Border Hopping

North Carolina makes extensive use of daylilies to landscape rest areas and exits on its interstates and we heartily approve.

 We’ve spent the last few days popping back and forth over the border between the two Carolinas while wrapping up our national park site and revolutionary war site visits. It has been interesting, productive and cooler!

Part of the reason for the cooler weather is that we moved inland, further from the coastal humidity. But a cool front and lots of clouds have helped too.

We visited three revolutionary war battle sites in South Carolina; Ninety Six National Historic Site, Kings Mountain National Military Park and Cowpens National Battlefield. Similar to Moores Creek all of these parks have nice trails with good interpretive signs and exhibits.

The later two battles, fought in October 1780 and January 1781 respectively, were overwhelming and largely unexpected Patriot victories that played a crucial role in leading Cornwallis to the fateful finale at Yorktown.

Shifting gears a bit, we popped back into North Carolina and the edge of the Appalachian Mountains to visit the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site.

To be honest, we were only vaguely familiar with the name and not much else so we studied up a bit and read a few of Sandburg’s poems and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know more about this man of letters and his goat-raising wife at the 240-acre farm where they lived from the 1940s until his death in 1967.

Sandburg was a prolific writer through the first half of the 20^th Century, winning two Pulitzer prizes for his poetry and another for a massive biography of Abraham Lincoln. Interestingly his future wife was at first skeptical that his literary skills were sufficient to match hers, because she was a phi beta kappa graduate of the University of Chicago where she majored in English and Sandburg was a college dropout.

They first met briefly, by chance, at the headquarters of the Wisconsin Social-Democratic Party where he was immediately smitten and asked if he could write to her. She consented and write he did. The two exchanged more than a hundred letters between January and June 1908 when they married having met in person only one other time.

He kept all of her letters but at first she discarded his and wrote disparagingly of his aspirations to be a poet.

Apparently, lines like this in a letter Sandburg wrote to Lillian on April 30, 1908 changed her mind; “The Soul of You, all that Sea of Surging Thought and Tinted Dreams that is you, all the sky of love and earth of beauty in you, I know from your letters.”

One hundred thirty-four of those letters have been published in a book; The Poet and the Dream Girl: The Love Letters of Lilian Steichen and Carl Sandburg.

After Sandburg died in 1967 Lilian sold the house and 240-acre farm to the government for $100,000 and left virtually everything – furnishings, appliances, etc. – behind.

The house is currently being renovated so all of those furnishings have been removed but we were still able to take a tour, attend a goat cheese-making demonstration and hike several miles on the trails in the park where we were caught out in a drenching rain.

We will be seeing a lot more views like this before we leave North Carolina.

We've now been to most of the NPS units in South Carolina and all of them in North Carolina.

Our next stop is Charlotte and then we will start heading west on I-40 through the mountains toward Asheville, Knoxville and Lexington.

Lookout, the coast is clear

Goodbye MCNB. We will (sort of, but not really) miss you.

We have briefly decamped from North Carolina to South Carolina to investigate some Revolutionary War battle sites (and NPS units). But don’t fear faithful blog readers, we will return to North Carolina soon and resume our quest to “really get to know” the central and western (Piedmont and mountain) regions of the state.

So, I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity (i.e. a good wi-fi connection) to post several photos from our fantastic three-day trip to the 18-mile long, half-mile-wide “North Core Banks” of Cape Lookout National Seashore.

But before I get to that I want to diverge briefly from travel blogging to give a major shout out to two “Friends Of The Blog” who are sitting for bar exams in Illinois and Tennessee Tuesday and Wednesday. Rock it kids!! Furthermore, I want to extend major “blog-congrats” to Rachel Simon for her recent selection for a prestigious, two-year clerkship with the staff attorneys at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. You go girl!! (and good luck to Tex in trying to keep up with her).

Now, back to our trip to Cape Lookout National Seashore.

