North Carolina

It started out as an idea that I had been pondering for quite some time. About 2 months ago my good friend Ethan mentioned that he had bought a new apartment and that I should come visit him [and his girlfriend Hannah]. North Carolina is not exactly a neighbor to Boston, plus there was COVID to think about, so it stayed as just a really cool thought for awhile. Eventually I impulsively bought the tickets and soon after left on the journey of the summer!

Be warned, this is the longest blog post so far. Hope you have nothing better to do today!

The Itinerary

One day I just decided, enough talk! I will go in August. Thus, the planning stage of the trip started. Initially I was interested in driving down. I’d done long drives before so a 1000 mile trip would certainly not be a major challenge in one day, but I just didn’t want to add that many miles to my already well traveled car. So the second idea was to fly. The only drawback with flying is that I would then need to rent a car. This is both exciting (I’m finally 25 so I can rent cars myself) and really expensive.

Usually when I plan for a trip I have maybe 4 days max before I leave so planning one a month in advance was new for me. Not even a single stone could be unturned! I started out with the basic road trip plan: driving. The first plan was to see everything on the coast on Thursday / Friday. (I want to see all the national parks) Unfortunately upon further inspection that proved to be too much to handle in 2 days. I would be doing about 1k miles on Thursday, 500 on day Friday, see Ethan / Hannah on Saturday/Sunday, and finish with an all night drive on Sunday into Monday morning to get to work. Wew! I was really nervous that would be too much driving for my car back to back so I went back to the drawing board. Plan number 2 was similar but I’d add a pitstop in Richmond, VA to breakup the massive 1k drive into 2 separate 500mi drives. Easier for my car. (Even cars need breaks). Then I had the revelation that I should just fly. Waaaaay easier and I wouldn’t have to worry about adding 2000 miles to my car in a weekend. (For you non-American folks, that’s like driving from Berlin to Madrid in 2 days, then adding on 950 km later.) Renting a car and touring the eastern coast would be annoying, but necessary. Right as I was set on driving down a thought occurred to me.

The whole point of going to North Carolina was to see Ethan! So scrapped the 3rd plan and that brought about the fourth plan. I switched gears and focused on the western half of the state instead. The forth plan was scrapped as it was too difficult to make it to the border of Tennessee and back to Raleigh before I needed to give back my rental car. That brought about the final plan: plan 5. I bought my plane ticket for Thursday (because that was the cheapest day to fly), however Ethan had work until the end of Friday. So all day Thursday to Friday evening I had time to tour the boonies by myself. With things in motion I plotted out my destinations, rented a car, and booked the hotel like a regular Philmont trip.

If you don’t already know, I overthink everything. This time there were soooo many things to consider. I double checked that all the locations I wanted to see would be open. It’s one thing to see a national park, but if the visitors center is closed then I can’t get my stamp and souvenir patch to add to the collection! I wasn’t super concerned with the COVID aspect since I’m double vaxxed, not going to a major sickness hub, and generally very careful when around others anyways. One thing that really concerned me was the rental car situation. In the agreement it said “you have unlimited miles.” That seemed too good to be true so I read the entire terms and conditions word for word and it still didn’t say. 🙁 My Mom tried to reassure me I could drive around the world with this car and be fine, but I remained unconvinced. Then there was the whole ‘will the sales rep try to scam me with the insurance’ conundrum…Long story short, I eventually sorted out all of these problems and life was complete.

Thursday

On Thursday I woke up at 4:15am and got ready to drive to the airport. I was ready to go! Legendary Mom drove me to the airport at 5:15am since Uber’s in Boston cost a fortune. I was all stressed about security and Mom was like “Ah there will be nothing, it’s early.” Skeptical me still worried about it anyways. I lucked out with TSA pre-check and it only took about 10 minutes to get through. Otherwise it would’ve been a long wait because even at 5:25am the regular line was packed. Sitting in the airport was great since I got to write a bit of my blog with not much distraction. Everyone was wearing a mask, but you could pull it down if you want to eat/drink. It’s basically just like a normal flying trip. I had a lot of time to waste, but at least getting here 1 hour early has helped alleviate my worst fears. (Sudden unexpected gate change, huge line at security, no outlet seats available, or worst of all: a huge line at Dunkin’ Donuts!)

