Our next adventure took us to Mistletoe State Park in Georgia near Augusta where I was stationed during my time in the Navy.

We arrived in the afternoon and the weather was sunny and gorgeous. We made some vegan bacon BLT sandwiches and nested in our new camp spot next to the lake beach. We explored the park a little bit and found several closed trails due to the damage from the pine beetle. Large swaths of woods were cleared and burned, in (what I assume was) an attempt to eradicate this invasive pest. We caught a beautiful sunset on the lake. When we got back to camp, I cleaned inside the trailer while Sterling prepped food for sweet potato tacos. We forgot to buy firewood and then the camp store closed so we scavenged some logs but struggled to get a fire going. We went to bed early and a little sunburnt.

My best friend of 20 years (Little Jess) came to our camp at 9am and we made cinnamon rolls + pour over coffee as my new espresso machine is not working right. Ugh. That’s a problem for future me. Anyway, we enjoyed the beautiful morning and plotted a cold beverage, thrift shop, good food and art museum day downtown. We ended up hitting the Grovetown Goodwill first and scored $140 worth of thrifted treasures, including a miniature crock pot to keep for our RV trips. Perfect for soup or like? Cheese dip! Fondue pot? Sterling found a pair of moto boots and platform, cornflower blue chucks. When did goodwill get so expensive though? Yuck. Two pair of shoes was like $90 of the total bill. Next stop was 2nd & Charles which is a giant, used bookstore that also sells used records and CDs. It smells amazing in there and is an old, familiar place that I like to get lost in. I found a couple things I wanted, and we left to pick Salem up from school! He declined to have dinner with us, so we dropped him off at home with his Dad and headed to Whiskey Bar. I think Brian Brocksmith showed me this place years ago and it’s survived the ever-changing downtown landscape. They ripped all the trees out of downtown Augusta, in case you didn’t know. It looks horrible and the southern charm of the downtown area is completely gone. It looks like every other city now. Concrete jungle. Thumbs down. I order a breakfast burger with a veggie patty from Whiskey Bar. It comes inside a syrup-drizzled croissant bun, a fried egg and some kind of magic. The sweet potato fries with it. Ok, I’m drooling. After our late lunch/early dinner, we headed to Morris Museum of Art and explored the exhibitions. Quick stop at Boll Weevil for dessert and then we headed back to camp.

Jess and I parted ways and I sat in my camping chair and watched a blue heron (I think?) for a really long time. I wanted to watch it fly away so I watched it intently waiting for this moment. After it diarrhea-stream-rocket-pooped, I stopped watching it and shortly after that, it flew off and I missed it. Sterling and I explored the boat ramp and beach area of the park. There were a lot of shells and clams? Or mussels? Whatever the things are that live in between the two shells. I got in the lake and the clay squished between my toes. I washed my feet off later and the bottoms were stained orange. Georgia is so gorgeous. One thing I forgot about is all the pollen coating everything in a thick yellow powder. We came across a spiderweb covered in pollen making it visible as hell in broad daylight.

Back at camp, we started a fire. We sat outside enjoying the sunset and dusk. It was pretty windy out and everywhere we moved the camping chair, the smoke followed us. My eyes burned and watered and I was fed up with moving around. We spent the rest of the night inside and ate our to-go desserts from Boll Weevil. We watched the first episode of Scarpetta from our camper bed, then we fell asleep.

We woke up to heavy winds, rain and a crack of thunder and lightning. We scrambled to get packed up and headed out as quickly as we could.

I got an email from the director of the doctoral program that I was accepted into while we were camping, and I can’t wait to be a doctoral student from the road this summer. Until our next adventure!