I had heard pretty much only good things about Virginia Beach. It is a well known tourist destination, after all, and everyone that had been there seemed to have really enjoyed it. That included my parents, and my father had a particularly good reason to look forward to it and enjoy it: this is where Edgar Cayce, a unique and fascinating man in history, lived. You can visit his home here, and I had been hoping to do exactly that. This is a man that has been described as America's Nostradamus, because of his knack for making eerily accurate predictions. Also, perhaps more importantly given the focus on natural health and especially natural foods these days, he was able to diagnose people with problems almost as quickly as they would enter a room, and his diagnosis, if I remember correctly, almost always had to do with a change in diet. He would tell these people what they needed to eat (natural foods, of course, being pretty much the only thing that they had at that time), whether it was a particular kind of fruit or vegetable, and he apparently had quite a knack for healing these people, as well!
Quite an interesting figure in history, wouldn't you say?
Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to visit Virgina Beach, and even though Edgar Cayce's House had actually been the main thing that I, personally, wanted to visit, it did not happen. We got to see the beach a little bit, enjoyed our hotel (including the indoor swimming pool), and that was pretty much it!
We woke up fairly early the next morning, and got going, on our way to still faraway Charleston, South Carolina.
It was a long drive, too! We got out of the Virginia Beach area, driving right by the downtown area that looked pretty much like any downtown area for a fairly sizeable, North American city, filled with office buildings for the business district, and drove past the suburban area, knowing that the North Carolina border was approaching, and just wanting to cross it.
We did, and probably within the hour. But it was strange. The GPS had us go on a highway that seemed nearly deserted, and filled with farmland. And at some point, I just noticed that the plates parked on the side all seemed to be North Carolina plates. Also, there was a school or so, and maybe a police department, that looked like they had state flags that were different than Virginia's.
Yet, as we approached I-95, we reentered Virginia, only to reenter North Carolina proper maybe a couple of minutes later - this time with a full out welcome center for the tourists. Wanting a guide, as well as a state road map, we made a stop. I thought it would be a good idea, also, to take some pictures of my son in front of the sign welcoming people to North Carolina.
One thing that was immediately obvious to everyone was just how much hotter it was! I know things do not actually work this way in real life, but it seemed like the heat and humidity was taken up a notch or two simply by crossing into the North Carolina border!
After a relaxing respite from the mind-numbing drive, we were off again. Another several hours down I-95, heading towards the South Carolina border, stopping once to eat at Bojangles, a local fastfood chain that I had never heard of.
There was one place that I was interested in visiting, because a friend had mentioned that it was just a place to visit after a long day's drive. This was "South of the Border", a kind of makeshift Mexican village filled with all sorts of strange stuff, just inside of South Carolina. He joked that many of the billboards as you approach (and there are a lot of them!) seemed blatantly racist, and he was sure that they must have been taken down by now. They portrayed the main character, a cartoon Mexican, who was incredibly lazy.
But they had not taken them down, and I began to see many signs once we came within maybe one hundred miles of the place. The closer we got, the more frequent the advertisements got.
And we finally got there. I took the exit, and everyone was looking out the window, looking at the rather odd place we were traveling through. Indeed, it was kind of a mix of a Mexican style village, along with a theme park. Yet, it was different than each, and had numerous little gift shops of sorts.
Another thing that was hard to miss is that it was mostly empty. Hardly any cars driving or parked anywhere. Nobody walking around (although that might have had something to do with the rather excessive heat), and it just had a lifeless feel about the place. I drove through, until we essentially left it, and then turned back around. Picked a place (some gift shop) rather randomly to stop at, and found out, with some measure of surprise, admittedly, that nobody else wanted to go in. Not my girlfriend, and not my son. Not even to go outside and stretch their legs! It had begun to drizzle the tiniest bit (although this did nothing to alleviate the heat!), so I went in alone.
The shop had all sorts of things, souvenirs, it seemed, from all over the world. Not surprisingly, they even had souvenirs from Myrtle Beach, which was originally our main destination for the trip.
I left without purchasing anything, and we left "South of the Border" altogether, getting back onto I-95 for maybe all of five minute (I doubt it was that long),before the South Carolina Welcome Center came up on our right. It had palm trees, which was exciting (we saw palm trees on the North Carolina side, some kind of a field of some sort, as well as a few at "South of the Border"). But here, I could walk right up to them, if I wish.
Now, I know this sounds stupid, but this was pretty exciting to me! You see, I had only been to one area that was warm enough year round to support palm trees, that being a trip to San Francisco that I had been very fortunate to have been a part of during late February of 1996. That was the only time that I had seen actual palm trees outside and planted in the ground, and not in some greenhouse or bucket that could be moved (there is a New Jersey beach town - I forget which one - which has some of the latter palm trees).
This was feeling truly like "the South" now!
Again, I went in and got a South Carolina tourist guide, as well as a road map. And, again, I took a picture of my son by the sign outside welcoming people into a new state for everyone in the car.
It was incredible hot and humid out there. ery uncomfortable! We sat at a picnic table in the shade for a while, giving the dog a drink of water and allowing him to stretch his legs like the rest of us, before we got back in the blessedly air-conditioned car, and started back on our way.
Once again, we drove a long way, a mindnumbing drive through now completely unfamiliar territory and landscapes.
Eventually, we neared Charleston, and everyone just kind of wanted to get there, already!
We got close, and off the highways, onto a local road, which our hotel was just off of, apparently. There was traffic, and it was slow. But I noticed this street was lined with palm trees, and it looked kind of the way I imagined a southern California road might look! Again, this was all new to me, and so it was exciting!
The hotel wound up looking extremely nice from the outside. It had palm trees, it has Spanish Moss (also, something I had never seen, and which was exciting). It had a huge marsh in the back, with signs warning that alligators might be a threat!
Perhaps most appealing of all, especially after spending even a few minutes in the heat, was the inviting, sparkling blue swimming pool!
We were too tired to do much of anything that evening (although we did go into downtown Charleston to grab some grub), but the swimming pool was something that my son desperately wanted to explore, and pretty much immediately.
And that was our first day in the "real South", if you will!
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