Current Location: Honey Bear Campground, Boone, North Carolina

We got rolling this morning and took our time unhooking and rolling out. Our trip today was only 119 miles total and we were stopping in Lenoir, North Carolina to have lunch with our friend, Brad. On the way out of the campground as we got near the interstate, we decided to take advantage of South Carolina’s amazingly low diesel prices and went ahead and filled up the tank at $3.42 a gallon.

Cheap fuel.

We ended up arriving at the restaurant (located in the corner of a big Walmart parking lot) about an hour early at 11:00 AM (we were going to meet Brad at noon). We walked over to the Walmart and did a little shopping for items we needed and Malcolm called Brad to let him know we were there already. Brad showed up at noon and we had a great time catching up and eating a great meal at Fatz Restaurant. We even ended up with some leftovers we put in our outdoor refrigerator. We gave Brad a brief tour of our trailer (as much as you can with the slides pulled in), then said our goodbyes.

The drive from Lenoir to Blowing Rock, North Carolina along US 321 is quite a climb. The truck was running well, but you could really tell the engine was working hard. The radiator fan was pulling full force and you could smell that the engine was warm through the air conditioner vents. Nothing major, just a “hot” smell. The gauges were all showing things were within range. We made it to the top without issue and found our way to our campground without any problem (we’re really liking the GPS software, by the way).

The last road back to the campground had a couple of switchback curves that made the drive interesting. The campground, itself, is very tight and hilly. They put us in site D1, which is on a dead-end road and is angled such that the trailer needed to be backed down the road to get it in the site. It wasn’t too hard to get it in the spot once we figured that out.

The campground is beautiful and most of the spots are literally carved into the side of the hill. A few of them have recently been dug out as the hill seems to have slid down into a few of them. Ours looks pretty sturdy, fortunately. We are parked right across the road from a beautiful creek babbling over the rocks.

Pulled into site D-1.

Babbling brook.

The view out our off-door side window.

After we got set up, we called Val’s aunt and uncle and went over to their house to go through old family pictures. Those that Val’s aunt wanted to keep, we scanned into Malcolm’s computer so we had a copy, as well. We were fine with giving her all the pictures if she wanted, as we’re trying to get away from tons of printed photos and scanning them all into digital form.

We ate dinner with Val’s family, visited until about 10:00 and headed back to the trailer (about 2 miles away from the house). Tomorrow, we’re heading over for breakfast and looks like we’re heading to Blowing Rock to do some walking around and shopping with the family.