Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Rain and Trucks

My two least favorite things on a road trip are rain and the eighteen wheelers which splash mist into the air making it very hard to see even cars that are well lighted. This is how we spent the major portion of today's trek through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia (From Statesville, NC to Brunswick, GA).

We got an early start and were very optimistic. We thought it would be an easy travel day - we had planned for an early stop in Brunswick to rest up from yesterday's trek.

Right away we ran into rush hour around Statesville. It was stop and go for 15 for 20 minutes - bumper to bumper, complicated by heavy rain and more trucks than you can shake a stick at. There was a parade of red tail lights as far as the eye could see ahead of us - a little disconcerting!

After we cleared that mess, the weather let up some, and then it rained off and on for the rest of the trip. The trucks didn't let up though. Trying to share the road with the big truckers makes you a big fan of sending freight by rail.

In South Carolina we saw two bizarre incidents along the highway. In the first case, a police car was checking out a wrecked new model car on an exit ramp. The front of the car was badly smashed in and it was just sitting there - no indication of ambulance, wrecker, etc.

The second event was even more unnerving - the car was on the right shoulder of the freeway, headed right at us on an upward curve to the left. There wasn't a lot of shoulder because of the guardrail along the curve. A man appeared to be getting out of the car - almost as though this had just happened. It appeared that the car went out of control on the curve, hit the guardrail, was smashed in the front, and was turned around backwards. At 70 mph it's hard to take it all in, but it was definitely interesting to say the least. Again, no evidence of wrecker. Bizarre.

After we rested, we drove around Brunswick to see what we could see. There's a huge bridge to Jekyll Island. We found a middle school with some event going on - cars were parked everywhere - the lot was full and so were the surrounding streets. We had no idea what the attraction was.

Drove down streets of really nice, big homes reminiscent of 6th Street, and other streets that were woe-begone and God forsaken. I noticed that the residents, black, white and in-between all like to sit on the porch in the evening.

Back to the motel and over to Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Q for dinner. Luscious ribs - comfortable family atmosphere - it was a pleasure to be there.

The accent in Georgia sounds to be the typical southern stereotypical accent. At Sonny's I heard a man ordering - "I'll have this here...that there." Huh?