The Good and the Bad.....

Roebuck, South Carolina
Pine Ridge Campground
Pull Thru #29

First off let's talk about the good.  We left about 10 am for Greer, South Carolina which is a suburb of Greenville.  You ask, what's in Greer?  The BMW factory!  We've been through this area before but we didn't stop at the plant.

As we started up the entrance road to the plant, we knew this was going to be good and we weren't disappointed.  

Bill loved these trees, but I don't know what kind they are.

The grounds were beautiful.

I'm not sure why the BMW museum is called Zentrum.  Is it German for musuem?  Help me out, my German speaking readers.  

We walked in and were immediately greeted by a friendly receptionist who told us it was self guided.  Bill got his wallet out and she said, "no charge."  

The Z3 was the first time James Bond drove a BMW in the movie Golden Eye.  The Z3 for the movie was the first one off the production line.  The South Carolina plant associates built the car by hand.  The VIN number is 007.

This Z8 Roadster prototype was James Bond's car in the movie The World is Not Enough.

The Z1 which was never marketed in the USA has removable body parts and it you wanted to change the color you just changed the body parts.  

Notice the roll down door.  

They were all gorgeous!

Notice the license plate.

And of course, BMW isn't just famous for cars.

These were mounted like they were on a race track.

Bill nor I can remember the name of this one.

Ron and Gay, this one is for you!

And this is what I was pointing to:

I really enjoyed the motorcycles.  Before I married Bill, I use to have a Moto Guzzi.  

Bill enjoyed the story about this one.  The owner, Ed Culberson named his BMW "Amigo."  It has 267,964 miles on it.  He did the Pan-American Highway which is 16,000 miles long. 

I actually started motorcycling with a sidecar.  Nothing this nice, though.  

This is a 328 Roadster.

The South Carolina plant makes all the BMW SUV's for the world.  

The Art Car was something I had never heard about. 

I had a hard time picturing someone five foot four that raced and had to jump on the bike while it was in motion because the bike was too high off the ground.  

Naturally, we were attracted to the Isetta, but I don't think we're ready to trade yet. 

Even the video was first rate.  There was a cafe but since our next stop was in downtown Greenville at the moonshine distillery we thought we'd have lunch there.  

We passed a sign for a confederate musuem that we thought we might catch when we left town.  

Downtown Greenville is very pretty.  The tree lined streets have restaurants with outside seating.  We found a parking place right along the street.  That's the good.  As I was getting the camera, I heard this loud noise and saw a red Dodge truck come so close he hit our mirror.  I looked and saw his mirror dangling as he drove away without stopping. 

 This is what our mirror looks like.  I still had the window down so some of the glass went inside.  And that's the bad!

Bill was very upset, but he was trying so hard not to get upset.  We walked up to the Dark Corner Distillery and he just didn't feel like trying anything.  They would give demonstrations on moonshine making if we wanted.  

I suggested we just go to a Dodge dealer and get the mirror repaired.

Bill drove back to Spartanburg and said it felt strange with the mirror broken.  

The dealer didn't have the replacement, but said he could get one out of Atlanta tomorrow morning.  I paid the $54 since it was special order and said we'd be back in the morning. I really expected it to cost more than that, since it's the heated one.   

The campground has this site and all sites rented tomorrow so we'll have to go to the dealer and come back and hitch up.  

One other note, since the sun was shining, Bill went to put the meat on the grill.  No sooner than he got it up to temp, it started to rain. No photo today.  

I received an e-mail from Betty and Don DeMent yesterday and they are about 155 miles from us.  Unfortunately, we're headed in opposite directions so we'll have to see them in
Arizona.

Turtle Safely.......