20190804 - Up in am got everything packed up int he car, checked out of the place and headed North. We used our maps and Waze to find alternative routes out of the tourist traffic and swung through McD's for bfast on the way. I drove the first leg out of SC and into NC ad to our first stop of the Newsboy Statue in Tabor City NC in honor of Horace Carter, who owned the newspaper and stood up to the Ku Klux Klan, and won a 1952 Pulitzer Prize for his editorials against the Klan. We left Quarters with the Newsboy for good luck! Then J drove us for a bit to the spot in Fayetteville where Babe Ruth hit his first profession home run!
L then took over driving and drove us to Snowball that was in a REALLY BAD part of town so we bailed out of there and found a Zaxby's for lunch to compare to Cane's and got D some sweet tea. We think Cane's wins! I took over the wheel and drove us up to Garysburg NC where we swung past the Q. J. Stephenson's Occoneechee Trapper's Lodge. Q. J. Stephenson was a trapper and dragline operator for forty years. While on the job he had a knack for spotting fossils and relics and began amassing quite a collection of found objects. He started working on the lodge in the 1970's and built it from all the things he found. It was pretty cool! Then since we were close we ran over to Weldon NC to visit Rocky the Giant Rockfish. Weldon is the "Rockfish Capital of the World" stakes its claim with a giant sculpted Rockfish, hung from an outdoor beam. An accompanying plaque tells the tale of a 1904 monster Rockfish that got away.
We drove and drove and the bad traffic turned our 6 hour trip into a painstaking 9 hour ride... We finally got into VA, not a great pic by L and got to our Hampton Inn and got our stuff in. The boys had a short swim in the hotel pool, said it was too cold and I got on the elliptical machine to get my hip moving, hurts from being in the car all day. We then took a short drive to the Montclair Family Restaurant for an awesome dinner. Back to room and relaxed the rest of the evening
