My trip scheduled to go to Port O Connor Texas to see my long lost biological sister had finally gotten here, unfortunately I had to delay my trip because of hurricane Florence that hit the North Carolina coast, right where I live.
The hurricane was an extremely strong category 1 and did quite a bit of damage, lots of trees down and all major roads in and out of Wilmington were flooded or damaged and un-passable. It took a week before there were any routes either north or west out of this area. Finally after a week a couple small roads opened up, so it was time to go.
I packed up HD, a few snacks, all my stuff and headed out at 6am on Monday morning the 24th of September. The first problems I encountered were flooded roads in eastern and southeastern South Carolina, numerous detours, slow winding back roads, I had to zig zag around to finally get past all the flooding, this was a slow process and took about 2 1/2 hours longer than it should have. Once I got near Florence(weird I know)South Carolina everything was normal on the roads and the trip was mostly smooth.
My first stop was planed for just outside Mobile, Alabama where I would stop and sleep at a Flying J truck stop. As I was coming off the highway, I could see that the plaza was really really small. I didn't do an aerial view on it via google maps and really didn't know what was offered as far as space available, from now on I will be doing an aerial before heading out.
I drove around the parking areas to see if there was a spot for me, but every one of the spots were taken up by 18 wheelers, not even a half spot that my pickup would fit into. I pulled back up front and pulled up one of my apps and started looking for a Cracker Barrel that was close by. I found one about 20 miles away and headed out to check out my second spot of the night. At this time it was around 9pm and dark, I was getting a little tired and just looking for a place to get a few hours of sleep before hitting the road to Texas.
My GPS took me through some pretty shady neighborhoods, but finally got me to a Cracker Barrel that was about in the middle of town. There was one semi dark spot in the back parking lot so I decided to pull in and get my windshield cover and side window covers in place. It was hot, I had forgotten my window screens and magnetics so I ran the air conditioner for a little while as I settled in.
I was just about asleep when I heard a small plane fly over, I though to myself, that seems a little low and laid back down again. After about 3-4 minutes, I hear another small plane fly over at about the same height, I though that was weird, I'm in the middle of town and planes were flying over really low. After about 15 minutes it seemed all quiet and was finally asleep, then it happened a large jet flew over at about the height of the small planes. My first though was a crash was coming up, but no explosion, so my only conclusion was I was under the approach path of a local airport. Of all the places to park...I had to pick a flight path.
Needless to say I decided to move to a new location, got out my apps and found another Cracker Barrel just across the Mississippi border near Orange Grove, just off route 10. At this time it was around 11pm so I pulled in and drove around the building to see if there was any good spots to boondock. Finally found a nice dark spot way in the back where I could still could see across the parking lot and other parking lots across the street.
I got settled in and fell asleep quickly and all was good until about 2am. I was awoken up by a building alarm going off, it was extremely loud and echoed across the empty parking lots. I got up, looked out the side window and didn't see any vehicles or people anywhere in sight. After my head cleared up a little I realized that my vehicle was the only vehicle in 3 to 4 parking lots and a burglar alarm was going off loud and clear.
Then it dawned on me, my vehicle will become a suspicious vehicle and I will become a person of interest because I'm at the wrong place at the wrong time. I immediately got up and started looking for my driver license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance because I just knew I would be surrounded by 10 police cars with 10 guns pointed at me at any time.
While my mind was racing and trying to get everything together, I completely forgot to video any of the happenings around me. I was just worried that I might be going to jail that night and wondering how I was going to explain to the police that it wasn't me.
A few minutes later I heard and saw a police car racing down the road towards me and the Cracker Barrel building. About 1000 feet from the parking lot I was in, the police turned off its vehicle lights and siren then pulled into the building parking lot across the street from the Cracker Barrel lot. About 45 seconds later a second police car did the exact same thing and I was starting to sweat as I didn't know what they were doing. Where they waiting on more police to show up or were they waiting on the swat team to come take me out. As I'm sitting there sweating they just kept sitting across the street with their cars pointing towards the Cracker Barrel building.
After what seemed to be an eternity the building alarm went off and I was thinking about what I was going to say, especially when they asked me if I had any weapons in the car. I did, I had a small paring knife I used to cut up apples and peel oranges and I had one BIG butter knife I used to spread peanut butter. I could see myself now trying to explain why I had such dangerous weapons in the truck.
I didn't want to start up the truck, as they might misconstrue that as me trying to sneak away from the scene which would make me look guilty and I didn't want to start a slow speed chase around town.
After a few more minutes, the police cars left the parking lot across the street and started driving off in the opposite direction from me. I watched for a few minutes to make sure they were not sneaking around the back of Cracker Barrel to do a surprise attack on me but they were gone, I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to calm down a little. It took me about an hour to be calm myself enough to get back to sleep, which was for only about 2 hours at which time I just got up and got back on the road.
Never have I gone through such a nerve racking situation before, but it all worked out so I'm a happy camper for now.
Watch for blog 10B which will impart the rest of my trip to Port O Connor, which wasn't as smooth sailing as I would have liked it to be...
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