The cruise control’s main advantage was that it allowed me to drive over 3 hours at a stretch without getting a leg cramp—Wunderbar! The truck handled beautifully and road as softly as any car we have ever owned, which might not be saying much, come to think of it. Anyway, being up so high and having a great view with a nice soft ride gave me the same feeling as the bus tour we took in Great Britain. Light traffic decreased the workload so we had time to just gaze at the scenery flowing by, which changed from snow-covered to bare and brown, to somewhat green and noticeably warmer by the time we reached South Carolina. I even had to use the air conditioning for a while! That was the first time I used the AC system—I’ve been scraping snow and ice off the truck since I bought it rather than worrying about AC--and it also worked perfectly, thank goodness.

So we drove for about 9 hours but were remarkably free of fatigue when we arrived in Charleston. There wasn’t enough daylight left to do the Charleston Volksmarch, which we have heard is very nice, so we put up for the night in a motel—we don’t think it’s usually worth it to set up camp for just one night and we weren’t sure how cold it would get in this area. We had dinner in the Huddle House next door, and could not help overhearing the discussion between an older gentleman, a middle-aged lady, and our waitress. The older gentleman mentioned he had given “2 steaks, 2 potatoes, and a can of vegetables” to a certain woman. Instead of being praised for his Christian charity for this act, he was roundly criticized by the lady with our waitress, who apparently knew them all, chiming in. They said that the woman would just sell the steaks and potatoes to get money for crack cocaine for herself and her boyfriend. They did everything but call him an enabler. But the old man maintained that he just couldn’t “let them go hungry” and felt it was the right thing to do. Neither side gave an inch, so after several repetitions of the same positions, the discussion just wound down and the old man left for the night. Such is the way drug addiction plays out at the lowest level, I guess, and with that sobering thought I went to bed. Our plan is to start our walking early tomorrow morning in Charleston, and I’m really looking forward to it because I haven’t had a decent walk since last Saturday.