April 18, 2017

Following tradition, and gearing up for her 112th birthday on May 31, Doris dropped off her tax return at the Post Office today and hit the road for another April Airstream adventure.  This year, we are going on a short jaunt to Boone NC to attend the wedding of my great niece Grace to her beau Andrew.  (Grace is the first of my 25 great nieces/nephews to get married.)  We thought we’d make a week of it by camping first for two nights at Devils Fork State Park on Lake Jocassee in SC, and then heading up to Grandfather Mountain NC, near Boone, for the real deal.  We will cheat by staying for two nights with my sister Nancy and her husband Bill at their lovely home in Beech Mountain, and then circle home by way of Twin Rivers State Park in SC.  Doris is sentimental about many things, but weddings might top the list.  She has talked of nothing else for the last 24 hours!

Our camp site at Devils Fork is breathtaking; secluded in the woods about 20 yards from the rocky lake shoreline and overlooking mountains in the near distance.  The water on this 7500 acre lake on the eastern edge of Sumpter National Forest is pale green, translucent and chilly still in the April air.  Someone is fishing on the shore nearby.  A bass boat speeds past, perhaps chasing a late-breaking tip.  Doris has crawled under the table and curled up for a nap.

Within 15 minutes of leveling the camper and hooking up the essential pipes and hoses, we broke the cardinal (but rarely enforced) rule of state parks by sneaking out a bottle of 12 year old Macallan given to us last night by our neighbor Doug who was, I suspect, enticing us to leave town as soon as possible.  Thus distracted, and over an open fire, we burned our dinner of meant-to-be-steamed aluminum-foil-tented beef and vegetable medly to a blackened crisp.  Nothing goes better with top notch Scotch than food that smells and and tastes like a peat bog.  Authentic!

Tonight we will play canasta, eat sinfully dark chocolate ice cream and try to go easy on the coveted single malt.  It is after all still the first day.