Today was a good example of the kind of day that, while pleasant, doesn't turn out exactly as planned. We said goodby to Ernie around mid morning and headed north toward Wilmington, NC. (Gloria is sad to leave as am I.)
One of the aspects of car travel that we have down pat is the luggage. For trips of this duration (around 2 weeks) we each take one large bag for clothes, share one for electronics, and one for toiletries. All these fit neatly in the trunk of our Subaru Outback. The back seat contains a garbage can, maps of every state we will follow, water and protein bars, medicines like sun screen, bug spray, aspirin, blistex, rain coats, and the like plus a few gift bags collected along the way.
We prefer the coastal route up Rt 17 to Wilmington over the one proposed by Garmin, that heads west across northern South Carolina before turning north into North Carolina via I-95, so packed and determined we arrived in Wilmington in an hour and decided to skip the many attractions there and continue north to the little town of Warsaw where a restaurant and vineyard was reputed to exist. We never found the vineyard and settled for lunch at a Springfield restaurant that turned out to be a one cut above fast food. Still it was clean, staff friendly, and the food tasty.
Back on the highway we decided to visit an artist collective in Rocky Mount. Garmin's instructions had us traveling down streets that didn't exist and the wrong way on one way's that did exist. However, we are used to such situations and just drive legally on real streets while Garmin re-routs. Due to patient determination we finally found the place. It was closed and the building is for sale. Rocky Mount wasn't appealing enough to encourage us to pursue one of the other 13 attractions listed on Trip Advisor, so we hit the highway again heading ever further north toward our destination in Virginia.
Along the way we had a bit of excitement when a Semi hauling a big box we were following blew a left rear tire. We felt the shock wave of the explosion and narrowly dodged a hailstorm of rubber tread pieces and the stone guard. I was glad to have been keeping my distance. The driver of the truck did a great job of getting the rig off the road and we kept along. We caught the whole thing with our dash camera but I haven't yet figured out how to edit video. When I do I will post some stills and a link here.
Despite our lack of visits to tourist attractions we did enjoy taking the back roads through farming country. We stopped every hour or to stretch, get a drink and do other things that tempt folks off the highway. I got a chuckle from Gloria's reaction to the improvised women's room at the Sheetz rest stop along the way. It was a temporarily reassigned men's room complete with a urinal. All I got was a creepy porta-potty in the parking lot.
We stopped for the night at the Hampton Inn at Stony Creek, VA. We were concerned that we would need to settle for fast food or a long side trip, but our host at the Hampton Inn gave directions to Little Italy, which is a genuine, small, Italian style restaurant on Blue Star Highway. It wasn't a five star place, but a solid 3.5 to 4 and way better than fast food.
Tomorrow we are off to Newport News to visit my brother and his family for a day. It's about a two hour drive, so its early to bed tonight and up early (ugh) tomorrow. See you along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment