Today we traveled from the Coan River Marina back to Richmond then southwest on I-85 to Pittsboro, North Carolina negotiating horrendous traffic around Raleigh. Luckily, we discovered the 4,560-acre Jordan Lake State Recreation Area surrounding the 13,940-acre Jordan Lake near Pittsboro.

www.ncparks.gov/jordan-lake-state-recreation-area

The US Army Corps of Engineers built this flood control, water supply, recreation project during the period from 1973 to 1983, which involved damming the Haw and New Hope Rivers.

Most of the lake shoreline has escaped development so far except for a thousand or so campsites scattered around in half a dozen public campgrounds. This time of the year camping pressure is rather light. Don’t go in the summer. Then the campgrounds become cities with monstrous RVs (recreational vehicles) packed in like cars in a junkyard, which is where most of those monstrosities end up. The lake becomes a seething mass of powerboat hauling skiers and tubers about in figure eight formation, personal watercraft buzzing relentlessly, morning till night, and frustrated old fart fishermen searching out rare unoccupied coves, I imagine.

We arrived at the Poplar Point Campground on the lakeshore. No one attending the entrance station. In that circumstance at most campgrounds, the procedure is that you pick a vacant site and a Ranger will come later to register you and take payment. So that’s what we did. Lucky for us we found a very nice site across from a bathhouse on the lakeshore with no one else around. I commenced to set up our camp and presently too cheerful, young lady Rangers, smartly uniformed, spit-shined, packing 9 mm semiautomatic pistols, mace, and batons on their belts showed up to register us. One does not argue with young lady Rangers, smartly uniformed, spit-shined and packing 9 mm semiautomatic pistols, mace, and batons on their belts. They were very pleasant and even offered to open the bathhouse for us even though the season had not officially started yet.

So here we camp on the lakeshore with a few other folks. Twenty buck a night for a site on the water with power, clean bathroom, (rated 8) and hot shower. What more could a man want? For those who don’t know what a head is, get a life.

Notice the 8 rating for this bathroom facility. Yes, we rate the bathroom facilities we use when out on our camping excursions. Don’t we all when we are away from home, in our own way, rate “foreign” bathroom facilities. We, the traveling Talleys, take it to another level by recording data about the heads we visit. In might come in handy someday. You might even use one of “our” bathrooms in your travels.

Head, outhouse, honey pot, privy, loo, crapper, pit toilet, Johnnie house, call it what you will, these are names for the same essential device; that place or thing in which we make frequent nutrient filled biological deposits. And the fundamental principle on which we can all count is that “when you got to go you got to go”.

Given that fundamental principle, one often must compromise. For us, it’s just a fact of life on the road.

When one goes to the places we go, one does not necessarily have a choice of a range of fine bathroom facilities. And one may not necessarily have the time to consider where and under what circumstances one is to make a deposit. Across America, public campgrounds in national forests, national parks and monuments, US Army Corps of Engineer dam and recreation sites, Bureau of Land Management properties and others generally have adequate bathroom facilities. Some better than others.

We include overall cleanliness and maintenance, presence or absence of showers, hot and cold water, odor, hand sanitizer, sinks, bugs like flies, scorpions, spiders and an occasional skunk in our criteria for making the ratings.  Once both Emily and I use a facility we conference to compare notes and, after extensive consideration, by consensus, assign an overall rating. We have not had to consult with a facilitator yet.

Why am I talking about this? Why am I telling you about such things? I’m old. I’m retired. My mind wanders. And I like boring people to death.

A last note. For “emergencies” and “primitive” camping we have the Luggable Loo, Emily’s favorite traveling companion. No moving parts. And combined with a spade or shovel, it provides adequate transport to a deposit burial ground.

We spend a pleasant evening at Poplar Point. The next day, April 10 starts off with a natural phenomenon the likes of which I have never seen.

We got up to prepare for our departure, exited Ali the Aliner, and a monster pollen cloud attacked us. I’m not making this up. An actual yellow loud pollen had settled over the lake and our campsite. Visibility about 100 yards. We breathed and ate the pollen.  No choice. It got in our hair, ears, and noses. The cloud deposited the pollen on everything. Our brand-new white camper is now yellow. Car, yellow. Our white dog, yellow. What does one do when attacked by a pollen cloud? The answer, act like a bee. So, we acted like a bee and got busy leaving.  We are not harmed. Pollen is just pollen.

Actually, as I’m sure you know, a pollen grain has a single male microgamete (sperm cell) of a seed-bearing plant enclosed in a tough outer covering. Male flowers produce pollen and wind, bees, beetles, bats, butterflies, slugs, ants, wasps, moths, mosquitoes, hummingbirds, and other creatures transfer the pollen to the pistil (female part) of a flowering plant or the female cone of a coniferous plant. There the pollen grain germinates and sends out a tube, down which the male gamete (sperm) migrates to find a female gamete, the ovule. Then exciting things happen.

I can only imagine how many pollen grains there were in our cloud that day. In just one cloud in one day. A hundred billion maybe? That is a lot of sexual activity going on out there.

And now, after that biology lesson, we are off to our next campsite.

Namaste.