Sweet Carolina

A bum saw me being a tourist and taking this photo of downtown Raleigh.

56k dial-up warning! I have many photos I want to share to capture my experience through North Carolina. Best state or bestest state?

Roanoke Island

Following my successful camping trip, I treated myself to Dairy Queen using a gift card I received as payment from one of Gramma's friends back in Pittsburgh for diagnosing her TV woes - it was finally time for her to upgrade from her CRT television. I tried to refuse payment, insisting I didn't actually do anything, but it's hard for me to turn down a cookie dough and Reese's Blizzard™.

I drove along the Outer Banks until Roanoke Island. Not the typical OBX destination, but I had had my share of beach recently in Virginia. It did look like a beautiful seasonal vacation spot though, with beach houses upon beach houses on BOTH sides of the highway, inland to the sound and outland to the ocean. As for Roanoke, it isn't even a place most people have heard about. I had been fascinated with the island ever since grade school when I learned that it was among the first places the English settled when colonizing America. Shipment of supplies from England were delayed to the colony, and when the shipment finally arrived, there were no traces of the colonists at all, except for the mythical word "CROATOAN" carved into a tree.

Entrance to a garden near the museum grounds

It is one of history's great unsolved mysteries. Many theories have been put forward as to what happened to the colony, including a lost battle with native Americans, a devastating hurricane, and abandoning the colony to travel westward when supplies didn't arrive on time. My favorite theory is one proposed in Stephen King's TV miniseries, Storm of the Century, in which the antagonist demon claims to have wiped out the colony when they wouldn't choose which child to sacrifice to be his heir.

A clearing out of the woods

Today Roanoke Island looks like a really nice family town, and the island is deceptively large. I toured the museum of their history and took a little hike from the museum to the shore. They host a famous "longest-running symphonic outdoor drama" called The Lost Colony which I would have loved to have seen, but it only shows in the summer. The play proposes their preferred solution to the disappearance of the colony - no spoilers!

At the end of my hike, I found the lost colony off in the distance.

Raleigh / Durham

I was hosted for two nights between Raleigh and Durham by the sister, Sam, and her boyfriend, Tony, of one of my Louisville friends, Zach. Although I barely got to spend any time with them, they were very helpful hosts and welcomed me stay a second night even though I initially only asked for one: there was a lot more to do in Raleigh/Durham than I anticipated!

A view within Pullen Park

Raleigh struck first blood when I tripped on uneven sidewalk at Pullen Park, scraping my knee and opening my finger. +1 ailments. They hit second too when they became the first city on my tour with a homeless guy that was able to sucker me out of a dollar. I walked around downtown some, deciding to save the two big, free museums right in the center of the city for the next day when I had more time. I traveled the twenty minutes to Durham to see the Duke campus and Sarah P. Duke Gardens, then get dinner.

Not another one!

The capitol building

The Duke Gardens are serene and inspiring. They are split into four large sections: a typical gardens, an historic gardens, native plants, and Asian plants. If you just casually walk the grounds like intended, you can get through in about an hour. If you take every twist and turn and treat it as a museum like I wanted to but didn't have the time, you could be there all day reading about each type of plant species.

Unbelievably, an old friend from Tufts spotted me walking through the gardens. Little did I know that Mike Hawley is wrapping up his political science Ph.D. at Duke this spring. He was a fellow journalist at The Primary Source. I say sincerely that there was nobody at Tufts I respected as a conservative thinker more than him. The number of informal debates he has trounced me on are untold. As he was in a rush, we arranged a time the next day during his office hours to discuss everything I wanted.

Although there is much we disagree on philosophically, we share mostly the same views towards today's political world, we both casted effectual protest votes in the 2016 election, and we both have a disgust of flying the confederate flags. He raised the interesting point that confederate flags not only stand for the ideas for which I have blasted it, but also for high treason in the form of secession, and so it is strange to see it endorsed by the "patriotic" set of Americans. Mike gave me some talking points for my eventual political post.

