Day 13 - Wilmington & Carolina Beach

October 14, 2019

Today we went to the beach, but first the photos I promised yesterday. Yesterday when we left the campground we got on I-95 for maybe 30 miles before getting off on state highways. Within the first mile we saw this outfit on a frontage road running along I-95.

What made this interesting was that about 3 hours later, many miles down a state highway, we pulled off into an empty parking lot for lunch. As we were sitting in the trailer eating, watching the traffic go by, this outfit went buy us.

One of many cotton fields we saw as we traveled yesterday.

It rained here from about 11PM until 6AM. Nothing torrential, just a steady rain most of the time. A little thunder but no wind.

Today we drove down to Carolina Beach, about 17 miles south of us, to wade in the ocean. Carolina Beach is a town/beach on a peninsula south of Wilmington. (Traffic here is terrible. Mid-morning on a weekday!. We can't imagine what it must be like during the summer months. This will certainly be my last trip to the East Coast, FAR to many people.

This was a pedestrian street we passed on the 2 block walk from the parking lot to the beach. 75% of the tourist shops are closed for the season.

 This boardwalk ran along the top of the dunes that separate the beach from the town. We saw no evidence of damage from the hurricane.

The was a boardwalk out to the beach, a branch off the one in the above photo. Kathy normally lags behind me when walking, but not on the way out to the oceanfront.

Checking out the waves.

 Note the wet legs of her pants. Some of the waves were quite large. I took some video with my phone but most of the files sizes are to large to post.

 Asked a beachwalker to help us out by taking a photo.

It felt hot at the beach with the bright sun, but the water was cool as it washed over our feet. The high was supposed to be 77. It felt a lot hotter than that, not stifling but uncomfortable warm, even with  the cool breeze from the ocean.

On the way back from the beach we stopped at Jimbo's (Best Breakfast House in Town) for lunch. Kathy had liver and onions. I had eggs with a couple of pieces of pork tenderloin. Both were good.  The 2 pieces of tenderloin must have weighed 10-12 ounces.

Then it was back to the campground for the rest of the day. The traffic is just to bad to bother fighting it.

We decided not to stop at Myrtle Beach, just don't want to fight the city traffic. Tomorrow we plan to travel to Charleston, SC and spend a few nights there before heading on to Savannah, GA.

PS. One of the days highlights was getting pulled over by a cop. Kathy was driving when he pulled us over. He stopped us because we didn't have license plate, at least not one on the back. He never heard of such a dumb idea as Missouri's requiring that license plate on 3/4 ton trucks, and bigger, be put on the front. He was quite nice. He must have called for back-up as he was pulling us over because within a few minutes of stopping us a State Trooper also pulled into the parking lot. I was kind of glad I didn't happen to be carrying, and that I didn't have a pistol in the console as I searched for the truck registration.

This is the best I could do with video. The waves were substantial, not dangerously so. And they were noisy.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.