North Carolina - Day 11 - to Durham, Chapel Hill

Rolling View Campground, Falls Lake State Recreation Area

Monday, 10 July 2023

I finally got worried enough about Dexter's unusual vomiting (it's rare for him) that I made an appointment with the Banfield vet in Raleigh.  I figured most local vets would refuse to take new patients or would relegate us to an appointment next month, because that's what I've been finding everywhere.  Clearly, if you're at all interested in animals and willing to go through the extensive schooling, being a veterinarian is a growth industry.

Banfield had called me the day before to confirm and mentioned they expected me to drop Dext off and leave him there.  But I told them I wanted to be present when they did the exam, so they gave me an earlier time to arrive today.

today's route

On the way into town, we were passed by a yellow Mustang with an NC license plate that said "VVROOM!".  (The exclamation mark was part of the plate.)

We were at the vet's for just over an hour.  Their conclusion: they wanted to do x-rays, several blood tests for various reasons, anti-nausea meds and anti-diarrhea meds.   When I asked about the anti-nausea medicine, they said it was so if he vomited despite taking it, that would indicate a significant problem.  I said because he's now gone almost a week with only vomiting once, then I'd regard any vomiting now as a significant problem, with or without meds.  And since Dext hasn't had diarrhea, I asked about that and they didn't seem to have an answer.

Anyway, any of that would cost a fair amount of money (they gave me an estimate), let alone all of it together, so since he seemed to be getting better anyway thanks to the chicken-and-rice diet, I nixed all those ideas.  Especially since they couldn't come up with a diagnosis.

They said to keep him on the chicken-and-rice regimen another week and then start him back on Purina ProPlan, which is what I had been giving him before I ran out and started switching foods, which may have been the cause of all this anyway.  So that, I figured I could do.

From there, we drove a half hour to a recycling place in Durham.  (Raleigh had one but said it was for residents only and dumpers would be required to show proof of address.)  At Durham, that was a strange experience.  They made me (and everyone) get on a scale and say specifically what I wanted to dump.  When I explained, they said it would be free because I had only a small amount, and I was to follow the signs for "Hand Unload" down a seriously bumpy and muddy road.  I did that and had quite a job convincing the workers that I didn't need to back up to a big pit other people were tossing truck-loads of stuff into - I guess the size of the RV had them confused.  They finally directed me to the one dumpster for recycling - labeled "Hand Unload" - and it was so nearly full I barely got my few things in.  But what I tossed was small only compared to others; compared to the amount of room I had in the bathroom once I got rid of them, it seemed huge.

From there I drove through some back streets (a little joke of Google's) including an encounter with the famous Can Opener.  It's a low railroad bridge over a city street in Durham, but with an 11' 8" clearance, it's known for peeling off the tops of trucks that are too tall.  It was originally built to the standard height back in the 1920s - but since then trucks have gotten much bigger so it's now more than 2' lower than the standard.  In 2008, a guy set up a video camera and posted it to YouTube; in the following 8 years, he'd recorded 101 crashes.  In 2016, the city set up a series of lights and huge warning signs, and even raised the height of the bridge by 8".  And less than a month later, yet another idiot ran into it.  Part of the problem seems to be that GPS still routes drivers under the bridge, though that doesn't explain the obliviousness to the warnings.

With my 11' clearance, I knew I could make it, so I can attest that the warning signs are indeed functioning and, honestly, I don't know how someone could miss them.  But I made it safely into town to the campus of Duke University.

I came in memory of my sister Louise, who attended here for 3 years until her death the summer before her senior year.  On the map I'd spotted the Visitor and Alumni Center, strategically located so I could park and Dext and I could walk around the campus a little.  Except once there I found they charge for parking.  As far as I could tell, they charge everybody, not just visitors.  I'm not used to a college refusing to make accommodations for their graduates, or for their visitors for that matter, so this seemed weird.  And greedy.

So we didn't stop there but instead drove over toward the famous Duke Chapel.  And couldn't get there because the road was closed to regular traffic and any place I found to park required a permit.  I was disappointed but gave up and headed toward Chapel Hill.

Online I'd found a dog park in Chapel Hill so we headed to that.  Actually I found several dog parks in Durham too, but they all required advance online registration and some other hoops to jump through - these are for the public dog parks, you understand - and I thought that was ridiculous.  Especially since this one in Chapel Hill was open to the public like all the others I've found around the country.

When we got there, we were the only ones in the dog park - and then suddenly a guy pulls his car to the wrong side of the narrow 2-lane road, puts on his flashers, and lets his dog into the park, ignoring all the cars having to inch past his that's illegally parked.  Dext and the dog meet, Dext looks interested and then goes blah like he's been doing lately, the man's dog poops and the guy just watches it, and then they leave.  Weird.  And selfish.

I was once in Chapel Hill about a lifetime ago when I visited Louise in Durham, and I was straining my memory to find anything at all I recognized.  I thought maybe the iconic Old Well on the campus of the University of North Carolina might do the trick, but when I got there, I found the view almost completely obscured by construction around it and was barely able to inch past the equipment.  So much for a stroll down Memory Lane.

This is what I should have seen.

For comparison, this is an 1892 photo.

Just as a note of interest, the "new" version was designed and built in 1897 and modeled after the Temple of Love in the Gardens of Versailles.  As you can see by the old photo, the well was actually a well and supplied all the water for the school.  They still have a water fountain in the center of the structure, which is now the symbol for the school.  Sorry the construction stopped us from visiting.

One thing that surprised me about this area was all the greenery.  Massive amounts of plants, bushes, trees everywhere, and the roads seemed almost overgrown in both towns and along the Durham-Chapel Hill Road between them.  You know how memories are, and in my mind's eye it was still late fall here as it was when I'd visited before, and all this green stuff was disorienting.

I stopped at yet another grocery story - a Food Lion this time - and then drove on to yet another BBQ place, this one called The Original Q Shack in Durham.  Except the directions Google gave me didn't match reality.  The highway exit signs didn't say anything like Google had said.  I drove for miles past where the turn was supposed to be, with no luck.  And I wasn't at all clear about Durham's geography so didn't want to just try and flounder my way to the place - so yet again I lost out on North Carolina barbecue.

I heard something on the radio about "celebration of the '70s featuring artifacts of the era," and it did a number on my head (as we used to say back in the '70s).  My old stuff is now an "artifact?"

We got back to the campground, I dumped the waste tanks, and we were back in the campsite by 2:45.  Looking back on the day, the only things I really accomplished were dumping recyclables and dumping my sewage.  Another strange day.

To end the day, I compounded the strangeness.  Given the vet's instructions about Dexter's diet, I decided to get rid of the 2 opened bags of food I wouldn't be able to give him once we'd gotten off the chicken-and-rice, so I took them over to a nearby campsite where I knew they had large dogs.  And they accepted them willingly.  It was only a few days later that I realized I'd left a measuring cup in one of them.  And this wasn't any measuring cup - it was part of an old set (older than I am) that my momma used.  And now all I have are the ⅓ cup, the ½ cup, and the 1 cup measurers.  Gone forever is the ¼ cup.  Taking part of my childhood with it.