As soon as I got to the airport in Raleigh there was no time to waste. A normal person might rush to the bathroom or stand lost for a couple seconds near the gate. Not me. I needed to get my rental car pronto. Still worrying if there would be a weird car I followed the ground transportation signs to the bus and luckily for me there was one already there. Upon getting to the Hertz office I was very pleased to see only one person in line. I read on google reviews that there would be an outstandingly long wait. After finishing up all the paperwork I headed out to the car selection area.

Since I was getting the cheapest car ever I didn’t have high hopes. The first car I sat in had the smell of cigarette smoke in it and I knew if I got that one, Hertz would charge me for cleaning services even though it wasn’t me that made it smell bad. I switched cars and chose the car of my people: a Toyota [Corolla]. Eventually I continued onwards without fooling around with it too much since time was of the essence.

The first destination of the day was Kings Mountain National Military Park. I was running about 30 minutes ahead of my predicted time, which actually helped out later on. After getting just 3 hours of sleep and then going for a 2 hour early morning flight I can say I was pretty tired. Perfect for a drive cross states. Kings mountain is in South Carolina so that made it about 200 miles from Raleigh airport. (Pronounced Rahhl-lee. I got that wrong a bunch at first.) I saw a sign that read “Slow cars keep to the right” so naturally it made sense for me to stay to the left. Things went well all the way to Greensboro. That’s when I noticed something weird was happening with the car. You see sometimes the car would ding loudly for no apparent reason. Strange and kind of annoying. No real problem, so I kept going. Then about 30 miles later I found that sometimes around corners the steering wheel would magically move by itself, which was actually quite nerve racking. There I am going around a corner at 80mph with a semi on one side and a wall on the other and the steering wheel would just lock in position or even worse turn a little extra for me. That freaked me out so bad I stopped at the next rest stop to figure out what the heck was happening. I also needed to use the restroom since I skipped it at the airport. I found out from the owners manual that it’s a steering assist and lane change notifier. So basically if the car deems for itself that you are going ‘too fast’ to safely make the turn it will ding. Also it ‘helps’ you on turns sometimes because it senses you might need help to stay in the lane around certain curves. Anyways, it was super annoying so I turned it off. My troubles were gone from that point on.

Eventually after a few hours constant driving I crossed into South Carolina and went to the park. The predicted eta was 1:30pm but I managed to get there at 1pm. Woo! I was one of only 5 people there surprise surprise. The park ranger suggested the short film first since it was going to play soon so I headed in to about a 50 person room and watched it alone. Watching the film first was definitely helpful. I’ll run you through what happened at Kings Mountain real quick.

History lesson

The revolutionary war was reaching its end, however there was still quite a bit of fighting. The British in the north were getting tired of not winning so they sent some men south. After taking Charleston, SC and setting up a base they went north a bit and slaughtered a bunch of people at the battle of Waxhaws. After this terrible loss, the Continentals (good guys) go to Camden to surprise the British there, but the British had over-leveled troops and crushed the Continentals. At some point General Cornwallis (dude in charge of the British south campaign) puts Major Ferguson in charge. Ferguson an epic leader and basically tells the rebels in the backwoods of the carolinas that they either need to give up or he will burn / pillage their homes. Well, as you might expect no one liked that so they all came together at Kings Mountain to ambush the British. When Ferguson took up the challenge he found that he was outmatched and died. Lord Cornwallis probably facepalmed when he heard the news. Anyways that’s it until later. (I skipped a bunch of things to make it shorter.)

It was so incredibly hot outside that I almost did not go on the 1.5 mile hike around the battlefield. The battlefield path had a bunch of hills so that made the sun seem hotter. I got to see Ferguson’s grave next to the trail and eventually made it to the battlefield monument that is iconic to the park. The next stop was Cowpens National Battlefield, which was about 30 minutes west of Kings Mountain, so after the walk around King Mt. I headed back to the car and started driving.

