Our American East Coast Trip

It’s been months since I’ve written a newsletter, not that we haven’t been busy. My book is finally finished and available on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com, but at this moment only as an ebook.  The printed book, or, to use a new term, pbook is coming – this takes months to work its way through the printer to the distribution channels.  I’m working through how to sell it on my website because I don’t want to deal with HST issues.  As well, I’ve uploaded quite a few short videos to You Tube - just type in thelaughingboomer, no caps and no spaces.  I’ll send more information on the book soon.

 Since Chile we have been to about 10 countries, on two cruises, and spent quite a bit of time in the United States and Canada.  Our first cruise was from Chile to Miami, stopping along the way in Peru, Costa Rica, and Jamaica and through the Panama Canal, which is fascinating achievement.  We’ve spend time in these countries before, especially Costa Rica and Panama, so it’s enlightening to see how things change.  We finally completed a trip I’ve wanted to do for several years, and that is drive up the East coast of America, which I’ve detailed here.  After that we spent quite a bit of time in New York, Washington and Chicago, all fabulous cities, and then returned to Vancouver where Ken promptly had a heart attack.  It was a good thing we had advised the BC  government when we were leaving and returning (BC residents are allowed to travel two years out of five, as long as they continue to pay their premiums),  so he was in on Saturday, had the stent put in on Monday and out by Tuesday. He found there were much less repercussions with his heart attack then when he broke his back whale-watching in Ecuador.  He’s as good as new now. My, haven’t we had fun!

Now on to our East Coast US trip.

We drove from Ft. Lauderdale up to Jacksonville, which is near the top of the Florida panhandle. We’ve traveled much of Florida before, which I will detail in another story. At any rate, Jacksonville was somewhat depressing: the downtown core was grungy and felt a bit dangerous, with a prison right in the centre and rough looking people hanging about. The revamped waterfront had a great boardwalk and lovely new restaurants but was basically empty. We felt this town was hard-hit by the recession.

Savannah was perhaps the most magical of the places we visited: we were not looking for magical, but there it was. The old section was built on a grid and has beautiful old homes and buildings, while the streets were lined with great ‘live oak’ trees covered with Spanish moss. It is not truly moss but lichen from the pineapple family. The hop-on-hop-off bus tour introduced us to the Confederates side of American history, with lots of firsts here and important places there where the early presidents and Army leaders such as General Lee stayed and made important decisions. We saw the Mercer House, home of the songwriter Johnny Mercer’s family. Moon River is the new name for the nearby Vernon River. The movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was filmed here. The long brick and cobble-stoned riverside stroll is full of excellent restaurants, street stalls, vendors and of course, tourists.  It was a bustling fun place to be. The seafood such as oysters and she-crab soup was delicious, but the gulf oil spill had restricted supply.

The geography of Georgia, South and North Carolina coast was new to us. It is called “Lowcountry”, often shown as one word, and is a mixture of salt and freshwater marshes, low lands and snake-like rivers, tidal streams and inlets and little ponds. In North Carolina it’s comprised of “ocean beach, barrier dunes, salt marshes, fresh and brackish water ponds and impoundments, as well as creeks and bays.” It’s a different beauty than we are accustomed to, but a great beauty nonetheless.

We took a day trip to nearby Tybee Island, a coastal barrier island, which is one of the nearly 500,000 acres of salt marshes in Georgia.  Tybee Island has been populated for over 100 years, and has the usual large homes in older beachside properties and then many small cottages on stilts and the typical motels and restaurants of a vacation hot spot.  We were glad we went out of season. We wandered the seashore for a few hours and saw a several shorebirds:  oystercatchers, gannets, plovers and black skimmers, so called because they skim the water to catch fish.  Their lower beak is longer than their upper beak.

 We drove on to Charleston, which was slightly disappointing after Savannah.  Part of this was the weather, which was unbearably hot, and also our hotel was on the other side of the river, theoretically a mile from the town center, but completely inconvenient. Charleston also has lovely old homes and gardens, huge streets, lots of museums and many art stores featuring Lowcountry artists.

On the way out of Charleston we spent a morning at an old slave plantation Boone Hall, originally around 4,000 acres but now 750 acres.  The grounds were interesting – the half-mile of live oaks were used in the movie Gone with the Wind. Viewing the slave area was very sad and strangely moving. The current owners have enlarged to poster size many of the documents from that era such as the wills, lists of slaves, slave auction posters and ships records. On a ledger called Slave Ships to Charleston 1711 to 1858 for example, in 1739, showed one ship, Amoretta, and Captain John Crode brought slaves from Right of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea Islands to South Carolina, with 258 embarking in Africa and 207 disembarking. The owners of the house, Mary Boone, owned 34 personal slaves in and her husband Thomas Boone had 26. She left various slaves to her children and grandchildren, along with her silver tea service. Another enlarged document showed later residents Horlicks 1854 slave inventory and yet another listed the value of people, with Syllah and her four children worth $500. A few cottages remain on the now-named Slave Street, and we were able to walk through and image how it might have been. We could hardly imagine how this could have existed.

