Thursday night the low fuel light had been on since Laurinburg, so I pulled in on the way home and filled the CR-V to the top: 13.9 gallons at $2.93, $41 even. I put that receipt in the trip envelope before I'd even started the car. Friday morning we were going to the lake, and I wanted the gas counted honestly from the start.
July in Robeson County is not a month you want to spend in the yard. It was in the mid-90s all week and the air felt like a wet towel. A beach weekend in July costs real money, so we decided on one long Friday instead: drive two hours to Lake Norman, swim, eat a picnic, drive home, sleep in our own bed.
Why a state park instead of a boat
When people think of Lake Norman they think of boats, docks and lake houses. Renting a pontoon for half a day would have cost more than our whole trip budget. Lake Norman State Park, near Troutman on the north end of the lake, has a sandy swimming beach roped off in a cove, a bathhouse, picnic shelters and trails. That's all we wanted.
We left at 7:15 a.m. with June dropped at Tonya's the night before. The route is US-74 west through Rockingham and Wadesboro, around the south side of Charlotte and then north on I-77. Traffic around Charlotte on a Friday morning was the only stressful part. We got to the park a little after 9:30 and the swim area opened not long after. The swim beach charges a small fee in summer, and for the two of us it was $12. Parking was free.
This was also our first long drive since the air conditioning started blowing warm on I-95 earlier in the month. The shop in Lumberton had found a leaking valve and recharged it, and I'm happy to report it blew cold all the way there and back.
A long, slow day at the water
The water was warm, almost bathwater at the top, but cooler a few feet down. We floated, waded, and sat under an umbrella we'd brought from home. The beach was busy with families by late morning but never packed. Wes swam out to the rope line twice and came back to report that the lake was, in his words, "wet." That's as much travel writing as I'm going to get out of him.
For lunch we had the cooler: chicken salad sandwiches, cut watermelon, a block of cheese with crackers and a gallon jug of sweet tea we'd frozen halfway so it stayed cold all day. I'd bought the extras for it for $13. We ate at a shaded picnic table and then walked part of one of the park trails along the shore, maybe two miles, slow because of the heat.
Around three the sky to the west went dark the way it does every July afternoon, and the lifeguards called everyone out of the water at the first rumble. We took that as our sign. By the time the rain hit we were on I-77 heading south.
Gas math and what the day cost
The round trip was about 280 miles. At 31 miles per gallon on the highway that's roughly 9 gallons, around $26 worth of the $41 I'd put in. We came home with a little over a third of a tank. I still charged the whole $41 to the trip, because that's how I keep it simple: whatever goes into the tank for a trip belongs to the trip, and the leftover covers some of my Monday commute.
- Gas: $41
- Swim beach fee for two: $12
- Picnic groceries: $13
- Ice cream and drinks on the way home: $7
- Total: $73
Seventy-three dollars for a day at the lake. We stopped for soft-serve outside Rockingham on the way back and sat in the car with the AC running while it melted down our wrists. Then we picked up June, who acted like we'd been gone a week.
A day trip isn't a weekend away, and I don't want to pretend it is. You come home tired and sunburned and there's no motel bed waiting. But in a hot month, when the trip account needs a break after a few bigger weekends, a single tank of gas to a state park beach is about the best deal I know. We'll do it again next summer, probably earlier in the day, before the thunder rolls in.
