Tar Heels Homeward Bound

A friend expressed surprise that Maureen and I were still blogging (talking?), even though we’ve been on holiday in North Carolina for a couple of weeks but we’re a dedicated duo and America is pretty good at Wi-Fi.

It seems to be bloody useless at recycling – or we were hopeless at tracking down the requisite bins – and as plastic-free July looms in the UK, perhaps we should be switching from upping our recycling efforts to ensuring that we stop using Himalayan-sized mountains of plastic packaging in the first place.  Goodness gracious me, I can hear the long-suffering loyal reader sigh, she’s off again, here comes another rant.  Well, no, not really but I have found the whole thing unutterably depressing.

You’d have thought digs like this would make provision to reduce our environmental footprint.

An American pal who would not dream of NOT recycling was sure that “an earthy crunchy town like Asheville” must offer recycling and suggested Googling it.  Trouble is, Asheville is nearly an hour’s drive from where we’re staying and our rustic digs didn’t have a single word on separating plastic, glass, aluminium, paper and cardboard.  Apparently, in some rural areas recycling bins can be found at fire stations but even I am not going to be driving around with the car filled with rubbish looking for the proper bin.  This would-be eco-warrior has her limits.  Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

What’s a girl (?!!) to do…

At my advanced age I wasn’t sure I could get my tum in or out of the tub safely, so I used it for storage.

Brian, who is a recycling cynic (with good reason I’m beginning to fear), is, however, fond of a road trip and likes driving, especially when he can set the satnav to go off grid and avoid interstates, tolls and the like.  The lanes he really loves are meandering rural ones taking you through parts of the state that not many North Carolinians will have travelled. We crossed the entire state, from near Swansboro in the south east to near Asheville in the west, not too far from Tennessee and the Appalachians.  (Think I also mentioned the Blue Ridge Mountains but looking more closely it’s more like the Great Smoky Mountains and Bald Mountains.)  The journey took a tad longer than nine hours, with one longish stop (for homemade breakfast pancakes at The Farmhouse Cafe and Bakery in Newton Grove) and two shorter ones.

Just like in the UK going north/south (or vice versa) is more straightforward than going east/west and having been instructed to avoid Charlotte, our gizmo took us on an early higgledy-piggledy adventure through little country lanes, made more mysterious because of the early morning fog.  We just hoped we wouldn’t meet any of the monster trucks that are a speciality over here or super-sized farm machinery looming out of the gloom.  Not every driver gave a toss about headlights so our driver had to be wide awake and fully alert from the off.  Fortunately, he’d had his breakfast and coffee early.

No clue where we are but time on photo says 0732 and we started at 0700. Probably gone about 10 miles, given the main road avoidance strategy.  Not every road was this straight.

In times past, you used to study the map before your journey but now you tap in the instructions and follow the machine until it tells you to stop.  Brian has it all linked up to his hearing aids so he doesn’t need any helpful advice from his passengers; in fact I’m not sure he hears any of the advice coming his way from Mo (in the back because it’s more comfortable for her ailing neck and shoulder) and me (in the front trying not to interfere – insert whatever emoji seems appropriate).  Specs were needed to keep track of where we were because a lot of the places were in tiny print – if in print at all.

Our Rand McNally Road Atlas, 2012 version, invaluable for getting a proper feel for where we were.

There seem to be more churches than there are places in this neck of the woods, mostly some variety of Baptist but there was Maysville Methodist Church, White Oak Missionary Baptist, Maple Grove Baptist, Lamie’s Chapel Christian Church, Rivermont Holiness Club, Deep Run Church of God, Zion Methodist Mount Olive, Eureka Christian Church, Pentecostal Free Will, to mention but a few and on and on.  Plus a sign or two saying “America Needs To Repent”.  Well, there was no shortage of places to stop by and confess all.  The first – and only – Catholic Church we spotted was in Asheville and it was Korean Catholic.  Think there was a Korean Methodist just up the road.  Bible Belt anybody?

This is Hadnot Creek Primitive Baptist Church. Meetings 1st and 3rd Sunday 11:00 AM. We arrived on a Monday and left on the Saturday.

On Monday the 24th of June, I hit 70 and celebrated by opening all the birthday cards I’d brought with me and having a cup of Irish breakfast tea on the verandah, wearing the birthday jim-jams given to me by a kind friend who wasn’t enamoured of my rudimentary running repairs on my previous pair – they wouldn’t have been appearing in any photos shoots.  Thanks to everybody for their kind wishes and thanks to the Naughties for the big party we Noughts had at WHGC on Friday 7th June, the day before I flew to Dublin for the start of this trip.  It was ace.  Apologies but I don’t seem to have any decent pictures of the occasion – there must be some somewhere.

Many of my family and friends will be sick and tired of this pic but I’m ecstatic. Three score and ten.  Who’d have thought it!

As well as churches there are oodles of craft breweries here and we rooted out a few.  Our driver had to be very abstemious but he could well be back – with a chauffeuse.  Slainte.

Mo and B on the way in to our favourite (and closest) pub/brewery, the Whistlehop, an old railway engine and carriage, in Fairview.  Thanks for a wonderful trip for a special birthday.

And, finally, this is where all the rubbish will be going.  Note the chain but do you really think it would worry any self-respecting scavenging bear or crittur?

A black bin to deter a black bear??  Or just to stop it blowing away in the mountain air?