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Published: March 27th 2016
Weather was perfect started around 15 degrees and increased to about 23. Not a cloud in the sky. Got up early around 7am and had small breakfast of Special K with berries, strawberry greek yoghurt a banana and OJ. Left around 8.30am and we headed off on route 526 and then route 17 on our way to Wilmington, North Carolina. Still not totally used to Mr. Tom Tom. It does give clear directions but I like to see the overview of the route being taken as this morning it seemed to be taking a slightly route different to the one I envisaged. Nothing major as we just used the Google Maps on Kerry’s new smart phone to show the route and make sure we did not get lost ! 292 km total driving today for around 3.5 hours. Our first stop today was just short of Myrtle Beach. Since we had a light breakfast we planned on having brunch at Cracker Barrel. I was super keen to try out there Blueberry Maine Pancakes. Only $7.99 for 3 and they were yummy, Kerry had some French Toast with strawberries. This time we tried the puzzle on the table. It is a game
where you have a triangle shaped board where you put pegs that look like golf tees into holes. There are 15 holes and 14 pegs, so one hole starts empty. The challenge is to jump over a peg to a spare hole and then remove the one you jumped over. A bit like checkers. The instructions said if you leave one peg you were a genius, leave two you’re purty smart, leave three and you’re just plain dumb. Leave four or more you’re you don’t want to know. I went first and left four pegs (ouch). Kerry tried and left five ! You would not believe it but whilst Kerry went to the rest rooms I became a genius and retired immediately. As we drove North towards Myrtle Beach we were simply amazed at what we were seeing. First it was the Putt Putt courses. I think we saw at least 10 of these. Next was the Fireworks shops, almost as many again. Thirdly it was Caravan sales. Now back home we have one at Tweed Heads which might have say 20 vans on display. Well here they must sell a lot as we saw about 10 different lots and
some of these lots would have had over 200 vans on display ! We would have seen over 2000 caravans for sale in a 5km stretch of road. And then there was the Golf Carts. Well as an avid golfer, I was impressed. There would have been around a dozen places to buy carts here. I am sure you get a bargain with this amount of competition. I’ve heard that North Carolina has a lot of golf courses which probably explains why. We then headed to the coast road and saw all the buildings on the beachfront at Myrtle Beach. I must admit I thought it might be like Surfers Paradise back home, but on this occasion I was disappointed. The quality of accommodations looked very dated and I think we have them well covered. Not much farther up the road and we crossed another bridge and we were in North Carolina. Passed a number of golf course before arriving in Wilmington which is located a few miles inland on the Cape Fear River. Wilmington has deep history dating back to Civil War times when it was the largest city in North Carolina. We arrived here about 1.30pm and our
B & B was not ready until 4pm, so we headed to downtown about 1km away and parked the car on Chestnut Street across from The Cooper Penny bar. We paid $2- worth of quarters in the meter and decided to go on the Wilmington Trolley Tour starting at 2pm.We wandered around a few shops on our way down to where it started from. The trolley tour only cost $11- each and went for 45 minutes. It was nowhere near as comfortable or professional as we had in Atlanta or Savannah but it did the job to show us another set of grand mansions and some other historical areas of town. We are only here for 1 night so the trolley ride is ideal. We then went for a drive around town and I took my first Youtube Video which is attached here
Afterwards we went into a souvenir shop and I was excited to find a North Carolina licence plate in the first shop for our Bali Hut display. We then had a really nice Latte Coffee from specialized coffee shop in the Cotton Exchange complex before we got back in the car to head to Bellamy Mansion
on Market Street. We did a tour from 4-5pm which cost $10- each. This place was built in 1861 I recall and it was an opulent building of it’s time and still is today (total restored). Amazing to see the detail craftsmanship of this era and the adjoining slave quarters. Our guide was super passionate telling us stories about the families who lived here as we toured through the building. It’s amazing in that from the front of the building it only looks like a 2 storey structure but is in fact 4 storeys as the design of the verandah concealed the ground floor used as working areas for the slaves (kitchen, laundry etc.)and the roof partially conceals the upstairs children’s bedrooms. In only 1 hour we felt as though we got a real understanding of how the Bellamy family lived 150 years ago. It was excellent experience to deepen our knowledge of the civil war period. Our B & B was only 2 blocks away so off to check in where we met Scott our host who was unlike what I expected from email communications. Dinner we went to Elijah’s Restaurant on the Cape Fear waterfront at the suggestion
of Scott. It was a bit windy but still pretty nice to have alfresco dining. As we are on the Atlantic coast, seafood is king here so we shared a calamari dish for starts then I had cod fish & chips and Kerry had a Chowder Soup. We had enough room for dessert menu and Kerry was excited to see Key Lime Pie on the menu. It was delicious. Total dinner bill was $44.00 and $5- tip. We took some nice photos trying out the Sunset settings on the little Panasonic digital camera. Only staying for 1 night so it was good we got several thing done here this afternoon. Tomorrow we head inland towards the city of Charlotte, North Carolina which is home to the Carolina Panthers NFL team and the Charlotte Hornets NBA team.
