My Last Trip?
About three years ago my wife and I received a present from our children and grand children that was meant to offer us more entertainment choices. As we cut back on our satellite TV programming to reduce expenses. They gave us a ROKU unit. It opened a whole new world to me. It did not take long and I was hooked on YouTube. My wife doesn’t care for YouTube, but I can spend hours watching how to programs.
I have always loved to travel, Three of my children were born overseas while I was in the Army. Two in Germany and one in Panama, When I left the Army I drove a truck, which I learned how to drive OJT in Vietnam. For twenty years I was and over the road trucker and drove all the continental U.S. and most of Canada. I was hooked on travel by my father. We went to Colorado when I was fifteen and drove to Alaska in 1964. Later in life he actually tried to go to Alaska by boat. He was a Navy veteran and was at the D-Day invasion. and ended the war in Tokyo harbor tied up close enough to the USS Missouri to watch the surrender ceremony. He spent much spare time taking classes on boating, but seems to have missed the class on tides. Fortunately I had joined the Army by then.
Having been forced to retire at fifty-seven in 2004 I sort of missed traveling. My love of travel was satisfied by the videos I watched. One in particular was a program on raising and buying Koi fish in Japan. I started watching a channel on how to build ponds. It became an obsession with the idea of having a pond for raising Koi. It even started influencing my travel decisions. I took a vacation to North Carolina and visited Koi Farms and bamboo farms. I like bamboo as it is useful in making crafts that I like to do. My vacation ended at the Atlanta Koi Show over Labor Day weekend.
Most of the trip was based on visiting sites I had found on YouTube. Thanks to getting my Agent Orange compensation in 2013 I could afford to travel again. My goal for several years was to go out west to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.
After canceling three years in a row because of forest fires. I finally in 2017 went east instead and up thru Canada via Niagara Falls. Then across Canada reentering the U.S. into Maine. From there I went to North Carolina via New York City and Washington, D.C. to watch a skydiving competition for jumpers over sixty, While I don’t jump any more I did during my thirteen years in the Army and figured I might meet some old friends. From there I found my way home through the Smokey Mountains
In 2019 I made a trip to North Carolina and the Smokies. It was a very laid back and leisurely trip. I slept in my van and dined mostly at Waffle Houses along my route. The first night out I spent with my son-in-law in Cincinnati which allowed me to tour the awesome place he works as a design engineer, which got me the bonus of a free breakfast. That evening I stopped at the rest area on the West Virginia Turnpike. As I could not make up my mind what the healthy choice was I allowed a truck driver to go before me. He paid for my meal and we had a very nice visit.
The first place I went in North Carolina was not open. So I altered my plans accordingly. After seeing several ponds first hand I started getting a better idea of what I wanted to do. Several of the ponds I visited were home based business’s run buy people who were and are dedicated to promoting Koi fish.
As I am not a very organized planner, most of the places I visited by just calling as I got in their area. The first place I visited was East Coast Koi, in New Hill, NC the owner Bobby Wang is a Taiwanese native who moved to America in 1977 and has a pretzel business which is how he makes his lively hood. Koi are his hobby, but it is a very serious hobby. He raises and breeds Koi on his home property which is a very impressive and well laid out operation. He is very kind and was very helpful in sharing and answering the questions I asked of him. He had several ponds in his barn and several above ground swimming pools that he used for holding his fish. He also has a several acre pond. That is how I found out about him. YouTube had a video of the harvesting operation at his pond. I wanted to go back a month later for that event but my resources did not allow for it.
My next stop was Marsha & Lou’s Koi in Mocksville, NC. It is another home run operation. My only regret is the pictures I took inside her shop did not come out for some reason. I bought a beautiful shirt from her when the only one she had happened to be my size which is 3X. Yep I are a fluffy fellow. I have lost fifty pounds over the last year and a half though. Marsha was awesomely helpful and her and Bobbies inside ponds inspired me to figure out how to make my own.
