Par for the Coast

We made it coast to coast planning to coast up the Carolinas. A veer to Charleston, which like Savannah, has a beautiful, historic core (and again like Savannah built on a not beautiful past). South Carolina especially Charleston is known for a generalized rotten egg smell known as pluff, from the swampy bacterial (pluff) mud.  We walked around Charleston and enjoyed the neighborhoods, but didn’t notice or get to enjoy the pluff.

However, we had been camping for a few days. To pluff’s credit, it may have smelled better than us, which explained the ample social distancing we received as we toured the town.

Myrtle Beach introduced us to the new phase of the trip….. “off-season”.  We were well versed in “off season” . Along the Croatian coast we never got to go swimming, but we also (fortunately) missed the crowds https://chosenfugue.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/croatia-1-dubrovnik-on-the-rocks/ and in Cyprus we never got to enjoy the closed themed bars and restaurants, but really we would not have gone to or enjoyed them. https://chosenfugue.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/cyprus-the-good-the-bad-and-its-mostly-ugly-part-1/ , https://chosenfugue.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/paphos-the-redemption-of-cyprus/,

But coming from always-on-season-California, where all ice cream shops stay open all year, we did not think this same cessation of commerce actually happened here in the US of A., but it does.  It all worked out because the beach does not close. We stayed in a small family run hotel, although the furniture/flooring had not been updated since 1965, there was a balcony overlooking the ocean which is Patricia’s criteria for a good room (plus exterior corridors which is our Covid criteria and generally requires avoidance of chains). 

The beach is all season, so a walk on the beach where weirdly all the shells were the same grayish color and super super thick.

Onward to a state campground in Carolina Beach which was probably one of the nicest sites because it allowed Magellan, the Beast and Eureka some play time (yes Papou theater has gone on the road).

For the uninitiated, see below for some past episodes of Papou theater.

We first avoided the Carolina Beach boardwalk not really wanting  a repeat of Myrtle Beach, but the next day we ventured to Carolina Beach to find a beautiful, sunny, bird filled beach with colorful shells and no miniature golf (goff?)

We crossed into NC the next day, driving through Wilmington, NC. Wilmington had some Southern charm, less than Charleston or Savannah but we may have hit the wall on cutesy Southern towns, plus we had trouble finding parking, so Wilmington was a drive thru.   

So far, weather has been great in the South, pretty much no day much below 70, which allowed us to stay Covid safe by staying outside much of the time, but winter was coming and we were pretty disgusted with the frequent roadside Trump signs so we decided to shelf our coastal cruise and get boosters at Maryland/Virginia Kaiser.  Appointments made,  we shifted from the coast, turned left and drove through inland North Carolina. 

Another stroke of luck when we found the Neuse River Nature Center and Campground, in Kinston, NC with a name and website far more standard then what we found, what we found was pretty memorable. 

We entered, drove past a very, very dated playground (must have been built the same time as our hotel in Myrtle Beach), the “nature center” a one room mobile unit with three outdoor cages with and without birds in various stages of rehab. One cage had an owl, one a vulture and one, was empty but still marked “red tail hawk” cage. We called Ron our campground host to direct us and he came puttering up in his golf cart (do parks provide these carts or is it BYOC?)  Ron directed us to the perfect spot, down by the river, in the “overflow” lot (vs the more permanent campground village) so he would only need to charge us $10. 

Ron is a Vietnam vet and said he found his happy place here, a treatment for his PTSD by orienting travelers to all that the Neuse River Campground offered and sharing his “home” (aka campground) with all who needed a place. As we left, Ron told us we were always welcomed “back home”. 

Onward to a still open off-season campground in Triangle Virginia, Prince William National Forest, location selected because it was still open and it was 20 minutes to Kaiser Woodbridge for our booster.  The campground was beautiful, lacked consistent internet and no water or electrical at our site. So pretty par for the course. 

Also weirdly, when we drove in to Prince William Forest a sign said “campground full”, although the two nights we were here it essentially was us and maybe 4 other people in a large around 80 site, three loop campground. Off season, no reason to be fully open.  But there were clean hot showers, which we had to ourselves.