Hi! Just wanted to reflect back on our trip we ultimately took to Kershaw, SC, for a race down at Carolina Motorsports Park. We didn’t get to spend as much time exploring during this trip but we did take the time to explore Charlotte, NC, a place where neither my husband nor I have been before. I must say, Charlotte is absolutely beautiful!! I am 100% jealous of anyone who is living there right now; although, the real estate there is way more expensive than I thought it would be. Unfortunately that means I won’t be moving there anytime soon… it’s fine. Everything’s fine. At least Pittsburgh has a beautiful cityscape that I get to look at everyday on my way into and out of work.. I’ll survive.
We didn’t make it very far from home on the night we left. We left on a Wednesday night after work and still had some packing to do before we could take off. We only made it to the Beckley, WV, Cracker Barrel to sleep. Have you guys ever driven through West Virginia? We’ve done it SO. MANY. TIMES. and I will never get over how wild of a state it is to drive through. The scenery is great but the hills are torture for a car towing anything. There’s like 60 miles straight of crazy hills! Our SUV gets such a workout driving through there, but I swear that semi-trucks just roll through there like the hills don’t exist. My husband and I realllyyyy dread that part of southern trips. Anyone else?
Anyway, we did a lot in the short amount of time we were in Charlotte. We started off eating at Legion Brewery Southpark. Well, before we even got to the restaurant, we parked at the Dick’s that’s really close to there and sat in the Adirondack chairs in front of that cool outdoor stage for a little while. How cute is that little space? I could totally imagine a summer night with a drink in hand watching whatever/whoever is on stage that night. So relaxing.
After we basked in the (chilly) sunshine for awhile, we made our way over to Legion. Their food and beer was so good! I got a flight of beer. I’m not terribly picky when it comes to beer, so if I can try more kinds in a sitting, I’m down for it. I am partial to sours though. The Dogfish Head SeaQuench Ale is one of my favorites and it doesn’t feel like I’m giving myself a stomach ulcer; although, I do love an ulcer-inducing sour beer. Off topic, sorry! My husband got this pizza from Legion that may have been some of the best pizza we’ve eaten. I want to say it was The Big Vinny and omgaaddd, delicious. I got the Juicy Jay’s Grilled Chicken Sandwich with Sweet Potato Fingerlings on the side and that also was tasty but not as tasty as the pizza IMO. They do have good ranch there, though! Is loving ranch on everything a northern thing or does that happen all over the place?
After eating, we decided to check out Freedom Park and that was not disappointing. It is so gorgeous there! The pond with the fountain, all the green space, the people just generally enjoying themselves there. The atmosphere was perfect. I was jealous of the human sleeping in a hammock in the shade. We veered off the pretty paved walkway across a bridge over a little bubbling creek to walk on a trail over there. I quickly found a place to climb down to the water first. It was so peaceful down there that if I had a book with me (and no husband patiently waiting for me), I could’ve stayed there for hours just sitting on a rock. The trail was so perfect, anything that is surrounded by nature, I’m there for. We eventually made out way out to the back side of the park with the playground and soccer fields. My husband and I reverted back to our inner children selves and played on the playground for a long while (ok mostly me). I used to be a gymnast and they had those bars there so naturally l had to play on those for a bit. I could hardly pull myself up on those things, I have no idea how I was a gymnast… The swings were my favorite part. There’s just something about swings that drowns you in nostalgia for your childhood. I would highly recommend checking out Freedom Park if you’ve never been.
Ryan and I just enjoying the views of Freedom Park.
After the park, we only had time for one more stop before we had to continue our drive into SC to get to the racetrack. We chose ice cream! 🙂 We stopped at Golden Cow Creamery, which I mostly picked because I loved the name but the ice cream did NOT disappoint. My husband got the Salted Oreo. Anything that’s salty and sweet, includes Oreos, and can be enjoyed outside is a win in my book. I for the life of me cannot remember what flavor I ended up getting, though, but I do remember it was very tasty. I probably can’t remember the flavor because we were so distracted by this adorable little black lab puppy that was in the process of being trained the whole time we were sitting outside eating our ice cream. For a puppy, that little baby was so well behaved. I was very impressed.
