Wednesday, 19 July 2023
So today didn't start out auspiciously. (Spoiler alert: it didn't end much better than it started.) I'd only just gotten up and was still in the bathroom when Dext suddenly wanted a whole lot of attention, which he never does. That was my first clue that something was really wrong.
I found he'd thrown up all he'd eaten yesterday, which of course made a huge mess all over the floor (which isn't very big to begin with). He'd messed up the cabin floor, the water dish, the dog beds, the step. I kept the kittens stuck in their crate while I cleaned it up to keep this bad situation from getting much worse.
Then on our first walk, his stool was completely liquid. I really hope all this was a reaction to garbage he ate yesterday before I could stop him, but I thought about stopping at a grocery store for more chicken and rice, just in case.
And after I'd located him, it was almost 9:00 before we got on the road.
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| today's route. |
I passed a ruined brick building with a historical marker titled "Ida Yarn Mill." For a welcome change, this marker had some actual detail. It said this had been the 2nd oldest textile manufacturing plant in the county, it had been powered by water wheels, it had been named in memory of the owner's daughter who died, and it operated from 1882 to 1939.
A little way farther along the road I came to another historical marker, this one back to NC's apparent policy of need-to-know. It said only that in March 1865, Sherman's Army entered the state near here on its "path of destruction" from Georgia.
"The rest of the story" is that Sherman, after capturing Savannah, was ordered to take his men by sea to shore up the troops in Virginia. Sherman convinced Grant to let him continue his "march" through the Carolinas to destroy military sites and to further demoralize the Southerners. Before he reached this historical marker area, his troops had conquered Columbia, SC's capital, and from here they went on to defeat Confederate Gen. Johnston at Bentonville, which is southeast of Raleigh and northeast of Fayetteville. Johnston's surrender came 2 weeks after Lee's at Appomattox and essentially spelled the end of the war.
Both yesterday and today a lot of oncoming traffic included trucks carrying pre-formed swimming pools. Today I saw the first one that actually had escort vehicles, which made me wonder why none of the others had them, because they sure took up a lot of room on the road.
Today we once again had to deal with the AC not coming out of the AC vents but instead coming out on the floor and on the windshield. It's like the only setting it understands is the one for heat - though thank goodness we're getting cold air. But when either Dext or I has to sit in direct sunshine, we'd really like it to be working properly. But it's been doing this for years and I haven't wanted to pay someone to figure out how to fix it.
Richmond County said it was the "Proud Home of Rockingham Dragway." And since I don't have access to Facebook, all I can tell you is that their racetrack opened in 1970 for auto racing.
North Carolina has a town named Hamlet, and I wondered about the origin of that name and looked it up. In the late 1800s a few houses built in this area, then called Sandhills, were joined by a woolen and saw mill. The mill owner mentioned to his friends that back in his native England a small collection of houses like those here would be called a hamlet. And the name stuck. I sort of like Sandhills, but at least they didn't name it after Shakespeare's character. Today it has a population of more than 6,000.
I crossed the Pee Dee River near Lilesville.
Near Wadesboro I saw a billboard that said, "Anson County: 46.83% Vaccinated." I was curious about that and learned that as of the end of December, this is the percentage here that were fully vaccinated against Covid. And I learned that it's one of the lowest percentages among all NC counties. Which means I'm glad I wasn't planning to spend any time here. I'm still spooked about catching that illness because of it being a respiratory disease, and because people are still dying from it.
At the town of Peachland, I saw a sign for a dentist that said, with appropriate illustrations: "Chickens don't have teeth. Don't be a chicken."
I'm seeing lots of mimosa, oleander and crepe myrtle blooming. Really nice.
Near Marshville I saw a sign saying: "North Carolina is too pretty to trash."
At Wingate I saw a historical marker titled "Wingate University." It's almost getting funny. This one said, in its entirety: "Baptist. Est. as Wingate School in 1896; a junior college, 1923; became a senior college in 1977. University since 1995. Campus one block north." These days, it has more than 3,600 students in a variety of liberal arts fields. It separated completely from the Baptist church in 2009. One of its alumni is the founder of the Family Dollar stores.
I passed the turn for Jesse Helms Park, a name that brought back unpleasant memories. Jesse Helms was a senator from North Carolina from 1973 until 2003, the longest serving US senator in the state's history. He was extremely conservative in his views and used very rough language when touting those views - e.g. homosexuality was a "filthy, disgusting practice" and people with AIDS "deserved what they got" because there's "not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." And so forth. Apparently he was a really nice man if you agreed with him (though he never knew his beloved granddaughter was lesbian).
