Virginia - North Carolina: Monday - Wednesday, Nov. 7-9, 2022 | |
This would drive my brother-in-law, Heinrich, crazy. He is from Bavaria, Germany. Beer, by law, must be made with only four ingredients: Barley (wheat can be substituted), water, hops, yeast. That’s it. No coffee, berries, chocolate, and certainly not pumpkin. I admit, whenever we visit Bavaria, I do love their delicious beer. | |
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Monday, November 7, 2022
Poor Saturn and V-Jer were filthy. Today was chore-day. Wanda tore Saturn apart, cleaned everything, and re-organized our supplies. I washed and waxed V-Jer. The solar panel alone kicked out nearly twice the wattage after polishing. When completed, both vehicles proudly gleamed, as we did.
I celebrated by bringing out my guitar, my iPhone tracks, and my Spark Mini practice amp. Three guys about 20 years old from Raleigh stopped by to listen. We had a good time talking about shelling at Cape Lookout. They all came to this area specifically to go out to Cape Lookout. Even though it was a gorgeous day, and Hurricane Nicole was still well off the Florida coast, the Cape Lookout ferry was shut down in anticipation of the storm. We all agreed that it was an overkill in precaution.
Wanda and I decided to hike a bit on the MTS trail that ran through the campground. When we saw another huge spider in his web across the trail, we turned around. That was it for the day.
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My reward for cleaning up V-Jer. Notice the iPhone where I have my song-tracks. It is plugged into the tiny practice amp. So is my guitar. I have 140 song-tracks on the iPhone with the guitar parts removed. I supply the guitar parts live. It is ingenious. | In the late afternoon, we walked down by the river to connect up with the MTS Trail. | And with this guy’s web spread across the trail, we turned back. What is he eating? Or is that an egg sack? | |
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Today we moved down to Carolina Beach State Park, just a few miles from Wilmington. I sometimes follow the video blogger, Slim Potatohead, on YouTube. He is a single guy with a small camper about the size of V-Jer. He takes long road trips and hikes a lot. Last winter, he toured the southeastern states, including North Carolina. He stayed at Carolina Beach State Park and highly recommended it. He was right. It is an excellent campground at a reasonable price. We paid the senior discounted price of $20 to boondock. Electric hookups, of course, cost more, but we don’t mind going without if the price is right. I am impressed with North Carolina state parks and campgrounds. First of all, unlike so many state parks, they don’t require an expensive sticker or day-pass fee. The facilities are well maintained. The shower houses are clean and modern. And the price to camp, while not dirt-cheap like the National Campgrounds with our Senior Pass, are reasonable.
When we got to the campground, we checked in to verify our reservation. The guy warned us that the campground may be shut down over the weekend due to the storm coming. “If winds reach 45 mph,” he said, “all campers will be kicked out.” They didn’t want any trees crashing down on any campers. I guess it is time to take Hurricane Nicole seriously.
Looking at all of our weather apps, sustained winds of 30 mph and wind gusts reaching 45 mph are predicted as well as a ton of rain and a storm surge. Our campground is right on the Cape Fear River just before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean. So, if kicked out, where would we go?
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Ahhh, we still had a couple of days before we have to deal with that. Time to go check out the town of Carolina Beach. The beach, on the Atlantic Ocean, was the usual amazing expanse of perfect beige sand. The wind was strong, kicking up some good wave action and negating the warmth of the sun.
A couple that parked next to our car at the same time as we did, planned to go swimming. They were from Minnesota and bragged that this was swimming weather. That almost sounded reasonable. Just a block or so from the beach, the sun felt glowingly toasty. As soon as we rounded the top of the sand dune ridge to face the Ocean, we stepped into a totally different world. The brisk gale-force wind bit. The couple did not go swimming.
The town of Carolina Beach took me by surprise. It was a carnie-town. A little seedy, a little Coney-Island’ish, a little cotton-candy’ish, but in the summer, I bet kind of fun. Abandoned in November, it just looked sad. The carnie rides begged for attention. The hot dog and candy booths were boarded up. Only a handful of revelers were scattered about and one or two taverns were open.
The town’s beach boardwalk, although only a quarter-mile long, was very nice. It provided excellent access to the excellent beach. Even bundled up in our warmest jackets, we could only stand 20 minutes walking the beach.
|  | The carnie-rides on the beach were shut down for the season. | The boardwalk was short, but provided good access to the beach. | Beach access from the boardwalk. These pathways were provided every 100’ or so along the boardwalk. | The wind was so strong that I could barely walk into it. Sand and grit in the eyes didn’t help. | What a beautiful stretch of white sand beach! | Live music and fireworks most Thursday evenings - NICE!! | |
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
YouTube weather clips are starting to predict that Nicole’s tract may veer around to the west of us. We would still get a lot of rain, wind, and storm surge, but not as much as originally predicted. Our Underground Weather app, usually the more accurate of our apps, is predicting sustained winds of 20-25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. This is down from yesterday. Tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be the washout days.
Today’s weather is iffy, but warm. We started off by hiking a 5-mile trail loop in the park. The trail wove through a pine savanah, through lots of sand dunes, and briefly touched the Cape Fear River. At the farthest point in the loop, it started to rain. Fortunately, the rain only lasted a few minutes before turning into sprinkles. We made it back to V-Jer damp, but not soaking. It was an odd rain, at least odd to us. The rain was warm.
| Cape Fear River overlook. | The pine cones were collossal. |  | |
After drying out a bit, we decided to drive up to Wilmington, a city the size of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The downtown, on the Cape Fear River, featured their waterfront with a great waterfront boardwalk. The battleship USS North Carolina, is moored on the river. It is a state museum now. There are several tour boats and water taxis along the riverfront.
Wilmington used to be a major cotton exporting port. Many large brick warehouses were built for housing cotton waiting to be shipped out. Only one warehouse remained and it was re-purposed into a quaint shopping mall. Now, that’s how you preserve historical buildings. It reminded me of how Europe preserves their centuries-old buildings. They gut the insides, reinforce the outside walls, and rebuild the interior to remain authentic. The Cotton Exchange Building was similar.
The rest of town was also nice and vibrant. My German brother-in-law, Heinrich, would shake his head at the Pumpkin beer being sold at the Pour Craft Brewery. Beside gross sounding beer flavors, Pour had another interesting innovation - you pour your own beer. If you get too much foam, it is your own damn fault (lol).
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  | The Cape Fear River docks and riverfront boardwalk. I love that name - Cape Fear. It does sound foreboding. | Anne Bonney’s floating bar and grill. | The Cotton Exchange warehouse re-purposed into a shopping area. | The Cotton Exchange warehouse was a maze of shops and restaurants. | Yet another of a dozen entrances into the Cotton Exchange. | A little piece of Bourbon Street in downtown Wilmington. | The pour-it-yourself Pour Taproom. It is the home of pumpkin beer. That just does not sound right. | When we returned to camp, the YouTube forecasters were predicting Nicole would travel even further to the west. The brunt of the storm would swing all the way to the Tennessee/North Carolina border. That was good for us. We were looking at 1 1/2” of rain, winds around 20 mph with 30-35 mph gusts, and very little storm surge. We went to bed confident that we would not be kicked out. However, eerily, the campground had almost completely cleared out. We were the only campers on our loop. There were 3 campers on the other loop. | |
Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum. | | | | |
