Akku's Dirty South Road Trip 2024 - Day 5, Amish and Tobacco

Excellent stuff. Bookmarked

Fabulous. As a fan of most things US, I am in for the ride!

I'm keeping well out of the politics, although I was there the week leading up to the elections so I could not miss it. And I was surprised at the result, down in the deep south there is a lot more liberal / left folk than I anticipated. Don't make Communist jokes in South Carolina though, that didn't go so well LOL.

But costs, well, as I will cover I guess the US is more expensive than most people seem to think.

Google Maps is fine for navigating, and the rough areas are obvious - windows up and look straight ahead! But if trouble comes, talk VERY English and you generally get away with it...

Sunday dawned and I was up and about at a sensible time so David and I threw our bags in the Rover and hit the road. First up was breakfast. We went to a lovely sort of deli coffee shop type place and it was all avocados quinoa and so on. I had sausage and biscuits and added bacon. I can’t be doing healthy breakfast when on holiday… Or when not. But hey.



From there we did a little tour of Atlanta as David wanted to show me some stuff. There is a very cool road / walkway tunnel which is full of graffiti, in fact there was a lot of down-town graffiti all round. Some delightful murals and some large spaces covered.

















Somewhere down town we came upon the old Ford Model T Factory. Yup, fun fact, Ford used to make the Model T here in Atlanta. The building has now be repurposed as apartments (or “Lofts” as they are described). Its right by The Ponce Market, oh how I laughed, and had to explain to David why...

















Notable in Atlanta are the huge number of EVs on the road. There are EV versions of the F150, Jeep Wrangler, Jeep Cherokee, more Teslas than you can shake a stick at and so on. One thing I did note was the number of Cybertrucks on the road. Now when you see one of those in a photo you thing “Wut? Why would anyone buy that ugly misshapen thing?” but when you see one on the road it makes sense. Its like brutalist architecture. They look like nothing else, and no matter where you see one it looks out of place. It’s probably the most “LOOK AT ME” thing on four wheels, and I suspect that’s why people buy them.








I was there the weekend prior to Halloween and my life the Americans are true to stereotype on this, there were so many crazy outlandish yard decorations. I saw skeletons which were two stories tall and all sorts.













We also did spot a few interesting cars parked up in the neighbourhoods, some which looked to have been stood a while and some in current use by the looks of them. I didn’t see much of interest which was driving around though.











Oh, mid 60's Ford Ranch Wagon. NICE!








As we looped out of Atlanta to head out of town I saw an interesting yard or compound, it appeared to be a closed up / closed down garage “auto repair shop” so we stopped to have a nose. I’d spotted an early 60s Ford Fairlane and I am hot for those, and beyond it was a mid 60s Lincoln and more. I took a few photos and noted an old chopper parked up as well. At this point a door opened and a biker fellow comes out and asks “Can ah help you gentlemen?” in the sort of tone which means he does not regard us as “gentlemen” and that “helping” is probably the last thing on his mind right now. Also he is now between me and the car…

So I do what is always best done in these situations which is to go “full Hugh Grant” and hope for the best.

“I’m a British tourist, I was just passing and saw the Fairlane, I didn’t mean to intrude, I have a couple of 60’s Galaxies myself back home in the UK y’see….”

Well, within literally 2 minutes the guy is friendly as anything. The chopper is named after his mum, he has ridden it across 9 states in 30 years and never got a registration for it until he came to Atlanta “and that’s when they started ticketing me” – he was a real character and we had quite a chat. I suspect that if we had time we could have been sharing stories all day with him.



















So Metro Atlanta is BIG, and we started trying to leave it. About an hour later we had. The open road was beckoning. Georgia is also a fair size and our plan called for us to be in South Carolina by sun down….








Smokey and The Bandit was filmed on these roads. There is a Bandit Run most years. We did make a half hearted attempt at singing East Bound and Down but quickly run out or lyrics we could remember.

I mainly avoid talking about them online when I get home....

We took a wrong turn when me and a mate were staying in Alameda. The blokes sitting out on their porches looked young, dangerous, and were almost certainly packing. We did look straight ahead and drove out at a decent pace. It's amazing how much difference a couple of blocks can make.

However if you stick to where you should (do your research) you will find that Americans are some if the most friendly people you can meet.

@akku I bleeping LOVE this 

Loving this. Really interesting read, like Grizz's road trips used to be, living vicariously through someone else's enjoyable trip. 😎

Thanks for sharing, really well written and lots of decent car content. I'd love to do something like this.

I awoke refreshed and ready. The Colony Inn wasn’t too bad a sleep. Packed and jumped into the Rover looking for breakfast. Google recommended a place called Eggs Up Grill. It recommended well. I had a “southern eggs benedict” which is basically corn beef hash on toast with a poached egg on top. Odd but it was good with hot sauce. But then, what isn’t good with hot sauce?



