After spending five nights at the Elks lodge in Morehead City, North Carolina, we were ready for a change of scenery. So Saturday morning we hit the road and drove east forty miles on State Route 24 to Jacksonville, where we hooked up with U.S. Highway 17.

We followed that route another 100 miles south to the South Carolina state line, passing by the sprawling Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base along the way. As we passed the base, chain link fences on both sides of the highway were adorned with signs written on bed sheets welcoming home units and individual Marines that had been deployed overseas.

Most of our route was good four lane highway with light to moderate traffic, except right around Camp Lejeune, where it was heavier. There were quite a few traffic lights to deal with in the small towns along the way, but we made good time.

At Wilmington, we bypassed the city on Interstate 40, passing by the battleship USS North Carolina, a proud old warrior from World War II that has been converted into a floating museum. I really think I’m getting over the worst of my bridge phobia. Crossing over the Cape Fear River, I wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable. I’m not ready to take on the big boys like the Tampa Bay Bridge or the Chesapeake Bay Bridge yet, but at least I don’t snivel as much as I used to on other bridges.

U.S. 17 became a four lane surface route again south of Wilmington, but there wasn’t much traffic. We pulled into the South Carolina Welcome Center at the state line for a potty break, and a half hour later we arrived at the Moose lodge in Myrtle Beach. We had covered 170 miles, an easy day of driving. Most of the day had been gray and dreary, but about the time we crossed into South Carolina, we suddenly broke out into blue sky. After a week of stormy weather, that sure was a welcome sight!

The RV parking here at the Myrtle Beach Moose lodge consists of several back-in sites on the edge of a big blacktopped parking lot, with 30 amp electric and water hookups. The only other RV here is a nice looking Winnebago Ultimate Freedom, so we don’t feel crowded at all. At $10 a night, it’s a heck of a bargain in expensive Myrtle Beach, and one more example of the savings on overnight parking that Elks and Moose lodges offer to traveling members.

The only drawbacks here are that there is no dump station, and even though we have three bars of EVDO signal with our Verizon air card, the internet is really slow. I did a speed check and we were only getting download speeds of 369 kbps, as opposed to the 1100 kbps we were getting in Morehead City. We’ll need to find a dump station pretty soon, the tanks on our Winnebago motorhome are not as large as we had on our MCI bus conversion, and we’re getting close to being full.

Though we love the ocean and the beach, Myrtle Beach just doesn’t appeal to either of us. It just feels too upscale touristy. So I don’t think we’ll linger here very long. This morning we have a couple of stops to make, and then we may just head on down the road.

We have a good friend who lives in Florida whose health isn’t doing very well, and we want to get down to the Titusville area to see him before he has some major surgery in a week or two. So after playing tourist the last couple of weeks, we’ll probably switch into our “go fast” mode and put some miles behind us in the next couple of days. 

Thought For The Day – Treat every day as a new opportunity to be happy.

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We have waited years to explore the North Carolina coast, and unfortunately, the bad weather has put a real damper (quite literally) on our visit. But, we are making the best of it and taking advantage of any break in the storm to get out and see things.

Yesterday we stopped to check out Beaufort’s Hammock House, located just a block or two from the waterfront. The oldest house in Beaufort, the old building has been a local landmark since the early 1700s. The house has been an inn, school, and private residence over the years, and it is not surprising that many claim it is haunted.

Local legend says the pirate Blackbeard used to stay here when he was in Beaufort, and one tale says that after spending several weeks here with one of his wives while his ship was undergoing repairs, he got tired of her constant nagging. So when he was ready to put out to sea, the story says he hanged her from one of the home’s live oak trees and buried her in the yard. Local folks say you can still hear her screams on moonlight nights.

Another story says that a man named Richard Russell once lived in the house, and when he took a slave up to the attic to discipline him, the slave pushed him down the stairs and broke his neck. Some claim that Russell’s ghost has been spotted stalking back up the steps, possibly in search of revenge.

As most regular readers know, Terry and I enjoy exploring old cemeteries. Whenever you think your life is rough, just spend an hour or so wandering through a cemetery reading the headstones, especially the older ones, and it will help you put your life in perspective.

We have found some tragic stories in old cemeteries, of course. Especially the graves of so many children who died at a very young age, back in the days when infant mortality was so high. But we have also seen some gravestones and learned some stories that have left us mystified, and a few have even made us chuckle.