Thought it was a honey bee at first!

I'm no bird expert, but I believe that's the tufted titmouse.

Very near to the gardens is Duke's west campus, which has the famous chapel and most buildings of interest. When you turn the corner or walk up Chapel Drive and first see the chapel, it shocks you. It really is the representative building of Duke it deserves to be. What I liked most about Duke is its architecture as a whole, not just that of the chapel. Every building shares the same stone architecture style, and it's pleasing, making the whole campus distinct and dazzling. My main complaint about Tufts, besides dorm showerheads being too low, was the lack of a unifying architectural style and upkeep of building interiors. Duke lies on the total opposite end of the spectrum.

Duke University Chapel

Within the chapel. Two grand organs up ahead on either side and one behind.

Every single building shares the architecture. Even curbs and half-walls.

The next day Tony, as Duke's Athletic Director I think is his title, went the extra mile in hosting me and gave me a tour some of Duke's athletic buildings. He took me backstage and showed me some rooms outsiders would not normally be able to access, everything short of Coach K's office. Even got to see Duke's fencing facilities, which Tony admitted most people don't ask about.

Courtside at Cameron Indoor Stadium

Learning Duke's X's and O's

Duke's NCAA Championship trophies

I doubled back to Raleigh to go through their North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and their North Carolina Museum of History. I was disappointed in the natural sciences museum at first, looking like it was mostly geared toward children, then discovered there is a whole other half across a sky bridge. It covered rather thoroughly everything from the Precambrian to the Cenozoic eras. There are exhibits on weather, animals (some living and many, many modeled), and scientific methods, mostly focused in the North Carolina region. I found myself wishing that parents would take more of an interest in what their young children were enthusiastic over. I had never noticed before such criminality. I get it, parenting is tough and exhausting, but if you're taking your daughter to a science museum, let her be excited when she finds giant microbe models instead of ushering her along! I saw many sad cases of that example.

Public space between Raleigh's two primary museums

How many animal models can you find?

I flew through the history museum in an hour due to time constraints. It also wasn't that big as compared to the science museum. It featured prominent exhibits on the World Wars, the civil rights movement, and sports. And you can bet it made North Carolina's case at being more relevant in the history of flight than Ohio.

Hi Orville!

Reconstruction of a 1920's drugstore

Piedmont Restaurant, Durham, NC

In Durham I had definitely the best dinner of my trip and one of the best dinners of my life. I only went to this place because I searched for "piedmont" while in Pittsburgh, trying to find where the stuffy haute couture restaurant I had dined at many years ago was located. Google Maps found not Pittsburgh's LeMont (I was mistaken on the name), but some obscure Piedmont in Durham, NC. Knowing I would eventually get to Durham, I saved the restaurant to my map. Coming in under a 4 star rating, I thought I might be wasting my money not eating at a premier Raleigh/Durham restaurant, but who knows. Gotta leave the beaten path once in a while.

And boy did I find a gem! Piedmont features a menu that changes almost daily with $30 dishes portioned to just the right size. According to the older wino friend I made seated next to me at the bar, the wine list is expertly paired. The general manager Crawford (New Orleans native) and head chef John both took an interest in me and my trip once we started talking, recommending other must-go restaurants for my trip.

Completely irrespective to their cordiality, my rabbit main course was perfect. It was my first time having rabbit as the centerpiece meat (only had it one other time, in Louisville as an appetizer) and I wouldn't want it prepared any other way. I wish I were better at talking about food to describe for you the joy I got out of this. On the sides were a liver, turnip, and egg pȃté concoction. Though I'm not one for liver, still feels like old person food, every bite enraptured me.

And then, perhaps best of all, John treated me to a whole complimentary second main course, featuring steak. He wanted me to try a new preparation that could make it into a future menu. I told him neither my palette nor my words are sophisticated enough to give the most detailed feedback, but he looked for my take anyway.