My last stop in North Carolina was at the Haiku Bamboo Farm near Hendersonville, North Carolina. They raise and sell bamboo products. The store is worth a side trip, call and go to the store though. The farm is on top of a mountain and if you don’t have a four wheel drive you may not want to visit it. The road into it is one lane and a couple miles long. When I finally got to the gate I had to back up almost a quarter mile to find a place to turn around. When I finally got off the mountain I had to drive several miles before I finally had phone service and found out I had passed the store on my way in. He has lots of really neat hand made bamboo items for sale.
Finally I went to the Atlanta Koi Show and stayed there for two days and met tons of really neat people and harvested a ton of information on growing Koi. The vendors were all very helpful and overwhelmed me with things I had never considered.
While there I found out about My Front Yard Koi Farm in Sellersburg, Indiana only two hours from my house. I stopped by there on my way home. It was a very nice facility. They had several ponds out front and a very well stocked store with all kinds of supplies and ornaments.
Upon my return home I started watching pond building shows with a new understanding of what I needed to know. At some point I found out about an organization located in St.Charles, Illinois. Much to my pleasant surprise I found out they offered classes in how to build ponds, In January I signed up for me and my grandson to go to the 16th and 17th March class. The Friday before the class everything got canceled because of the Corona Virus.
With nothing else to do. I decided to go ahead and visit Aquascapes headquarters. It was a very worthwhile visit as I picked up the items I needed to build my own pond. They gave me the grand tour. It is one awesome facility. You can tell pride and craftsmanship went into every detail of their operation. With the impending shutdown of everything in Indiana at least now I know what I will be doing. I will be attempting to build my pond and get my greenhouse up and running.
As a person who has had several bouts of pneumonia, COPD, and Agent Orange my lungs only operate at thirty to forty percent capacity. At seventy-three getting the virus would be a death sentence for me. As long as I have others to do my shopping for me I can stay on my property out in the woods and hope and pray nobody brings the virus my way.
I just checked and this post was started on March 24th of this year. The delay has provided several details I did not have when I started which is a Blessing as I was trying to figure out how to end this tale. I already know that I will be writing at least five more stories about my trip if I live long enough. One on each place I visited, but this weekend made me wonder if I will have time.
In June of 2015 I wrote a post called Coming Full Circle. Over this Memorial Day weekend I had an experience that made me wonder if I am right. Around Easter I always get the feeling the Rapture is near. With this Corona Virus my life has definitely changed. My wife and I take care of our twin, eight year old Great Grand Daughters. Their Mom brings them at 3AM five days a week and we keep them till she gets off at 1PM. With school being out our schedule has changed a lot. I have definitely gotten a lot of time off. We started taking care of them five years ago because I got convicted by the verse in 1 Timothy 5:8 which says that one who does not take care of their own is worse than an infidel. Taking care of the girls allowed their Mom to get a job and get our of government housing.
Getting back on track, we went to my grandson’s wife’s grandparents house for dinner and a visit. Over the course of the event her grandfather Kenny and I found out we had the same job in the military. Not only that but in 1965/1966 we had been stationed in the same unit at Ft. Campbell, KY. While we were not friends our paths definitely crossed. There were 240 people in our unit. Her grandmother was just getting over a case of the Covid virus. My Grandson’s wife is in the Air National Guard, where she is learning to be a nurse, she had just returned from a month long commitment working with a Covid testing unit. So in spite of my hiding from the virus for several months I was exposed indirectly to the virus, which made me realize how easy it is for people to get the virus. I ended up spending the night at my Daughter’s house in Corydon, IN.
Getting back on track again, but on the other rail of this post I went to the My Front Yard Koi Shop on my way home and picked some butterfly Koi fish for my aquarium. Something I got into since returning from my trip. While there I met a Koi Event judge because of the T-shirt I was wearing, from the Atlanta Koi show. We had a nice visit and he connected me with a local Koi owner. Yesterday I went to see his pond. It is pretty awesome.
So I traveled across half of America to find what I was looking for right where I started. I was an over the road trucker for twenty years. There are about fifteen houses on the road I live on. About nine of us are truckers. I don’t really know any of my neighbors even after living here since 1987. The irony is that the three I do know I met on the road by making small talk on the CB radio in other states. I guess that is the way life is.
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