Although we really like Asheville, it was time to move on.
Over the weekend we made a significant change to our original planned itinerary. Rather than head south to Savannah Georgia we will only go as far south as Wilmington on the North Carolina coast. Plus, rather than hit Pittsburgh, for a Pirates base ball game, after Boston, we would go from Wilmington to Pittsburgh via the west side of Virginia, before going to Washington DC. This will give us much more time in New England after seeing a ball game in Boston on June 25th before we need to be in Cleveland for a game on July 12. The added benefit is that we have booked a KOA spot not far out of Pittsburgh for the Memorial Day weekend. Must always remember to book far ahead for holiday weekends!
We were also watching the weather as tropical storm Ana was expected to hit the Carolina coast sometime Monday or Tuesday at the latest. We planned to take 3 days to get to Wilmington by which time Ana should have hit landfall and dissipated a lot. Fingers crossed!
So, Sunday morning we headed east. A relatively easy 3 hour drive to Fort Mill, South Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. We stayed at the KOA and it was a tad disappointing. This has to be the most un-KOA of all the numerous KOAs we have ever stayed in. The park itself is not a bad setting but he office is across the road in a gas station and the restrooms bordered on filthy. ENOUGH SAID... the only real redeeming feature is the nearby John's Bar (they claim it is "on site at the KOA" but it too is across the road). There is also a nearby Publix grocery story that is quite convenient. We wandered over to the Publix and picked up some ready made salads for lunch and some chicken wings to snack on later. Later in the early evening we walked over to John's Bar for some wine and watched some sports (mostly baseball highlights) on their bigger screen TVs. The waitress, Hannah, was a pleasant young lady but, boy, could she turn tough in a minute. We witnessed that when she had to toss out a guy that was a tad inebriated and was acting up a bit. She did not take one iota of sh*t from that guy!
Monday we continued eastward with a stop at Sleepy Bear's RV Park just outside of Lumberton, NC. Friendly folks there helped us get a spot with lots of shade and pretty close to the restrooms. For lunch we drove into Lumberton to Fuller's Old Fashioned Bar-B-Que...
... a place advertising in the KOA sheet. This place gives you the option of having menu or buffet service. We opted for the buffet (for all of $8 each). They had a great selection of "sides" with a few bbq dishes and whacks of desserts. We tried the pulled pork (even though they do chop it into little bits in these parts - not our favorite way to get it), sausage and baked chicken (it might have been baked on the bbq), some macaroni, collard greens and other veggies. To finish off we tried the Sweet Potato Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie and Lemon cake.... all quite delicious. All in all, a pretty good meal for the dollars. After lunch we asked our GPS to find us a Starbucks. Nearest one about 15 kms away in Pembroke. So off we go, only to discover a vacant building when the GPS told us that we had now "arrived at Starbucks on the left". Drat! Continuing down the same road we went into the University of North Carolina campus where we noticed a sign pointing to "Starbucks in Lowry Hall". Well, like most campus roads, we have been on, it seemed to be a case of "you can't get there from here". We stopped a couple of young, student looking, men to ask how to get to Lowry Hall. One guy was "first day on campus" and didn't have a clue where he was, never mind Lowry Hall. The second guy knew where the hall was but since he only walked on campus didn't know how to get there driving. So he told us some landmarks to look for and off we went. We had to drive off campus and come back on again but eventually we found it. As we walked up to the door we realized that they should have closed about 10 minutes earlier... but... lucky for us the door was still open so in we went and they were nice enough to fix a couple of iced lattes for us. Outside they have a nice seating area with lots of shade trees. Classes are not in session right now so very few students around. We chatted briefly with one young women who is a junior studying political science and is looking forward to the start of classes in a couple of weeks.
