First Campground Bust

ON SC-121 EN route to Cross Hill, SC

Sometimes plans work out; sometimes they don’t. Our plan to spend two weeks at Fort Gordon’s Pointes West Army Resort falls into the second category.

Our initial thought was to break the 322-mile (515 km) drive from the Eastbank COE campground to our new home near Appling, Georgia into two segments. After further consideration, however, we decided to push on and do the drive in one shot.

The drive was an easy one, and we arrived at Pointes West around 4:30p. We checked in, got a list of the available sites, and settled on 4K — a rustic FHU overlooking Lake Strom Thurmond.

Things went downhill from there. The site turned out to be infested — and I mean teeming — with ants. Not sure if they were Argentine ants or not, but whatever they were, there were a lot of them. The campers in the neighboring site reported that the ants were getting into their trailer as well as their truck. Mui attempted some ant control by spraying the area and laying down a bait perimeter, but there were just too many of them in too big an area. So we got the camping fee refunded and left … the tag for 4K our only reminder of plans gone awry.

Mui refused to even consider the state and county parks nearby on the assumption that they probably had ants as well. Plus, we wanted an FHU site. By then it was 6:30p, so we drove 20 miles (32 km) to Grovetown, Georgia for our very first overnight at Wally World. (For those not in the know, that would be the Wal-Mart parking lot … in our case, the Gateway Supercenter.) After getting permission from the manager for our overnight stay, we shopped for some produce, had a bite to eat at the on-site Subway, and returned home to crank up the genny and make ourselves comfortable. With the manager’s blessing, we put out one of the bedroom slides for ease of maneuvering around the bed, but otherwise limited our footprint two our ten tires on the pavement.

Thanks for the hospitality, Wal-Mart.

We spent the evening re-grouping. Hours of searching for campgrounds did little to yield an FHU site that tickled our fancy. Although we went to bed without a place to stay for the next two weeks, we had the beginnings of a plan that hinged on moving up our solar panel install.

With the toad still hooked up, got to make sure we don’t drive off in the morning
without making sure it is road-ready.

After a decent night’s rest — once my brain finally stopped churning with ideas hither and thither — we wandered over to thank the Wal-Mart manager for his hospitality, picked up a pest-control sprayer with a bit more oomph to aid in future ant control efforts, and got on the road at 7:30a. A short drive of 12 miles (19km), took us to the South Carolina Welcome Center. Time to make some phone calls. We left 15 minutes later with our new plans gelled.

And that’s how we happen to be heading to Greenwood Lake near Cross Hill, SC. The bonus of our new plans — a roadside produce market that yielded several pounds of delicious peaches :-)

A great looking roadside produce stand invites us to …

… stop and pick up some yummy peaches.

We’re getting close to our destination … time to put on my navigator nag-givator hat … I’ll explain the term another time ;-) Or maybe I don’t have to :-D

I’ll have more about where we landed in the next post.