After getting a new tire in New Bern we drove to the tiny hamlet of Atlantic (which can safely be described as an “out-of-the-way” place) where a small ferry transports visitors across the sound to a collection of rental units clustered at a place on the island known as Long Point.

For folks interested in semi-rustic, relatively affordable accommodations and secluded, pristine beaches Long Point on Cape Lookout NS may be your kind of place.

10 and 2 baby. You never know when someone might dart out in front of you.

A couple of hundred miles and a ferry ride from the nearest tow truck...what could possibly go wrong?

There are no motels anywhere close to Atlantic but we lucked into finding a small apartment that the ferry service rents. So we drove from New Bern in the afternoon and were the only customers for supper at the decent, and very affordable, restaurant adjacent to the ferry landing. I walked back for breakfast in the morning and the drive from the apartment to catch the first ferry of the day took about 15 seconds.

On the island we “splurged” for a unit with air conditioning in a two-building fourplex that we shared with three families, two dogs and lots of kids. 

Home sweet pod.

Utilizing the truck’s four-wheel-drive features we drove nearly the length of the island to its northern tip hoping to be able to visit the historic village of Portsmouth. However, when we got within a mile or so of the village there was at least two feet of salt water over the “road” that is the only route through the tidal flats to village; so we turned around. We would have walked the last mile but the bugs on this part of the island have been described as “epic” and a few seconds outside the truck confirmed that assessment.

The "road" to Portsmouth Village. We turned around. What would you have done?

We are not “beach people” and we don’t like fishing; but this was a great trip to a beautiful place.

Amazing! The sun sets into North Carolina...

...then it rises out of the Atlantic Ocean the next day!

Bern there, done that

We are en route to a remote section of Cape Lookout National Seashore after which we will return to the cell-service desert of Moores Creek NB after which we will be on the road.

Thus, while I have a good connection I thought I'd get in a quick post to wrap up MCNB (where we completed our volunteer duties last Saturday) with a closer look at some of its monuments and to document our one-night stop in New Bern.

This is probably the guy most responsible for the battlefield being a national park. The monument was erected in 1910 and he died in 1912.

These inspiring words appear on one side of the "Women's Monument" which was placed at MCNB in 1907.

On the opposite side of the monument this story is told. However, historians later found out the story is not true. Oh well.

Now, about New Bern, the first capital of the state (but not the colony) of North Carolina. New Bern sits at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse Rivers, close (but not too close) to the coast where it could receive ocean-going ships while also having some protection from the stormy Atlantic. Founded in 1710 it is North Carolina's second-oldest city and became the colony's capital after the Crown-appointed governor William Tryon built a palatial home and moved the seat of government there in 1770. The house was so big and elaborate for the time, designed by an architect from England, that taxes had to be increased to pay for it. Needless to say that caused quite a bit of controversy and Tryon decamped for New York after only one year. His successor made it four years before being run out of the state by the Patriots of the American Revolution in 1775. Four state governors lived in the palace before the capital was moved to Raleigh in 1792. The palace burned to the ground in 1798.

Like all of the eastern coastal communities that were prominent in colonial days, New Bern began to fade in the 19th century. Eventually, in the early 20th century a highway was built right over the top of the site where the palace had once stood.

And then along came Maude Latham. She was the wife of a wealthy cotton planter and trader but she also shrewdly invested monetary gifts from her husband to create a considerable personal fortune of her own in the 1930s and 40s. The couple lived in Greensboro where Mrs. Latham took an interest in city planning and historic preservation. However, she never forgot her roots in New Bern where she grew up and when the original architectural plans for the Tryon Palace were discovered Maude Latham set out to rebuild the structure based on those original drawings, and she convinced the governor to back the idea.

However, before the complex and expensive process of the state re-routing the highway and re-acquiring the property where the palace once stood was complete Maude Latham died in 1951. All was not lost however because she left more than $1 million in a trust fund managed by her daughter that was dedicated to bringing the project to completion and the reconstructed Tryon Palace opened to the public in 1959 and has been operated as a state historic site ever since.