Beaufort has been home to seamen, pirates, soldiers, and settlers since the early 1700s, so there is a lot of history here, and much of it can be found at the Old Burying Grounds. A self-guided tour is a good way to get to know the old cemetery.

One grave is that of a British naval officer who refused to lie down in rebel territory, so he was buried standing up, so he could salute King George!

Another grave is the final resting place of Captain Otway Burns, one of the most successful privateers of the War of 1812. On one voyage alone, Captain Burns and the crew of his ship Snapdragon captured over $2 million worth of British cargo. After he died, a cannon from his ship was mounted on top of his tomb.

Two stories at the Old Burying Ground are of love lost and found. After Sarah Gibbs’ first husband was lost at sea, she remarried and had a child with her second husband. Several years later her first husband returned and wanted his wife back. Understandably, her current husband wasn’t too keen on that idea, so the three of them worked out a deal. Sarah remained with her second husband, but when she died, she was buried beside her first husband so that they could be together for eternity.

The other story is that of Nancy Manney French, who fell in love with her tutor as a young girl. Her father disapproved, so the tutor, Charles French, went west to seek his fortune, vowing to return for Nancy someday. He eventually settled in Arizona and became a chief justice. Charles French faithfully wrote letters to his beloved back in Beaufort, but the local postmaster was a friend of Nancy’s father, so he intercepted them and they were never delivered. Just before the postmaster died, many years later, he needed to clear his conscience, so he told her what he had done. Nancy never married, and as an old man Charles French returned to Beaufort and found her dying of consumption. The lifetime lovers were finally married, and Nancy died just a few weeks later.

Of course, one can work up quite an appetite playing tourist. Not to worry, there are plenty of great places to eat on the Crystal Coast, including Luigi’s Pizza in Morehead City, a small place that serves up big pizzas. This was a small pizza we ordered for dinner. It was even more delicious than it looks!

While we were out exploring, Bad Nick was at home posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I Don’t Want To Press One For English! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You decide what you can and what you can’t do.

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While you might picture the wide open spaces out West when you think about wild horses, you really don’t have to venture any further than the Outer Banks of North Carolina to see some of these beautiful creatures living wild and free.

Shackleford Banks, an island located three miles from the mainland in Cape Lookout National Seashore, is home to about 100 wild horses that are the descendents of animals abandoned by the Spanish in the 1600s, and others that escaped shipwrecks in the treacherous waters along the coast.

Popular with tourists and beloved by the local people, the National Park Service, which administers the island, wants the horses to live as wild as possible, so no water or food is provide them. The horses graze on natural grasses and get fresh water from small ponds and pools on the island.

The horses live in small harems, which are controlled by a mature alpha stallion, and in scattered bachelor bands of younger stallions that have not yet gathered their own harem.

As with all wild animals, interaction with human beings is harmful to the horses, and it is illegal for visitors to the island to feed or disturb them. One must keep in mind that though they may look like domestic horses, they are still wild animals, and can be dangerous to people who get too close. The horses are capable of biting and kicking when they feel endangered. One must be careful not to get between a mare and her colt, or two stallions that are fighting.

With no natural predators on Shackleford Banks, to keep their population in balance, the National Park Service occasionally rounds up some members of the herd and offers them to the public for adoption. Because of their natural beauty and intelligence, the horses are very popular with their adoptive owners.

Access to Shackleford Banks is by private boat, or by several privately owned passenger ferries that operate from Beaufort and Harkers Island. There are no facilities on the island, but visitors can bring their own tents and provisions, and camp overnight for up to fourteen days.

Thought For The Day – It was all so different before everything changed.

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The promised heavy rain resulting from Tropical Storm Ida began falling about 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, and it still hasn’t stopped. In fact, it hasn’t even slowed down. The temperature also dropped, from the mid-70s the last two days, to the low 60s yesterday. At least the heavy wind that was supposed to accompany the rain has not appeared.

We are parked close to the building on a paved lot at the Elks Lodge here in Morehead City, North Carolina, and the property slopes away slightly, so we’re in no danger of floating away, but Miss Terry has been wearing out her Sham Wow cloths soaking up water that is leaking in around the front corner or our living room slide. That’s an issue we need to deal with at the first opportunity.

With such nasty weather, we took a break from playing tourist and stayed inside all day. I cruised the internet, answered several e-mails that had backed up, and worked on the seminar schedule for our upcoming Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally.