We also visited The Center for Birds of Prey, in Awendaw, S.C., where we were treated to a long walk through the sanctuary and then a falconry presentation, with a peregrine, Sagar hawk (mid-east desert hawk) and red-tailed hawk. An endangered Mississippi kite flew overhead, much to everyone’s excitement and made the day for the biologists there.  With many types of owls and hawks in huge cages or compounds, these birds are mostly in rehabilitation and unable to survive in the wild. The center does education, research, conservation programs and breeding of endangered species for sale or trade to other sanctuaries operating on the same premises. Some abandoned owl and vulture chicks were being cared for and it was amazing to be within a few inches of them.  One chick leaned against a young girl’s leg. What a great day.

We received mixed reactions when we told people we were going to Myrtle Beach.  The old Myrtle Beach area has stately older homes and hotels and is quite lovely; fortunately our hotel was in that area. Myrtle Beach is famous for its golf courses and there are hundreds of condos and lovely single family neighbourhoods, but much of Myrtle Beach is quite commercial, with an ugly “Kingsway” like business area and plenty of fast food restaurants and strip malls. The town has made quite an effort to attract families, with at least a dozen amusement parks and an awful-to-us Broadway at the Beach outdoor mall full of gimmicky restaurants and tourist trivia. However, the long straight beach with its new boardwalk still reflects the draw of this lovely geographical area – the sea and relaxed seaside living.  Why would you need amusement parks when you have the beach? We drove on from South Carolina due north.

Nags Head is part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina – a region replete with bird and animal reserves and long strands of Outer Banks barrier islands. It’s called Nag’s Head because in the past pirates would lure ships to shore with a lantern draped over a nag. The actual town is highly overbuilt with many large, season homes and even an outlet mall.  I would imagine the summer would be very busy but our stay was wonderful –a comfortable but rustic seaside motel overlooking the ocean with martins nesting in a large “condo” birdhouse nearby. The Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, 10 miles south, has bird-watching trails and we saw green herons, black-bellied plover, dowitchers, pelicans as well as the usual egrets and ducks. Pea Island, midway on the Atlantic Flyway, is used for resting, feeding and wintering birds, similar to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary in Delta, which is part of the Pacific Flyway migration route. I would go back in a minute in the quiet season.

From there we meandered north on secondary roads, stopping along the way as we wanted, and drove through towns with strange names like Kill Devil Hills, to arrive in Raleigh, N.C.   We enjoyed the Carolina Natural History Museum as the building design allowed for large trees and dinosaurs inside.  As birders it is helpful to see stuffed specimens and the woodland area showed the birds in their normal habitat.  We were able to go from floor to floor seeing which birds would nest and live at each level of vegetation.

After that and a bit of shopping and then forged on to Virginia Beach, getting lost along the way. Virginia Beach again has miles of wide walkway along its long ocean front and statues of giant shells, huge blue fish and a colossal statue of Neptune and other displays every couple of blocks.  Virginia Beach is a military town, with 11,000 people working at the US Naval Aviation Station Oceana. The excellent open-air museum along the beach detailed the Naval Aviation history, something about which we knew little.  Strangely enough as we walked along the beachfront dozens of ladybugs landed upon us and we saw hundreds on certain plants and squashed upon the sidewalks. Apparently they bite although we didn’t notice. At Virginia Beach we finally bought a GPS and what a difference it made. The structure of many of America’s towns is that many of the hotels and chains surround the city and the maze of freeways is truly scary. Our drive to Richmond, Virginia was sooo easy we wonder why we didn’t do it before; but we know the reason why – one more thing to carry.

Richmond, Virginia has just completed its expansion of the Virginia Museum of Fine Art to 545,000 square foot, at a cost of$150 million dollars.  This major art gallery ranks amongst the best in the country with special collections of Art Deco and Art Nouveau and American art. We joined a free guided tour given by a retired computer programmer and art lover. Of interest to me was the large collection of Art Deco decorative art, glassware, and furniture and Ken raved about the excellent Oriental collection.  Art galleries this size need several days. There was a great buzz about this gallery and many diverse groups were enjoying the day. Close by is Carrytown, a neighbourhood of old homes and historic streets with little old shops and unique bookstores, similar to Georgetown in Washington. As much of America is malls and wide highways we enjoy the opportunity to appreciate the historical places. We also spent a day exploring Richmond’s city centre and old town and impressive state capital, designed by Thomas Jefferson and searched for birds along the James River and visiting Henricus county. 

We drove from Richmond to Washington and dropped the car at the airport, but that’s a story for another day. America is a great country for independent car travel and our three-week trip was one we’d like to repeat in other areas of this great country. Driving along the gulf coast from Florida to Texas is next, but who knows when?  We would highly recommend this trip.