Moving On- Room at the Inn

all those black dots are teeny vampires

We had planned on a nice morning at the beach.  But the vengeful relatives of the mosquitoes we had swatted were waiting for us in the morning.  So we packed up lickety split and got the you know what out of there. Now we know why they call it Kill Devil Hills. 

 We skipped our campfire oatmeal and sold out for a nice breakfast at a diner in town.  Then we decided that we'd run into a patch of not-great luck there in NC, and we should get away from it!  So we drove.
And drove.
And drove.
We drove the entire breadth of North Carolina, until we found ourselves in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains.

 It was so breathtakingly beautiful that we forgot how tired we were.  We forgot how tired we were of driving.  We oooohhed and aaaahhhhed and were distracted with amazement.
Until the campground we were going to sleep at turned out not to exist.  And in fact, no campgrounds seemed to exist, anywhere, for miles and miles.  We drove and drove and drove. It was starting to get dark,  and we were all hungry, and suddenly remembering that we had been strapped in the car for 12 hours. 
We backtracked to the only thing we had seen for hours, the "family campground".  It was an RV park.
We talked to the lady who owned it; she came buzzing out to us on her golf cart. We asked if there was anywhere we could pitch our tent, please. Please, please, please.  The baby wailed.  Little One whimpered.  The dogs cowered before the "no pets over 25 lb" sign.
I thought of Mary, going from inn to inn in the Christmas story, and never finding a place to rest.  The keeper who let her crash in the barn must have given her the same "I pity you, fool" look this lady gave me.  We don't take anything but RV's here, she said.  But well... if we wanted to, we could find a spot and camp for the night.  She charged us practically nothing.  At that point, I swear, I nearly went for another group hug.
We set up camp, fixed a quick dinner, and put all the babies and pets to bed just as the rain began to fall.  J and I sat out by candle light and opened a bottle of wine. The air was cool and smelled like pine trees. There were NO mosquitoes.  All's well that ends well, isn't it?  It was a long couple of days.  But it's a good thing to learn that while most of the time we can count on ourselves, when we can't (and we crash the car and plan poorly and drive around cluelessly) there is the kindness of strangers.  Kind of a nice thing to come upon in the messy world. Something I love about adventures like this one; finding treasures along the way.