A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

North Carolina's Coastal Plains, which make up 45% of the state, took up about 85% of today's travels. But the Coastal Plains actually look so much like Florida that I wasn't motivated to take any photos. I was probably too tired, as well. But that didn't stop me from, on a whim, pulling into the parking lot of a North Carolina Division of Forest Resources fire tower.

I found myself as eager to climb it—I'd never climbed one before—as Chris had been to buy fireworks. Chris was okay with it, so we parked at the base of the tower. It was unmanned, but a sign simply warned visitors to take care. We couldn't go into the locked shack at the top but we got photos of each other from as high as we could go. Chris managed to blink as his was taken, but I considered mine to be one of my best photos ever and used it as my photo whenever I needed one.

But the sun was starting to set, and we still didn't know where we were going to spend the night. So off we went.

It was just a few miles before we got to a campground that had tent camping but also electric outlets. (We needed one for the electric frying pan, that we used for all our cooking.) I don't remember the name then, but today it is Charlotte's Whispering Pine Farm. We wasted no time cooking and eating.

In those days, no phones, and we had no transistor radios with us. But we had a guitar! (Chris and I had been two-thirds of a folk trio in high school.) So, after just a little music, and with fingers crossed that we wouldn't be hit by another flash flood, we hit the hay.