All Good Thangs Must Come to an End

Regrets: not doing this, not going on the Charleston Prison tour, not still being on vacation

Summing it Up

Number of miles travelled: 2213
Number of State lines: 6
Number of U-turns: 17
Tanks of gas: 9

Live animal species petted: 9
Dolphins hit by ferry boats: 0
Southern BBQ restaurants experienced: 4
Pigs eaten: 2.5
Vegetarian restaurants: 1, grudgingly
Local beers tasted: 4

Average age of guys that hit on us: 20
Favorite pick-up line: “Are ya’ll on Spring Break?”
Number of successful pick-ups: 0
Number of Pretty Discounts: 5
Average $ amount spent at consignment, vintage, outlet stores: 300 each
Number of new outfits that no one in DC/Chicago will ever be able to recreate: infinite

Gracious hosts: 6
Coked out hostel owners: 1
Hippie musicians at Nashville hostel that tried to bum a ride: 2
Number of rides given: 0
“That’s what she said” jokes: 78 (before we lost count)
Recurring inappropriate conversation topics: 4
Liters of bourbon purchased: 2
Future barrels of bourbon to be purchased: 1, depending

Times we sang along to John Denver’s “Country Roads”: 21
Chapters of Harry Potter on audio book: 26
Times we listened to the news on the radio: 3
Paradigm-shifting, historic votes we missed back in DC: 1
Sports sections we read along the way: 3
Front pages we read: 0.5

Raw oysters consumed by vegetarian: 6
Fake-meat courses consumed by omnivores: 1

Stars seen in the northern GA wilderness: infinite
REM sleep hours camping in said forest: 1 (combined)
Times spandex took the place of pants: 14
Georgian octogenarians who judged and whispered to themselves about said spandex: 12

Number of sleepless hours: 8
Sleepless hours spent watching Miley Cyrus movie: 2
Ghosts captured on camera: 1
Bleached blonds encountered: 30+
Number of boxes of blond hair dye left on most CVS shelves: 0

Times Jackie asked to borrow toothpaste: 25
Times Rachel said “it’s in the plaid backpack”: 25
Times Jackie scored: 1
Age of the man (who assisted (in the indoor soccer game)): 44
Crushes developed on musicians we’ll never meet: 2

Cups of coffee held comfortably at one time by Amanda’s bladder: 0.3
Composting toilets used: 1
Clogged toilets we wished were composting: 1
Interiors of men’s bathrooms photographed: 1
Minutes spent in communal bathroom by hippie musician at one time: 43

Number of future road trips/vacations/long weekends/adventures planned: 79
Number that will actually happen: unclear as yet

Southern Hospitality

What they say, it really is true.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a proud Northerner. But we really have nothing on the South in terms of genuine kindness for kindness' sake.

I'm sure there are some qualifications, but we three young women have been on the receiving end of endless favors and generosity of spirit. We wanted to recognize some of these instances before we pull back in to Washington.

Obviously our hosts have been most graceful. They not only helped us keep the trip affordable, but also so much more enjoyable and educational and enlightened than we could've imagined. You not only showed us the best sleeping place you had (whether it be floors or newly renovated bedrooms), you really shared with us your lives and your hometowns. As Amanda said, you seemed to stop your lives to make sure we got to know these places, and had fun in the process. We got to go to a premiere equine hospital, the local speakeasy, and a self-sustaining farm. We petted bunnies and alpacas. We were treated to dinners and driving tours.

So, Pam, Bob, Ryan, Jon, Brent, Kathryn, Anna, and Patty: thank you, for everything. We had so much fun touring the monuments, seeing the lands, and mostly hearing your stories.

And Raja. Somehow you have not made it into the blog, but we hope you are reading. We met Raja in the line at the Pancake Pantry in Nashville (it was down the block!). She offered to show us around, as a native of the city, and gave us directions, tips, and answers. Then she paid for our brunch - a total surprise. Thank you.

Jackie has already posted about the nearly-toothless mechanic in West Virginia. In addition to thanking him, I also want to recommend the services of Import Auto Repair in Nashville. The overdrive on my car stopped working somewhere on the journey down to Tennessee. When I took it in to Import and explained my story, about how I was on a road trip and due in a National Forest later that day, they moved me to the front of the line, fixed the problem, gave me recommendations for the upcoming stop in Savannah, and even recommended a good car wash to get the filth of the journey off of my ride. Fully respectful the entire time. Thank you.

There are so many other favors that I haven't detailed here (like the discounted meal at Bluebird). We hope (and believe) that we've spiced things up for the people we've met, as well. And please know that anyone reading this is invited to stay on our floors, and tour our cities, anytime.

We'll try our best to exhibit some of that Southern charm.

The 2-Step Schlepp Northward

"OK, that's good."

