In My Mind I'm Going to Carolina....

Last week, Marilyn and I took off for a brief trip to North Carolina (and, apropos to the title of this post, we actually did cross the James Taylor Bridge at one point in our journey) to visit our long time friends, Sandy and Gary Carroll, who retired and moved to Southern Pines, NC several years back. It was a most enjoyable trip.

Sandy and Gary have a beautiful home in a golf course community called Long Leaf in Southern Pines. Here is the view, literally, from their back porch:

Not bad, huh? This is the first hole at Long Leaf, which I double bogeyed!

We spent much of our three days in Southern Pines catching up with Sandy and Gary, enjoying their hospitality, eating at some very fine restaurants, and touring the area, including a visit to the famous Pinehurst Golf Resort. It was at Pinehurst's Number 2 course where Payne Stewart won the US Open in 1999 a few months before he died in a plane crash. A statue of Stewart commemorating that win stands just off the 18th green at the #2 Course.

As referenced above, I also played with Gary and two of his playing partners at Long Leaf on Thursday. It was a fun course to play and an enjoyable round. I even played fairly well, carding a 53-50 for the day.

On Friday morning, we left Southern Pines, and drove to Durham to visit our niece Bonny and her husband, Michael and daughters Mara and Sophie. It was a short but delightful visit. On Friday evening, we went to the "American Tobacco District" in downtown Durham. This is an area of old tobacco factories and warehouses that have been reclaimed and redeveloped into offices, retail space, restaurants, and condos surrounding a very cool public gathering space, and beneath an old Lucky Strike water tower, where we saw a very cool outdoor concert. The picture below will give you some idea of what a neat venue it is.

It was an all together delightful experience to get together with old friends and distant family members over the four days we were there.

The trip through North Carolina was also of interest to an old TV fan, because you pass near and through the town of Mt. Airy, NC, which is famed for being the birthplace of Andy Griffith. While we did not stop and visit Mt. Airy, you can surmise from the signs you see along the way on the Andy Griffith Parkway that the area is milking the Griffith connection for all it's worth. The famous fictional town of Mayberry is said to be based upon Mt. Airy, and one of the geographic landmarks is Pilot Mountain, from which I am sure Mayberry's neighboring town of Mt. Pilot was derived.

While driving through this area, we saw signs for the following businesses: Mt. Pilot Storage, Mayberry Camp Grounds, Mayberry Shazzam Go-Carts, and Aunt Bea's Gentlemen's Club.

OK, I made that last one up, but the others are real.

On the way home, we pulled off at a scenic overlook, something that we never do, and got a close up look at the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virgina. It was quite a sight, as you can see below.

Most of the drive is spent driving through the state of West Virgina, and I will put aside all West Virgina jokes and tell you that it is beautiful country. I can only imagine how gorgeous it might be two or three weeks from now when all the leaves turn to their fall colors.

The only negative for the entire trip came when we were within shouting distance of home. On Saturday afternoon, just north of Canonsburg on I-79, we hit road construction and it then took us 64 minutes - yes, that is 1 hour and 4 minutes - to drive the SIX MILES between Canonsburg and Bridgeville. We are grateful to PENNDOT for making it such a pleasure to drive in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

And I will close by giving a shout out to one of the great inventions of the era - our Garmin GPS system. That thing took us on our 1,000+ mile round trip journey without missing a turn. How does it do that? We both were lamenting how much we would have loved to have had such a gadget while working and traveling the hinterlands back in the day.

But as with all trips, it is always good to be back home.