We finally reached Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC, Thursday evening. It’s a very sandy paddock and the sand seemed to get everywhere as per usual. Friday was a nice day but the track day was a real cluster of a day. The amount of red flags that came out during the day was ridiculous. I think every single session was red flagged aside from maybe 4 (there’s 24 15-minute sessions in a day or something close to that). Wild.
The endurance race was on Saturday and I’m pretty sure there was enough rain that fell in that single day than falls the entire year in any part of the world. I’m exaggerating obviously but there was a LOT of rain. Thankfully I brought a raincoat and rainboots but I still felt like I was soaked through everything… can’t imagine how the riders felt in that. Their leathers had to have been 20 pounds heavier when they got off the bike than when they got on, all from rainfall. The hot shower at the end of the day before we left for home felt incredible. My husband and his endurance team placed 4th overall, which was better than expected! So proud of those guys 🙂
We had a great time on our Carolina trip in April but we really wish we had some extra time to explore there. The amount of breweries in Charlotte was outrageous and I would love to get a chance to explore more of those the next time we’re down there. Suggestions always welcome! It’s so hard to know which place to prioritize when all of them had like 4.2 stars and above… HOW DO YOU CHOOSE?! If there’s anything else in or around Charlotte that we should check out next time we’re down there, I’m all ears! 🙂 Seriously.. food, drinks, ice cream, must-sees… all of it. I want to know.
Hi all! My husband and I just came back from one of his races at Roebling Road Raceway in Bloomingdale, GA, and we had a blast!
I should start with some background about what we travel in and what we take with us on these racing trips. We have an enclosed trailer that we tow with a Nissan Pathfinder, and we use both of these to their fullest capacity. Our enclosed trailer hauls my husband’s race bike, our pit bikes, seemingly every single tool or spare part that my husband has ever collected in our garage, a ridiculous amount of fuel, more tires and wheels than any human could possibly use in a single weekend, two canopies, multiple chairs, and our coolers… but you have to be prepared, right? Our SUV stores all our personal items, snacks, and our bed…. yep, you read that right, our bed. We sleep in our SUV for pretty much the entirety of our trips, but if we’re staying overnight in a city we are exploring we will book a cheap hotel.
Anyway, we started our travels on a Tuesday to start driving towards Savannah, Georgia. It’s roughly 13-14 hours from Pittsburgh (where we live) with stops included. That’s probably longer than it needs to be but my husband drives like a grandpa when he’s towing the trailer. He acts like it’d be a tragedy if his mpg dropped whatsoever… sort of can’t blame him when he’s only getting 16.0 mpg while towing, but also…. I like to get from point A to B as quickly as possible. We stopped overnight in Wytheville, VA, and slept in a Cracker Barrel. We pretty much exclusively sleep in Cracker Barrel parking lots while traveling because they all have RV/Bus parking spots, it’s free to sleep there, and every one we’ve stopped at has had a well-lit parking lot and other people sleeping there, too! We do call the location(s) we have plans to potentially sleep at before they close just to make sure they’re allowing overnight parking but also just to be courteous.
We finished our drive down to Savannah on Wednesday and checked into our Best Western Inn hotel before we started exploring the city (only paid $96 for the night, which seemed to be pretty cheap for the Savannah area for a last minute booking, and it was only about 15 minutes away from city center). We started off by buying tickets to the American Prohibition Museum in City Market, which included a drink ticket for an old-timey drink. The museum was actually pretty cool with all the information they had, the realistic wax figures, the newspaper clippings from that era, and the treasures they had displayed. I’m not a big history person but I thoroughly enjoyed it. They also have an exhibit at the end where you get to try and learn a dance from the timeframe…. my two left feet failed me miserably, but I’m sure everyone watching got a kick out of my attempts. Once you reach the near end of the museum, there’s a neat Speakeasy with old-time cocktails, many of which had ingredients I had never heard of before! I got the Pimm’s Cup and my husband got some kind of Corpse drink – both were good but my husband’s was quite strong.
