#366 Harvest Host, OLD NICK WILLIAMS Co Distillery, LEWISVILLE, NC

When we left Hillsboro, we wanted to at least spend a minute with my little sister on the way out and we looked and there was no availability at Tanglewood. I found a harvest host location near her house about 15 minutes away going in the right direction. I called and they said they had a spot so I came on by. It was a whiskey distillery. I have a background in recovery for some 20 years and it seems like hanging around where they're making liquor doesn't sound it the best thing to do. I figured if I wasn't planning on drinking it would be okay. We stayed there and it was a perfectly nice place to stay.

After we got settled in I kind of wanted to go into the gift shop/bar and at least see if there's anything that they might have we could buy. I was hoping they had a grill or something like that. It seemed they weren't serving food but I'm sure they would have sold me plenty of liquor drinks. Again that wasn't what I do anymore. I looked around they had a coat hanger cool thing that was made from an old barrel for like $37 and I didn't want that. Then they had this and that but nothing that appealed to me.

Liquored-up hand sanitizer

On a shelf, there was a little spray bottle and beside it, there was a gallon of liquor hand sanitizer. It said $8 beside it and I thought cool that’s something we can use. They said that it was 80% alcohol with a little glycerin and stuff and it was FDA-approved as a germicide hand sanitizer. I said have you got anything to spritz it with and he said that little bottle there works fine. I got one of those as well sat it on the bar and got out my credit card. I was expecting it to be about 10 or 12 dollars and he said that'll be $54 and I'm thinking, what? He said well you wanted that gallon for about $43 and then the spritz bottle was like 8 plus tax. My false pride made me act like oh well that's what I wanted to do anyway so I just gave him the money and felt a little bit like an idiot. Well, now I've got hand sanitizer for the next five years. I was like a cat jumping from a desk to something higher missing the mark and falling on its face. The cat pulls itself up shakes it off and looks at you like, What, I meant to do that. Somehow, I couldn’t admit I was so wrong about the costs I so said Oh, I meant to do that.

Remember, the reason we stayed here is that it's a free place to park the RV and I just spent $54 on hands-on sanitizer which is moonshine.

I called Cheryl to get a bite together and say bye and as we were about to hit the road she said her air conditioner wouldn’t come on and could I take a look at it. She said well it just doesn't work and it's like 95° outside. I felt I just couldn't leave her stranded. It appeared the thermostat was bad and maybe the best thing to do was to stay one more night till I could get her back up and running. I said if I left the distillery, maybe we could stay in the back parking lot of her church, Calvary Baptist. She made a few phone calls and they said it would be okay. I parked the RV over there and it went by to take a look at it.

The thermostat was shot and we ended up getting a programmable one. I installed it that night partly and finished the next morning. We went back to the RV and soon a guy was knocking who wanted to know why we were parked here. I said my sister is a member here and she said we had permission so that’s about all I could say. I gave him her name and number and he seemed satisfied but it made me nervous. What if I had not asked permission? What if I had said we were in a pickle and had just needed a place for the night. Would he have said don’t worry we're Christians and that’s what we do? Or would he have said this is private property you need to leave? The only reason I bring it up is he was a little intimidating at first like I was violating them.

The next day I went over to Cheryl’s house and the thermostat was one of those fairly complicated ones so we had to get some help from customer service. After that, I tightened up her stair handrail that was wobbly and was able to get out of town by around noon or 2:00. Everybody was happy and she said thank you and I said well no problem. We were finally heading to Sedona. A little late but heading out west finally.