Jackson Browne

February 22, 2023

We’ll get to Mister Browne shortly…

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels.

We woke early, hoping to make it to the Angel Oak tree, the largest living oak (live oak actually) east of the Mississippi and one of the prides of SC. It was also on the way out of town. We met Moses the dog and his people. Moses’ people have the same trailer as us. We chatted for a bit and they mentioned how the road to Angel Oak is nasty, but worse, we’d find it impossible to turn around. We were also running late and I didn’t want to rush the tree. Years ago Susan and I spent a few hours in the Muir Woods and frankly, we could have spent days there. We’ll come back.

Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields.

When unhooking the electric this little guy jumped off the plug and on onto me. I instinctively shook him off, thinking he was just a wet leaf, I wish I hadn’t, I could have said good morning to them.

We packed up and headed down the road. I had picked out three Cracker Barrel restaurants at varying distances, most Cracker Barrels allow overnight stays. We were getting tired of our music so I googled top road trip songs or something like that and quickly put together a playlist. Born to Be Wild was, of course, first.

In ’65, I was seventeen and running up 101

Oh, if you are wondering about our path, just go to There and Back Again, a Google map of our path. You may have to sign in or click things to make it work. But here’s a screen shot if you don’t want to ‘play computer.’

I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on.

We made a quick driver’s change, I made a sandwich and Susan had more dreadful food from McD’s. “It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve eaten at McD’s,” she said to me.

I kept on driving so she could eat. We normally change drivers but she had managed to skip breakfast (and not realize it). I had walked around a lot, so we figured with half a tank of gas we’d change drivers at the gas break.

Running on, running on empty
Running on, running blind
Running on, running into the sun
But I’m running behind

We found a nice gas stop, which was 20 miles down the road from where we were but it had Onion Information or something like that. With my daughter’s and her fiancé’s line of work, I figured we needed Onion Information.

That station had no gas. Actually, it looked like something out of a horror movie. Half the shelves were empty and the lights were off. But a guy came out back to inform me, that yes, they had no gas. I didn’t ask about meth or moonshine and we kept on driving.

By now you’ve figured out the blog title and the song lyrics.

We either ran out of gas or we wanted a 90 minute road side break with fire ants and wanted to meet a Georgia Sheriff (First LEO encounter!) and make a new friend with a pickup truck and a gas can. And he left the can behind when he drove away, noticed it, called us but we’d already pulled away. Sadly he had to go back ’round to fetch it.

Freshly rested and not at all stressed out (ha!) we pushed on past the first Cracker Barrel because the next one was only 88 miles away and the final one 30 miles past that. I play with the GPS and delete the first Barrel. The times update but they don’t make any sense. We’re getting to the last one before the middle one? I pull over into a Lowe’s parking lot and re-do. It still says the same thing. Ok, either it’s a bug in the GPS or I’ve input them backwards.

Then it hit me, we’re driving to the west. (That’s an in joke, Susan will laugh.)

Yup.

We’ll pull into the middle one. Decide to eat there. We don’t often eat at a ‘Barrell but it is breakfast when we do. And they serve that all day long.

There’s a good reason for that. The food was, well, dreadful. Never again.

We’ll try to sleep under the sodium vapor lights, lulled into dreamland with the gentle hum of tires on the highway about 13 feet away.

We’ve already requested an awesome Harvest Host for tomorrow.

Daily: 350 miles

Total: 1,495 miles

Miles/Day: 213.6