I've never had that happen before. Southern hospitality at work. I'll remember this dinner the rest of my life. By all means, if you're near Durham, allow the Piedmont restaurant to dine you for a night.

Greensboro

The words that entered my internal thoughts when I saw Greensboro were "decently sized small city". It's well kept but noticeably lacking in event spaces. They are proud of their hop scotch art up and down their sidewalks. And in contrast to Raleigh, the homeless are very passive. None of the three I came across asked me for money or change, they were just saying hi!

I stumbled upon a really good casual Greek place away from downtown that actually lived up to the ratings. It could compete with the halal vendors of NYC. Only problem though is the cashier didn't believe I could handle spice. I asked her to make my order as spicy as possible, so I saw she wrote "very spicy" on the receipt she passed to the chefs. When she asked me later how the food was, I told her excellent but could have been spicier. She said in earnest that she should have given me "very very spicy" - that was an option!?!? How much clearer can I get than asking to make it as spicy as possible?

Winston-Salem

Winston-Salem is a sprawling city that seems to hold many businesses, with an arts section and a nice centralized restaurant and bar area. It won't make it to the top of my job hunt, but it was very impressive for a city that I had never heard of until two months ago. The restaurant area was parisian, in the sense of how many tables lined the street densely; everybody sits outside.

WFU quad

I discovered while driving around that Wake Forest University is located here, and that it is called Wake Forest for a reason: the grounds are cut out of a huge forest. The campus was ok, but I thought it lacked character - maybe being totally surrounded by trees is character enough for some. The other downside of the university was that I saw very little off campus within walking distance.

Cutting edge town back in the day!

There's a section of the city called Old Salem, trying to be a Williamsburg type of town. The problem is it didn't feel very old, and it is extremely small, like one block small. There are some actors in 18th century garb giving tours of certain old-fashioned buildings, like the bakery, tavern, and farm. The whole town is set up as a tour, geared toward a field day for elementary school kids.

You start to learn a few tricks when you are living out of your car. You find gyms to shower in and do the rest of your hygienic routine. Winston-Salem's LA Fitness featured a very old, very naked man in the locker room that asked me to hang up his coat. Trick #1: don't get a locker anywhere near an old man. 

You also learn the best places to safely sleep in your car with the windows rolled down. Hospitals are prime locations: hospital parking is secured and lit, thieves feel bad for you, and staff is forgiving of people sleeping in cars (usually visiting somebody under the hospital's care). Trick #2: don't park so high up the garage to be away from traffic that you put yourself next to the medevac helicopter pad with a helicopter that inevitably takes off at 4am.

Wrap Up

North Carolina has skyrocketed to my favorite state in the country. There's so much going on here. Beaches and mountains. Less Confederacy memorabilia than Virginia. And I haven't even gotten to Charlotte yet! Well, I'm there as I write this post, but you'll get my thoughts on it later.

Root Beer

Aviator Draft

I think the Aviator Root Beer can only be found on draft, which is why I don't have a good bottle picture. And bleh, nothing desirable to be found. The very first moment it hit my tongue, I thought it was alcoholic in some way. A couple more sips and I realized the flavor I tasted was that of black licorice. I could not enjoy this root beer. Didn't even finish it. 2 stars.

On Repeat

Song: Men Without Hats - Pop Goes the World

Album: none; I have almost exclusively played that Men Without Hats song. 29 times total in 3 days. I'm serious when I say this music is on repeat. I can really listen to a single song for hours on end. This song in particular is apparently the second most well known from Men Without Hats, yet I had never heard of it before. I guess I only knew one of their songs. Pop Goes the World snuck its way onto my 80's radio when I was binging on 80's music, and I was instantly hooked. My now-ex girlfriend used to call me a pop-tart, mostly for my dancing to Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry, but I think this song works too.

Next Up: Charlotte

Foreseeable: Possibly Greeneville, then Columbia, Charleston, Hilton Head