Take Off

Friday, April 2, 2010

Red buds line the thruway in North Carolina. The sun is warm already...it is in the high 50's.
Mary is wearing her new khaki vest, notebook carefully placed in a front pocket.

Slowly, we leave behind the daily activities of our routines...facing forward (at 75 mph), new adventures...we are filled with optimism.

We've stopped for our first coffee break and an egg biscuit. The temperature is rising as quickly as the sun. The landscape now changing to low pine forests, dotted with South of the Border billboards. White dogwood trees dot the corridor of the two lane thruway. A Mexican family is picnicking along the side of the road...their car hood up as a trooper pulls up behind them. We speculate that the many South of the Border billboards depict American views of our neighbor to the south.

A large yellow hat floats in the sky.

We cross the border.

Mary's radar vision spots GRAFFITTI...we veer off the thruway and wind our way to a grass covered road..chained off. We maneuver around an alternate entrance and find several strips of abandoned, vandalized motel buildings next to the Silver Slippers Sweepstakes outlet. We are on the border of North/South Carolina. We take our first photographs.
Caroly finds and records this image of, what appears to be, an alien spacecraft hidden in the woods nearby. We are amazed! We ponder taking it home to North Carolina where a friend is looking for something similar for his front driveway, but we realize that we don't have the right bungee cords to secure it to the top of the car.
Not too far away, Mary has found further evidence of an alien presence. Now, we are creeped out. We leave.

Winter jasmine laces itself to the trees and boughs of wisteria cascade intermittently. The nubile leaves of the red maple are vibrant red.

We are having trouble with "Zelda", (our beloved GPS system). She has become irate with us. We have exited I-95 and are taking a less travelled route, US 52, to Charleston. Her insistent, "re-calculating", "take an immediate u-turn", etc. have driven us to temporarily mute her. It is obvious that she wants us to avoid a smaller highway. After twenty miles or so, Zelda realized we were going our own way and she finally rejoined us in our navigation to Charleston.

We were astonished at the number of churches we saw as we drove down US 52....some more affluent than others and car dealers, auto shops, and here and there some boiled peanut vendors. We saw one or two grand southern homesteads, and millions of miles of telephone wire crisscrossing the landscape.


Finally in Charleston! We head immediately for Fleet Landing and a long awaited lunch. This restaurant was recommended by friends of Mary's and we were not disappointed....the best coleslaw!! We had a table on the deck outside and were able to watch dolphins swimming and playing near the pier. Outside the restaurant, Mary gets some good shots of a Black-crowned Night- Heron....just hanging out in the marshy area at low tide.

After lunch we walked the streets (quite crowded), and took in some of the historic architecture, stopping here and there to talk with vendors at the open market. It was imediately evident to us that Charleston is a place we must visit often since there is so much to see and do.

What a great first day! Filled with the sights and sounds of this historic city, (and our close call with the aliens), we take off for our Inn...to eat,sleep and blog.

Here we are checking out the pool at the Inn.

At right you see some of the local flavor of Charleston. Caroly and I call it the "DNA Exchange" !

After a good nights sleep, we're off to Florida and camping!!