NC: The Outer Banks

Here is the second part of my little road trip with my parents. From Virginia we went to Kill Devil Hills, NC and Kitty Hawk, NC on the Outer Banks and then back to Durham (about 550 miles according to google). You should really have heard of these places. It was where the Wright brothers did the first powered flight. Here is a picture to jog the memory.

OK no more learning. I wanted to go for that reason, but also the outer banks are also beautiful place. We stopped off at the tourist info and couldn't resist snapping the folks acting like Carolinians.

It was just our luck to get there as a Hurricane/Tropical storm was moving up the east coast. I think it passed about 100 miles off NC a few days after we left. It did give a pretty cool

It was pretty grim weather

But being NC, it didn't want to stay bad for a while. We also still got the swell from the storm.

I love watching the pelican fly up and down the beach.

As we were pretty much across the road from where they did the first flight it would be rude not to go to the museum. I really did enjoy it, but I kinda am a geek.

This is the hill that the did their first glider experiments from, and later powered flights at the bottom. It actually moved back in thoses days so they had to put grass on it to keep it anchored, in fact most of the landscape has changed. Certainly all the houses cropping up.

You gotta loves those sunsets.

As an appology for the learning earlier, here have a silly looking American car.

Virginia: The Historic Triangle

My parents cam to visit me in May (ahem sorry for the long time) for my birthday. We did a little road trip. First stop was the Historical Triangle up in Virginia. My reasoning behind this was a) it's not Durham and b) I quite like history. Here is my photoblog. First up is Williamsburg. It's a cool open air museum and was the old capital of Virginia.

I just like this photo

Next up is Jamestown. The first British settlement in America. I am glad I don't have to come over on that boat.

I really am a photo geek. I quite like explosions too. Not bad timing, aye?

Next stop Yorktown. Where we kinda surrendered the US to those colonial types. It's quite a cool place though. Here is the Virginia chapter of the Studebaker drivers club, just chilling out, maxin', relaxin'.

My dad and I both love going on boats, so we took a trip on this bad boy. It was pretty slow going out down the river but got faster on the way back.

Diffraction limit anyone? I'll get my coat.

There was a civil war battle at Yorktown too. They do like recreating stuff.

Speaking of battles. I managed to convince my dad to play mini-golf.

All smiles here but out on the course it was a tightly contested affair. In the end we played two rounds and it ended 1-1.

I really do like taking black and white photos of bars.

Next we moved onto Plymouth, VA. We were driving down to coastal NC and it made sense to stop here. Managed to stumble upon an old red phone box. They get everywhere don't they?

While not on many tourists list of places to go it was actually quite nice.

A little patriotic, but still nice.

They even had the oldest running ferry. It was a cool way to get to Norfolk, VA. Where do they get these names from?


OBX next.

North Carolina: Wilmington and Jordan Lake

After Charleston we decided to take it easy and have a night in Durham and off and another small road trip to Wilmington, NC. It's only a 2 and half hour drive and both Jimmy and I like the beach. North Carolina beaches really are lovely.

Apparently, Wilmington is twinned with Doncaster (or Donkey as I like to call it). From that sign I reckon that Sheffield is about 3900 miles away from Durham.

Last time I was on this they were filming One Tree Hill, no such luck this time.

After our little trip to Wilmington, we stopped by Jordan Lake. Which is rather nice.

We got there at just the right time. Partially due to one of my famous short cuts.....


We finished the day with a burger at Dain's. Although we didn't have any Bojangles Jimmy did have a good tour of NC and SC and it was damn good to see him again. This concludes Jimmy's adventures in NC, more of my other adventures wil be coming soon.

South Carolina: Drinking in Charleston

Charleston is a really cool place to visit for all the touristy things, but also it is a really cool place to go out drinking. Here is the photographic evidence of us getting wasted. After our day of walking we got pretty thirsty so we stopped in a Irish bar for a cheeky pint (or 2). Then got ready to go out and hit a brew pub first. They offered a selection of all their beers for $10. They didn't have the eighth so we got to choose our favourite at the end. I think it worked out as about 3 and a half pints in the end.

I was obviously so excited I couldn't even keep my eyes open. Well it passed the time while we waited for food.

This bar we actually found in the day. It was the place where we found a good cupa... water, juice and nice bit of apple strudel, everything three growing boys needs to get over a hangover. The waitress took a shine to us and said we should come back later when it was a bar. So here we are after a few drinks, the tequila slammers come out.... not so good. The aforementioned waitress was kind enough to document it for us.

We hadn't even got going and Andy had borrowed her top....

Cheers! To England! etc

This really does remind me of the three monkeys.

By the end we had progressed onto surfers on acid and quite happy about it.

We even found an English pub which I was extremely happy about.

Yes Andy did steal the waitresses coat, it was really hot, but it brought out his eyes. She got it back in the end.

South Carolina: Charleston

As I have been terrible with updating the blog the next post is when Jimmy flew down from Canada and we drove down to Charleston, SC to meet Andy in July. Charleston is only 300 miles away from Durham so it was too bad a drive.

It was great the Jimmy decided to fly down to Dirty D. I got to show him a few things round town and we just had a chilled out first evening. Then we drove down to Charleston the next day. We took a minor detour, as I kinda got carried away during an in-car game and missed the [not so] small sign[s, lots of them] for I-95. It was pretty cool seeing rural NC. Jimmy had definitely not seen anything like it in his life (I'm sure we heard a few banjos). We met up with Andy a little late, but that was due to setting off late (due to my bosses, grrrrr).

I will go through our nighttime adventures in the next post, here is my photoblog of Charleston in the day. Blue was the order of the day, I'm sure people were staring at us! It's quite funny how white Jimmy looks (and ahem how American Andy and I look).

The next few photos are just things I liked and snapped them while we were wandering about.

The waterfront.

A wee turtle in the SC aquarium. It was really cool place to go and I learnt a few things about the coast of NC and SC, mainly that it has a lot of cool things in the sea.

We had a great day in Charleston, and I really do recommend it to anyone. It has a bit of everything, the old, the new, places to eat, the beach and a good night life (see next post). It is a great place to get away from it all too.