Comings and goings

* Heh. =k *

DAY 90! (Monday, November 28^th)

We packed up camp and got ready to leave the nice campgrounds near whatever dam.

Charlotte is becoming more and more tree-like as the trip continues...

Small grocery store near Bowling Green feels the need to label the Kool-Aid section.

WE HAD KFC IN KENTUCKY! I was pretty excited about that. Then I pooped in their bathroom.

No, I see myself shitting.

Tin Cup in Nashville! This is where Charlotte did her post and I mostly downloaded minecraft mods :]]]

We found a nice part of the city despite the rain and ...cityness! (we don't like big cities)

omg it's a bridge!

Live band at Acme Feed and Seed. They were pretty good! Our food was worse, unfortunately. (actually mine was delicious, I had curried chickpeas with coconut rice and fry bread holy shit- Karol's was not great : ( -C)

*Sniffle*.. that's all I ever wanted to hear!

Holy fuck this was the worst drive I've ever had to do. A hundred miles in POURING rain on one pitch black highway with big trucks speeding past me (I gave in and just went like 20 under the limit...)

...hey

My fingers are getting better, thanks Doctor Henry!

WHATAMIDO?

Black Mirror before going to sleep in the walmart parking lot.

\./91 (Tuesday, Nov 29^th)

When I wake up, I do it creepily.

We were a little too cold sleeping under just blanken, should have slept in our sleeping bags. Oh well, it was fine. We woke up right around sunrise and of course there were plenty of people around, buying shit and walking around and whatever. I noticed that the sun was conveniently going to rise over the walmart building and started wondering whether it was all part of their marketing scheme. Their logo is a sun and I wonder whether the build their stores such that the sun always rises over them, so you see the sun rise as you walk into the walmart. I'm sure they'd think of this sort of thing (or maybe someone in marketing for such a large company might), but I'm not sure it's a huge part of their construction planning. (Monday 12/5 addition: we slept in a walmart parking lot and the sun rose not over the building. So much for my theory. At least for this one.)

The sunrise is always nice, no matter the amount of corporate meddling.

Anyway. This was the day we were heading to the Great Smoky Mountains national park! We were excited because we planned to backcountry camp for the few nights we had before getting to the farm in Georgia.

It was a really nice drive the closer we got.

We arrived!...

Well, it was closed. The national park. It was closed. Because of wildfires. We turned around because the road we tried to take in was closed and went to the nearest visitor center, at the suggestion of one of the rangers.

Well, we found out that lots of the area had been evacuated because of the fire which was aggravated by the tremendous wind lately. Roads were closed (highlighted in yellow) and a large area on the northern end of the park was (is? I'm not sure how bad it still is) ablaze. My mom even read about it in a Polish newspaper days later - apparently there were many people who died. The ranger at that visitor center told us it was the worst they had ever dealt with, of course due to this long, widespread drought. He suggested we take the long way around to the North Carolina side. Maybe we'd be able to hike there, at least.

Road map the ranger drew on, suggesting routes we could take and places that might be open to camping.

The two hour drive around the park was at least really pretty.

This is on the North Carolina side.

We stopped here to deposit urine and walk around for a few minutes before continuing.

Cataloochee, one of the places we might have camped if the backcountry permit office was open (we tried calling several times to no avail).

We settled for lunch and (vaguely greenish, despite filtering) water from the river here, at this closed campground, right before a closed gate.

Still gorgeous, although now literally smoky mountains.

Well, since that was a fail, we drove further away to the Pisgah national forest, since freecampsites.net reported dispersed campsites along forest roads. Well, we ended up driving straight through the forest, north to south. The first road we tried was difficult to navigate with a vehicle that is very non-offroad (also we drove at least a mile in and didn't find any campsites). The second one actually had campsites, but they were all filled. Eventually the road got much worse and we stopped seeing campsites so we turned around. We also needed gas if we were going to be driving around forest roads looking for a place to camp...

Pisgah. What a name. It's like an expletive.

