Homeward Bound

Nephew Franklin and his wife Joanne are babysitting their granddaughter Evy in Lafayette, LA while their daughter and her husband are vacationing. We found the beautiful house with no problem and had a nice visit. Evy has really grown up since we last saw her as a baby, and she’s very friendly and adorable, and smart! (She beat her grandpa and Uncle Jack at a board game while we were there, which pleased her no end.) Joanne made us all a delicious lunch—we always enjoy our visits with them so much!

Franklin, Evy, and Joanne

After a storm blew through, we continued on our way, but it was still raining and we wanted to eat some crawfish for supper, which we usually try to do when passing through Cajun country, so we stopped for the night in Beaux Bridge, LA. We found a Cajun eatery nearby and had our crawfish etouffee, catfish and fried shrimp—very yummy!

We split the Combo.

We’ve driven through this way a few times before, and driving over the Atchafalaya swamp is always interesting—you’re driving on an elevated bridge for miles and miles. Looks like prime alligator habitat.

The mighty Atchafalaya swamp.

We crossed the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge, and drove through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, on our way to visit our niece Christin at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. (Lots of trucks on these southern highways. Also we found our cheapest gas of the trip here—the cheapest we purchased was $3.04/gal and the cheapest we saw advertised was $3.02. Note that on last year’s Epic Journey the cheapest gas was $3.14.)

18-wheelers as far as you can see. Jack thinks they should be outlawed on interstate highways...

We did one more sightseeing stop on the South Carolina/North Carolina border, near Charlotte, to visit King’s Mountain National Historic Park, a fascinating Revolutionary War battle site. Jack recently finished a book about the campaigns in South Carolina, and learned a lot about the War that we didn’t know before. In this area, the Revolutionary War was more like a civil war between the patriots and the loyalists—lots and lots of bitter infighting among friends, family and neighbors. The battle of King’s Mountain turned the tide. The Brits and loyalists had won most of the battles to this point and were feeling pretty cocky that the American Revolution would fizzle out soon. Gen. Cornwallis had what he thought was an ironclad plan for defeating the battle-weary patriot forces.

Memorial to all who fought at King's Mountain.

However, Col. Ferguson, a British officer (Scotsman) who was in charge of about 1000 loyalist militia and regular soldiers (loyalist = America was their homeland but they sided with the Brits in the Revolution), made the mistake of issuing a threat that if anybody else, including the mountain frontiersmen who lived in the rough country to the west of King’s Mountain, raised arms against the British, he would kill them and destroy their houses, crops, livestock, and generally make their lives miserable. The frontierspeople did not take well to threats and this pissed them off royally. To this point, they hadn’t been all that interested in the Revolution, thinking they were busy enough just keeping the Indians at bay and hacking out a living in the rough frontier country. But they took Ferguson’s edict as a direct affront and it prompted them to band together, bringing their long rifles and hatchets, and making the long trek over the mountains to show Ferguson a thing or two.

These so-called Over-the-Mountain men came out in force, chased Ferguson and his troops onto a hilltop at King’s Mountain, surrounded him and basically hacked his entire force to pieces, in a rage, killing Ferguson in the process along with most of his men (the remainder were taken prisoner). So, one of Gen. Cornwallis’s flanks was entirely destroyed by these “savages” (as the Brits called them). The local loyalists got scared and began to think that just maybe these patriots were going to win the war after all, so they quit fighting for the Brits. The patriot success at King’s Mountain turned out to be a major factor in Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown the following year. The mountain men just disbanded afterwards and went home.

Ferguson's memorial and grave site. (Ferguson actually sounds like a good leader and brave soldier--he just made a grave error in judgement regarding the Over-the-Mountain men!)

Next morning, we drove on into Boone and found a campsite near Christin’s new apartment building, where she lives with three roommates. The plan was to meet up with her and her boyfriend Tyler at the campus art studio, where she had to prepare some cotton paper pulp for an instructor, for use in an art class next week. (Christin has a sort of internship for credit with this instructor.) We parked in a parking garage and walked over to the art building and watched her blend up the cotton pieces into a kind of slurry, using a large mixing machine.

Christin and her paper making machine.

Afterwards we headed to her apartment and met two of her roommates, who were getting ready to go to a barbecue, while Christin showered and changed. Then the four of us went out to dinner at The Bistro, where we enjoyed sitting outside on the patio. Great food, and good conversation! When it started to rain, we finally left our pleasant table and we headed back to their apartment and our campsite. Unfortunately, a traffic accident was blocking the first intersection and we had no alternative but to sit there and watch it play out. One car was pretty well totaled and we saw one patient on a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance. Finally we were cleared to pass and made our way back to the campsite.

A delicious dinner with Christin and Tyler.

Now it’s Saturday and we’re driving on I-77 toward home!