2025 Big Truck across the Southeast, day 12 + wrapup

Day 12 - rafting day! Even though it was raining and misty, we were pumped about what was about to happen.

We elected to go with the New & Gauley River Adventures outfitter, doing the Upper New half day trip. We figured this was a good way to introduce Jordan to rafting & hopefully set the table for a more aggressive trip in the future. As we were getting ready, we snapped a pic of the boat barn and the sweet fleet of retired school busses which we would later learn may have had all suspension components removed.

Since we weren't bringing phones along, we grabbed a final pre-trip selfie to document the moment. After wearing a hat for 11 straight days (and roughly 50 years prior to that), the salad was looking pretty good.

We didn't opt for the $100 photo at the end, so you can just imagine that this is what we looked like. We had 9 in our boat, including 3 younger kids that had a great time.

The trip was awesome, Jordan had a great time, and our guide Lindsey was the best. She splits time between here and South America, guiding on the Futaleufu River in Chile. Cannot recommend her enough, she kept it fun, had everyone engaged, and hit the rapids perfectly just as she described in her preview.

Here's where things took a bit of a turn. Without getting too far behind the scenes, we were starting to miss our dog Cru back home, and the rafting trip finished up a bit earlier than we expected. We had a quick executive discussion, and decided to forego our final night at the campground and just send it straight home. Whenever you have the chance to get up at 6am, paddle in a whitewater river for 3ish hours, and then drive a motorhome towing a Jeep 10+ hours through the mountains and infinite construction, you take it. We made a quick pitstop at Lindsey's coffee shop recommendation in Fayetteville, a place called Range Finder. Not a big coffee guy, but given our recent decision, it was time to power up.

We packed up, still soaked from the river, hooked up the Jeep, and set out for home. The very first 10 miles that the GPS selected for us really set the tone. This road is not meant for a rig like ours, but that's pretty much all we saw on it. We might as well have taken the Tail of the Dragon to get out of here.

From there, mountains.

After that, things sort of blurred together. We ended up rolling in right around midnight, parked the rig in the middle of the driveway and left unpacking for the morning. As always, quick recap of the trip.

We ended up covering 2,146 miles in the motorhome, and another 482 miles in the Jeep. Spent countless hours in both ocean and river waves, visited 2 national parks, a state park, a state recreation area, a zoo, an aquarium, plenty of local breweries, and made a ton of lasting memories. Huge thanks to Jacqueline from Rover.com for taking great care of Cru while we were gone.

With Jordan about to enter her senior year of high school, we're not sure how many more of these trips we'll have as a family. This one was amazing, and a good reminder how fortunate I am to have a family that travels as well as we do. It's always hard to try to find an image to encapsulate the trip, but this one is about as good a summary as I could find.

2025 Big Truck across the Southeast, day 11

Day 11 was fairly uneventful - mostly a travel day. We had a goal of wheels up by 9am from the Poinsett State Park campground. We were mostly successful, with the Jeep hookup and dump station pushing us just beyond 9:30am. The winding road out of the park set the tone for the day.

Being the sunday of the Open Championship, I was not about to miss a golf major, even though Scottie Scheffler was doing his best to remove all drama and excitement from the final day. (I believe this setup is legal in any and all southern states)

We had roughly a 6 hour drive, with plenty of mountains and a few tunnels to keep me on my toes.

Fast forward to our destination, the New River Gorge - last time we were here, roughly 25 years ago, Kimberly and I rafted the Upper Gauley river. This was before we were married, and things didn't quite go according to plan. This photo shows the moment before Kimberly got tossed out of the raft at Pillow Rock, and I somehow stayed in and watched my future wife bounce through a class V rapid, nearly hitting Volkswagon rock. The red arrows point us out - I'm the white helmet.

Needless to say, we chose a bit of a different trip this time for Jordan. First we stopped at the visitors center, which is new for us as this was just designated a National Park in 2021.

We decided to take the scenic drive and link up with the audio tour. It was interesting to learn the coal mining history of the area, and drive over the OG bridge at the bottom of the gorge.

From there, it was on to set up camp at Rifrafters. We were outracing a storm system, so we just got things in place before the rain hit.

We retired a bit early, as our rafting trip started at 7:30am the next day. Fun day ahead. Cheers!

2025 Big Truck across the Southeast, day 10

Today started on time, with a prearranged 10am call time to be wheels up to Congaree. It's been a bit since we've been to a National Park, something these trips are usually built around. We were excited for this one, as it is different and definitely a less visited park among the entire lineup.

As soon as we started walking up to the visitors center,

we noticed a familiar friend - actually, a lot of them.

As we would learn from the older volunteer (future career path for me?), the giant yellow spider that I nearly inhaled twice last night is actually the adult Golden Silk Orbweaver. Some of these guys were as big as my hand, and they were everywhere.

We decided we would stick to some more regularly traveled trails - especially since it was only 98 degrees, but the trail conditions sign made sure to let us know that it felt at least 104. Good day for a hike.

We started off with the boardwalk loop, winding through lots of old growth forest

Our hike led us to first to Weston Lake,

then we headed over to Wise Lake, where Kimberly caught me putting out the vibe. Sorry, it's hard to turn this thing off sometimes.

Along the way, Jordan picked up a hitchhiker

who then switched to freeloading off me for a while

As we worked our way back, we saw the trees that reminded us of the Dagobah System, something I was looking forward to the entire hike.

Jordan also took this opportunity to express her support for doing this hike under these conditions.

As we passed a couple of trail signs, I was immediately transported into my childhood basement listening to the "ooom papa mawmaw" portion of Elvira. Just a very normal brain that processes things just like everyone else.

We returned to the visitors center, drenched in sweat, and sought refuge in the air conditioned auditorium to watch the 18 minute movie about Congaree.

18 minutes was not long enough to dry out, so we decided to head out and find a spot to grab a late lunch. On the way there, we were greeted with yet another familiar sight.

We were close to Columbia, so we decided to check out their brewery scene. The first one we came across was called Hunter Gatherer Brewing, which resided in an old airport hangar.

Anytime you've just hiked about 4 miles in 100 degree heat, you've got to opt for the sausage balls. Seriously, they were good.

We made one more stop at Savage Craft, which appears to have been launched during the Ed Hardy t shirt craze.

This place was huge, had a ridiculous outdoor setup, and provided for some of the best people watching we've experienced in years.

I'll do my best to summarize. Apparently there is a rooftop level that is 21+. We were there around 4pm on a Saturday, and the bar area had a mixture of suits, tanktop wearing meatheads from a nearby gym, a running club that showed up while we were there, a bunch of travel baseball parents housing drinks while their kids were running around in uniform, and some women who had recently completed a round of golf and were wearing some sort of fringed/tassled golf shoes much to Kimberly's dismay "Those are hideous".

It was a fascinating insight into the Columbia, SC social scene. Felt like we were dropped into some sort of a reality show taping. If this brewery were a person, it would be this guy.

Our time in Columbia was wrapping up. As we were exiting the city, we caught a glimpse of Williams-Brice stadium home of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.

All in all, a big day today. We returned to the campsite with a little bit of daylight remaining, but after seeing another 10,000 of those banana spiders or whatever they are on our hike today, I was not about to go riding through the woods and have one of those guys go full Alien.

Tomorrow - pack up, drive 6-7 hours through the mountains, and prepare to go rafting in WV. Cheers