The last road we tried was luckily not far from a town so we got some gas and ended up getting dinner at some place called Huddle House. It looked dinery and was open and like right there. After days of trouble finding camping and not being able to hike at all, Charlotte was pretty upset. All she wanted to do was hike and camp comfortably, but instead we spent hours every day driving... We also had hardly a thousand calories each day, so there was that too. So we got gas, drove about a mile to find the walmart we'd sleep near, and the Huddle House was about a thousand feet away from that.

Thanks, Huddle House, for being there when we needed you.

I can't go to a bathroom and NOT take a stupid picture. Thanks for reflecting my face, Huddle House!

/.\92 (Wed, Nov 30^th)

How about some of this?

We wanted to make sure we found a goddamn camping spot this day, so we went right to it after changing and filling our water bottles at walmart. We drove back to the Pisgah national forest, hoping to find some camping there before it fills up (also hoping motherfuckers would be gone because of the rain and intense wind), but instead...

Probably tons of downed trees and shit. Thanks, Trump.

We turned around and had lunch here! Then it started raining again.

Dziekujemy jeszcze raz za zupy! Double tomato soup from my parents for lunch.

FINALLY found a campsite around three, but, again, fuckin' rain, yo.

So we hung out in the car for a while.

We set up camp in the twilight and then cooked some brown rice (thanks again, family) with the spearoon! This is the first time we cooked and ate with one of my utensils and I'm quite happy we did.

|.|93 (Th, December 1^st)

This was the day we'd finally be heading to the farm in Madison, Georgia. We didn't really hike like we hoped, but we ended up having a nice night. We got up and packed up since it wasn't raining. Charlotte went to go pee but screamed that she found a deer head!

I don't know what the fuck happened to the rest of this deer.

This was our water source for the day (we brushed our teeth here!)

The drive out of the forest was pretty in the sunlight.

This is about when I realized my facial hair is getting kinda long.

Zaxby's for lunch! It's a fast food fried chicken place, sort of like a nicer KFC.

wat

It's true. Too bad you're not real, John Wayne.

Some fuckin' good shit, yo.

We arrived at the farm! Here are some of her Great Pyrenees!

She's got some crazy kinds of chickens. Three groups of them, all different. Some of them lay green eggs.

Very pregnant goats. The white one is Lucky, whose horns curled the wrong way after some severe WWOOFer-caused trauma. (Basically his dogs killed one of the litter - she managed to hide, covered in blood)

Charlotte's of course in love again. These guys just lie down and want to be petted.

I FINALLY SEWED MY PANTS (one pair had a hole for like a month. Then the pair I wear most often developed one too, both in the crotchular region, unfortunately, and when I noticed it on the pair I was wearing, I had to act)

So Charlotte wasn't having a great time again this day. She'd been feeling a little anxious toward the end of our stay in Virginia and it came back when we got closer to Georgia. One of the biggest things she hoped for out of WWOOFing was to have some sort of personal connection with each host, to develop some sort of deeper relationship that would last for a while. I assumed something like that might happen, but I wasn't as adamant about that as I was about learning new things.

Well, we haven't really had the kind of personal connection Charlotte was hoping for and it was clear that we wouldn't get it in Georgia. In fact, we noticed that WWOOFing seems like an organization that pairs hosts with free labor (and yes, of course free labor is ultimately what we are, I know this- I just didn't expect it to feel so impersonal -C). We felt sort of dehumanized (as clearly must happen when hosts see people come and go so often (I think Virginia had new people every month for like three years or something)), and we really weren't expecting to feel like expendable workers or something, just passing through. On top of that, the things we learned and did in Virginia (and even West Virginia, as it was mostly land clearing) were clearly things we could have learned and done on our own. We kind of just needed a kick in the ass, as it turned out, and to get out of our slump in New Jersey.

Well, mission accomplished, I guess. We now have tons of things we know we're capable of doing, some thanks explicitly to Virginia (we know we can build hoop houses, a greenhouse, a shed, we know we can easily make our own cheese and yogurt, and I am much less afraid of trying things like making my own fuckin forge and trying blacksmithing (assuming I can find a good spot to do it safely), which is also thanks to Nathan in West Virginia). The thing now is that WWOOFing is somewhat getting in the way of doing what we want to be doing because it sometimes feels like a full-time job and we don't have a place of our own to start a garden or build furniture or whatever.

