August 25th – August 28th, 2007
We left Ocracoke reasonably early, planning on a modest day’s ride. We did stop by and look at the award-winning beach on our way out. White sandy expanses stretched out forever, with no stores or shops nearby, giving a feeling of being really remote. It appeared to be very clean. We also saw that it’s like the beaches in northeastern Florida where cars are allowed to drive on the beach (not one of our favorites). We did managed to see the famous Ocracoke ponies, too. The ride on that island was really peaceful, and we had another short ferry ride after only an hour or so of riding, taking us across to Hatteras. From Hatteras it was an easy ride to Frisco – a good thing, since it was still terribly hot.
We wanted a short day, and we had several choices of campgrounds listed on the Adventure Cycling route. We took off towards the state campground, the first on our list, but after winding our way down along the roadway, we still hadn’t come to anything, and it didn’t look too promising. We backtracked and hit the main road again. Spotting a store that looked promising, we stopped in to stock up on food and water, since we had no idea what the next campground would have.
We loaded ourselves up on veggies, some canned goods, and I even bought two books I was dying to read. Not only did we buy books, we splurged on a 6-pack of hard cider to drink, and we bought juice. Getting all this food and liquid into our already packed trailers was hilarious. We crammed things into our Camelbaks, we tied things to the back racks, and we crammed things into every available spot in the trailers, having to finally take individual bottles and stuff them under our bungie cords on top of the trailer. We had to do all this right in front of the store’s entrance, so we got quite a few looks as people streamed by us.
Turns out our campground was only about a mile down the road, and it was beautiful. The staff was incredibly friendly, and we got to pick our site ourselves. We chose one next to the bathhouse, but off by itself, with a great tent site and two tables. We got set up and took showers and so on, and wandered back over to the store. We couldn’t believe the prices! We have never, before then or since then, seen prices so reasonable outside of Wal-Mart, never mind a campground store. We splurged again on a 6-pack of Mike-aritas (low-alcohol margaritas in small bottle), and we found our favorite popcorn. We had a great time looking at some of the camp equipment they had, and we thought seriously about buying two chairs.
We loved the Frisco campground so much that we decided to stay several days. We still had the website work we needed to do, and it seemed a good chance to catch up on it, as well as get a good rest. The woman in the camp store gave us two sun umbrellas (they couldn’t be sold because the clamps had broken off) so we stuck those in our empty hard cider bottles and had a perfect shade for working on the computer. When we weren’t working we explored the campground and talked to other campers. I got caught up on a lot of the website work, and we plain old got relaxed.
I headed off to the main store on the last night to get better Internet signal and to sit in the comfortable chairs up there, on the porch. (Sitting for multiple hours at a picnic table, typing, leads to major shoulder aches and sore bums.) As I was nearly done, a tall quiet late-30-ish fellow came up and asked me if the wireless signal was working, and if I was almost done (I clearly had the best chair). I explained that we had Verizon Wireless, so I didn’t know about the wi-fi, but we got to chatting and swapped stories.
Brian Ebel, when we met him, was on a personal journey, wanting to make changes in his life. He had been involved in a personal relationship, and he and his girlfriend had planned to buy and RV and go on the road together for a few months, in between job contracts. By the time Brian left, he no longer had the relationship, and he and his dog Mandy took off together to see what they could see. Brian was headed north a ways, uncertain of where he was heading.
Meanwhile, Chelsea and I were becoming very concerned that we weren’t going to make it up to New Hampshire before the weather changed. It was already late August, and though we were still dealing with major heat, we were moving farther north and the cold weather would be upon us soon. We’d been tossing over ideas of how we could shorten the trip so we could be on schedule to get to the west coast in time to ride.
When Brian offered to take us up to Maryland in his RV, Chelsea and I talked it over for a while, and finally decided to say yes. We wanted to make a jump forward, and we liked the idea of a short adventure in an RV. So, the next morning we packed up our things, loaded our bikes and trailers into Brian’s RV, and we took off into the unknown.