One complaint I have heard many times about RV rallies is that they have the same seminars over and over, year after year. And, of course, everybody is different. Some people want technical seminars, some want lifestyle seminars, and some want travel seminars.

It is a challenge to find new seminars and people qualified to present them, and I don’t think anybody can ever come up with a schedule that makes everybody happy. The best we can hope for is to be able to present a variety of fresh seminars covering a broad enough range to give all rally attendees something to enjoy.

I think we’re putting together a pretty good lineup for our Yuma rally, including seminars on safely backing up an RV, geocaching, testing air brakes, RVing in Alaska, oil painting, computer safety and security for RVers, digital photography, boondocking, and digital scrapbooking, to name just a few. We’re always looking for new seminars to offer our rally attendees, so if you would like to present a noncommercial seminar, send me an e-mail and we’ll see if we can make it happen.

Once the weather breaks, we have a couple more places we want to see here on the Crystal Coast, and then we’ll start heading further south. I’m not sure if we’ll stop in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina or not. It seems a bit too touristy for us. We prefer places a little more off the beaten path.

One popular city we would like to spend a few days in is Charleston, South Carolina. I have not been able to find an Elks or Moose lodge there open to RV parking, so I have been studying our Passport America book looking for an affordable RV park. We’d appreciate any suggestions on a place to stay, if you are familiar with that area.

Thought For The Day – The aging process could be slowed down if it had to work its way through Congress.

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We spent yesterday exploring part of the Crystal Coast; this interesting, laid back region of North Carolina. Here you can find everything from bustling small cities like Beaufort and Morehead City, to quaint little fishing towns like Harkers Island. No matter what your interests are, from history to collecting seashells, to fishing, or just sitting back in a beach chair and watching the seagulls fly by, you’ll find it all here.

Our first stop of the day was Fort Macon State Park, home to historic Fort Macon, which saw service from before the Civil War to World War II. The old fort was built as part of a chain of coastal defense forts, was seized by the Confederate Army during the Civil War and then recaptured after a siege by the Union Army, and has been restored to its glory days.

We enjoyed wandering through old barracks and climbing up to the fort’s walls to where sentries once stood guard duty, looking for enemy ships, blockade runners, and World War II German U-boats.

From Fort Macon, we drove 27 meandering miles to the charming little village of Harkers Island, where we stopped at the Cape Lookout National Seashore Visitor Center. It was here that we met a very nice man named Chuck Anderson, a fulltime RVer who is volunteering at the Visitor Center. He told us a little about his duties, we exchanged travel adventures, and then spent some time looking at the displays about the local wildlife and history.

Almost next door to the Visitor Center is the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. This was one of the most impressive off the beaten path museums we have ever visited. We expected to see exhibits on the region’s hunting heritage, and there were certainly plenty of them, from duck decoys to massive ten gauge shotguns.

We also met a local woodcarver named Anthony Brooks and watched him at work for a while. Though he was born and raised on Core Sound, Anthony had a distinctive Scottish accent that he said he inherited from his grandfather, instead of the southern drawl we’ve heard most people use here.

What we didn’t expect at the museum were the impressive exhibits on the region’s history. There are displays on the fishing industry, a wonderful collection of model boats, quilts, and even a fully sailed fishing skiff on display. On the second floor, the several small towns strung along Core Sound have their own exhibits on their local history.

From Harkers Island, we drove back to Beaufort to tour the North Carolina Maritime Museum, which focuses on the seafaring past of the area. Everybody from the notorious pirate Blackbeard to the brave men of the United States Lighthouse Service and commercial fisherman are remembered here. The museum also has displays of fish and marine mammals that inhabit coastal waters, including this Great White shark caught 40 miles off Cape Lookout. This massive critter measured over fifteen feet long and weighed 2,080 pounds! Suddenly I wasn’t all that interested in launching my kayak anywhere around here!   

We had been bracing for predicted heavy rain and strong winds as the Tropical Storm Ida moved across the Southeast, but except for a few sprinkles while we were at Fort Macon, it was actually a pretty nice day. We’ll wait and see what today brings.

Whether you’re in sunshine or rain today, take a moment to thank a veteran for your freedom. Bad Nick made it a point to in today’s Bad Nick Blog, titled appropriately enough, Thank A Vet.

Thought For The Day – Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up.

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