The final installment of the journey takes us northeastward into the Carolinas. The last time I set foot in North or South Carolina was when I was about three years old when we went to see my Dad’s sister who lived in Burlington, NC. As acute as my memory generally is, I don’t remember a damn thing about that visit 45 years ago, so this was all new territory for me…
Before we leave Atlanta behind, those immoral words (along with “Play it pretty for Atlanta…”) were uttered by the late Ronnie Van Zant at the venerable Fox Theater when Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded their classic double-live album One More For/From The Road in 1976. The place looks rather ornate, and like the other famed Fox Theaters in Detroit and St. Louis, I’d love to see a concert there someday. But why do they waste such a classic concert venue on the likes of Nicki Minaj? That’s akin to William Hung playing the Metropolitan Opera House…
This would be the home of the University of Georgia Bulldogs in Athens, about an hour east of Atlanta. Unlike most of the college football stadiums around these parts that have oodles and oodles of parking surrounding them, most of the stadiums I visited in SEC/ACC territory have virtually NO parking to speak of near them, which makes me wonder how in blue blazes they manage to get 90,000 people in and out of there on game days.
Here be the vehicle I rented from Enterprise, a 2012 Ford Focus that had exactly 10,000 miles on it when I picked it up. It got awesome gas mileage, 34.5 MPG, but I could’ve done without some of the bells and whistles that came with it, like phone gizmos and an overly-complicated radio/audio system. Not a bad car for weekend ride, though…
Clemson University’s Memorial Stadium is known as “Death Valley”, but it didn’t live up to its name on a rainy Sunday morning when I dropped by. In one of the cooler traditions in college football, the Clemson Tigers enter the stadium literally from the street on the east end and each player rubs “Howard’s Rock” (enclosed in glass here) before charging down the hill onto the playing surface. Fun way to get fired up for a game, it seems.
I spotted this place just up the road from Clemson U. and had to get a shot of it. I love seeing vintage signage from “a better, vanished time”, as the Rush song goes, and this one made my day. I remember seeing lots of Esso stations during our family vacations down south when I was a kid, and this place appears to be an old-school gas station that was converted into a bar and restaurant, and the old Gulf sign was a nice touch too. All that’s missing are the “Regular” and “Ethyl” pumps and gas on sale for 32.9…
Believe it or not, this used to be the site of Charlotte Coliseum II (aka, “The Hive”), the mammoth 23,000-seat arena where the NBA’s Hornets once played. The place opened in 1988 and hosted the 1994 NCAA Final Four, but didn’t even make it to the age of 20, thanks in part to its lack of luxury suites and semi-poor location out in the suburbs, but mostly thanks to the Hornets’ dickhead owner George Shinn, the NBA’s answer to baseball’s Charles O. Finley. The original Charlotte Coliseum (now known as Bojangles’ Coliseum—named after a fast-food chicken outfit) still stands and is still in use just east of downtown, while The Hive literally bit the dust in 2007 after the Hornets moved to New Orleans and its site has yet to be redeveloped five years hence.
Because of our central location in the contiguous 48, Kansas City was majorly in the running to land the NASCAR Hall of Fame about five years ago, but it’s located in Charlotte, where it truly belong in the heart of Earnhardt Country. I’m a fairly casual NASCAR fan, but I especially enjoyed watching the races back in the ‘70s (back when the number was the most prominent feature on the outside of the car instead of them being rolling billboards like today), and I follow it enough today to know who’s who, so I figured their HOF was worth a look, and indeed it was. It’s only been open about four years, so there aren’t that many inductees so far (no Dick Trickle yet, dammit!), but the exhibits are pretty cool, especially the legendary cars on display on a “track” that wraps around the main atrium of the building and also simulates the various degrees of bankings found on the different speedways around the nation. They also had some interactive exhibits where you can play pit crew and see how fast you can jack up the simulator “cars” to change tires or how fast you can hook up the gas pump gizmo, etc. If I was a more hardcore NASCAR fan, I could’ve spent all day there, but an hour’s worth was good enough for me. An absolute must for racing fans, fer sure.
