Songs of the new sourth... (NC)

We broke camp about 10 AM and caravanned with Ed & Susan and Dave & Kathy 145 miles west to Chocowinity, NC, where we will remain for three days.

We three chose to take the designated scenic route 264 because we are brave and adventuresome; the others took the faster route 64 bypass. We had been cautioned to travel at least in pairs because the road is narrow with no or little shoulder and if you became stranded it could be some time before another vehicle came along that could help.

Highway 264 wasn’t too bad and we had a good time, and traveling at least in pairs certainly makes sense. This part of North Carolina is very flat and somewhat swampy.  Roads are formed by digging parallel trenches and piling the dirt in the center, ending up with a raised roadbed and a water-filled canal on one side, and a narrow and steep shoulder on the other.  We would be in deep trouble if a trailer wheel slipped off the asphalt.

Highway 264 passes through such interestingly named areas as the Dismal Swamp and the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Much of the road is through forests of tall thin trees, perhaps pines, interrupted on occasion by wet areas, some of which show hurricane damage (trees broken off part way up the trunk, etc.). The area is lightly populated and contains both a Navy and an Air Force bombing range for entertainment. In one small village there is a building signed as a disaster assistance center and five houses in the process of having their foundations raised.

Eventually we came to stretches of large fields of soy beans and cotton but no people in the fields, only large machines, like the cotton areas in California. Things must not be good for the unskilled and low-skilled and local real estate: there are many abandoned usually small houses overtaken by brush. Sorry, no antebellum plantations. No darkies singing about picking soybeans all day.

We are now at the Twin Lakes Camping Resort in Chocowinity. It is large, treed, and laked. Prior to this we were on the outer banks; we are now in what is sometimes called the inner banks. Pamlico Sound separates them. Additionally, we are a ways up the Pamlico River. Much farther west and we’d be in Greenville.

Dinner was catered: coleslaw, potatoes, fried fish, and breaded shrimp, served under an open pavilion. A little kitty cat helps clear the plates.

Tonight I browsed a “dummies” beginning-bridge book, did the blog, and continued reading a book about the lost colony at Roanoke. Marcia read then left for the game room, where she played yet another version of Mexican dominoes, winning 2 out of 3 games.