First thing - I checked my Blog settings, and I was not allowing comments before. I forgot that I set that up awhile ago, but now it's fixed! Comment away!
That being said... THE SHED
Let me first say that the drive here was terrific, especially the last bit of it. Each road got smaller and smaller, and it felt like I got further and further from civilization. In the end, I'm glad I have a 4-wheel drive vehicle because the road leading up to this place isn't much of anything. Here's a video from where I got out of the car:
I can admit that I felt a little bit depressed because there really are quite a few houses and trailers in this area. It seems as though it's a rental area, but it's a little weird because there are trailers (the kind that literally just look like you hitch it to a car) that have been here so long that the forest is kind of overtaking them.
There is a strange lock on the outside sliding glass door, and the management sent me the code to it. I came over to the shed, took care of the lock, and the door opened right up. I was glad that happened because I was running this horrible scenario in my head where I couldn't get into the place after driving so far. I unloaded some things and took some video of the inside of the place.
I actually got more depressed once I was inside. The place was DIRTY. The bed was actually unmade and looked like it had been slept in, there were food particles throughout the kitchen area, the shower stall literally had leaves in it, and the inside of the hot tub looks like someone threw a couple shovels of dirt inside it. Once I saw the hot tub, I have to admit that I started to get pissed.
The dogs were still in the car so I went back out for them. As I was coming back in, I heard what sounded like an airplane fly overhead. Sure enough, there was a very small plane flying above the treeline with what looked like a hang glider just behind it. I shoved the dogs inside and took some video of just outside the sliding glass door, on the porch.
You can see a large grassy area out the front which is where this plane landed and took off every 20 minutes from the time I got there until about 6:00. I now know that this is a place where you can learn to hang glide. Apparently, the plane tows the hang glider into the air, and the person flys back down to the earth. I'm not exactly sure where they land, but you know what, I don't care either.
When I came back in, I was pretty upset. I figured I'd get the dogs setup, and then go find food. Once everything was out of the car, and I thought everything was as good as it could get inside the place, I walked back outside. This is when I realized I had no idea how to lock the place back up. The lock thing was attached to the door handle. Looking at it, I had no idea how it actually worked. I figured maybe I had to input the numbers for the code again and did so several times. Nothing I did actually locked the door.
At that point, I almost lost it completely. I couldn't figure out why a place would let me get inside and then not be able to lock it up when I wanted to go. I put the numbers in over and over for lack of any other idea, and finally, decided to push this little button that was just beside them.
Wouldn't you know it... the strange lock thingy opened up to revel a key to the door which meant that when I arrived, the Shed was actually already unlocked.
Despite that scary thought, I can't even explain how much better I felt about everything.
I got in my car, my wonderful Droid led me to a great little town called Trenton which is about 10 minutes away, I shopped for groceries, came back and cleaned, made and ate food, and am now calmed down enough to sit here and type.
I can say that it's actually not that bad.
The stars are flat out amazing... there's no light anywhere, and the sky is incredibly clear. It's also so quiet. There's no noise from cars driving by ANYWHERE. This cabin really is in the middle of nowhere. The views on the drive in are so great, I honestly don't think anyone can take a picture that will come close.
Everyone around here has at least one dog. Seriously, I've seen more dogs in the past few hours than I've ever seen at the humane society. The other awesome thing is that none of these dogs are on leashes. The dogs just are roaming around, big and small, and each one seems to know where their owner is.
Everyone I've spoken to makes me want to laugh like a child because of their accent. My old boss was from Virginia, and everyone could tell he was from the south the minute he opened his mouth. I can tell you right now, that man had spent many year in the north because he NEVER sounded the way the people sound down here.
That being said, everyone I spoke to in the grocery store was ridiculously nice. Like over the top nice, nice like in stories little kids read, nice like that's just how it is, they aren't even trying.
One of the cool things about the Shed... the light and fan switches in the bathroom. They're flat out awesome.
That's right... the string is connected to the light switch which is hidden. The switch itself has a tiny hole drilled through it, and the whole thing works with a pulley.
I'm going to go ahead and chalk up the anger from earlier to a VERY long trip. After I hit publish on this, I'm going to write an email to the management of this rental. We'll see if I receive any kind of response this week.
Things are good.
Jack Daniel's Distillery tomorrow.
