Medoc Mountain St Pk I

Medoc Mountain State Park, NC

Thursday, 22 March 2018

I spent some time driving around Lumberton this morning, grocery shopping and going to the post office to mail a letter. The KOA thoughtfully provided a fairly detailed street map of the main area, and the internet thoughtfully provided the locations of grocery stores. Pretty little town.

I had been thinking maybe Lumberton was named for a history of logging or something like that, but today I crossed the Lumber River several times so I’m guessing that’s where the name came from. It’s designated a Natural and Scenic River and, in fact, was quite pretty.

A car passed me on the highway with the license plate BYTHEC.

I drove less than 200 miles today, including driving around Lumberton and getting lost trying to find this park, and I still drove almost completely across the state of North Carolina. Granted it’s not the very widest spot, but it still doesn’t take long to get somewhere in this part of the country. Going to take some getting used to.

Once again I’m in a park without wi-fi. What’s different about this park is that I can’t get much of a TV reception either so I can’t see the weather report. Well, the TV claims it can get 20-something channels but it’s lying. I can only get about half that and the picture breaks up constantly and there’s often no sound, so I can really get only ½ a channel. Probably because of the wind but disconcerting nonetheless.

I have a reservation here for 2 nights and, without a wi-fi signal, I’m going to have trouble finding a place to stay for Saturday and beyond. And without the weather report, I can’t figure out which direction to head to avoid the oncoming weather system (to the extent possible).

I hate to do it, but I think tomorrow I may have to drive into a town somewhere (not that I saw one anywhere near here) so my hot spot will work. I really need to get a clearer idea of that weather system they say will be moving into this area this weekend.

Fortunately, the prediction I saw this morning showed it completely missing both Pennsylvania and Maryland, so they have a chance to shovel out from under the snow that got dumped on them. Unfortunately, it looked like it was going to blanket all of Virginia and I’m really close to the border.

Everybody keeps saying the temps are 10° to 20° below normal, so instead of late March I’m getting stuck with early March. How could I be so lucky? It may get down into the upper 20s here tonight and I’ve pulled out my warmer clothes I thought I wouldn’t be needing for a while.