My month in North Carolina

My take on North Carolina

where I went this month

North Carolina's land

It's a little hard to see the state's boundaries on this map because of its shape.  The southern boundary with South Carolina and Georgia is marked with a blue pen; the eastern boundary is the Atlantic Ocean; the northern boundary is mostly a straight line with Virginia; the western boundary is half forest land and is shared with Tennessee.

As I've mentioned before, North Carolina is really spread out.  It has almost exactly the same number of square miles as Arkansas, which should show how non-compact this state is.  That stretched shape meant I ran out of time to visit huge chunks of the state.  Also like Arkansas, North Carolina has a lot of mountainous areas, making road travel a bit of a challenge. 

This is a lovely state, and my guess is it's lovely at any time of year.  When I was there I had the summertime growth and green trees and so forth.  But NC also has a lot of deciduous trees so it's likely to have some great fall colors.  And it also has a lot of evergreens so it's likely to still be pretty in the winter.  

This state certainly has its fair share of mountains, what with the Appalachians running right up through the western side of it.  It also has a lot of farmland, and all the scenic attractions of a coastal plain.  The Outer Banks are an internationally known destination for vacations.  Someone I knew in Seattle took her vacation there each year with friends (okay, Seattle's not "international" but you get the idea).

North Carolina's people

Most of the people I met here were very nice, very pleasant folks. 

It seemed to me, as I was traveling, that NC cities had a lot of similarities with Georgia, so I did some checking.  And was very surprised to learn that though the 2 states have almost exactly the same populations (GA had 10.7 million to NC's 10.4 million at the 2020 census), the size of the cities were quite different.  Georgia's top 10 cities by size begin with Atlanta, of course, at 499,000 and end with Johns Creek (heard of that?) with 82,000.  North Carolina, on the other hand, started its top 10 with Charlotte at 875,000 and ended with Asheville at 95,000.  

The odd thing, though, was that Georgia's #2 city by size was Columbus with 207,000, while North Carolina had 6 cities larger - Fayetteville came in at #6 with 209,000.  In other words, the list of cities by population looked like NC was a hands-down winner in population but still came in behind GA overall.  And it also seemed odd that Atlanta - which anybody would agree is a large city - would have only a little more than half the population of Charlotte, NC.

Maybe what happened was that, with all the land that the mountains and farms take up in North Carolina, the population got squeezed into fewer population centers - hence the larger cities.  Compared with Georgia which is not only larger in size but also has a lot more habitable land, even with all its farms.

Driving in North Carolina

This is the license plate most of us see on an NC vehicle.

For the last few years, this version has also been
an official NC plate, and they're fairly popular..

The First In Freedom plate commemorates 2 historic events, one of which I accidentally stumbled on in Charlotte: the Mecklenburg Resolves, aka the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in 1775.  The other is the Halifax Resolves in April 1776, which was a declaration of independence by the North Carolina Provisional Congress.  It was the first official such declaration among the American Colonies.  The Halifax Resolves preceded The Declaration of Independence by almost 3 months, so I'd say NC comes by its First in Freedom claim honestly.

Again like Arkansas, North Carolina has a general lack of major highways, which is challenging for road travel.  But the difference between Arkansas and North Carolina is that because Arkansas is compact, the major roadways have a better shot at reaching more parts of the state, while here they're more reliant on state/local roads.

In general, I found North Carolina's roads to be in pretty good shape, which is just as well since they're so important to transportation here.  

And in general, I found NC's drivers to be fairly safe, and they ran the gamut from very considerate and helpful to pretty rude.  Still, I never got tailgated and the most unsafe behavior I found were the drivers who pulled out slowly right in front of me.  Not a good situation but not bad compared with the driving in some other states.

What I wanted to see that I missed

I mentioned quite a few places in the daily posts, but there were others I'd hoped to see but ran out of time for.  In the far northeastern corner, Elizabeth City, which I passed through, is home to the largest US Coast Guard station in the country.  They also have a lot of boats in the Dismal Swamp Canal, which runs up to the Dismal Swamp.  That straddles southern Virginia and northern NC, and I'd have liked to visit - with a name like that, it's got to be interesting.

A little farther south, on the Outer Banks, I'd really wanted to get down to Cape Hatteras, where the lighthouse is the tallest in the US.  Its light was originally lit with whale oil.  Some current concerns are shore erosion as climate change is affecting ocean patterns - the lighthouse has already been moved once, in 1999, thanks to the effects of erosion.  That's something I think I should get to while it's still there, but I was apparently in North Carolina at the wrong time of year and no campgrounds were available anywhere near there.

In Raleigh, I would have liked to visit some of the state's museums - specifically the history museum and the art museum, which includes a Botticelli and works by Rubens and Titian.  I spent enough time in the area that I could have done it, but I was having a hard time getting myself pulled together and failed to take advantage of the time I had.

I know I sounded like a broken record about all those barbecue places I missed, but there were many more I'd hoped to get to and didn't that I didn't mention.  For instance, Lexington seems to be acknowledged as the hub of bbq in NC, and I'd planned to get there at least as a side trip, and just didn't make it.  It's almost due south of Winston-Salem, about halfway between Charlotte and Greensboro.  I'd intended to swing by there when I went to Statesville, but I ended up being in a hurry then, kind of racing from Wilmington through Charlotte to Statesville because I couldn't find anywhere to stop in between.  And it was in the Statesville campground that I had those strange electrical power problems that just threw me completely for a loop, and instead of staying in the area a couple of days, I raced over to Asheville.  So I missed Lexington's trove of barbecue joints.

In Hickory, the Furniture Discovery Center shows the steps in making furniture.  About 60% of all US-made furniture comes from a 200-mile radius centered on Hickory/High Point, and I'd have liked to spend more time here.

My conclusion

I guess I'm ambivalent about North Carolina.  On the one hand, I enjoyed my time here and wish I'd had longer.  On the other hand, I kept finding places that reminded me of my sister Louise, reminding me that the pain of a loss will diminish with time but never really goes away.  And on the one hand I found many places that were comfortable and beautiful here, while on the other hand I got tired of how thoroughly rural this state is, despite its numerous large cities.

North Carolina is a beautiful state with very pleasant people and as laid-back an attitude as the conservative end of the spectrum can take.  And it certainly has mountains and ocean and rivers and forests - and large cities and small towns - I guess North Carolina could make the case that it has a sample of just about everything.