Arriving at a meeting point 45 minutes late on a motorcycle is bad form. People tend to worry and besides that, it’s just not nice. I still get a chuckle about anyone freaking out over anything less than two days. Good news travels fast and bad news is nearly instant. I misjudged traffic on a near perfect Mothers Day Sunday on the Parkway. It was busy and, being in the NC mountains, cell service is spotty at best so calling ahead wasn’t possible.

I’m to meet my son in Pisgah Forest for lunch and then afterward, we’re going to do some primitive camping. I pull into the space behind his Jeep at Hawg Wild BBQ. He walks over looking a bit concerned and relieved at the same instant. He mentioned being worried. I can understand that. Forty-five minutes is a long time.

We get seated really quickly and our food comes out almost immediately. We talk about many things and the subject of his level of preparation comes up. Have a sleeping bag? “Aw man! I left it beside the door!” A tent or hammock? “Ugh. Left that at home, too.” Oh boy. This could get interesting.

It was forecast to be in the low 40s in Brevard which was at a lower elevation than where we’d be camping. He went to Walmart and picked up a cheap hammock and a fleece blanket. I told him he’d be cold, but he felt like he could handle it. So with ice, beer, hotdogs, chips, and the cheapest sleeping arrangements available, off we went into the woods.

He followed me up a forest service road in search of camp. After a few miles I find the perfect campsite. Ok..well it wasn’t perfect, but it was free and as a bonus, there was some wet firewood laying around.

We got set up, cut a stick for cooking the dogs, and lit a fire. Despite using some of my gasoline from the bike, we only managed to get a mediocre fire going. But beers were had and stories were told and suddenly it was 10:30 and getting chilly.
I am set up for both ground and hammock camping for this trip. I have a two pound, two person, Nemo backpaking tent and an Eno Sub-7 hammock that is under seven ounces. I prefer to sleep in a hammock, but I did not bring an underquilt. For cool nights in a hammock, an underquilt is a necessity. Figured I’d try it anyway and commiserate with my son, because I knew he was going to freeze.

Around midnight, he ended up in the Jeep. Leaving me to commiserate with myself. I woke up to the sound of my teeth chattering and never really got back to a solid sleep. I was comfortable, except for that whole shivering thing. It doesn’t matter. I was camping and camping with my son!

I got up at daybreak and let him sleep a little while. I took a walk up the closed trail we were camped in front of. Looked around a bit and headed back to camp. As I walked into camp, I noticed something a bit concerning. A big No Camping Here sign posted about 20 feet up in a tree basically right over top of my motorcycle. Though we weren’t blocking the gate, we were camped illegally. Oops. Oh well, it was time to break camp anyway and go get breakfast.

Waffle House was the first thing we saw and the first choice. Breakfast was good and quick. We chit-chatted with our server who wanted to know how she could get the two weeks paid vacation my son mentioned in our conversation. She was like a characiture of a TV sitcom waitress. She launched into an animated story about having to meet the helicopter at the hospital when they were picking up her mother and the pilot offering her directions to the hospital. “I just said, ‘Chile, I’ll prolly beatchu derr!!!” She was a lively spirit to say the least.

After breakfast we explored a little and stopped at the Pink Beds Commisary — couple of old buildings along US276 I’d been meaning to check out forever and finally had the time to do it. 19th Century America intrigues me. We had a look around at the exhibit and drove some more dirt roads. Pisgah is a beautiful area. In my mispent youth, I used to bootleg hiking trails on my mountain bike. In the late 80s in NC, a mountain bike was a thing of wonder.

We finished up with a cold drink at a gas station and said our good-byes. What a great send off!