On our recent cruise, we traveled into South Carolina to get to the port in Charleston. It’s common for us to use our GPS to navigate our trips and this one was no different. While it is more desirable to take as many major roads as possible, GPS software will usually take you through some less traveled areas in an attempt to find a shorter and/or faster route. It is not unusual to see a GPS take you off of the main road even for a short period of time in the name of taking you the shorter route when it would have been faster just to leave you on the main road. If you are like me, these shorter routes usually lead through neighborhoods or narrow roads with anything from speed bumps to school zones that seems designed to slow you down. So, I was suspicious on this trip when we were told to turn off a major interstate and directed down a two lane highway. My wife looked at an overall map and assured me that staying on the interstate would take us a more roundabout route than this South Carolina shortcut.
The vehicle in front of us was moving slower than what we cared to be travelling but wasn’t unreasonably slow most of the time. We weren’t on a road that offered many opportunities for passing slower vehicles but eventually we were able to get around. It seems like there were a series of people out for Sunday drives in the country, but it also gave us an excuse to slow down and take in the property on both sides of the road. It appeared this part of the country had more than its share of mobile homes. While there was an occasional cluster of these buildings next to one another, most of them were off to themselves. Many had a collection of cars and other metal objects in various states of rust that could only be rivaled by the houses themselves. Most of them looked like they could have staged yard sales if anyone was interested in their rusted menageries. Rust was not the only thing that appeared to have attacked these prefabricated buildings. I opined that these structures had been passed off as “new” in South Carolina after being used well past the point of typical use and being condemned in Tennessee. To be fair, not all these homes that we saw were dilapidated, but there wasn’t one that didn’t have some degree of rustiness. I don’t think we were close enough to the coast, yet that salt water was doing this, but I don’t know what it was. I assumed that these people were doing the best they could do with what they had, and we were in an area with widespread rural poverty. Not the kind of place you usually pass through without a GPS but totally keeping within a GPS’s knack for sending me through sketchy parts of large cities.
At one point, we were taken by a trailer that was in pristine condition. It also had a brick wall around it with a tall security gate and a huge garage to the side. While it looked like the people in this home had run into some money, we speculated that ill-gotten gains had paid for the “luxury” we observed.
As we continued, the GPS gave us a notification about a wreck on one of the major routes that it could help us avoid. We didn’t want to sit in traffic for long stretches, so we took the alternative route. This kept us on the road we were on until we came to a bridge without exits that took us over the interstate where we could see traffic backed up behind the wreck we were avoiding. We were especially thankful that we had avoided being there as we were also in search of a restroom. There were no stores or convenience stores where we could stop. We also started noticing more traffic on the road we were travelling on. It seems like the GPS was directing all traffic down this small highway to avoid the wreck.
We rounded a corner which took us to another mobile home that was in a little bit better condition than all the others except the one behind the security wall. This one also had at least 4 rusted out 1970’s era greenish gold limousines in various states of disrepair. At least they appeared to not be road worthy. Based on the state of housing in this community, those limos might have a thriving business.
Around the corner from limo land was a subdivision of small houses. The traffic had come to a standstill in front of the houses. At one house, a man stood at the door watching the parade of cars. It was like there had never been that much traffic on that road ever until Google Maps sent everyone there. I noticed that this house had yellow vinyl siding that matched the siding on his shed. Then I noticed that it also matched every neighbor’s house along this road. I decided that whoever ran the yellow vinyl siding concession in this area really cleaned up in this neighborhood.
The traffic was so slow on this road because it ended near the house with the staring man. At that point, a left turn was required to make a short trip to a ramp back onto a clear interstate. That left turn was hard because of heavy traffic coming from your right at that intersection, due to cars from other areas also being rerouted by their GPS to avoid the wreck. Soon enough, we were able to turn onto this road and make a stop at the store that was within site of the interstate ramp. We said goodbye to the adventurous backroads of South Carolina, anticipating another encounter with them on our way home. Alas, it was not to be. Our GPS, in it’s infinite wisdom would select a different route for our journey home, taking us though the wilds of North Carolina instead of charming haunts of Georgia.