Leaving Pembroke we headed back towards the RV park. On the way we drove through the town of Lumberton so we could gas up the car before returning to the park. Typical smallish town with a main drag and lots of fast food outlets at the freeway exits but that's about all. Once back, at the RV park, we hit the pool which was very nice although there were some ominous looking dark clouds heading our way. There was one young woman and her two kids in the pool and she thought the water was very cold. We thought it was wonderful :-) After about half an hour in the water we got out to lay on the provided pool chaise lounges but within a few minutes a heavy wind had come up. One umbrella got turned inside out so we decided it was time to vacate the premises. The heavy wind kept up for a bit but no rain. We found out later that two umbrellas had been blown into the pool and one flew the coop over the fence into the neighbouring property.
Tuesday was to be a short drive (an hour and a half or so) out to the coast at Wilmington NC. We thought we would put a "no highways" restriction on our GPS to see what route it would take us to Wilmington. Without that restriction it will just take us on the fastest freeway. This time it was a bit of both and about 30 miles out of Wilmington the GPS took us on a turn up a back country road and indicated that we had more than an hour of driving time left. Ok... let's see where this goes. Well, it took us right past the "Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge" National Park, so in we went. Turns out the visitor center is closed on Tuesdays so we were left to just read some of the markers etc. Unfortunately the main path leading to the (reconstructed) actual battle area was under a fair amount of water so we had to give it a miss. Turns out this battle was a key battle in the American Revolutionary War where a relatively small handful of North Carolina colonists turned back a much larger loyalist (British) contingent essentially breaking the back of the loyalists in this part of America. Shortly thereafter North Carolina became the first colony to declare it's desire for independence from Britain. Not being able to follow the path, we left and headed down the small back road into Wilmington and the KOA our stop for a few nights. After getting checked in we drove into the historic downtown part of Wilmington. For lunch we stopped in at the Reel Cafe on Dock Street for some oysters and salads. After lunch we wandered around the area for a bit. On the way back to the KOA we stopped at a Starbucks for the usual iced lattes then at Harris Teeter, an excellent grocery chain store, for some salad fixings for dinner. Having a Harris Teeter loyalty card definitely saves a bit of cash. Back at the KOA we hit the pool... aaaahhh! It was a wonderful evening out so we hooked up our TV outside, watched a ball game then some of our Sons of Anarchy DVD set that we are currently working our way through.
Wednesday we headed, with coffee in hand, down to Wrightsville Beach, one of the islands off the coast at Wilmington. What a beautiful area with white sand beaches as far as the eye can see....
... besides a group of young folks playing frisbee, there were very few others around. Although we didn't go swimming we did take the opportunity to stick our toes into the warm waters of the Atlantic...
Leaving the beach, for lunch we tried the ocean side restaurant Oceanic where we were able to sit outside on their pier and enjoy the nice views up and down the coast. By this time a lot more people on the beach, or maybe this is just a more popular area...
The clam chowder was quite good although a bit thick; very nice beet and goat cheese salad; excellent crab cake with side salad. Another lunch that will basically do us for the day. After lunch we headed back into the historic downtown area for some more looking around. On the way back to the KOA we stopped in at The Fresh Market for some dinner salads then back to the KOA to do some laundry. Later in the afternoon it was time for another dip in the KOA pool and another nice evening to sit outside to watch the New York Rangers beat the Washington Capitals in the NHL playoffs, then one episode of Sons of Anarchy before calling it a day. We also informed the KOA folks that we have decided to stay one more day. So we'll leave Friday rather than Thursday.
Thursday was another coffee at the beach day; this time at the Carolina Beach a bit further south from Wrightsville Beach, although every bit as beautiful...
While there we chatted with a fellow who was fishing from shore. On a good day he said he might catch a 15" flounder. During the chat he recommended we take the ferry over to Southport; said it was only $5... hmmm sounds good; so off we went. He was right. $5 one way ticket for car and passengers. (Try to match that BC Ferries!!!). Had a very nice lunch at the Fishy Fishy Cafe on the marina in Southport. After checking out the small downtown we headed back to the ferry and returned over to the outer island and on back up the highway to the KOA. It had cooled off quite a bit so we passed on the pool this day and got ourselves ready to depart on Friday. We're glad we stayed the extra day here. This is a very nice area with wonderful white sand beaches that likely get pretty packed in the heat of the summer.