The park was between Wingate and Monroe, a town established in 1844.
The whole drive this morning I was getting a terrible signal for NPR in North Carolina but finally picked up a signal from South Carolina's.
We reached Charlotte, with a population of more than 2½ million, stopped at a grocery store (for chicken and rice), then drove to the center of town. I passed a statue of a bronze horseman in full gallop and was curious about it. And learned the statue is called "The Spirit of Mecklenburg" and represents Capt. James Jack who took the Mecklenburg Resolves to Congress in 1775; Mecklenburg is the present-day name of the county Charlotte's in, and the Resolves declared British law null and void here. These Resolves grew out of news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord, so not exactly a Declaration of Independence but in that general vein. Unfortunately, the North Carolina delegation in Pennsylvania were still hoping to reconcile with London and didn't tell the other delegates about Mecklenburg's action, so you could say his 30-mile/day, 1100-mile round trip was for nothing. Or you could see it as indicative of the rebellious spirit of the residents here.
This statue is on Charlotte's Trail of History. I had to do some serious searching to learn that this trail, which runs through uptown Charlotte, is a mile and a half long and aims to teach the community about Charlotte's history.
Actually, I didn't know any of that was there but just happened to pass it on my way to see the Books Monuments. They turned out to be nothing like I'd expected and, also unexpected, I couldn't find any place to park so we could only drive by. I didn't find any non-copyrighted photos online but I did find this page that touts not only these statues but other book-related art in the area. The pictures are worth taking a look at. https://clture.org/charlotte-public-art
I'd hoped we could walk around that area a bit but didn't despair when there weren't any parking places because we were headed next for a dog park. Frazier Place dog park looked very nice on Google with a long greenbelt straddling a creek, plus various recreational activities. The problem was it was around noon when we got there and the only parking was parallel street parking; because it was lunchtime there weren't any spaces available for us. So I made a loop around the area (lots of condos, mostly) and got to the other end of the street where there was more greenbelt. I found parking places there, but they were on a very steep hill. The day was getting hot and I didn't want to walk up and down steep hills in that weather. Plus I didn't want to trust my emergency brake on that hill.
But by then we were all desperate for a break so I broke out my hotspot and laptop and figured out how to get us out of there and back on the road I'd planned. Except that didn't work out right either and I was driving around for a bit trying to figure out where I was and how to get where I was going. Finally I saw a Hardee's Hamburgers and decided we all needed a store-bought lunch, which would buy us a parking place. And that's what we did, while I first walked Dext and then once again asked Google for a route out of town - and this time paid close attention to the way intersections and signs looked, and didn't just trust Google's written directions.
And that worked. It took us about another hour to get up north to Statesville. On the way we ran into heavy traffic at Mooresville, and I couldn't figure out why. I still don't know, but I now know that the town has a bunch of places related to racing: Penske Racing has a large facility in town that houses 3 NASCAR teams, and Kyle Busch Motorsports has auto racing stuff, and the NC Auto Racing Hall of Fame for NASCAR fans. I hope the traffic I ran into didn't have anything to do with racing.
Near Statesville, I passed a place labeled the Barium Springs Home for Children. That was its name from 1883, when it was founded as an orphanage, until 2014 when it merged with Grandfather Home for Orphans and became Children's Hope Alliance. By then both groups had segued from orphans to care for children who had been abused or neglected, and that's the primary focus of this organization today.
We arrived at the Statesville KOA by about 2:30 and discovered it was perched on a steep hill above the interstate. They'd assigned me a campsite, but when I asked about it being level, they changed me to a different site that, they said, was still inexpensive but much more level. I bought propane from them and dumped my waste tanks and went on up to the top of the hill to my site. Which turned out to be not at all level, but one nearby didn't seem so bad and they let me have that one. I planned to stay here for 2 nights and didn't want to be on a serious slope for that long.
I took Dext to the nearby dog park, where he pooped for his 4th time today - all of them completely liquid. I hoped the problem would work through his system quickly.
I had a long list of things I intended to do but ran into a power problem. Beginning late Wednesday afternoon and into the evening, the power went out 7 times. At first I thought it was this whole section, until I realized my neighbors were just fine. By the time I figured out it wasn't going to stop, the office was closed. I called the "after hours emergency number," which they'd pointed out to me specifically when I registered, but I got a recording. I left a couple of messages at different times but never got a call back.
See tomorrow for the next thrilling installment of this saga.
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