Road Trip

Miata World ’99

Twenty years ago today Donna and I got back from a 2 week vacation which consisted of a drive to Dallas, Texas. We were going to a national gathering of the Miata Club of America to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the car. We were going to take 4 days to drive over, spend 4 days in Big D and take our sweet time on the way home. The big draw at this event was they were giving away, to one lucky attendee, a brand new 1999 10th Anniversary Edition Miata (it wasn’t us.)

Bill Kirby, who was the Metro Editor for the Augusta Chronicle, wrote a column for that section 4 times a week. He’d collect postcards from readers when they went on summer vacation. Each year, his goal was to get one from every state and as many different countries as possible. This served three functions: 1) Local folks get their names in the paper with the added bonus of bragging about their travels, 2) Bill got to go on lots of vacations, and 3) Bill got an easy way to fill his column in the summer months. A couple years prior Donna & I had made the paper, because we took a trip to New England and that seems to be a neck of the woods little visited by folks from the CSRA. So I vowed to sent him a postcard every day of our trip.

I had intended to start on May 2nd and post one of those postcards each day until today, but forgot, so better late than never, here is the first, with the rest follow.

LITTLE RIVER CANYON FALLS
Desoto State Park, Fort Payne, Alabama
Bill,
A little early for vacations, but this is ours for the year. Day one of fourteen of the “Slow Miata to Texas” tour. At 300 miles, the Aiken, SC to Fort Payne, AL leg is the longest of the trip. Staying in a lodge in the State Park. Saw Desoto Falls today, this one and others tomorrow.
Brian & Donna, Aiken, SC		 Bill Kirby
The Augusta Chronicle
P.O. Box 1928
Augusta, GA  30903

Cocktail Weenie?

A couple of weeks ago we drove over to Atlanta, GA (approx. 300 mile round trip) and spent the night in a motel to take a picture of the Miata with a Wienermobile to score 9 points in this year’s Moss Motoring Challenge.

Now, for next weekend, we are considering driving to Gainesville, FL (more than 300 miles one way) and spending a night in a motel to take a picture of the Mini Wienermobile which is worth zero points in this year’s Moss Motoring Challenge.

Seeing as it is worth zero points, if we go, what should we drive? The Mini, to take a picture with it and the Wienermobile made from a Mini. Or should we drive the Miata, just to have a photo of it with both sizes of Wienermobiles.

30,000 Damn Yankees

We saw this sign on the way down to Hilton Head on Thursday, but Donna was driving and there was some traffic, so I said we’ll be sure and stop on the way back home. I had a good idea of where the sign was, but still had drive by it and then find a spot to turn around to go back.

I took the picture and as I was getting back into the car another vehicle slowed down next to us. The driver zipped down their window and said, “I stopped, took a picture and sent it back home up north and everyone got a big kick out of it.” “Actually it used to be a giant Confederate flag, but someone burned it down.” (you can see that sign on an old Google Streetview)

On the way home on SC125, about halfway through the Bomb Plant, the Ladybug blasted past the 30,000 mile barrier.

Magically Moosetery Tour

One of the motoring challenges this year is Wild Animal Statue or Sculpture (life-size or larger) and we were going to use one of the fiberglass art horses still scattered around town, but after some discussion we thought that maybe they didn’t fit the wild part, so we have been keeping our eyes open for other possibilities. Three weeks ago when we did our three city deli bagel taste test drive on our way back from North Carolina on US176 South, somewhere we zipped by a large metal sculpture of a moose. We both noticed it, but didn’t stop because we were over carbo-loaded and just wanted to go home.

This past Saturday we decided to take a road trip back up to Greenville to go to Greenfield’s Deli to get some more of our favorite bagels. And seeing as we were nearby, we decided to go and find that moose statue. The both of us could see the statue in our minds eye and knew it was somewhere along US176 between Landrum,SC and Flat Rock, NC. Not that I minded the extra 80 or so miles of driving because fully half of it would be on windy two-lane US176 up and down the mountain between those two towns. We were relatively sure it was just outside either Tryon, NC or Saluda, NC, but as it turned out it was nowhere near them, it was nowhere we could find along that route.

