Ok, three separate observed instances make it true: every female Applebee’s bartender wears a black top and blue jeans and that black top is cut to maximize boobage. Not complainin’, just observin’.
The implacable predictability of American shopping culture has given me a comfortable routine on these parking-lot days.
- go into the Walmart, find out were they want me to park
- check out the spot, then check out the neighborhood
- ook for a friendly local hangout, but surprise, if they exist they are not in the shopping center with the Lowe’s and the Walmart, so …
- end up at the Applebee’s, because they will have a bar and can be made to change the channel to the game I want, and the food is actually ok.
- sleep
- in the AM go to the Panera for coffee and wifi.
just reading what I just wrote I loathe myself a little for being such a corporate tool, but when a day of tourist-ing comes to an end, the free parking lot to crash in is such an easy solution to the challenge of what to do with yourself for the night.
As usual, the first part of the driving day was fun and interesting, but by the afternoon it was annoying and tiring and an all-around grind. Today had a little spice because I was detouring around Camp Lejeune, the big-time Marine training base. I remembered it from last time as lots of aggressive traffic and places I didn’t want to stop, but this time it was just another chunk of four-lane suburbia. Maybe they’ve built a new road, because where could all those strip joints have gone?
North Carolina parks are reasonably priced ($15 with my brand new >62 discount!), so that is where I will go tonight, to Carolina Beach State Park, on the way down the peninsula to the ferry across the Cape Fear River.
Since it is close, I decide to invest the $5 to check out Airlie Gardens, a pleasant little interlude in the rich-people suburbs of Wilmington. I enjoyed it. I took a couple of stoner videos of a cool fountain with my resurrected camera, that I hope to have enough wifi to upload someday.
Carolina Beach State Park has a odd check-in procedure, but was quite cool once i settled in. Lotsa trails again, so I walked around and watched an excellent sunset over the Cape Fear Sound.
I met a fellow driving one of the Airstream Sprinter conversions I had seen on the web. Same size van as mine, but they managed to squeeze a full shower and bathroom into it. They do it by going up! It is about a foot and a half taller than mine and mine is pretty darned tall! My first twinge of camper-envy. Until this day I have had a complete van superiority complex – nobody’s van is cooler than mine! But now I have seen one of arguably equal coolness. I last saw the guy this morning emptying his poop-water at the van dump station, haha.
Thursday
Had a coffee and muffin at a beachy little place on the way to the ferry. Spent a couple of hours at Fort Fisher, which i remembered from last time, and which I really liked again.
First of all, the location on the tip of that peninsula has a lot going on:
- there is a vestigial US military installation, which is mostly a sweet little campground an hang-out spot for folks with a Defense Dept card, which sadly I do not have.
- then there is Fort Fisher,
- then there is an NC State Beach,
- then there is the NC State Aquarium,
- oh yeah, and the little two-lane road to the ferry goes right down the middle of it all, so every 45 minutes there is a large clot of traffic going each way.
Fort Fisher is made out of sand. Big mounds of sand, that proved to be utterly impervious to Civil War artillery. The harbor at Wilmington was the last major Southern port to not be shut down by the Union, and they wanted it badly. The feds lobbed in over 20,000 cannonballs in an attack in late 1864 and they laughed it off. Then in early 1865 the feds showed up again with a more serious commitment to the land attack, and they took the place, and the South knew the game wasa up and folded pretty soon after that. Really an interesting place.
Drove through the quaint town of Southport, the southern terminus of the ferry. Then hit the road for Myrtle Beach, final destination the Myrtle Beach walmart. I had a beer by the beach, then went on a quest for a bar that got NBA League Pass so I could watch Warriors-Bulls. I even downloaded two find a sports bar apps, which are both utterly worthless. Just as well I failed, W’s lost by 30. But I did go to a sports bar and had a sub-standard time … give me an Applebee’s any day haha.
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