You Can Hold It – Not The Painter

March 27, 2024 – Day 12

Lake Powhatan Recreation Area, Arden NC to Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN

We didn’t head out early from Lake Powhatan. We had a short drive (HA, yeah, we really said that. But! More importantly the site we were going to did not have a sewer hookup.) The next location would have power and water but no sewer. This means “home style” showers will be exchanged for “navy shower” for a while. This meant “home style” showers before we headed out to the next place for a 5 night stop. Paul also did ham radio while sitting in the Jeep. His second contact was Australia! Australia!!! He later found out that early morning is Australia time. They know we’re waking up and try to make contact with us. Here’s a kanagroo playing with a ham radio.

*Real absolutely not photoshopped picture from KC1TRY*

We’re always struck by how beautiful the land is down here. Last time we were in the Great Smokies we extended our trip by a day and said we’d be back. Well, we’re not actually back. We drove around most of it and currently we’re adjacent to them and it’s still really beautiful here. They just don’t smoke much.

Around this time we realized we had made a rookie mistake. You would think that since this our third cross country trip we wouldn’t make rookie mistakes, right? But the truth is that there is so much going on living and traveling and sprinkling in adventures that mistakes happen. We’d forgotten to check out our gasoline situation before heading out. It is way easier to plan this while stationary. It lets you plan, look at Google street view, etc… So we had to do it on the road. Small town gas stations are usually pretty good if they have enough land. It seems that most modern gas stations have the pumps perpendicular to the road meaning a hard turn to get in then another hard turn to get to the pump. Not awful if there’s enough real estate but when there isn’t it’s virtually impossible for us. The ideal set up is to have them parallel to the road. But even if they’re ideally situated sometimes they are on tiny and you can’t maneuver! We drive right on by which is less than ideal if you’re looking for gas already. We found a good one and filled up. The exit was tighter than we liked, Paul got out to spot Susan, to see if she would hit the mailbox. She passed within 6 inches of it. Then we were back on the road.

We went through a tunnel. That’s not that weird, tunnels happen. But we can’t tell if the face above the tunnel entrance is carved or natural!

And we can’t tell if it is screaming or not!

We started seeing billboards for Buc-ee’s about 90 miles out. Buc-ee’s, is a chain of rest stops known for super clean bathrooms and more gas pumps than could ever be considered normal. To say they’re a madhouse would be an understatement. The one is Sieverville, TN is the newest and largest. There are 120 gas pumps and 74,000 square feet of convenience store. Yes, dear readers you read that right. 120 gas pumps is bonkers enough. Entering a 74,000 square foot Buc-ee’s convenience store is overwhelming. It’s also a world record. (susan here: Katy, TX is on our radar, it’s the longest car wash! Boy oh boy we sure do visit the coolest places, huh?) Blog readers may remember our trip a year ago with the travel trailer where we white knuckled it through the parking lot and left without stopping. This time we were able to park out of the fray (relatively) diagonally across 6 or 8 parking spaces and went inside with a mission.

Why did we do this? Paul’s daughter, Anastasia, wants some Cosmic Pops. We sucked it up and went in. Big and loud does’t begin to describe the mayhem inside a Buc-ee’s. We had no idea where to find Cosmic Pops.

We stopped a helpful person with a Buc-ee’s shirt and they took us over to the Cosmic Pops display. Because really, finding them would have been like looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack.

Let’s have an aside here. All retail people are trained to be helpful. They have to be or their manager will give them black star on their TPS reports and they won’t get their $0.03/hour raise. Their job is horrible. But in the south, every single person is just nice, and I mean sincerely nice not fake “bless their heart” nice. They are just nice down here.

Now onto the Cosmic Pops.

Anastasia wanted any flavor but the Cherry Cola flavor. So we didn’t get that one. We got her those three, and an Orange Cream and Lemon Lime for ourselves. We had some of the Lemon Lime as research prep for the blog. They’re uh… (susan here: is the adjective Paul is looking for “nasty”? Sorry, Anastasia.) Well, you smell the artificialness when you cut open the bag. Yes, you need scissors to open the bag. Can’t let all that artificial goodness out or they might decay. In 1000 years. What are they? Let me quote Anastasia.

“They’re little like pop rocks coated in like white chocolate.”

Now that we’ve eaten them, let me quote Susan.

“Odd tasting soggy rice crispies.”

Clearly, someone is wrong.

Now let’s look to the internet. We found this page: I tried 56 snacks from the Buc-ee’s food menu and ranked them and they put the Cosmic Pops in the 2nd tier, named “The Meh Tier: Looks Fine, Tastes Fine. Buc-ee’s food that’s nothing to sneeze at or to write home about.”

“These are absolutely marketed to kids, whose gentle palates might delight in the faint fizzle these produce. For those expecting the satisfying crackle of Pop Rocks, look elsewhere. The bag says that they pop in your mouth, but perhaps I’m missing something!“

We also bought some glazed cashews who’s only saving grace was that they were hot. They were also sweet, very sweet. It was good that they weren’t sticky but neither of us could determine if cashews were inside the glazing. But they were hot!

Eventually we escaped the insanity that is Buc-ee’s and pushed onward. We hit a delay of about 45 minutes trying to get around/thru Knoxville. Not fun but not awful. The Buc-ee’s stop may have meant that we got caught in the delay but so what? It was a life experience that everyone who’s near one should do. So thank you Anastasia for initiating us into the Buc-ee’s Nation. It was an unexpected highlight of the day. Oh, we got a fridge magnet. We collect them, don’t judge.

The careful reader will notice a magnet from a place we haven’t been to yet. That’s the beauty of the timeline of the blog. Of course I’m typing this today, we were at the place yesterday, but in blog time we’ll be there tomorrow. Or maybe it’s July?

It’s 4:41pm and KC1EIJ, remember him, wants to know if we’re parked so he and Paul can play radio. We’re about 10 minutes out from the campsite. But you need to check-in, find the site, get level, pop the slides, put all the homey stuff out, connect to power, and in this case add water. We had drained a lot to reduce weight for the anticipated hills. Then we needed to go grocery shopping.

And we did find a bread knife, so Ann, we have one! Then we were off to Lupi’s pizza. The park host reccomended it to us. Funky interior and delish! pizza.