Road trip '05 - The hounds of Cha-Cheese!

Road tripping. That's been my thing recently. For the past two years at least. Drive somewhere, do something, drive home. Last year it was my mini Southern Hospitality tour to SC, Atlanta, Nashville, and Baltimore. This year was a little less ambituous, largely just being SC. Okatie, that is. That's where my folks have a house, and that's where I was for the past week.

I've been on a lot of vacations. My family used to take them a lot when I was younger, so I got used to the idea of going places every year. When I got older, I continued (and continue to) that as best I could/can on my income. So this summer, my thing was I wanted to be able to go somehwere and just relax, not have to worry about "doing" things. This was partly based upon my yearning for a chill vacation, and partly motivated by the fact that I'm recently in a new aparmtent and don't have a lot of cash.

So I packed up the car with some essentials: clothes, guitar and amp, nana's brownies, and a couple of friends and headed down to Okatie.

Brief description of Okatie, SC: Nowheresville. It's on the southern edge of SC. The nearest sizeable city is Savannah, about 40 minutes away. The nearest bastion of civilization? WalMart. About 15 minutes away.

But that's what I wanted, a getaway. So Sunday night we leave. About 13 hours later, Monday morning, we arrive in Cary, NC, where my sister lives. Spent the day there sleeping, eating, vegging out in front of the TV, and playing with my nephews. Games that included giving me plastic cars, and then taking them back, throwing things at my head, and stabbing me with "swords." Ahh, kids. After that short pit stop, the next morning we hop back into the car for the last 5 hours of the drive. Eventful of course, for the drenching downpours that slowed us down considerably, and for the check engine light that had come on, apparently for no reason, in the middle of the night.

But we make it to the folks house with no problems. What followed for the next few days went largely as such: drink, smoke (the Hybrid), grill, eat, get scared of the dark, sleep, play guitar, listen to music, watch TV, repeat.

That entails a lot of our time at the house. But not all.

Description of Chechesse (Cha-cheese!) road in Okatie, SC: That's a toughie. Quaint? Rural? There are only a dozen or so houses. Very close-knit community, if you can call it that. My folks were only able to buy the plot of land and build a house there because my dad has some sort of roots there. His uncle lives a 90 second walk down the road, and is known as the "Mayor of Chechesse". Also, my dad was born in the area, although he didn't live there very long before the family moved north. But without those small roots they would not have been able to build a house there, because they likely would not have been sold the land. Everyone knows everyone there. Of course, aside from WD and Doris (my dad's aunt and uncle) I didn't know anyone.

Further description: Dark. Woodsy. Perfect setting for a horror movie because it's plenty scary at night. Much fun was had under the influence of....well, influential things, creeping ourselves out at night. Sitting on the back porch, seeing the rabid rat peeking over the treeline. Any new sound above the cacaophony of night-time insects was a thing to wonder about. The constant heat lightning provided some good ambiance. And the walk we went on the first night? Well...

Walking down Chechesse, once you get past the houses and to the lane that takes you out to the main road, there's little but dark and woods. And woods that canopy over the road to negate any small light the stars might offer. At the edge of the houses lay a dark tunnel that looked like something out of a nightmare. We didn't make it past the edge of the houses before turning around and walking back. Which provided it's own frights. First off in the street lighting. Call it an overactive imagination, but the lighting on a certain part of the street looked quite a bit light the lighting in the scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street, when Freddy walks out at the end of the alley, and starts running down it with his supernaturally long arms scraping the sides. Considering how much that movied terrified me when I was younger, this made for a tense walk home.

But it gets better. My folks house has a motiondetector light on the front porch. We discovered it when we walked out. So to try and circumvent it, we were walking the long way around the driveway in the sort of psuedo-military operation you only find important while drinking or smoking. (Or both.) I was first in line ahead of the other two, halfway up the driveway to the door, when we first heard the hounds. A fierce big-dog barking, collar chaing jingling. I hear Matt say "Don't run!" as Brian boots it past me for the door. Then it gets funny. As he skids ont he welcome mat and slams chest first into the door, spilling his beer everywhere in the mad scramble to get the door open, which he does, and makes for the inside, muy pronto. I get to the door, go in. Matt follows me. We look outside. No dog. Well, there is a dog, the neighbor has one, but he's nowehere near us. In fact, we can't even see him.

That's not the end of the hounds story. For the next few days, we do see two dogs walking around the street, through our backyard, once even on the back porch. Not leashed. Big-ish dogs. Probably just ambling about, but there's a bit of a mystique to them now. Which culminates in Friday night. We get home from Savannah, it's maybe 2:30am. Matt's passed out on the back seat. Pull in the driveway, open the door. Dog's barking. It walks out into the streetlight in front of our driveway, and just looks at the car. I close the door, replaying scenes from Cujo in my head. The anticlimax here is that the dog, jsut turns and walks away, probably thinking: "God damn humans! This nice spot behind my ear is NOT going to scratch itself."

But whatever. It's dogs. It added some good atmosphere to the trip. Let me just say that my plan was to go whether or not no one else did. But I'm glad Matt and Brian did go, because that house gets creepy at night, and I'm sure had I gone alone, I very well might be dead from fright right now.

Other quick notes, as this is getting long:

Beaufort, SC: Quaint little cty. Not much to do there.

My car: Not exactly sure what the deal with the check engine light was---maybe something with the catalytic converter, but it had apparently fixed itself (???)--- owever the Beaufort Toyota dealership took care of it and gladly accepted my $75 to do so.

Savannah: Let's just say I want to go back. Ever see that movie Coyote Ugly? Well we basically lived that on Friday night at the bar we ended up at.

The drive home: Long. Had some good pizza in D.C. Left at 11am yesterday. Got home at 7am this morning. I'm tired. Looking forward to sleep.

That's all for now.