After the museum, we explored the shops in City Market with a drink in hand from Wet Willie’s. If you’re a daquiri person, you would love this place – it’s like a gas station slushy area on steroids. There had to have been at least 15 different daquiri flavors. I can’t recall the names of the drinks we got, but they were SO. GOOD. If I wasn’t a lightweight or if it was warmer out, I might have gotten a second one. While exploring the market, we found Byrd’s Famous Cookies shop, which had amazing cookies. They probably tasted even better after my husband and I both had 2 drinks each but luckily they tasted just as good, if not better, the next day. This cookie shop lets you taste alllllll the cookies before you buy them, and it’s totally worth eating a sample of every single cookie that appeals to you. We ended up buying a sizeable takeout box full of all the cookies we liked best – I think we had lemon, triple chocolate, cupcake, almond shortcake, and salted caramel (omgaddd that best flavor). We peeked through other stores, especially enjoyed the art shops, but we’re too poor to afford legit artwork so we just admired and moved on. We ended the evening out at Your Pie Pizza near City Market and that also was amazing. We got to build our own pizzas and I think I put every topping possible on it.. 🙂 On our way back to our car, we actually got caught up having to wait for a TV show filming segment to be completed before we were allowed to cross the street. The show is called First Kill and it’s a Netflix Original Series about vampires, I think – not out yet, but my husband and I fully intend to watch it just so when the scene comes on that we got to watch be filmed, we can say we were there!
Enjoying our Wet Willie’s daquiris. Even better is being able to walk around City Market with an open container!
Thursday was our last day of Savannah exploring, but we started it off right by eating at Debi’s restaurant for breakfast. It was a little more pricey than I think your typical run of the mill breakfast restaurants, but it was 1000% worth it. It also is in the most unique little setting that was super cozy. Savannah just has the most beautiful buildings in general (IMO, from the cities we’ve visited anyways). We then set off to Bonaventure Cemetery, which surprisingly comes up in a Google search of things that you should check out if you’re there. Once we got there we totally understood why. Again, it’s absolutely beautiful with all the trees and landscape intertwined throughout it, but it also has such unique headstones and plots with people buried in the 1800’s, a WWII memorial section, a Holocaust memorial section, mausoleums, and plots of famous people. It was incredibly sad to see how many infants and children are buried there, but it was touching to see all the little toys and trinkets people have left at their gravesites to honor them. Apparently Bonaventure is also haunted, but we went during the daytime and didn’t experience anything paranormal.. thankfully. I believe it might be part of a haunted tour, though! I would definitely go back in October given the chance to go on that tour. After Bonaventure, we hit Tybee Island starting with the Lighthouse Museum. We climbed to the top of the Lighthouse and had an amazing view of the island – not great if you’re not great with heights, but totally worth it if you can stomach it! We moved onto Tybee Island beach after that, which is always my favorite part. It was a little chilly for the water while we were there, but we still sat comfortably on the beach for about 3 hours before we had to pack it up and head to the race track. I’m a beach reader through and through, anyone else? My book pick for this was What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins. If you haven’t read it, pick it up! It was a very touching read with a lot of depth to it. *Caution if you’re triggered by suicide or abandonment.* We ate at Comacho’s Surf and Turf on Tybee Island for dinner and I can honestly say that I won’t be back. Food was OK but I’ve certainly had much better, and the food scene in Savannah/Tybee is way too good to eat there again. I’m pretty easily pleased with food, too, so this is an odd thing for me to say. Sorry, Comacho’s!
Tybee Lighthouse View. It was built in 1736 but due to a fire set by the Confederates during the Civil War in 1861, it had to be partially rebuilt. The bottom portion is original but the top half was modified. I was a little uncomfortable up 144 feet in the air.
Tybee! Had a pretty empty beach on a Thursday – no complaints here!
Once we wrapped up Tybee Island and dinner, we traveled another 1-1.5 hours to Bloomingdale, GA, to get to Roebling Road Raceway. My husband, Ryan, really enjoys this track! I don’t think it’s the best for spectators but you can still watch the good parts of the track. 🙂 The facilities aren’t bad, certainly not as bad as Road Atlanta or Mid-Ohio (IYKYK). You have to play around with the shower knobs for a bit but there’s hot water and you can’t ask for more than that when you’re living at a race track! We also keep a large garbage bag to put all our dirty clothes in from the weekend so when we get home, we can just take it straight down to the laundry room & save time during the unpacking process. I’ll credit Ryan on that travel hack.