The "new" Tryon Palace.

Betsy has now been to every North Carolina stop Washington made on the southbound leg of his 1791 Southern Tour. Despite what this historic marker says it is not known for sure if Washington stayed in the Stanly home. However, historians are quite certain that President Washington attended a party in his honor at the Tryon Palace where he danced with as many as 20 different women (Martha did not make the trip).

This is the room in the re-built Tryon Palace where the dance was held. Looks like Betsy is hoping to be dance partner #21.

Check out these cantilevered "air stairs" in the Tryon Palace, built without any supports other than the weight of the other stair "box".

 

Tough Choices. Winston or Salem? Dash or Hyphen? Baseball or History?

These two picked a pretty good day to get hitched, huh?

On our most recent mini-trip away from Moores Creek National Battlefield we ventured further west, deeper into the Piedmont and farther from home than any trip so far as our time as volunteers at MCNB draws to a close.

So before I recap (mostly in photos) our recent trip to Winston-Salem/Greensboro, I'll give readers a brief rundown on our future plans (probably because they have been top of mind for us in recent days as we have made a flurry of reservations in preparation for a new phase of our summer travels).

After wrapping up at MCNB on Saturday the NPS is graciously allowing us to leave our trailer there for another week while we spend a night in the first NC state capital of New Bern and then two nights in a cabin on a remote section of Cape Lookout National Seashore on the Outer Banks.

After that we will leave MCNB for good and head into South Carolina for several days to visit Revolutionary War battlefield sites (and National Park units) there.

We will then return to North Carolina and stay about a week in the Charlotte area before heading west to Asheville (via Hickory) for another week or so before leaving the state for good (or, at least, for the summer). 

After a brief stop in Knoxville (TN) we will arrive in Lexington (KY) to get ourselves prepared for the BIG EVENT of the summer.

After the wedding we will return, briefly, to Knoxville to put the trailer in storage before driving to Dulles airport in Virginia to park the truck and catch the Metro into Washington DC where we will stay for a week in a hotel adjacent to the Washington Nationals ballpark where (coincidentally) the Nats have a six-game home stand that perfectly overlaps our stay. 

From there we will take Amtrak to Philadelphia for a five-day immersion in the momentous events that occurred there in the late 18th century, staying in a rental unit about a block from Independence Hall.

From there we will retrace our steps to Dulles and then back to Knoxville to retrieve the trailer and check in on the newlyweds before heading west for home via Nashville (for the TN state fair), Memphis (for the Civil Rights Museum, Elvis, ribs, ducks and jazz), Hot Springs (for the water and the park) and Houston (for the Astros).

Whew! Exhausting!! But enough about what's ahead, here is a photo recap of our trip to Winston-Salem/Greensboro which featured two minor league baseball parks (#6 and #7 in North Carolina this summer) and one new national park unit (#191 for Betsy and #260 for me).

No better way to get a trip started in the southeastern U.S.

Well, at least she wasn't shoving the kids out of the way to get to the mascot.

Each ballpark seems to be better than the last and Winston-Salem has a beauty.

The Winston-Salem team is (very creatively I think) called the Dash (for the hyphen in Winston-Salem). But with a name like that, what is the mascot and what do you call it? The answer to the second question is clear, Bolt. The answer to the first question is a little fuzzier.

With the exception of George Washington himself, there may be no greater hero and no man more responsible for the defeat of the British in the Revolutionary War than the Quaker blacksmith from Rhode Island, Nathaniel Greene. Greene rose from the rank of militia private to become Washington's most trusted and respected general. Ultimately, he was given command of the Continental Army in the southern states and "won" a series of battles with Cornwallis in the Carolinas and Virginia that led directly to the Patriot victory at Yorktown in 1781. One of those battles, arguably the most important, was fought here at Guilford Court House on the edge of present-day Greensboro. This a statue of Greene in Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.

