Vet Visit and Lunch at Hawg Wild BBQ and Catfish House
None of our road trips would be complete without a trip the the veterinarian. Upon arrival here at the campground last Friday, Beth was carrying Mercury from the car to the camper and something freaked him out to the point that Beth could no longer hold him. When he hit the ground he ran under the first camper he saw (our neighbor’s) and climbed up their entry steps (he’s trained to seek the steps when he gets scared). When they didn’t open their door for him he went on to the next camper down. Fortunately he waited on their steps and let Beth pick him up and bring him back to the camper. In the process he ripped out one of his rear toenails completely. Of course, Nurse Beth has been treating it all week, but yesterday there were signs of infection so she found a local pet clinic that was able to see Mercury today (Thursday) at 11AM. Mercury was an excellent patient and the doctor was thoroughly impressed with Beth’s nursing skills. The doctor gave Mercury a shot with an antibiotic which will actively fight infection for two weeks. She now has cats registered in 3 separate vet clinics across the country (not counting FL). Hopefully that’s all I’ll have to say about that.
Today is a rainy day so we decided to go to town and try out Hawg Wild BBQ & Catfish House. We are very glad we did. The food was delicious. We tried out their smoked chicken wings with mild buffalo sauce for an appetizer. They were excellent and the “mild” buffalo sauce provided heat for several minutes after eating a wing. I’d hate to try their “hot”. Beth had ribs for lunch which were also excellent. They didn’t need BBQ sauce, but their sauce was so good you couldn’t resist dipping the ribs in it. I decided to try their smoked Italian sausage and it was incredible. I now know the first meal I’m going to smoke when I get back to Florida. The waitress convinced me to use their hot mustard BBQ sauce as a condiment and she was spot on. As with the ribs, the sausage needed no condiment, but it seemed a like a waste of the sauce not use it. The serving sizes were huge and we will be eating leftovers for days.
Steak Over the Fire
Today (Wednesday) was our coolest day (high = 80) here in Hiawassee so we spent the day outside and built a fire to cook two nice Filet Mignon that Beth purchased at the local Ingles Market. This was also the first opportunity to use our new grilling basket that Aunt Jo got us for Christmas. The steaks were incredible. The grilling basket allowed me to get them close to the fire for searing and then back them way off for a nice slow cook. After dinner I went back out to burn up our remaining firewood. While I was at it Beth had me grill two chicken breasts so she would have meat to put on her salad (and sneak to her varmints). She said the chicken also turned out great.
Chatuge Lake – “On the Pontoon“
We have friends, Eric and Sue, from Sun City Center who own property just across the state line in Hayesville, NC. I met Eric when I placed him in the storage lot. He had mentioned that Sue is a dental hygienist and we happened to be in search of a local dentist so I asked him if she likes the office where she works. He said, “definitely”. So I let Beth know and next thing you know we both had appointments at that office in Sun City Center and Sue cleaned our teeth. Whenever we’re getting our teeth cleaned we catch up on where each of us has camped or is planning to camp. Beth recently told Sue that we were headed for Hiawassee this summer and Sue got excited and mentioned that they have property nearby. Fortunately for us, our week coincided with time they were spending here and they invited us out for a boat ride on the beautiful lake. Not only did they take us for a very nice ride on the lake, but then we went back to their place and they grilled pork chops and vegetables. We had a great time.
Bell Mountain
We visited Bell Mountain which overlooks the town of Hiawassee and Chatuge Lake. You can drive to the top of the mountain and the road is paved, but it is very narrow and very steep. We had to backup to very small pullouts twice on the ascent to let oncoming traffic pass and considered turning around, but when we reached the top we were glad we stuck it out. The view is incredible. They allow graffiti and seem to even promote it provided that it is not vulgar. It detracts from the natural beauty for me, but that’s probably why I’m not an accomplished artist.
Appalachian Trail – Dick’s Creek Gap
The Appalachian Trail passes fairly close to the campground so we decided to visit the nearest crossing which is about 7.5 miles East of our campground. We didn’t go there intending to hike, but we thought while we were there we ought to hop on the trail for a bit. We went about one tenth of a mile, but it was pretty rugged hiking that was rough on the knees and hips. We don’t think we’ll be doing any thru hikes form Georgia to Maine.
Riverbend Campground
Today we traveled to the North Georgia mountains and are now staying at Riverbend Campground in Hiawassee, GA for a week. We left Reed Bingham State Park at 9:00AM EDT and arrived at River Bend Campground at 4:30PM EDT (we might have made a wrong turn along the way). In order to avoid getting hung up in Atlanta traffic we took US-129 in Macon, GA to US-441 in Eatonton, GA. We stopped for gas and lunch at the Ingles grocery and gas station in Eatonton, GA. The trip was our new longest ride (7 1/2 hours) with this camper. The Expedition had no issues dragging the camper up the grades we encountered, although we did slow down on one long grade on a four lane highway because our transmission temperature was rising in the Georgia heat (low 90’s). This was the kind of grade where all of the truckers have their emergency flashers on and hang out in the right lane. We just tucked in behind one of them.
This is a very nice campground with 50Amp electrical connections, water, and sewer hookups. We are in Site #H3 which is right along the Hiawassee River. Apparently the campground previously had cable and then the cable companies decided they were no longer interested in providing service to the campground. So the owners managed to implement internet connectivity at each camp site using the old cable infrastructure. Each site has its own individual Wi-Fi connection. Our first and only speed test was 290Mbps download and 30Mbps upload. That’s faster than we get at home. Therefore, we are not setting up our Dish Satellite antenna. We will just stream what we can with our ROKU. We haven’t enabled our Dish service and don’t want to until we need to due to the cost. The only local channel we get on antenna is PBS.