… about staying with other people – apart from the convivial company of course – are the facilities on offer.

It’s true that I had been awake for some little while but when the door of the bus opened and a hot mug of coffee found its way in towards my sleeping bag, I knew that I was in some place that resembled a home.

Once I’d heaved myself out of my stinking, but extremely comfortable pit, Rhys gave me the guided tour of his little kingdom here. And apart from stepping on several colonies of fire ants, I managed to avoid the more dangerous critturs such as the Black Widow spiders and the snakes.

We ended up having a chat with Terry on the internet too. He’s after some new batteries for his power drill, and they are sold in the USA under the “Rigid” brand name.

That’s stocked in Home Depot and there’s a big one between Lexington and Columbia, so we decided to go for a drive.

No luck though – most of the shelving in the power tools section was empty. But there will be other Home Depots.

For lunch, Rhys took me to a Mexican place that was absolutely crowded, and then we went off to look at the local flea market just down the road.

The things that were on offer here were, quite frankly, amazing. No firearms that I saw, but how about this to take with you on your travels?

And sold along with socks and fidget spinners. The mind boggles.

Next stop was the “old town” museum here in Lexington.

This was a rich southern cotton-growing region 160 years ago before the Civil War and there were many traditional properties still standing until comparatively recently.

As the towns and highways have expanded over the old cotton fields, many of the old buildings have found themselves in the way of “progress”

Normally this kind of thing wouldn’t bother Americans in the slightest, especially as they have some kind of connection with slavery.

But even Americans can appreciate the value of some of the stuff that was endangered, such as this beautiful and complete cotton gin complete with all working parts.

Consequently, many old buildings were dismantled and removed to this site at the back of the town, which is now a museum.

The buildings were reassembled here and people are able to visit them.

But the reassembly has not actually been done in the best traditions of contemporary workmanship. Someone here has gone berserk with a nail gun and I’m sure that nail guns were not around in the USA in the ante-bellum period.

At least they could have used nails of the correct size.

There is a park on the edge of the town by a small dam. And during a storm a couple of years ago, the dam badly damaged and burst.

And so Rhys took me out to see it, and to see some of the damage that had been caused and which had still not been repaired.

There was a lake just there to the right, as you can tell by the pavilion on stilts, but the contents of the lake have disappeared

Later on, we went to a restaurant for tea – one that was famous for its salad bar. And they were right too, because it was well-worth the visit.

But here we had a most bizarre – but sadly all-too-common – dialogue.

Our hero – “I’m a vegan, so I’ll just have a baked potato with my salad”
Waitress – “what would you like with it? Bacon, cheese or cream cheese?”

Yes, staff training in Ruby Tuesday’s leaves something to be desired.

I fuelled up Strider on the way back as I have an early start in the morning – and I went straight to bed when we arrived back.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.