So now we're planning on taking it easy in December. We'll be camping a little more before staying with Henry (who, seriously, is probably the sweetest person we've ever met. He actually said "I always want to be kind of a haven for you guys, where you can just relax and not stress and not feel fucking used and awkward." What a guy. We'll stay there for a bit (obviously not overstaying our welcome cause that would be stupid) before heading further up north, staying with Jason for a little (can't wait to hang out with him again! Hilarity will inevitably ensue again and my body is ready for it) and hopefully Martin in New York before we go home for Christmas. We'll hang out with friends which we both are definitely excited for and then January will be cut shorter - we'll head almost straight for Georgia so I can get my tattoo continued anyway, despite not actually staying for long (it'll just represent the southern sojourn) and then go to Florida to visit Charlotte's mom before heading west. From there we'll potentially proceed as planned, just moving some things up a little bit.

(.)94 (F, Dec 2^nd)

So yeah. Probably not gonna be WWOOFing for much longer, if at all. We were thinking of doing at least a day's work in Georgia, but Charlotte's anxiety-induced ill feelings continued the next morning so she explained the situation to our host who understood that Charlotte wouldn't want to stay at someone's house while she was dealing with this kind of anxiety. We just packed up the car and left.

But not before a bathroom picture!

This was where we slept that night.

I was surprised to encounter a bull as I was bringing our duffel bag to the car... the neighbor's bull broke through their shitty fence apparently yet again.

We had breakfast at The Caboose! We met a really sweet old man there who served us.

I don't know what the fuck that was, hopefully it's on the mirror and not my stupid chin.

FRIED PIE OMFG IT WAS DELICIOUS

Again, we decided to look for a spot to camp as soon as we were done with brunch or whatever it was. We drove to a different national forest, going down its roads and being disappointed by one closed gate before we saw... our first fucking armadillo!

Not actually fucking, more like sniffing. (I'm still freaking out about cool this was and I'm claiming it's my new favorite animal -C)

We found a big open area near some horse trails! We also found horse poop almost immediately.

Horseshit-free!

This was our water source for these few days, a river along the trails near the campground.

Horse trails. Growing things. Georgia. No peaches. So disappoint.

).(95 (Sa, D 3^rd)

After a small breakfast of oatmeal, we hiked!

We went to the right, but probably not even close to 4.6 miles. Eventually the trails got confusing and we turned around. (also Karol's pinky toe was hurting because he cut too much (and then fucking ripped it out =k) when trimming his toe nails : p -C)

I don't know, weird colored feathers.

If this contained the water it was supposed to, we'd have had to swim up this tributary.

I say again, there has been a terrible drought. No rain (except for days ago) since mid-August.

Our second armadillo sighting! We ended up seeing a third, but the pictures I got from that one were far away.

That lady fucking stared and didn't wave back so I took a picture of her stupid horse ass.

I'M BACK IN THE GAME, MOTHAFUCKAS!

So we planned to get up and pack quickly and early the next day to escape the rain (it was supposed to definitely start raining around 8 or so) but instead it started raining as we were cooking dinner. Fuck that. We were doing some stuff outside on the stairs nearby that I guess are meant for shorties to get on their horsies, but we quickly brought everything into the car cause we don't enjoy having all our shit rained on.

>.<96 (Su, 12/4)

It didn't matter when we woke up cause the tent was already wet from Saturday night, but it actually ended up raining more continuously and harder around 9 or whatever it was, so we quickly rolled up our tent and threw it into the car, where we had some dry breakfast before beginning the four hour drive to Charlotte (North Carolina. Charlotte the girl was still right next to me, no weird surrogate/out of body thing happening here).

It's all wet and bleh.

Almost indistinguishable because it was raining, but that's our footprint. Bodyprint. Whatever.

We stopped at a grocery store called Publix for lunch. Look at this wonderful bounty!

Publix ham, smoked, and Publix swiss cheese on French bread! Fucking delicious with chips inside.

This water tower meant I took all of Charlotte's horse-spotting points (she had 7, though), putting me up to 64.

This is how my fingers look as I type this post - almost fine! Except yeah my index finger is swollen at the knuckle in the middle... gotta deal with that (maybe I'll try draining it or something).