This would be the Demon Deacon statue outside of Wake Forest’s football stadium in Winston-Salem. He didn’t scare me a bit. If anything, he made me hungry because of his resemblance to the “Struttin’” statue figure outside of Gates BBQ here in K.C. I found Winston-Salem to be a somewhat dumpy town, but then again, what should I expect from a city named after two cigarettes?
After stopping the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, I drove the 10 miles over to visit the Tar Heels’ arch-rival Dukies in Durham. The bulk of Duke University’s athletic facilities are tucked away in the woods to the point where I almost couldn’t find them (my Maquesting efforts notwithstanding), and when I pulled up in this circular drive in front of the legendary Cameron Indoor Stadium, I didn’t even realize what it was at first. It don’t look like at basketball arena, does it? This is the back door that the “Cameron Crazies” enter through, which is adjacent to the Wallace Wade Stadium (which actually IS a stadium), home of Duke football. As with Georgia, I don’t see how in the hell they get people in and out for games—there’s like one little two-lane access road and very little parking near the venues, so I’m guessing that hoofing it is the best way to get to Duke games. Either that, or having Scotty beam you down...
This would be Durham Athletic Park, where 1988’s Bull Durham was filmed. While no longer a minor league ballpark, the stadium underwent a recent renovation and appears to be in immaculate condition for its age, and is still used by high schools and other ball clubs, while the current Durham Bulls play downtown at their new park. I never did see Susan Saran-wrap anywhere near there, either…
I snapped this photo in Nags Head, NC. To the right you see an in-ground swimming pool. Quite nice, but over the hill to the left of it is like the 2nd-largest in-ground swimming pool in the world, something they call the Atlantic Ocean! Sorta like running a titty bar in a nudist colony. And based on my vantage point on a very public wooden stairway leading to the beach, fat load of good the privacy fence does these folks, too...
Just up the road from Nags Head is the Wright Brothers Memorial near Kitty Hawk, but not actually IN Kitty Hawk, which is a bit to the north. The monument resides on Kill Devil Hill, from which I got this shot of the replica of Orville and Wilbur’s first flying contraption. [NOTE: I mentioned Orville first for a change, since Wilbur always gets top-billing, for some reason. Gotta give Orville some love, too, folks!]
And on the other side of Kill Devil Hill would be the first friendly sky on earth, the strip of land where the Bros. Wright literally learned everything “on the fly” in 1903. It only costs 4 bucks to enter the property where all this went down—er uh, up—and there’s a separate fee for the museum, which I would like to have visited, but didn’t have time.
As I mentioned back during the Big Nor’easter trip last year, I love tunnels. Big bridges too. The outer banks of North Carolina and Chesapeake Bay area have a boatload of both, and for about five years now, I’ve been dying to drive on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel after watching History Channel’s “Modern Marvels” segment on it. It costs $12 one way (and $5 for a round trip on the same day) to ride, and the thing is about 17 miles long and comes with not one, but TWO tunnels that dip underneath the bay to allow ship traffic to navigate unimpeded toward Virginia and/or the Baltimore area. It’s pretty wild to reach a point where there’s nothing but water on either side of you and no land to be found—we don’t have cool shit like this around here! It seemed at times that the seagulls were racing me in the car, too. In addition, the Hampton/Norfolk/ Newport News area had several other tunnels burrowing under the various waterways in the region. Wish I had more time to explore what I found to be a nifty part of the country. I may well head back that way in October…
Ironically, I didn’t see a Hampton Inn in Hampton, VA, but for my birthday, I decided to splurge a little and stay at a Courtyard by Marriott just down the road from Hampton Coliseum and the adjoining convention center thereof. The Coliseum was one of the homes (along with Norfolk Scope and Roanoke Coliseum) for the old Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association, for whom “Dr. J” Julius Erving starred in the early ‘70s. More than a few Kiss and Rush concerts have taken place there over the years, and I believe one of the better Rolling Stones bootleg recordings originated from Hampton. Nice to see some of the “old-school” venues from the ‘60s and ‘70s are still functional and in use…
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