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Visit Dates: October 3-4, 2019

I’ve been delayed on posting for this great trip. No sooner had we returned from our trip than we hosted some of Carla’s friends from high school. When we returned from that jaunt, I discovered my uncle and aunt suffered separate health issues so we hurried down to Arizona to check in on them. Here’s hoping I can get back on track and finish posting about our trip without too many more interruptions.

As you may remember from my previous post our trip required some changes due to Hurricane Dorian when wiped out much of Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks. As part of the change we stopped in Wilmington, North Carolina for the night.

HOT; it was so very HOT AND HUMID. Even though it was October the heat index (temperature plus humidity) was over 105°. We were drawn to anything that might be cool.

We tried to venture but, while it was almost tolerable near the water, it was insufferable once we walked into town. So we stayed near the water.

Across the water from our hotel the battleship North Carolina is docked in a cove on the Cape Fear River where it serves as a museum. We thought about going to visit it but the thought of going into a big metal box on such a hot day was, well, unthinkable. We settled for viewing it from across the way.

Once it got dark it started to cool down and we ventured downtown to the Dixie Grill for dinner.

After dinner we walked the boardwalk along the Cape Fear River where it was fairly cool – relatively speaking. On our stroll we came across a street artist creating a Sweetgrass Palmetto Rose. (This image is a frame from a video.)

Sweetgrass baskets are quite popular down in North Carolina. Along our drives on the two-lane highways we saw a number people selling the baskets from their vans or front yards. Carla bought one from this artist where we have it wound around our small wine rack. I put it in a vase for this photo.

In my next post I’ll be writing about our visit to Charleston, South Carolina which was quite educational.