We're in Starbucks now and they have the worst hot chocolate - it's just fucking bitter. They're also very slow here, but I guess whatever, we had time to kill and I surprisingly finished the post in one sitting. Hooray! (Turns out it took about 4 hours though, which I didn't even realize). 

We also emailed the farm in New Mexico, basically telling them about our experiences thus far and our issues with WWOOFing. We wanted to see what they would say (and how they'd say it) before deciding one way or another whether we'd stay with them. Well, I'm writing this Monday morning because they responded and we feel much more comfortable going there. It seems like we'll actually have a good time and probably learn a bunch of stuff (which wasn't exactly in question; we, and especially Charlotte, were just worried about being another set of free workers). So yeah, New Mexico probably some time toward the end of January or February, depending on what we end up scheduling and when they can have us. We talked about the end of February last we spoke, so I'm not exactly sure when we'll end up in New Mexico, what with our timetable being moved up tremendously. We'll be in touch with them and are going to figure out our schedule for the next few months shortly, as we sit in another Starbucks Monday morning. Man, have my farts been smelly lately...

hello (this is in the Starbucks we went to Sunday night)

After this, we'll be heading to Bojangles which is literally fucking everywhere in the south (it's a fast food chain down here). Maybe I'll update this post with a picture or just leave it for Charlotte to use next week cause it's just fast food. Or I won't post this yet cause it's already almost 8 apparently and Starbucks is almost closed...

Fine, here, look at the food we ate. It was alright, the biscuits and rice were great. We're done with fast food for a while...

So yeah, now our life is mostly just traveling across the country. These past two weeks have been quite long, what with the issues with the weather and being unable to find camping spots quickly and painlessly, driving around for hours. The next few weeks will definitely be better since we have some decent plans and good friends to stay with. I'm vaguely worried about what will happen when we're out west at the national parks, since we expect to be camping and hiking for around 6-8 weeks. We'll obviously be stopping in towns and shit to put up new posts and buy food every now and then, but I'm not really sure where we'll bathe (Charlotte says we'll swim in bodies of water while we're camping) and... well I guess I don't know how much camping and hiking I'll be able to handle. There is a shitload to see out there, but I don't know. We've both realized recently that we're really not categorizable - we aren't city folk, but we aren't country folk either. Not suburban either. We don't want to live in the woods, we don't need to hike all the time, and we don't particularly care for big cities. We like a mix and balance of many different things, so I guess I worry that too much time in national parks or whatever will be just that - too much time in the wilderness.

Maybe not. I'm already more used to and better at camping and stuff and now we've learned a lot about the value of having campsites planned or whatever. Knowing where we'll be sleeping is important, so I'm sure we'll do better by the time we get west of Texas. I'm also not really worried about freaking out during the trip in general, ironically. Before we left, I think Charlotte and I both expected, if either of us, me to be the one that wasn't able to handle this whole adventure, because of my long history of terrible depression. It seems the tables have turned - Charlotte has had more trouble adjusting to this lifestyle.  I guess that's partly because I am just someone who can/does deal with things I don't necessarily want to be doing for much longer. I'm more enduring or something, and maybe also less used to having total freedom and doing whatever I want.  (Yeah I think my having left home when I was 18, and therefore having significant control and freedom over my life since then, has made me realize what a control freak I am and when things go wrong or not my way, I need to learn how to deal, especially in social situations. I'm glad to be learning so much about myself and what I need to work on to make my life/our lives/my friends' and family's lives better. I woke up today (Monday 12/5) really really optimistic about everything and yeah...life is just too good -C). That's a big thing I'm glad to be learning about on this journey. I'm starting to understand that I can do whatever the fuck I want and that's pretty huge. Now, it just needs to translate also to "I can change my plans whenever I want" because I guess I would feel bad (and did, yesterday) saying that I was tired of camping. Luckily, Charlotte quickly reminded me that we can do what we want now and we're just not gonna be camping for another week like we initially anticipated. We'll be going to stay with friends sooner. And it'll be great. If it isn't, we can just go do something else.

Because we fucking can.

Walmart parking lot again for the night.

Haha we're sleeping in Charlotte.