Friday we drove north to Goldsboro where our BBQ Bible highly recommended Wilber's Barbecue, as the best example of "east North Carolina BBQ". So a stop there for lunch was in order. Easy drive north and easy to find the BBQ joint. In all honesty, neither one of us is enamored with Carolina style BBQ. In these parts they typically don't do ribs. The chopped pulled pork is a texture that neither one of us cares for. Others, however, clearly like this style as Wilber's has won many awards...
The sides and especially the Hush Puppies were pretty good though. Those things are darn near habit forming.
Leaving the restaurant we noticed a number of people standing near the edge of the parking lot. We went over and asked a couple if they were just watching the grass grow or was there something else about to happen? They explained that on just the other side of the stand of trees across the field is the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and the Thunderbirds are practicing for the annual air show happening in Goldsboro starting on Saturday. They said that the Thunderbirds should be flying directly overhead any minute now. We stayed and chatted with them for about 15 minutes then all of a sudden you could hear a roar growing louder and then the jets appeared directly overhead. The noise was deafening but what a show. We hung around for about half an hour and saw numerous maneuvers put on. The neatest was when 4 of them in wing tip to wing tip formation roared overhead no more than a few hundred meters. Hard to get pics with our little point and click but we got a few (we asked the fellow we were chatting with if he wouldn't mind emailing us a couple of his pics; he said he would but nothing as of the publishing of this post)...
Reminded us of the Snowbirds back home in Comox.
Leaving the show we headed a bit west for Four Oaks our stop for the night at the Raleigh Oaks RV Park. This place is an older park that apparently has relatively new owners who have put a whack of money into it. The restrooms are as good as any we have experienced in our travels and deserve better than the maximum 10* that Good Sam Club rated them at. There is a new pool but it was a tad populated with young kids so we opted for the older pool which was perfect and we had it all to ourselves. Very nice. When registering for the park we discovered that we were only 15 minutes or so away from the site of the Battle of Bentonville, March 19-21, 1865, the bloodiest Civil War battle in North Carolina...
We decided to head over to the battle site first thing in the morning. The visitor center was very interesting but unfortunately the timing for a guided tour of the Harper House, furnished to interpret a functioning Civil War hospital, did not mesh with our timing but we had a look around the grounds etc before heading on our way...
Our goal for Saturday was west to Lexington, NC to check out Lexington Barbecue, a place recommended by our BBQ Bible as the best of "west North Carolina" BBQ. We stopped there just after noon and it was quite busy. The main difference between this place and Wilber's is that they offer coarse chopped and sliced pork as well as the normal "chopped" style. Kris ordered sliced and Brian ordered coarse chopped. Kris' was quite tasty but unfortunately Brian's turned out to be the normal chopped and was not all that desirable (chips and salad were not bad though)..
Kris' order came in, what we would call a small fish and chip tray. They don't give you a knife and we figured it was because if you cut a hole in the "tray" you'd have quite a mess with the very runny, albeit quite tasty, slaw they serve...
We didn't notice that Brian's was not the coarse chopped until later, when leaving, we noticed a guy sitting at the counter and he clearly had "coarse chopped". That actually looked better. So that's it for Caroline "cue" for us. We both definitely prefer Texas "cue" over the chopped style. So far the only Carolina exception is 12 Bones in Asheville where the ribs are right up there with those we tried in Texas. Oh well... that's that!
We stayed the night at the Cross Winds Family Campground just south of Lexington. Very friendly folks at this place. When we went to use the pool there was a woman there who told us that it was very cold... not this again! Much to her surprise, we just walked right in. The water was wonderful!
That evening we found that the campground owners had arranged a blue grass band to play there. We went over and watched with about 50 other folks. Very good music. They were an adhoc group of guys rather than an organized band (we bought a couple of their individual cds)...
A nice way to end this week.
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