Date: 2018-04-15
From: Franklin NC

To: Franklin NC 
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: moderate rain

I¢m still here in Franklin North Carolina after a crazy night!  Papa Big Swig, myself, Orlando, and Hugs went to the German restaurant/bar for our free hiker dinner. We really enjoyed the small town hospitality! Our meal was quite unique and I thought very tasty! It was baked Mac-n-Cheese with a choice of toppings and a side of cornbread. I chose homemade buffalo chicken on mine. It was the chefs preference. He said he soaked the chicken overnight in buttermilk and it had turned out delicious just as planned. I agree!  Wish I knew how to make homemade buffalo chicken! I didn¢t try any of the other options, but there was chili, seafood, and vegetarian. It was all eaten up! At dusk there was a glow parade put on by a local hostel. Sorry to have to say I missed it. The highlight for me was a little 3 piece folk band. They were a family who regularly donates 1/2 of their earnings to charity. Last night¢s earnings went to the local Boy Scouts. The cutest thing for me was their 3 maybe 4 year old grandson had his little toy drum set beside the stage and played right along with them! He had his own tunes going on and was loving it! We tipped the band $5 and gave the drummer a dollar bill! I think he¢s buying silly putty with it. I¢m going to try to upload a little video to the pictures/video section. Fingers crossed.  For those of you who don¢t know, you can look at all photos by clicking on the menu bars and going to photos. It should be the the same for videos too.On to the crazy night!  We have an optional ¢tent room¢ we can put on the front of our camper when it¢s parked. Our camper is an R-Pod and the room is technically called an R-dome.(pictured above) the dome is intended to be staked down like a tent, but this campsite has a concrete pad so Papa Big Swig used bricks to hold down the dome. That was all well and good until about 1:30am when the storm rolled in. Gusts of wind at 40mph, rain and cold.  Orlando was sleeping out there, well trying to sleep. And before long the whole room was flipped inside out!  What a scramble for recovery! In the end Papa Big Swig took the entire room down and put the room contents mostly in the SUV and some in the camper. We learned that our pull down table bed actually IS long enough for an adult! Thankfully Orlando had a dry place to sleep.  I have no idea what time we all finally fell asleep. But some time before the sun came up the most rotten stench I¢ve ever smelled woke me up. What on earth?!? I had to go smell Orlando¢s sleeping bag... not that. I went to the bathroom BLECH!  I could barely stand it!  By sun-up we were all on a mission to get rid of the smell. To this minute I¢m not sure what it was. I¢ve been to the laundromat and washed all clothing bedding etc, Papa Big Swig went through the camper. I bought a raspberry scented deodorizer and it¢s better. Not gone, but better. I¢m wondering if all the rain caused an issue with sewage fumes? Whatever it was I¢m ready for it all to be gone!  The rain cleared for a couple of hours today. That was nice. All things will work out as they should.  Tomorrow will be cold but I¢ll be back out there with my boots on and a smile!  Until Next TimeBlue Raccoon (2018)Where¢s your faith?