When I got to Cowpens I met the rangers and we talked for a bit about the national park sites. Then I headed inside and watched the movie. It wasn’t quite as great as the one at King, but it was informative. Then I went outside to get a better picture of the tactics displayed on the battlefield by watching another short film. I thought it would be boring, but it was actually alright. History lesson round 2! A few months after the battle at Kings Mountain, Tarleton shows up at Cowpens to defeat the last of the rebels in the area. (Tarleton is the bad guy who annihilated everyone at waxhaws) Basically basically he is defeated and Cornwallis cries. By this point I was getting pretty tired and it was too late to try to make it to the Carl Sandburg Home NHS so I started back towards Charlotte, NC to get to my hotel.

Once I got to my hotel I unloaded my stuff and went to find somewhere to eat. I found a burger restaurant called The Trail House in Indian Trail, NC. I had a 78% match on google maps. Protip: don’t go on Tuesday night if you don’t like singing. They had a sing-a-long night and there was a live DJ spinning popular tracks like Beat It and Spongebob Squarepants. It is kind of weird to eat alone at a table in a packed restaurant. Later when I got back to the hotel I had planned to write about my day in the blog, but after such a long day I was exhausted and chose to fall asleep instead.

Friday

Usually on my road trips I get up before the sun, but on Friday I opted to sleep in. Since I’m not a massive fan of hotel breakfasts, I left without eating one. The plan was to leave at 8:25 am so I could get to Reed Gold Mine right when they opened and that went off without any problems. When I got there it seemed like it was just me and the staff, which was great. One of the first thing they suggested was gold panning. I wasn’t going to initially, but since I’m one of those ‘see it all’ people I bought a ticket.

Expecting nothing special I headed down to the one on one gold panning session. As we were starting, a mom and her two little boys turned up. They were pleasant so I didn’t mind. In my experience the only ‘gold’ you can find is maybe a cool grain of sand or perhaps some fools gold (fake gold). Pan master Gregg was there to meet me when I got to the gold panning station. He is an expert at the craft and said that I didn’t have that unique Boston accent. He showed me the proper technique to sifting the pan. Basically you get a pan of dirt and fill the pan with clear water until the dirt is covered. Then you turn it clockwise and then counterclockwise really fast so that you filter all the big rocks to the top and the supposed gold sinks to the bottom. Then you pour out the water and repeat this about 5 times. When your rocks have been sufficiently strained you carefully dump the vast majority out. I expected nothing but there was actually a small flake of gold! Real gold. (I asked Greg) He carefully put the speckle of gold into a vial of water that I got to keep as a souvenir. Thank you Greg (if you are reading) for being awesome!

Of course there was a movie about how the mine came to be. There was this man named John Reed and he owned some land. One day his son Conrad was out playing in the forest by the river and discovered a 17Lb nugget of gold. At the time clueless Reed used it as a doorstop until he sold it to a jeweler for about $3.50, which was about a weeks wages at the time. It turned out it was worth like $3k lol. Shortly after this Reed was walking through the woods and found another massive rock of gold. So naturally he started sifting through it all with his family and a few neighbors. He found more and more and soon became rich. Later on someone else found some quartz with a vein of gold running through it on the riverside. At some point the rest of America noticed how rich Reed was from the gold and thus the California gold rush was started. That’s basically the story, sorry to any historians that read that and find inaccuracies.

After the movie I went to check out the mine. To get to the mine I had to walk down a long unassuming boardwalk. It looked too good to be true because it ended up being covered in spider webs. Luckily I didn’t actually see any spiders. I was alone for the time being so I tried to make the most of it and push ahead into the mine. Just like Jewel Cave, it was very cold inside the mine. I went along each stop in the self guided tour and got to see how it was actually done.

It was cool to be in the same mine as the one in the film. Around stop 7 (in the tour) I heard the kids. Those little bastards threatened to ruin my quiet peaceful adventure so I headed up the stairs to the exit. The person at the front desk said that most people only went in the mine and didn’t do the other 7 stops. I almost didn’t do them either, but I looked at the time and decided “why not?” I’d say going to the rest is worth it especially if you are dying of humidity. Eventually when I made it back to my car I decided it was time to leave.

The next destination was Gravity Hill. This is supposedly a haunted place in North Carolina. I’ll tell you why! (Quick side note to skip this paragraph if you don’t enjoy tragedy) So back in 1970 ish there was a woman and her kids driving on a side road in NC and when they were almost to the main road their car broke down. Not really knowing what to do the mom puts the car in neutral and gets out to push it up the last hill before the main road. She supposedly gets about halfway up before a truck whips around the corner and clobbers her and the car. So the folklore myth says that if you go to that very hill and put your car in neutral the ghost of the mom will push your car up the hill.

