Friday July 18, 2014
It is barely light and I know I can squeeze in between my
humans. Or not...
Woke up to rain; a moderate steady rain. It was 7:30.
I never sleep this late but since it was still somewhat dark, I slept
in. I loved it. But, fat knows no holidays so a walk I must
take, and I did.
We had talked about going into the Smokies... with the rain,
that was obviously out. The hike to
Chimney Rock was out. But a trip to the
Pressley mine for sapphires had possibilities, so we readied Hannah for
departure and headed back the way we came on I 40 for about 15 miles. We turned here, then there and finally made
it to the road up to the mine but Hannah would NO way make it up the road. So I left Spouse with Rudy (and unfortunately
the camera) on the road and hoofed it up the trail about a quarter mile to the
mine. As I started up the street, what
sounded like 100 dogs started barking and howling. It sounded like a horror movie, but on I
marched.
I so wish it wasn't raining as I would love to hike around
there but it wasn't going to happen. A
little orange kitty met me and I walked inside to see just a small sampling of
what has been collected in the mine.
Mainly star sapphires of a variety of colors are found. The host rock is a white feldspar. I ended up buying a bucket of dirt that the
owner collected and used their sluice to clean my bounty. It was fun.
My bucket had several rocks with the sapphires in it but how do you get
the sapphires out? I do some lapidary
stuff, but this was way outside of my world.
So you pay to have the do it... good gig huh? We shall see what gets sent to my house... I
kept some of the raw rocks to see if someone in my mineral society has the
skill, but at a minimum, I might polish the rocks some and put them in my
plants. In any event, the cats were
cute, the experience was fun and I loved the rain falling on the tin roof! I would do it again in a heartbeat!
I hiked back to Hannah, and to the canine serenade, then we
started heading to Butch and Lynn's house in Whispering Pines, South
Carolina. East on I40 in steady
rain. More green... when will it ever
end... At least the cacophony of
blooming crape myrtles break up the scenery some. When we turned south on 77, the rain subsided
and became intermittent to non-existent.
When we got near Charlotte, I started having major disagreements with
the GPS. We fought and fought. We proceeded based on the paper map. When we approached the tiny town of Abermarle
on hwy 27, we saw on the GPS that there was an RV park within 5 miles. When we tried to get the GPS to send us
there, she (the bitch) would say it is 61 miles! Obviously she was trying to take us to a main
highway but that is NOT what we wanted.
By now, we are exhausted and frustrated. We saw a Wal-Mart and pulled in and called it
a day. Wal-Mart allows RVs to park in
their lots for no cost. Since we are
fully self contained, we had no problems with stopping, having dinner and
kicking back. It is not a garden spot,
but we were both so tired, we didn't care!
I have determined that I like paper maps...
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