Today was always going to be the drive day. The plan was to make two stops along the way and arrive in Virginia Beach, Virginia late in the afternoon. A quick check of Tropical Depression Nestor and the plans changed somewhat. The storm’s track had it headed straight for Virginia Beach. I would be driving through it the whole way.
The worst of the storm passed through Florence in the middle of the night. Having slept through that, I was awakened by the two women in the room next door. At 4A they were packing to leave. One took a load down to the car. The other stood on the second floor walkway and they started shouting to each other and laughing up a storm. Fortunately, this didn’t last very long and they rolled out.
The motel didn’t do breakfast, but there’s a Waffle House one exit up I-95. Debra kept my coffee full until I was ready to go.
After three hours of rainy driving, it started to taper off a bit. Hwy 301 used to be the main north/south road before the interstate came through, and I could have jumped on it at any time. South of Winston, SC it was time.
The rain had lightened to more of a misting when I pulled off in downtown and parked across the street from Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park. Simpson grew up on his family's farm outside of town. Farming wasn't in his blood and he made his living fixing and maintaining farm equipment. He served in the Army Air Corp during WWII and once build a windmill out of a scrapped B-29 to power some of the base equipment.
Simpson retired from farming at the age of sixty and started sculpting with scrap metal. The result are what he simply referred to as windmills. Locals took to calling it Acid Park due to the way headlights reflected on the sculptures at night. As his health started to fail, he realized he could no longer maintain his park. The town of Winston offered to move them to a park in town and maintain them.
The other stop was going to be the Great Dismal Swamp. The park straddles North Carolina and Virginia and has a few hiking trails that seemed well worthy of a stop, just not in the rain. Instead, I just drove by.
My home for the night was the Schooner Inn on the south end of Virginia Beach. Not a bad view from the balcony...
Coming Up,
One of President Washington's first acts
No comments:
Post a Comment