So either we both had the same visual hallucination or it was a real moose grazing in the grass as it migrated back to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Bagels For Breakfast

We like bagels and really miss the ones we used to get when we lived in New Jersey for those two years. After living in South Carolina for several years we adjusted to just live with the ones from Dunkin Donuts. Whenever we would travel we would seek out a shop that sold “real” bagels, so now we have gotten kind of snobbish about them and will only eat those.

For a while we were satisfied from the one we got from a chain called Bruegger’s that had a store in Lexington, SC a mere 50 miles away. These were fine until we discovered a place called Joey’s NY Bagels in Hendersonville, NC on a trip to see my sister. The bagels from there elicited memories of those from Jersey, so we have stopped going to Bruegger’s.

A hundred mile round trip to Lexington and back for bagels wasn’t bad, but a 330 mile round trip to Hendersonville and back would be nuts. So we started looking for someplace closer that had “real” bagels. We found a place in Greenville, SC (a 220 mile round trip) called Greenfield’s Bagels & Deli. It is really too far away for frequent trips to just get a bagel for breakfast, but we’ve combined it with looking for some Motoring Challenge points and have been a couple of times.

Yesterday we decided it was time for some bagels this weekend. We were planning another Greenville trip, but I decided to look around for something else in the state that might be closer. Charleston and Hilton Head on the coast had promising bagel bakeries, but they were both further away than Greenville. Then I found a place called Corner Bagel Bakery & Deli in Anderson, SC. This place is a little under a hundred miles away one-way, not that many miles savings over Greenville, but Anderson is a much smaller town so traffic will be better and we won’t have to get on the Interstate at all.

We each got a toasted bagel and one each in a bag to go at the Corner Bagel Bakery & Deli. I thought it was not too bad, but Donna said it was barely Bruegger level. “Well,”I volunteered, “Greenville and Greenfield’s Deli is only about 30 miles away. You want to go there?”

So that is what we did. Because we had our own bagel in Anderson, we just split a toasted one in Greenville and then also got a couple more to go. I told Donna that I thought that this bagel was better than our previous gold standard, the Joey’s in Hendersonville. She informed me that I was nuts, Joey’s was better. “You know,” I said, “Joey’s is only about 40 miles away?”

“Let’s go,” she said. So we did. Here we split another toasted bagel and had them bag up a couple more to go for each of us. While eating in Joey’s NY Bagel’s store Donna decided that just maybe I was right about which one was best. We brought home at least one bagel from each place, so maybe we will have to figure out a way to do some back to back blind taste testing…

The triptych above shows the interiors of all three places we ate a bagel at this morning. From left to right: Corner Bagel Bakery & Deli in Anderson, SC, Greenfield’s Bagels & Deli in Greenville, SC and Joey’s NY Bagels in Hendersonville, NC.

Hope The Window Doesn’t Quit Too

The reason we were at the one-lane bridge yesterday was because we needed a picture of one for the Motoring Challenge. It is worth three points. We have one not too far from home that we used for the challenge back in 2015, so we didn’t want to use it again and we wanted something a little more scenic for this year.

Friday night, while sitting in the hotel, Donna asked, “See if there are any one-lane bridges in south Georgia?” The first one I found was this beauty and it was perfect. Even with having to drive a 1/4 mile of dirt road to get there.

Of the half dozen or so photos we took, the one above was my favorite of the bunch, but there is one problem, no person with flyer in it. We’ll probably submit the one below for the challenge. Who knows, we might be driving right by it on the way home tomorrow, maybe we’ll stop in again…

Tonight when I went to fill it up with gas, I couldn’t get out of the car. I pulled on the door handle and it moved, but nothing happened. Naturally I could not believe what was happening, so I tried pulling it several more times with the same negative results. I could reach out the window and lift the outside handle and the door would open.

I wasn’t trapped, but the window needs to keep working or I would be. I shouldn’t be worried, it isn’t exhibiting any hint of troubles, but then again neither was the inside door handle. I’m guessing that a cable has broken or come unhooked inside the door, should be an easy fix when we get home.

47,203.98 Foot-Pounds

We started the day listening to Ray Charles “play” the piano and ended with watching fireworks. In between we found a one lane bridge on a dirt road, found the Blue Angels flying indoors and took in a Double A baseball game.

The CTBNL ticked over 64,000 miles just north of Newton, Georgia (47,203.98 ft-lb converts into 64,000 Newton-Meters.)