Heading North

Well I've thought about how I could ever fill you Peanuts in on all the wild drama of South that I missed out on because I just didn't know where to start. But, well, I just don't know where to start! Little One and I made friends with the whole cast of characters, plus some, and there was always something going on. If I get around to it I'll post a few stories, but I'm not sure how I'd do it without having to go into way too much detail for your itty bitty attention spans. Not that you have those. Ahem. Moving on!
I will say that overall we enjoyed our time in South. We made friends, saw sights, and soaked up the culture. We might have complained a wee bit. About the smoking, the inexplicable propensity of the locals to drive 5 miles below the speed limit...the copious lawn decor....But look. North Carolina is great!
DID you know that North Carolina is home to THE Woolworths where the lunch-counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement began? Or that the pirate Blackbeard is buried on it's shore?! Or that it has the the ONLY fossilized dinosaur heart in the world and that it is the birthplace of Krispy Kreme doughnuts?!? Well it is. Peanuts, it is.
We wanted to celebrate these Stately achievements, but all those places were far away and we are lazy. But to bid a proper farewell to NC we did honor two of it's other crowning glories. The town we stayed in, for one, happens to be where Pepsi was invented. Yes huh! Here we are, in the very spot some guy made Pepsi up a hundred years ago, never imagining that one day Britney Spears would dance around with it half naked on something called a television.

North Carolina is also special because it happens to produce more Sweet Potatoes than the whole rest of the USofA. Believe it! Sweet Potatoes are the state vegetable and everything! So we picked up a couple of local orange spuds at the farmer's market, where the collard leaves are bigger than Little One, and on our last night cooked 'em up in a real southern dinner. Fried chicken*, sweet potatoes, and collard greens. That's the spirit!

We will miss South. We will miss the friendliness, the beaches, the greenness. We will almost miss the constant pulse of DJ G's musical offerings, the inability get out the door and to the car without 20 minutes of chatting with neighbors on the way there, the excitement of some new community drama constantly unfolding. But we are happy to be heading home, where we are free of the air contamination of the ubiquitous cigarettes, and can inhale exhaust from the ubiquitous traffic snarls instead. On to the next adventure! Unpacking.

*Of course it wasn't actually fried. Or chicken, per say. But it was a soy-substitute trying very hard to dress up as some fried chicken, and that's as close as we get. It's the thought that counts. What? Yes it is too.