It still comes as a shock to see the national reach of our favorite small-town brewery.

The Greensboro Grasshopper may be "low Class A" but they've got a first-class stadium and the game against the Lakewood (NJ) BlueClaws was the most entertaining so far, including a half-dozen or so close plays at the plate neatly packaged in a crisply-played 2 1/2 hours.

We'll get to the real thing momentarily but this photo in front of the stadium is a good place to talk about the grasshopper and the dogs. When we were at Guilford Courthouse NMP earlier in the day Betsy noticed that one of the cannon used in the battle was a "three-pounder" (meaning that it shot a three-pound cannon ball) nicknamed the "grasshopper". Might that be the inspiration for the team's mascot, whose nickname is Guilford? We asked numerous team employees and nobody knew. But it turns out, that is the origin of the mascot for the team that plays in the city named for Nathaniel Greene. And, after several discussions with team officials, we even got to see the replica of the original grasshopper that they keep hidden in a corner. As for the dogs; a team owner came up with the bright idea of training them to pick up bats. One of the dogs is on the DDL (Doggie Disabled List) but you can see the other dog in action in this video and this video.

The "real" mascot.

Betsy had to shove these kids out of the way to get to the mascot for her photo.

The "real" grasshopper.

George Washington really did sleep here, at this tavern in what is now known as "Old Salem", on his 1791 tour of the southern states.

The famous lunch counter at the Woolworth's here in Greensboro is now a fantastic museum and we had a great tour. Unfortunately for readers, no photos allowed inside.

Naval stores, whirlygigs and an update on NCBBQ

One of the things I really like about eastern North Carolina are the clouds.

Also, the crepe myrtles are fabulous.

When the dust finally settles (assuming it ever will) on our quest to visit all of the National Park Service’s 400-plus units, Moores Creek National Battlefield (MCNB) will not rank in the top ten, or make the 50 favs list. 

This our travel trailer home site in MCNB. As the next photo demonstrates, if the trailer had been here when Hurrican Mathew came through here last October, it would have been nearly covered with flood waters from Moores Creek.

MCNB is a very pretty place and it has a lovely, one-mile walking path sprinkled with an array of excellent interpretive signs and occasional, randomly-placed monuments that pre-date the establishment of the national park in the late 1920s.

So one thing I want to accomplish in this post is to share some photos of the trail to show readers what a lovely “home base” we have (all to ourselves after 5 p.m.) for “really getting to know” North Carolina. Another objective is to report on our trip to historic Halifax in the northern part of the state. Finally, at the end of this blog post, after recapping the highlights of our latest mini-trip, I will provide an update on, and “partial mea culpa” of, my previous comments in this blog about North Carolina barbecue.

Before I get to the walking path photos I need to provide readers with some additional historical information. Like probably everybody else reading this we knew before we got here that the early North Carolina economy was built on tobacco and cotton. But what we did not know about North Carolina history is the importance of something called “naval stores”; a term that includes the pine tar, pitch and resin used to treat and protect the rigging of sailing ships plus the wooden masts for those ships.

In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries one of the best sources in the world for naval stores was the long-leaf pine trees that grew here in eastern North Carolina in such great abundance that, by the mid-18^th century, most of the naval stores used by the British navy – the largest navy in the world at the time - came from right here in North Carolina, were produced mostly by slave labor and shipped mainly out of Wilmington which is just 20 miles or so down the Cape Fear River from MCNB.

Naval stores; now you know why North Carolina is called the Tarheel State.

When steam and iron replaced sails and wood the naval stores industry quickly faded and the hardwood, long leaf pine was replaced with the faster-growing, much softer loblolly pine that is used primarily for pulp to make paper products. Thus, today, most of the millions of ubiquitous pine trees that we see everywhere we go in North Carolina are of the loblolly variety and long leafs are relatively rare.