We sleep in our SUV but it’s really not bad until guys start revving their bikes at 6 am because they’re SO. EXCITED. CAN’T. WAIT. TO. START. BIKE. AS. SOON. AS. MY. EYES. OPEN. Seriously – don’t be that guy. Thanks.
Friday was the track day with N2 Organization, always a smooth ride (no pun intended).
Ryan ready to race in the Endurance race on Saturday with WERA. His bike is not the prettiest of the bunch but it looks better than some of his past bikes… it runs, that’s what matters, right? #SVlife
My husband and I keep all our food in coolers (very jealous of all you guys with toy haulers that have a refrigerator, but we make do). We usually have a little propane griddle that we (my husband) can make breakfast on, but we have no idea where our little propane thing went and the little table top grill we have does very poorly to cook eggs in a reasonable timeframe…. So, this trip we tried yogurt breakfasts. I bought some mason jars, plain nonfat greek yogurt, honey, and some berries. I put 6 oz greek yogurt in the jar topped with 1/2 Tbsp of honey and a good handful of strawberries & raspberries. I bought leakproof lids to put on these because water from the ice seems to find its way into EVERYTHING. Highly recommend the leakproof lids, worked like a charm (Thanks, Target!). These breakfast were actually pretty spot-on and we had some Almond & Apple Granola packed to put in it also. Will definitely repeat these. My husband can sometimes have the palate of a toddler, so when he approves of these things, it’s a win. We pack lunch meat, cheese, and bread as well as packs of tuna & crackers for lunches. We make sure to put the lunch meat in a good tupperware container to limit water invasion & then put cheese in a container and then put all of that in a gallon sized bag to double barrier it from water, but also keep the lunch stuff together. If you’ve ever tried digging through a cooler to locate all the food you need, this is a big time saver. For dinner we usually have some pre-made turkey burgers ready as well as hot dogs. I usually use 93/7 ground turkey mixed with egg yolk, bread crumbs, A1 and Worcestershire sauce, garlic salt, onion powder, and black pepper to make the burgers & these usually turn out pretty tasty! We also pack the pre-made salad kits from Aldi to eat with our dinners and these work out really well also. We split the whole pack between the two of us, so we don’t have to worry about storing them after opening them. For our snacks, we usually pack tortilla chips & salsa, crackers, pretzels, granola bars (I really like the Pure & Simple brand from Aldi and my husband likes the Sweet and Salty ones), bananas & PB, applesauce squeezey packs like for toddlers (just tried these for the first time this past weekend & will definitely use again), cheese sticks, and sliced bell peppers. We really do try to eat healthy while we travel, but packing most of our meals saves us a ton of money that would otherwise be spent on fast food or on food from the concession stand at the track, both of which add up FAST when you’re feeding two people (let alone if we had kids we traveled with). We used to do the latter and found ourselves feeling kind of crappy by the end of the weekend – both physically and mentally once we looked at our bank accounts/CC statements…. -__- My husband has lost about 30 lbs over the the last 6 months and he’s been really trying to maintain that, so I’ve been trying to do everything within reason/feasibility to help keep him eating a healthy diet the vast majority of the time (putting my RD credential to work in and out of a work setting). We still really enjoy our food from restaurants, as noted above, but racetracks don’t have any spectacular restaurants to eat from, so it’s easier to be more in control once we get there. We ran out of pre-made breakfasts and lunches by the time we were returning home, so unfortunately we did have to eat out and spend more money on the way home…. but it is what it is. A learning experience for next time! We also need to learn to pack more bottled water than we think we’ll need. Amazing how thirsty you get when you don’t have water in your immediate reach for a few hours…
We came home on Sunday and I can honestly say that was a very successful trip. We had a lot of fun exploring a city we’ve only spent limited time in and I’d say we fit a lot of activities in during a 24hr-ish trip. Would highly, highly recommend Savannah, GA, if you’re looking for a place to travel. If you have any van-life, minimalist travel hacks that you want to share, I’m all ears. If you have any specific Savannah recommendations to give, please share! I’m hoping my husband wants to go back to Roebling again next year, so any recommendations you can give, I will 100% be referencing them on our next Savannah trip!
Carson Caravan 