7th November 2006. The Hostel in the Forest, Brunswick, Georgia
It is a traveler’s paradise. Walkways and paths wind between the trees leading to scattered tree houses from the main buildings – two wooden domes containing a communal area, bedrooms for the staff and a library. Surrounding these is the dining and pool building, the kitchen, workshop and wood store, and further away the chicken coop, toilets (compost), and a shower block. You stand to shower in the open air facing the trees with warm water squirting from a showerhead attached to a tree. It’s clearly the perfect way to shower. A short walk away is the swimming pool (occupied by ducks), the flower garden, the herb garden and the veg patch. There is also the amazing glass house standing at one end of the lake. I took lots of pictures.
I stayed in Elmo the first of the tree house cabins to be built and closest to the main buildings. Slept well too. There is a huge window looking out into the trees. I’ll have to leave soon and head to the crazy zoo that I’m told is Florida.
I came here via the amazing roads and breathtaking scenery of Tennessee and North Carolina. I took one famous among bikers as the ‘Dragon’s Tail’. It has 311 corners in 11miles, or something like that - a beautiful road too. I taped the camera to the front of the bike to show the guys back home just how much fun they were to ride. At the top there’s a bikers café and the ‘tree of shame’ from which hang bent pieces of bodywork from bikes that didn’t make it in one piece.
I stayed for 4 nights with Jackie, a good friend of Tom’s who lives in a small town called Asheville. Tom is the guy who owns the hostel in St Louis - excellent bloke. Jackie, and her boyfriend Steve were very welcoming to the cold biker who arrived late after picking up a speeding ticket and getting a bit lost. She showed me around Asheville, and on one evening we rode up to the top of one of the mountains that surround Asheville. It was really cold, and we just missed the sunset, but the views were amazing. Incredibly we found a crash helmet for her to wear hanging from a sign at the side of the road.
I left Asheville on the 4th to stay at a tiny hostel near Athens Georgia, and happened to turn up on the night of a BMW bike meeting. Met lots of people with beards who talked about BMW bikes and ate lots of chicken. Was a good evening.
Stayed in the historic East Coast town of Savannah for one night too - one of the few towns that wasn’t burned by General Sherman in revenge after the American Civil War. Mostly elegant detached wooden houses from about 1850 or so and some nicely in need of a lick of paint. Mileage 4512