Day 110: Two ships passing during the day in Columbia.

We stayed a few miles north of Columbia, South Carolina at a Walmart when we drove down last night from Tryon. We are headed to Charleston but we decided that Columbia would be a good place for Luka to get his 6-month immunizations.

Our last visit to Columbia was a pass through with a stop at their great children’s museum while I worked in the Airstream. We were traveling the opposite direction at that time having just spent a few days in Charleston and heading towards Asheville.

We found our way to the Richland County Health Center after driving through some traffic in downtown Columbia with Airstream in tow.

As we were walking around, we were surprised to find that no one is here. We thought it was a good sign that we might not have to spend too much time waiting in line for Luka’s shots.

Well, we were wrong. For some reason, Columbia’s health clinic does not take any walk-ups. When we asked about making an appointment, they had nothing open for over 2 weeks. As we looked around at the empty waiting room and the handful of county employees sitting around thumbing through papers, all we could do was shake our heads in disbelief as we left the building. We are going to have to find a more walk-up friendly health clinic in the next week or two.

While we were finding our way around town, we got a message from our friend Kyle from WhereIsKyleNow.com. We had been criss-crossing each other since we first met in Denver a couple of months ago. We barely missed each other in Michigan and today we found ourselves in Columbia at the same time. We are headed to Charleston for Thanksgiving and he is headed the other direction towards Atlanta.

We finally reconnected at a campground here called Barnyard RV Park. It is a run-of-the-mill RV park in the suburbs of Columbia. The sites are decent sized and bathrooms are clean. Kyle saved us a spot across from him. This photo is showing lots of available sites but it didn’t look like that for long. They are expecting this place to be completely full this evening.

The campground had their Christmas decorations already on display and the girls got very excited as they ran around in the park. This will be their first time spending the holidays on the road and we are looking forward to it.

They had a cool Airstream inflation display in their decoration area and the girls posed next to it like they were taking photos at the prom.

This unexpected stop is a welcome change to what would have otherwise been a long driving day. We never spent the night in Columbia last time and now we have done both at a campground and a Walmart.

Kyle joined us for dinner at a spot within walking distance from the campground called ‘Vegetable Medley Barbecue’. Yeah, we didn’t really know what to expect. It turned out to be a home-style buffet with some interesting locals eating in there. We felt like we were in a fish bowl the way people looked at us when we sat down. I had pretty low expectations but I was surprised by their food. I wouldn’t necessary recommend it but it was at least worth the price of admission.

over and out,
dan