of the bridge deck, 
we found that access to the site was now cut off because of a dispute 
over ownership of the access road.  So back over the one-lane bridge we 
went, and we called the National Forest people for suggestions on a 
nearby free site.  We ended up driving over 20 miles to the other side 
of the river, but found a very nice and totally deserted site up in the 
hills of the George Washington National Forest.  A very nice drive along 
the Shenandoah river valley, with beautiful views of cloud-shrouded 
hills and aged crumbling farmsteads.  It was great to be in hilly 
country again--I hadn't realized it, but all the flat, open land of the 
last few thousand miles had put me out of sorts, and I was much more 
content surrounded by cliffs, waterfalls, and clouds in the hill tops.

Christa made dinner while I read funny stories from the newspaper to 
her.  We tuned in Radio Canada International on the short wave, and 
heard stories from home.  We were getting closer; the cooler weather was 
telling us that.  A light misting rain settled around us as we soaked up 
the silence and curled up in bed, reading for a while before turning off 
our reading lights and dreaming of snow.

[Next week: Into the Northeast and we drive through seven (!) states in  
 one short day's drive!!]

Tobin

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley                  Currently              =============  
(604) 689-2660                    Occupationally       /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca      Challenged!        O|             | putta
                                                       '-()-------()-' 
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)