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and we're back!
Aug. 1st, 2017 06:19 pmWell, that was a lot of driving. Out of Ontario in driving rain, through upstate NY into sunshine, stopped at the Salamanca NY antique mall. Salamanca is a off-the-beaten track sort of place with an Indian casino and an antique mall in what seems like used to be a Boscov's or some kind of old school retailer.
Now it's full of junk. We didn't buy much. One vendor was selling a Klan hood and robe, one vendor was selling new flags - two Nazi flags, one rebel flag, one "don't tread on me", zero US flags. One vendor was selling old movie posters and had one from the '40s starring a Carmen Miranda-type singer, on which the vendor had placed a note that read "ATTENTION LATINOS" for some reason. One vendor had a whole display of how copper is the new silver and how commemorative copper coins were the up and coming investment grade coin, and he had a bunch of coins he'd struck with themes like "The Second Amendment" and "The Spartans" and "The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse". The staff was dazed and slow, the Clark Bar vinyl figure we thought was $25 turned out to be $250, and generally the vibe was weird, like everybody in town had suffered a concussion.
We made tracks back to I-77 and headed south to West Virgina where we spent the night in a Quality Inn in Summersville. Friday AM we had breakfast in the next door Shoneys and it took so long to get us our coffee that we almost got up and left, that's how long it took. We detoured in Virginia just above the NC state line, bought some peaches at Mountain Man's, visited Mt. Airy NC (the model for Mayberry) and were in Smyrna around 11pm. It was hot, let me just say.
The next morning we loaded our stuff into Dad's CRV and hit the road again, off out I-20 towards South Carolina. Traffic stunk all the way to Augusta but cleared up afterwards. We were in Myrtle Beach in time for an afternoon swim.
The rest of the week was beach time, family time, a little shopping, some mini-golf, seafood, ice cream at Burky's, visiting the Gay Dolphin and playing some skee-ball in the Ocean Blvd. arcades. The wind calmed down later in the week and by Thursday it was like a bathtub out there, reasonably calm. Shain and I moved up to SPF 50 and as a result didn't get painful sunburns. We drove back to Smyrna on Friday, Saturday we did a little nature walking around the river and met up at Jessica and Mike's place with CB and Elizabeth and Parker to marvel at the new kitchen and visit for awhile. Then the next morning it was back out on the road. We got all the way to Dayton OH before we stopped for Skyline Chili and the night. Monday we jogged east towards Springfield, hit two large antique malls, did some cross country travel back to 75, lunch/early dinner at Big Boy, hit the border at Windsor around 6:30 and we were home by 11:30, including a stop in Cambridge for gas and groceries.
Now the cat is begging for attention, and we're back at work, back on our regular schedule. Stupid Comics once a week, Let's Anime once a month (I have one of those almost done), AWA in less than 2 months (!!), still working on my comic story in between times, and in December we'll probably make this big drive all over again. Whew.
Pix to come; I haven't uploaded them anywhere yet, except for the ones on my Twitter feed.
Now it's full of junk. We didn't buy much. One vendor was selling a Klan hood and robe, one vendor was selling new flags - two Nazi flags, one rebel flag, one "don't tread on me", zero US flags. One vendor was selling old movie posters and had one from the '40s starring a Carmen Miranda-type singer, on which the vendor had placed a note that read "ATTENTION LATINOS" for some reason. One vendor had a whole display of how copper is the new silver and how commemorative copper coins were the up and coming investment grade coin, and he had a bunch of coins he'd struck with themes like "The Second Amendment" and "The Spartans" and "The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse". The staff was dazed and slow, the Clark Bar vinyl figure we thought was $25 turned out to be $250, and generally the vibe was weird, like everybody in town had suffered a concussion.
We made tracks back to I-77 and headed south to West Virgina where we spent the night in a Quality Inn in Summersville. Friday AM we had breakfast in the next door Shoneys and it took so long to get us our coffee that we almost got up and left, that's how long it took. We detoured in Virginia just above the NC state line, bought some peaches at Mountain Man's, visited Mt. Airy NC (the model for Mayberry) and were in Smyrna around 11pm. It was hot, let me just say.
The next morning we loaded our stuff into Dad's CRV and hit the road again, off out I-20 towards South Carolina. Traffic stunk all the way to Augusta but cleared up afterwards. We were in Myrtle Beach in time for an afternoon swim.
The rest of the week was beach time, family time, a little shopping, some mini-golf, seafood, ice cream at Burky's, visiting the Gay Dolphin and playing some skee-ball in the Ocean Blvd. arcades. The wind calmed down later in the week and by Thursday it was like a bathtub out there, reasonably calm. Shain and I moved up to SPF 50 and as a result didn't get painful sunburns. We drove back to Smyrna on Friday, Saturday we did a little nature walking around the river and met up at Jessica and Mike's place with CB and Elizabeth and Parker to marvel at the new kitchen and visit for awhile. Then the next morning it was back out on the road. We got all the way to Dayton OH before we stopped for Skyline Chili and the night. Monday we jogged east towards Springfield, hit two large antique malls, did some cross country travel back to 75, lunch/early dinner at Big Boy, hit the border at Windsor around 6:30 and we were home by 11:30, including a stop in Cambridge for gas and groceries.
Now the cat is begging for attention, and we're back at work, back on our regular schedule. Stupid Comics once a week, Let's Anime once a month (I have one of those almost done), AWA in less than 2 months (!!), still working on my comic story in between times, and in December we'll probably make this big drive all over again. Whew.
Pix to come; I haven't uploaded them anywhere yet, except for the ones on my Twitter feed.