"No!"

Doing the Charleston in Charleston. Yeah, it's deep.

We lost Amanda but we put her clothes on this other girl and made her hide her face all day.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Still recovering from the "Bobos go Camping" experience, Rachel and I decided to get our supernatural on during a Savannah Ghost Walk tour. The city is known for being the most haunted in America. With Spanish moss hanging off every tree as though it were weeping, and graveyards, marked and overlaid alike, underneath half the city's historic district, there's a distinctly eerie, ethereal quality to Savannah.

And while there were no crazies walking dog-less collars or pre-op transvestites with semi-mystical abilities, the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil did a good job of capturing a certain essence of the city. Even Forrest Gump, sitting chattily on a Savannah park bench, embodied an inherent, friendly slowness about the city's preferred pace.

It helped that we were there on an overcast, intermittently rainy day. But the evening was dry and almost clear. The wide, flat streets gave the illusion of endlessness and somehow made the stories of the supernatural more plausible. The whole town feels like one big murder mystery dinner theater and I kept expecting the Ghost Tour guide to pull out a card saying I was found dead in the foyer of a knife wound.

Here she is looking a little ghostly herself without flesh, er, I mean, flash:

The other people on the tour was a couple in their 30s. The woman, tiny and with a hat covering most of her face, proudly outed her companion as a real, live Ghost Hunter 10 minutes into the tour. They were from DC, too, headed to Disney. The Ghost Tour was purely recreational, but at home, her companion owned the scientific instruments and devices necessary to track ghosts and spirits.

The Ghost Hunter himself was a squat, round man in jeans and a leather jacket who chewed at his gum nonchalantly while he explained that eddies were merely, usually just wind, NOT ghosts. And that people got excited about them irrationally. He said this, of course, as though disbelieving in the supernatural origin of eddies proved the supernatural origin of shadows and white spots in photographs. As though disbelieving in leprechauns made the rainbow's pot of gold real.

I shouldn't jest, though. We enjoyed the Ghost Tour immensely. It was one of the highlights of the trip. The cool-weather walk, the history, the well-recited stories of the tour guide, and the prospect that if I, too, died in Savannah, I'd have a better opportunity to haunt, and a wider social network to boot.

Here is the Haunted CVS that stands where an 18th-century jail once stood:

It housed the first woman to be hung in Georgia. She was imprisoned for murdering her rapist and watched the gallows outside her cell being built, while the baby she carried grew in her, knowing she'd be hung as soon as it was born. She haunts the store now, looking for her baby, overturning cotton balls and body wash in her quest.

Also, I caught a ghost on camera:

Outside the upper-right window. You know you see it. The spirit of a sailor's widow who jumped from the third floor upon learning of her husband's death. SUCK IT, Ghost Busters.

Saved

Rachel has some good ideas, I'll give her that.

Not many good ideas would get us all out of bed at 8 am, especially after Saturday consisted of a hike that none of our muscles were prepared for, a "fitness loop" that was riddled with medieval torture devices, and a grueling six-hour cross-Georgia over-packed car ride. But Rachel had done her Savannah research and it turned out that the oldest black church in America was located less than a mile from our hostel. And it was Sunday.

We debated putting on our big hats, nixed the jeans, and fortified ourselves with a large southern breakfast. And then we went to church.

I've always taken comfort from the ritual of the Episcopalian church that dominated by childhood Sundays and felt myself to be a decently spiritual person, regardless of the length of time between my visits to the alter. But a Baptist church was new ground and I was slightly nervous that we would be distinctly out of place and deemed disrespectful in what were clearly hallowed grounds. It turns out that we had no reason to worry.

At least four different members of the congregation stopped at our pew to thank us for joining them in worship. The usher asked me where I was from and whether I'd like to say a few words during the service (I nervously thanked him and declined). A small child in shiny patent leather shoes bumped into me in the hallway and blew a wet kiss.

The service started slowly with a short reading from the Bible and a couple of words from the pastor. And then the music started. I feel as though my description would only track what you've seen in movies, but I can only say that it doesn't feel like when you watch it in movies. People don't cry out for show, they audibly agree with the pastor. Everyone sings because the music is so sweet it's impossible not to join in. And the clapping is contagious. Everyone in this church was so HAPPY to be in church (when's the last time you said that?). So grateful to share in this community. So anxious to take the microphone just to say that they were happy for this day. The pastor joked about about the people who come to church only on Easter before asking everyone to bring all the friends they could to join them in two weeks. You could tell that this place was really home for a lot of people. It was really lovely to be a part of it, if only for an hour.

Good pick, Rach.

Map My Run

It's getting harder and harder to pull over and take mid-jump pictures on highways. Be satisfied with this sampling of state-line signs and take comfort in the fact that we have a border-crossing ritual that is always honored.