I decided to test out this theory for myself and so after driving on a twisting narrow road I got to the hill. Not gonna lie the place was pretty sketchy and I could totally see how it happened back in the day. Basically there are 2 hills and there’s a blind spot between them so at any time a car could just whip around the corner and nail you while you foolishly waited in neutral for a ghost to push you up the hill. No shoulders to pull off onto, no tourist parking. This was the real deal. Nevertheless, I did it anyways! So kind of tensely I stopped the car and put it in neutral…and…it slowly started going up. I couldn’t believe it. It just started rolling up the hill!

Haha psych! Just kidding. It went backwards down the hill just like you would expect. So I thought that perhaps I just started in the wrong spot and proceeded to start over in a slightly higher position. Nope, still rolled back. I did this two more times before I decided it was too risky to continue. I was asking to get hit at that point. One thing I forgot to do was put flour on my rear bumper to see if finger marks appeared where the supposed person would push me. Oh well, onto the next destination.

After an hour of driving came the highly anticipated Worlds Largest Chest of Drawers. It was indeed massive, but there was no parking! I ended up taking the picture from a traffic light that faced the chest. It was a quick stop and then off to the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. This park actually had people at it. That tends to happen when you go to something in the city vs something in the country. Last of the blog history lesson! So Cornwallis was ready to drive north through North Carolina into Virginia, but there was a bunch of Continentals at Guilford Courthouse. Basically there was a battle and Cornwallis technically won, but he lost way way way more troops. This ultimately was the battle that paved the way for George Washington to win the war. I once again walked around the trail outside in the sweltering heat and texted Ethan to let him know I was on my way back to Raleigh as he was going to pick me up.

After Ethan picked me up at Hertz we headed back to his apartment. I got the official tour and I’ve got to say that it is quite the pad. Later that night I finally met Hannah! I felt like even though I’d never met her I had heard so much about her I might as well had. (She felt the same about me I think haha). We had barbecue and a special wine for dinner. It was nice to just see Ethan. When I left Philmont in 2019 I didn’t think I’d ever see him in person again. After dinner I broke a glass and was mortified. Ethan said to not worry, but boy did I worry! Hannah made some allergy free brownies. Ethan and Hannah have brutal allergies (from my point of view). I had the chance to try an egg free egg for the first time. All I’ll say is it’s not bad, but I will never try it again. The brownies were good though! After desert Ethan made some cocktails and I had a Jungle Bird. It was delicious! Ethan sure knows how to make a good cocktail unlike me! After staying up rather late we went to bed. I was the first person to sleep on Ethan’s leather couch. It is pretty comfy if I do say so myself. The apartment at night is like sleeping on Antarctica, but with a blanket I felt fine.

Saturday

I woke up at about 8:30 and took a shower ten minutes later. Next we went to North Carolina State university when it happened to be orientation day. All the new freshmen were moving in so it was a really busy place. And very hot: 95F! We sort of passed off as freshmen. It was exciting to get an unofficial behind the scenes tour of the campus.

The two libraries are HUGE! See there is the regular one and the scientific one. The regular one had maintenance work being done so it was really cold, which was fine since it was so hot out. Ethan spent the most time in this library staring out the window and gazing at the beautiful views. Meanwhile at the scientific library there is a robot that selects the book you want. You just type in the name and off it goes! We went up soooo many stairs at both libraries. Also the main building at the college has a really big spire (called the technology tower) out in front and inside if you stand on the top floor you can view the wooden wolf sculpture that decorates the front inside hall. Lastly we tried out the “wolf ears” basically they are these big reflective dish things, spaced about 100 ft apart, (don’t quote me on that) where if you talk into one the person in the other can hear you. Pretty neat! That tour was really cool. I even got a red NC state T-shirt from the gift shop. Thank you Ethan!

