The Tour, 2002, Part 9

March 24, 2002

On the Road Again - - - - -

We drive about 240 miles, no wind to speak of, bright, blue skies, nice, except for all the crazies we see every time we hit the road.  Truckers driving way too close to cars, heavens, we see them with less than one car length between bumpers, very scary.  We stop at a tourist trap called “South of the Border” which is one mile south of the South Carolina/North Carolina state line.  Gas was 30 cents a gallon more at their gas station, I DON’T THINK SO!  We walked around one of the stores, filled with tourist junk, did not buy.  We were going to eat in one of the restaurants, but the line was long, and after a minute in line, we left, went to the trailer and fixed sandwiches.

We are in Selma, North Carolina.  As we thought, the campground is noisy, very noisy.  We have dinner, go out and do a little shopping.  There is a new lawn and garden place near here that caught our attention from the expressway.   They have lots of statuary, plants, bird bathes, lawn furniture.  Very interesting place.  Then we “hit” a outlet type store, found a yorkie T-shirt for both of us, and some books for the twins.  Back at the trailer I did some more input and now it is off to zzzzzzzzz land.

March 25, 2002

Spend the morning doing showers, getting a “to do” list for North Carolina Library and Archives.

Arrive Library and Archives about noon, find the Archives closed, for it is Monday, but I have enough things to check over to work in the Library for the 3 hours we have today.  Man finds my parents in the 1951 directory of Raleigh.  He also finds the name of my dad’s employer, address, etc.  Also finds an obituary for Charlee.  I do follow up work on the Bowen clan and try a lead (that does not pan out) for the Patrick or Fitzpatrick clan.  Also do a little work for Karen.  (Found a marriage for her, at least a marriage that is not on her printout of her family.)

At 3 we head for Durham for an early dinner with my cousins Robin and Linda, Robin’s husband Don, their parents, Charlie and Doise.  We met at a seafood restaurant, and the food was great, and wowie, was there a lot of it!  And the service was good.  We had a nice visit and a nice meal.

March 26, 2002

A full day at the Archives, I hit the floor running, with my “wish” list and that of Karen’s.  Karen got her primary wish, and a couple of other goodies.  I marked off all the entries on my list, and found a few other things as well.  Some of the documents I wanted no longer exist.  They did about 120 years ago when they were extracted from the originals.  Over the next 100 to 120 years, they have disappeared.  Very sad, a huge hunk of North Carolina history, now only recorded in extracted form, in books, and the rest, missing.  Thankfully, someone did those extractions.

I did find proof of Clifton Bowen, Sr. and Clifton Bowen, Jr, his son.  I have never seen any document that stated there were actually TWO Clifton’s.   But I found one!   I did the genealogists happy dance today!!

The staff in the Archives are fabulous, even Man comments several times about how helpful they are.  This has been a great experience.

I do a little email in the library before we leave.

March 27, 2002

Grooming time, Abby and Cappy get bathes, Tilly and Gallagher get combed out.  We are going to spend the afternoon and evening with Karen Dent in her Wilson, North Carolina home.  We get to her place at 2 and have a nice visit, ooo and ahhhh over the dogs, and the puppies.  Her significant other, Jim, home from work, and we go out to dinner at Bill’s Bar-be-que.  Food was good (oh, wow, we are on a roll now, several restaurants in a row with good food!).  We had a wonderful visit, thanks Jim for dinner, thanks Karen for a great day!

March 28, 2002

Time to move to Richmond Virginia.  We are not sorry to leave the campground.  The owner is a very nice man, whose wife is dying of cancer. But the road noise is horrid.  We have never camped that close to a interstate.  I mean we were close.

We drive north on I 95, uncertain of what campground we are headed for, so at our lunch stop we drag out the campground book.  We find a reference to a state campground with 65 full hookup campsites.  This sounds very good, as we prefer full hookups while traveling.  I hope to groom dogs, and clean the trailer, including the shower stall.

We head for the campground, after calling to verify that there are sites available.  It is a pretty place, but we find that the campground book is WRONG!  No full hookups, no sewer.  This means, no cleaning, no dog bathing and we must take showers in the bath houses.

I need to call the Library of Virginia to determine if they are open on Friday (Good Friday), Saturday, or Monday.  I try the phone at the campground office, it will not take the coins, they tell me that means the coin box is full.  Next we drive down to the picnic area of the campground where they tell me there is another phone.  And there is, and it takes my $$ but then it makes soooooo much horrid loud noise, I cannot hear anything but, and I lose my $$ and don’t get through.  Now, we must drive to find another phone.  It, like the first, refuses to take my coins.  By now, I am pissed, to say the least.  Man finally gets out his calling card and finally gets the phone call through, I find that the library will not be closed at all.  That is good news!

We do a supply run at Wal-Mart, which was drastically needed, we were out of a lot of stuff.  Back at the trailer we cook hot dogs and sausages and I start a panic review of what I would like to try to find at the Library of Virginia.  I manage to take the “to do” list from about 6 items to 3.5 pages in a matter of a few hours.  Whew, will print it out in the morning.

Our campsite is near a wet spot, small pond, very pretty.  The sites are not so large here, but there is a huge amount of room between sites.  The “peepers” are peeping here.  Wow, are they LOUD!  They will sing until about 4 AM!