We had a particular reason to be in Camden. Y’see Camden is the county seat (ie “capital”) of Kershaw County. And many of you will know that the K in Akku is for Kershaw. Its not a coincidence. Kershaw County is named in honour of my great, great whatever grandfather’s brother who emigrated to the US and later fought for American independence. His son was also a fighter but in the civil war and was kinda on the side we get uncomfortable claiming kinship to.

So we headed to the Camden Archive where the archivist we spoke with was super excited to have a British Kershaw on the premises. While David and I mooched round he got out some older research done on my ancestors and so on. That was super cool to see, and kinda weird to be sitting in a building in America kinda devoted to a long lost branch of your family and reading about the links back to good ol blighty. So we swapped email addresses and so on, he’s planning to come to the UK again soon and we may meet up.








After the Archives we had a mooch round the town. The part of Camden not full of budget motels and truck stops is actually super nice. It was a Monday but it was also Columbus Day so a lot of stuff was closed. A few folk we spoke to were keen to point out that “most people call it Native People’s Day now” but I didn’t see a sign to that effect anywhere. Again, this is internal politics for the US and none of my business. Like a thought during meditation I note that it is a thing and I let it pass from my mind.












There were obviously many buildings in Camden I wanted to see as they bear the name of Kershaw County on them. So we did a run round of me posing in front of everything from court house to refuse collection. We found an old Ford CROWN Victoria at the municipal offices with “Kershaw County” on the doors and looking like it was in disuse but there was nobody in the offices who was prepared to discuss selling the thing to me so we left.



We did find a very nice fire station and got chatting to the fire chief. He invited us in to see his pride and joy which is a 1920 Seagrave which he drives in parades. But not for Columbus day. Today it was just in the station. So we had a look, chatted to the guy, had a lovely time and then rolled on.
















We went to the Historic Buildings preservation to see Kershaw house, but it was closed due to public holiday. We really hadn’t planned this well! So we saw an employee of the place (its like a big park they have relocated a number of historic buildings to and where they do reenactments and the like). We explained my story and he said “well go on in then, have a look round, knock yourselves out man, the buildings are all locked up but walk round and you can see them at least” which is nice. He also wanted to impress upon me that Camden, SC is the oldest settlement of that name anywhere in the world “IN YOUR FACE LONDON!!!” well now. I have yet to fact check this statement, but he was wearing a uniform so I find him credible



While exiting the car park we saw a beautiful 1969 Pontiac Catalina go cruising by, and David was intent on chasing it down. Which we did. A little later the driver stopped (to do an errand not to ask us what the heck we were doing) and we introduced ourselves and had a good chat. Now this guy was a retired Navy Seal, he was a forthright fellow, and he was a card. He had bought the car from an old guy in the neighbourhood who had bought it new. It was originally a 428 and the old boy looked after it like it was his baby. One day in 1993 he went on vacation and came home to find someone had stolen the engine out of the car! It then sat in his garage at home until a couple of years ago he finally sold it and our veteran buddy dropped a “built up hot” 455 and TH400 into it and cruises it as it is. The Cragar mags were a dealer fit option. Its all original except the engine and box. It sounds lovely. “y’all ‘ll wanna git a video so you can hear how she burbles” – and I did. I did love that car.



























Next stop was the South Carolina Motorsports Complex and we were not admitted as it was closed for a private function. This is basically a short race circuit probably bigger than Mallory Park but smaller than Donnington. The guard was friendly but firm so we gave up our lacklustre blagging and carried on up to Lancaster County.

In Lancaster county is Kershaw Town. You see a theme developing here? Kershaw Town is nice, but lacks some of the amenities of Camden. We parked up next to the fire station (second one of the day) and were pleased to see the engines all said “Kershaw” on them. Well, we got talking to the fire crew on duty, they were great fun, they were more excited than I was it seemed. We had a real fun time with them and then the chief gave me a fire fighter’s medallion which says “Kershaw Fire Department” on it!
















I called by the Town Hall, Kershaw House of Pizza (where we had lunch) and a few other prime locations with my name on before we hit the road north in search of a whole new Carolina, the North one.

We drove without stopping much, other than to take photos of a vintage car collection we came across randomly somewhere on the road, we didn’t get out because it felt like shotgun country there. We carried on and got to Salem.













And other misc things of interest...














David insisted we had a “proper” hotel and we ended up in a Fairfield. It was OK. Bland and corporate. We did make up for it by finding a doozy of a place for dinner, this was a BBQ Pit called Due South. We had excellent food and a little beer, and headed back to the hotel.

Day 2 done, something around 275 miles covered.