Confusing; in Rochester the beach area on Lake Ontario is spelled Charlotte, emphasis on the last syllable. That is how I have always pronounced it. Now we are in Charlotte NC, emphasis on the first syllable. How am I supposed to remember which is which? This should be my worst problem.

We drove down here (assuming you hold the map with North up, we drove “down” the page) on Saturday and setup camp at Carowinds Wilderness Resort. I guess lots of kids of all ages running around makes it a wilderness, it sure felt wild when we arrived on a warm Saturday afternoon. The adjacent amusement park adds to the wild feeling, otherwise it is a nice enough campground with paved pull through spots with functioning utilities, not even too pricey, a surprise given the location.

Our plan was to see Leigh and Pat Rainwater who moved here a couple of months ago and to see their new home, and visit with Hazel (but you would have had to follow her travels from Austin on Facebook to get the point). She has yet to make an appearance for us, other than the typical cat lump under the bedspread in the guest room. As we were traveling here we realized that David Lovenheim’s daughter, Greta and her husband Earl also live nearby. We made contact, email is great, and arranged to have them join us for dinner at 5 Church, conveniently located at the corner of 5th and Church. But I get ahead of myself.

Saturday we had cocktails at Vestry Place, the Rainwater’s home and then dinner at Ilios Noce  followed by desert and . . . back at Vestry. Sunday, after lolling around the coach for the morning we set off for down/uptown Charlotte (they have this thing about whether it is Downtown or Uptown because it is on a ridge) where our first stop was at Levine Museum of the New South. The “new” is post civil war. It is quite a journey from a crossroads community of 5,000 to the major banking center of today. After the museum we strolled to the Betchler Museum of Modern Art where we had tickets for a performance of British music from Purcell to Britten to go with their exhibit of British Art. From there we went to the dinner described above and had a wonderful time with Greta and Earl as well as Leigh and Pat.

Monday was a lazy day and we went to the Rainwater’s for a light dinner,salad by Leigh and soup by Carol and then home to get on the road to Red Bay. I worked over the route more than usual since the straightforward route goes through Atlanta and is lots of Interstates. We ended up taking a mountain road that I had been warned against. My failure to heed the warning will cost some time and money as a rock wall encroached on the roadway at one point and even with Carol keeping the the left wheels near the center line we made contact to the tune of some grinding noises, removing parts of our awnings and some paint. We are unscathed and the coach can be made whole, so it is merely another experience for us to laugh about when we look back.  As I write we are in Murphy NC along US 64 with about 5 hours of driving ahead of us tomorrow to get to Red Bay (or as Tiffin Owners Forum members call it “Camp Red Bay” immediately shortened to CRB). I must say the route was absolutely gorgeous. The mountains are magnificent and the Fall colors are at absolute peak in this area. Many of  the local campgrounds are full so our plan to stay at WalMart was a good idea.