However, MCNB has made a concerted effort to re-establish long leaf pines in the park and has created a beautiful trail with interpretative signs explaining the important role these beautiful trees – and the naval stores industry – played in North Carolina history.

An up close view of the long leaf pine.

Long leaf in the foreground, loblolly in the background.

We’ve also noted that in at least two mid-18^th-century homes we have toured the original floor boards – still looking good after nearly 300 years – were cut from long leaf pines.

This weekend we traveled to Rocky Mount, east of Raleigh, to use a rental condo as a home base to explore some of the state’s early history along with some of Betsy’s family history.

Of course, we had to start it all off with another “high-A” Carolina League minor-league baseball game between the Carolina Mudcats and the Winston-Salem Dash (the same team, alert readers may recall, that opposed the Buie’s Creek Astros in the game we attended there last month).

Betsy went noodling for Muddy the Mudcats Mascot and got him by the tail. Do any of my readers catch what I'm saying?

The Mudcats play in the town of Zebulon which is sort of like a suburb of Raleigh, in the nicest of the five stadiums we have been to so far. The game itself, however, was probably the worst of the five; a long, grueling duel of walks, errors, sloppy play and pitching changes that goes a long way toward explaining why baseball is no longer the national pastime; 24 runs, 25 hits (at least two of the extra-base variety resulting from the right fielder losing an otherwise easy-to-catch fly ball in the sun), seven errors, lots of walks and a bunch of homers, including one that bounced around the top of the large, elevated scoreboard at least 450 feet from home plate. To summarize the game more succinctly, it was not a pitching duel and the Mudcats right fielder probably isn’t going to the majors.

Fortunately, the Mudcats won so the game only lasted 8 ½ innings.

Last week, after I had posted the blog, we went to a Wilmington Sharks game so, even though it is out of sequence, I am posting mascot photos from that game here.

Looks like Betsy has made a new fin.

A loyal Sharks fan.

 

Yesterday we headed up the road toward the Virginia state line to the historically important but – according to comments posted by the President of the United States – “declining” town of Halifax.

Poor Halifax. The town was already going through a tough stretch, and maybe it is true that its best days were in the rear view mirror by the time the president visited. Certainly it is true that Clinton walloped Trump by 26 points here in the 2016 election. Still, it seems like a low blow for the President of the United States to use a well-known communication medium to lash out and denigrate Halifax by telling readers that Halifax; “…seems to be in a decline & does not it is said contain a thousand souls."

Folks, I’m not making this up. This is not FAKE NEWS! And, believe it or not, it was not POTUS 45 tweeting out criticisms of Halifax (that I am aware of). Rather, it was POTUS 1 who wrote those scathing words dissing Halifax; in a diary entry on April 16, 1791.

Endeavoring to make a personal visit to every region of the country, George Washington set out from Philadelphia in March of 1791 and passed through eastern North Carolina on his way south. Weeks later, on the return north, Washington traveled through the central piedmont region of the state. Although he occasionally complained about the sandy roads in South Carolina and Georgia Washington was generally complimentary of the places he stayed. When he finally got back to Philadelphia, Washington summed up the trip in words that may shock current Americans, saying that the citizens he met; “appeared to be happy, contented and satisfied" with the federal government! Wow, those were the good ole days, huh?

Halifax alone seems to have drawn the ire of POTUS 1. Sad!

POTUS #1's 1791 Southern Tour stops.

Naturally, we have set our sights on visiting all of the places in North Carolina where Washington stopped on his tour and, to help us accomplish this objective, Betsy has purchased a t-shirt that has the Southern Tour route and major stops printed on the back. However, that’s not the only reason we went to Halifax.

Halifax (which is on the banks of Roanoke River in the northeastern part of the state) is the place where the North Carolina colonial government met in April of 1776 and “resolved” for its representatives to the Continental Congress to vote in favor “independency” from Great Britain later that summer. Also worthy of note, in his 1824 tour of America Marquis de Lafayette unexpectedly spent the night in Halifax after the locals threw a party for him at the local tavern that included 15 toasts. Perhaps, the origin of the word “toasted”?

