Emerald Island and Wilmington, NC

Last night we stayed with Liz. She is part of "Warm Showers ",  an organization where people offer a warm shower plus a place to camp in the yard, sleep on the couch or floor, maybe even beds and even meals and take advantage of others doing the same when they travel. Liz provided all of that plus intellegent and warm conversation. She was recommended to us by Bridget and George,  the folks we met the day before.  We stayed up so late chatting that I was too tired to blog last night. Apparently 8:30 is considered late for us now.   OK,  I will back up to yesterday.

We got up at 5:30 to catch the morning ferry from Ocracoke to Cedar Island.  So that was goodbye for now to beaches, white egrets, pelicans (funny guys), porpoise .... .  We started riding at the other side at 10 and had a long ride ahead of us.  Nice riding but not too much to capture in pictures.

I noticed that Lesley's rear wheel was wobbling, told Allie who told Lesley.  We stopped and saw she had broken a spoke. Turned out later it was 2 spokes. Allie used her phone to find a bike shop that was more or less on our way.  The wobble did not prevent Lesley from riding so we rode the 35 klm to the bike shop in Beaufort. The nice fellow did repairs from his garage and he seemed to know his stuff and by the time we finished eating our lunch at his picnic table in his backyard the bike was ready and on we went. Sadly, no one except me thought to take a picture and what could I do?  We rode on hopping from island to island to mainland by bridges and then another bridge to Emerald Island on the Crystal Coast. An hour later we arrived at Liz's house.  As soon as I enterted in the yard and saw the collection of chewed and abused soccer balls I recognized the telltale signs, from knowing my cousin Boggle, that a collie lived here. I was right. Liz has a bearded collie. Unfortunately she was staying with Liz's mom who seems to have a, not too subtle, plan to make that a permanent thing.  We had a great dinner, did laundry and chatted as I already  mentioned.

107 klm this day.

This morning Liz provided a great breakfast and we headed out into a sunny but slightly cool morning, starting with yet another bridge back to the mainland.

We soon arrived at Jacksonville which has a large marine base attached to it.  The commercial strip consisted of barber shops offering military cuts, pawn shops, "gentlemen's  clubs" and tattoo parlors.  Liz recommended getting a tattoo from a place beside a marine base as a fun thing to do, but we declined.  Actually she said to skip that and to stop at Sonic drive in for our morning break, which we did.

We soon realized we were making good time and changed our destination to Wilmington.  Allie insists that I stress that it was not her who decided we should be road warriors for a second consecutive day. But she loved it of course.

114 klm this day (US election day)

Lesley has cooked a candlelight dinner here at the KOA and we have wifi and will catch up on the election results if we stay awake long enough.

Ulike Allie I am quite willing to admit I am getting older. So the other night while we were shivering in our sleeping bag it did not bother me to say "I'm too old for this, we need more blankets".  So tonight we are ready.  Ahhhhhh.