Earlier in the week Ethan was optimistic that it wouldn’t rain, but I wasn’t so sure. By the time we were done at NC state it had already started to rain. We were on our way to the next location when suddenly the clouds really opened up and the heavens were raining down on us. Hannah was raving about this iconic ice cream called the “Wolf Tracks” at the Howling Cow Dairy Education Center and Creamery. It’s called a creamery because they make the ice cream at the same place. You can even see the cows that helped make your ice cream from a window in the ice cream store. I got a Wolf Tracks (with gummy bears) which was basically chocolate and vanilla with mini Reese’s cups in it and gummy bears on top. The rain was actually so intense by the time I got my ice cream that we got soaked from the 3 second run back to the car. There was lightning and thunder and just general uncertainty about the rest of the afternoon. We decided it was best to go back to the apartment to change clothes. Nice and warm we sat down and debated what to do for dinner. The original plan was to go to “the best BBQ place in town” (the Pitt) for dinner and then try some beers at the Beer Garden with some of Ethan’s friends. We decided on burgers instead since the rain was so intense. We went to the local Food Lion to get ingredients and then made the burgers. They were delicious! After dinner we talked for a bit and then headed to bed and the couch.

Sunday

Today we woke up at about 9:30am and had breakfast. Ethan and Hannah had oatmeal and cut up apples and plums. Meanwhile I had bagel bites and a plum. Then after more chit chat we went to the apartment clubhouse to play some games. We tried out virtual reality first. I tried my hand at golf and managed a 175 yard drive (my record on virtual reality). We also tried baseball pitching. It was tough to throw strikes. I’m not sure how pitchers throw 100 mph fastballs. I only managed to max out at 52 mph before my arm started to hurt. I played soccer and that was rather tough since it was penalty shooting and there was no goal for reference. Then we went to the other games and I tried my luck at ping pong vs Ethan. I’d say I’m pretty average at it even though he beat me. It was fun. Then I played an Atari game where you drive a 2d car and try to shoot cars in front. It was really challenging. Then there was pinball! There was a ninja turtles and a marvel version. The ninja turtle one had so much going on it was hard to focus on what needed to be done. Meanwhile the marvel one was easier, but had more going on. My high score on the marvel one is 20,000,000 which didn’t seem too bad.

Next we are going to dinner, but unfortunately the taco place we were going to go to was closed, so instead we might try German food at the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium! When we got there we waited for Ethan’s friends for a bit and low and behold Katherine showed up. At this restaurant if you drink 200 beers you get a “UFO Ring”. Katherine has the prestigious honor of having a bunch of these rings which makes her a ‘beerknurd’. I have yet to reach such a title.

After Katherine arrived we ended up just ordering food. I had the Kick-Ass sandwich and a Pilsner to start. Then the d9 sour. The d9 was awesome!! I love sour beers now. I also got a heavier raspberry sour which was good too. If I didn’t like raspberries I probably wouldn’t have liked this beer. After finishing at this restaurant we headed to one of everyone’s favorite grocery stores (not a Food Lion). Sort of like a smaller, but more elite looking Whole Foods. After hardly buying anything we made our way to the Dram and Draught, (another bar in Raleigh). I tried a Lavish Living (vodka, pomegranate, lavender, lemon juice, club soda, mint). It’s basically a lemonade. Sometime in the middle of this bar time David turned up. He is another of Ethan’s legendary circle of friends. After we got rather tipsy we went back to the grocery store to buy desert. I got a cookie dough ice cream sandwich. Ethan and Hannah got some dairy free ice cream. Since it looked like more rain Katherine and [Ethan, Hannah, and I] parted ways to go home where we ate desert. We went to bed rather early at 10pm since I would be getting up at 3:30am to go to the airport.

Monday

The final day of the trip! Ethan had graciously agreed to bring me to the airport super early and we actually left earlier than anticipated at 3:40am. Unlike Mom with her kisses and goodbye hugs, Ethan shares my personal style of a fist bump and a wave sort of goodbye. Security took about 5 minutes to get through with pre-check and I made it on the plane with no issues. I got to add a sunrise plane ride stat to my airport stats log. Maybe I’ll publish that some day, but for now it stays a secret. Overall it has been a really fun trip that has sparked my excitement for traveling. Ethan and Hannah are wonderful hosts!

Stats

• Miles driven in rental car: 574mi
• Distance traveled by aircraft: 1,555mi
• National Park Stamps: 3
• Selfies with Ethan: 0