It is a long trek from central Ohio to southern Georgia so we spent one night at a Cracker Barrel parking lot and decided to push on to our destination rather than spend a second night on the road. We consider this to be the official start of our winter camping trip because we will be here for 11 nights.
The R. Shaffer Heard Park sits on the shores of West Point Lake which straddles the border shared by Georgia and Alabama. The Park is large, 117 paved spaces with concrete pads for parking. Natural landscaping separates most spaces although the park does offer double spaces for families camping together. Most every site has a view of the beautiful lake. Other amenities include a boat ramp, large playground, amphitheater and two bath houses. Some of the spaces have a steep incline that could cause a larger rig to drag it’s bumper moving in or out. Our space was long, flat and level with privacy.
This park is 16 miles from LaGrange, GA. A drive around town was our only distraction. There just is not a lot to do around here. The weather, although much better than back home in upstate New York, was damp and cool sometimes giving way to heavy rain. The countryside is nice but the shoulders of the highways are littered with groupings of small crosses laden with plastic flowers. The number of these roadside memorials is matched by the number of body shops and auto garages. You can draw your own conclusion regarding the competence of Georgia drivers.
As we were setting up our site on Tuesday a very nice woman walked over from a nearby site to introduce herself. Cindy had seen our New York plates and said she and her husband Joe were from Saratoga Springs north of Albany. She said they had retired just a few weeks earlier, sold their home and furnishings and bought the RV to live in and travel full time. Their high end rig, a Tiffin Allegro, was 40’ of absolute gorgeousness and I really wanted to see the inside!
Comparing their rig to ours is a bit like comparing a Mercedes to a Subaru. Both will get you where you want to go, but…well, that’s where the similarities end. To be perfectly clear, I would not trade our Gladys for their RV! Gladys is comfortable, homey, dependable and paid for. The first evening that was nice enough to sit around a campfire was Sunday so they ventured over around the cocktail hour for some real bonding time. We had a couple of cocktails, great conversation, many hardy laughs and ended the evening with tours of each other’s rigs. As they were leaving the next morning we exchanged cards and air hugs and took phone pictures of one another and promised to stay in touch.
Later that evening I emailed the picture I had take of them in front of their rig. Two days later I sent a text to ask if they had gotten the picture. So far they have not responded. I have decided that friendships formed on the road are like those you develop in an airport lounge during a five hour flight delay; a great way to pass the time but sooner or later you take off in different directions.