They are not sure where Washington spent the night on his stop in Halifax in 1791 but Lafayette definitely slept here in the Eagle Tavern in 1824, quite soundly no doubt.

Not a bad place to be on July 4, 2017.

But Halifax is also historically significant as the place where Betsy’s great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Jesse Pendry Read chose to move to from Virginia prior to the Revolution and where, in 1774, he established and served for 45 years as pastor of the Rocky Swamp Baptist Church.

200-plus years later, a 6Gs granddaughter pays a visit.

Although much-altered the original church building is still standing and Jesse Read is buried, apparently in an unmarked grave, in the cemetery adjacent to the church. Betsy was disappointed we couldn’t find her grandfather’s grave marker but I pointed out that they guy has been dead for nearly two centuries (he died in 1820). Read also had a long service as a lieutenant in the Continental Army, seeing action at several major battles in the south. He was also held as a prisoner of war for several years.

On the drive down to North Carolina from Virginia we noticed an exhibit at the visitor center on I-95 touting the new “Whirlygig Park” in the town of Wilson. Apparently a farm machinery repairman named Vollis Simpson needed a hobby when he retired so he started making gigantic kinetic sculptures, which he called “whirligigs”, at his farm in Wilson County. And he did it seven days a week until about six months before he died at the age of 94 in May of 2013.

According to the Whirlygig Park’s website Simpson’s whirlygig farm was; “11 miles outside the City of Wilson and already attracted the attention of local people.  After the rise of the Internet, visitors from out-of-state made their way to Vollis’ farm too. Without any advertising, Simpson’s farm became one of Wilson County’s top tourism destinations. His work began to be discovered by art collectors. At the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland you will find his 55-foot-tall, 45-foot-wide “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” on permanent display.  His works are part of several other collections, including the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan and once featured in a popular window installation at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store.”

The website says that the City of Wilson sought to turn its; “most unique cultural assets into an economic engine of entrepreneurial job creation and tourism” adding “vibrancy to its Historic Downtown.”

Now, to some readers, this may sound like the desperate final throes of a hollowed out, semi-rural community caught in the vortex of an economic death spiral grasping at the thinnest straw to stave off the inevitable. And, after walking around the downtown area full of empty buildings and closed-down businesses, I’d say that sounds about right and I hope it works. (Betsy wanted me to add that Wilson does have a functioning court house).

Unfortunately, the construction of the park is behind schedule. Completion can’t seem to come soon enough.

Not too far from Wilson is the town of Ayden which is home to the Skylight Inn BBQ, a barbecue joint that has been in business for 70 years and is said to be the one of the best purveyors of Eastern North Carolina barbecue in the state.

Supposedly intended to represent the U.S. Capitol?

Supposedly, some of North Carolina's best barbecue. Note, that square thing with the bite taken out of it is fried cornbread and it was darn tasty.

With considerable trepidation I agreed with Betsy’s insistence that we give North Carolina barbecue one more try (she correctly pointed out that we had only tried barbecue at two places and one of those was a booth at a county fair). So, after eating at what is supposedly one of the best barbecue joints in the entire state of North Carolina, I am pleased to report that it wasn’t too bad. It did not suck and I did not throw any of it in the trash.

One of the things that probably helped was that the meat was served without any sauce, which was provided at the table. That allowed us to dress the barbecue to our own taste and to mix and match the vinegary Eastern North Carolina sauce with the sweeter, ketchup-based sauce favored in the western parts of the state. I think that went a long way toward making the stuff edible.

Hopefully, this re-assessment and partial mea culpa of my earlier comments regarding Eastern North Carolina barbecue will soothe any feelings among my legion of blog readers that may have been inadvertently bruised when I said that North Carolina barbecue sucks.