Wednesday, April 28, 2021.
Temp: 83/60, Humidity: 93/46%, Top Wind: S 17mph, Precip: none, Miles Traveled: 6 miles on shoes 😳
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Biscuit Donuts. Two words that can make my man smile and will get him to walk farther than normal. Kenny found this place on the map so we made a plan to go scope it out. How can you go wrong with biscuit donuts?! There were lots of pickup trucks in the parking lot, so that means it’s good food with the locals, right? Kenny had biscuits and gravy, I had an omlette with a biscuit. The food was good!
And then…. six biscuit donuts to go. They are kinda weird looking. I wonder how they taste?
Then we walked 20 miles uphill both ways in sweltering heat, to pick up a prescription at Walgreens. Right next door was a Piggly Wiggly grocery store so we went in to get a loaf of bread. They pretty much just had white and wheat. That’s it. No nine-grain, no oatnut, no Arnolds or Pepperidge Farm. We in the South, y’all. Lots of cracklins and pickled eggs. We looked at the cheese selection. No smokey gouda…. none of that fancy city-folk food. And the meat selection included all sorts of animal parts that I didn’t recognize…. but I didn’t look close.
On the walk back, we followed the sign to Tyron Palace. It was the Historic Capitol and Governor’s residence of North Carolina between 1770-1794. It burned in 1798 and was restored in the 1950’s. I don’t know what it’s status was for the 150 years in between. 🤷♀️
It’s an impressive property. Denise told me that the tour is very interesting, but we were hot and tired, and were counting the steps to get back home without collapsing.
In the Palace neighborhood are all kinds of neat old homes, including the John Wright Stanly House. It was moved and restored in the 1960’s.
It is really a very attractive house!!
There was a story board that told about the house. John Wright Stanly built it between 1779 and 1783. Edward Stanly was born here in 1810. In 1862 he accepted the post of military governor from President Lincoln. He hoped he might lead his hometown and state back into the Union, but he was unsuccessful. Stanly’s nephew Lewis Addison Armistead was born here in 1817, and became a Confederate General, but was killed at Gettysburg. Just an example of how families were split between Union and Confederate forces.
We got back to Island Girl and collapsed for a few hours. Whew! We walked a lot and got really hot. We weren’t really prepared to get so overheated. We SOOO should have gotten the bikes down for this adventure!
We had walked past a wood fired oven pizza joint that smelled so good, so we decided we’d go there for dinner. We didn’t get there until 7:00, and they close at 8:00. We were almost the only ones there, but several people popped in for take out orders. The pizza was yummy.
It was a cute former house that was converted into a restaurant. They were very conscientious about social distancing, and we were all by ourselves in one of the rooms. Then we thought we’d go check out the local brewery, but were shocked that they are only open from 4-8:00. DANG! We are just trying to be so good about contributing to the local economy!
So we tootled back home. This was a pretty street of homes near the Palace.
I scoped out my health app on my iphone, and it tells all sorts of stuff about how I walk! Apparently 1/3 of the time I have two feet on the ground, and my asymmetry is pretty good – I don’t limp or favor one side much. Who knew all this info was in there?!
So tomorrow. Oh – I found a phone number for the bridge that we need to have opened to get out of here, thank goodness. I’ve read all kinds of conflicting information about it’s schedule. The official word for tomorrow is that it will open and 7am and 9am, and at no time in between – unless our boat has lots of flashing lights and sirens on it. 😄. I guess we better plan to skedaddle at 7:00. We have roughly 36 miles to travel, and I’m really hopeful that early morning will be comfortable cruising. We’ve been bouncing and rolling in the wind all day, but it isn’t bad this evening, so fingers crossed! 🤞
I kind of like the PredictWind app. It shows all of the model forecasts together, and an hourly format. We like wind in the blue range (0-11 mph), and we avoid yellow & orange (over 17 mph). Green (12-17 mph) isn’t our favorite. I set this to look at the Neuse River down in the elbow around Oriental NC, where it turns to the northeast and is more exposed to the Pamilco Sound.
The morning winds don’t look too bad. It’s the gusts that blow, literally, which are in the red & orange velocity range on the line on the bottom. I think we’re just going to beat feet to our destination and hope the gusts behave themselves! River Dunes said that we can arrive at any time. Docking in the wind isn’t any fun, so the earlier we get there, the better.
I’ll report back and let you know how it was. 😬