Report on trip to SE USA, USS Yorktown,Biltmore etc.

We spent 10 days on the road and covered 2200+ miles. Our furthest point from home was Savannah, beautiful city but SWMBO thought the crowd was too much (on a Monday no less). Did a lot of two lane driving through rural SC and was impressed by the amount of abandoned run down properties. Really quite poor must be all the money is in the cities and coastal. Quite a lot of unpicked soybeans and cotton fields. One of the more interesting discoveries was a fish lift on a dam of the Santee river (diversion). The USS Yorktown was good but I enjoyed the USS Alabama at Mobile more (previous trip). The drive from Charlotte area to Asheville through Lure Lake was nice. Glad we did the Biltmore 5 years ago as the tour has been shortened and degraded a bit (crowds even on weekday). The Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville was really nice. Also as recommended the NC Transportation was nice especially for any rail enthusiast. Biggest regret was not having an advance reservation to tour the BMW plant near Spartanburg SC. The BMW Museum/showroom is not worth the drive. Good Carolina BBQ at Carolina BBQ on the east side of town just off the roundabout. Thanks for all the travel tips, couldn't hit them all.

The tour of the BMW plant is well worth the trip. We had a chance to compare it to our tour of the Rouge which we did in Sep 2018.
One big difference is the way you have to make prior reservations at BMW. At the Rouge we simply bought tickets at the Henry Ford.
BMW plant is about 90 or so years newer. Even so, the Ford plant uses extensive use of natural lighting thanks to Albert Kahn's
design. BMW not so much. So, here is a brand new plant working two 10 hour shifts per day vs an almost 100 year old plant working
two 10 hour shifts per day each turning out 700 vehicles per shift, 1400 per day. In the case of Ford, F150 pickups. BMW, SUVs. You
get to see a little bit more at BMW and walk right along the factory floor past the robots where at Ford it's all viewing from
overhead. My wife is a diehard BMW fan having owned her first BMW for 23 years before buying another one. I've always been
interested in Ford as my Grandfather always bought Fords. I have a picture of his first brand new 1914 Ford. My first car was a
brand new 1957 Ford. So we got to see both being made and it was a great way to spend some of our retirement time.

Last fall hurricanes Florence and Micheal took their toll on NC and SC
crops. Most left in the storms' wake were not worth harvesting.

At 220+ mils per day how did you find any time to see anything else. To me that is 5+ hours, more like 6+ hours on road each day. So taking eating and sleep time how did you find ant time to sightsee?

The big thing I liked about SC was the price of chewing tobacco Stopped in Florence SC on the way home from ACG Lorens last year and bought 400 dollars worth, here in Fl. the same amount would be over 800 dollars. . .Old Scovy

My grandfather started chewing tobacco and drinking whiskey when he was 6 years old. We'd go to watch horse races and he would watch from the center of the track where he could put his foot up on the track fence and talk with his old buddies and be able to spit tobacco juice while watching the races. Horse barns were in the center also, so he could go in and take a close look. Carried a pocket flask as well. They'd trade swigs. (;>))

The first time my wife and I visited Savannah, we literally could not find a place to park and ended up driving on. It wasn't too crowded on our second visit and we really enjoyed it.

I forgot to ask----where is the roadkill? We got home and had all kinds of dead varmints on the roads. Almost nothing in the SE.