August 20, 2023 We had clear, blue skies and a temp of 65 degrees as we prepared to leave today. We hate to say goodbye to North Carolina, but it’s time to head home. Sunday traffic was pretty light at 10:00 when we pulled out and got on I-40. We had 164 miles to go to get to Columbia, SC for our overnight stay.
It felt kind of strange to be on the move after 12 days in one location, but it was so comfortable there. After that long a period, you become so familiar with the roads, where things are, and you get to know the area pretty well.
There was a lot of road and bridge construction on I-40, but at least they weren’t working today.
We hopped on I-26 just south of Asheville and stayed on that the rest of the way. We entered the Green River Gorge area and started a very steep decline and crossed the bridge over the gorge.
One section of highway had these bright yellow flowers growing along the side of the road. It was so pretty.
There was a lot of up and down today which would affect our gas mileage, I’m sure.
We crossed over the border into South Carolina around 11:00 and left the mountains behind. We are definitely going to miss those mountains!
We stopped for fuel and took a few minutes to eat our lobster rolls that Bob prepared for lunch before we left. This was our last stop for fuel on this trip. We found a cheap station and took advantage of the price at $3.99/gal. Fuel prices seemed to jump up after our stop there to $4.44, $4.54, $4.09. Surprisingly, we got 9.3 mpg even after all the up and down driving we did in the mountains. We crossed the Broad River to West Columbia for our exit.
We arrived at Barnyard RV Park at 1:30.
It is a nice place with large sites and lots of space between the sites. They have very nice facilities, but no pool. We’d come here again.
We asked for a long, pull-thru site so we didn’t have to disconnect the Jeep. They gave us site A3 which was perfect.
We pulled in and got hooked up right away, so we could crank up the AC. It was a hot 91 degrees and we were sweating without doing much. Even Auggie, who was anxious to get outside after the drive, got hot and wanted to come in after only a few minutes. I think it’s going to take us a little while to get accustomed to the heat again. We chilled out and relaxed after the drive. If it wasn’t for all the road construction, it would have been a much more relaxing drive. We had dinner and waited awhile for it to cool off a bit before we took our evening walk. Tomorrow we have a little longer drive to Townsend, Georgia. It supposed to be a little cooler there, but not by much.