By noon we made it to New Bern (the second oldest city in NC & the birthplace of Pepsi) in time for some eastern NC BBQ. For those of you not familiar with NC BBQ, the western version is tomato based and a tad sweet while eastern is vinegar based with absolutely NO tomatoes. And if you’re somewhere in between, well, you never know what you’ll get. Anyway we asked a local to recommend a place & Moore’s Bar-B-Que (in business for 61 years) was everything we wanted… DE-licious. It was interesting that they were located right across the street from the Pepsi bottling plant but featured Coke in the cooler. However, whatever their beef was with Pepsi, it probably didn’t matter because everyone was ordering “sweet tea” anyway.
Took the time before leaving New Bern to visit Tryon Palace built in the early 1700’s, destroyed by fire, then rebuilt in 1952 from the original plans (the project of 2 VERY rich ladies from Goldsboro). Also restored are 14 acres of beautiful formal gardens. Our guide in the palace told us one reason beds were so short back then was that everyone slept sitting up with bolsters behind them because they ate huge dinners. (Perhaps they should pass out bolsters to everyone who works on Habitat projects in NC!) The photo is of the pigeon house next to the palace.
Tillie met up with her cousin, the red Corvette, and John’s cousins John & Judy at the Driftwood Motel on Cedar Island. (Patty was VERY excited to be spending the night in a real BED, not that Tillie isn’t cozy.) Even though the Corvette is much younger and probably more energetic.
The Outer Banks and National Seashore in NC are truly beautiful. Long, long stretches of sand beaches unspoiled by development, seabirds in abundance, & a few off-season visitors enjoying the outdoors – fishing, kite-surfing, kayaks with sails (we’d never seen those before), bikers, beach walkers, bird watchers & lighthouse gawkers.
We’re spending the night at the Surfside Hotel (you’d never guess it was on the beach would you?). Had a GREAT dinner at Windmill Point Restaurant in Nags Head. It actually has 2 claims to fame other than the food. It has the last of the windmills built over 100 years ago to grind grain in this part of the country. And it has and uses the largest collection of memorabilia from the ship S.S. United States. The photo is us sitting at the bar that came out of the ship and we’re sitting on the same seats where John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy & John Kennedy sat. Other notables were at the bar at different times but these happened to be together & John just HAD to sit where Marilyn sat. (The toilets in the restaurant are also from the ship – 1952 vintage & still working – there are no brass plaques so who knows who sat on those...)
