Elizabeth Priddy on tue 23 may 06
Well, out west, what NC calls mountains we call
foothills. I guess it
is all in your perspective.
Rick in Tacoma, WA
------------------------------------
The Research Triangle is a high tech industrial base
in NC made of Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. It is
the home of the RDU airport and is in the part of NC
called the "Piedmont", ot "foot-hills".
NC is flat and at about Sea Level, a town near me, for
about three hours of driving from the shore. and then
it gets kind of loose waving hills over the Piedmont
(another three hours), and then you get to the low
mountains that Tony visited, and then you get to the
blue ridge mountains, those misty blue/purple
beautiful elevations that the world got to see in the
old TV show, "the Waltons". Different state, same
mountains as Tennessee, virginia, Georgia, etc.
So it takes about nine hours to get from one side to
the other in NC and in that nine hours, you cross snow
capped mountains, the Piedmont, and the flat plains to
get to the sea, at a place called the Graveyard of the
Atlantic.
Diversity is the name of the game here in terms of
geographics.
I can only imagine a place where it is the same for
hours and hours of driving. Here, you just stay on
I40 long enough and you are bound to find an area you
like.
I actually like the flat area of the eastern Piedmont,
where I grew up, in tobacco country, which is rapidly
becoming an eastern industrial base like the Triangle
as people quit tobacco here and start growing it
overseas where the regs and lawsuits aren't such an
issue.
I have worked every leg of tobacco, even hand looping
leaves onto tobacco sticks. I set up grading bundles
with my mother. As mush as cigarettes stink, fresh
cured tobacco coming out of he barn smells like
heaven, like the aroma of a fresh cut cigar before you
light it and ruin it.
I miss the Piedmont.
But yesterday, I got to stop and let Logan watch
cattle egrets eating worms by the side of the road on
the way to the gym. So if I moved, I guess I would
miss the egrets and the salt marsh.
And for other NC lovers, the piers at Atlantic Beach
are coming down. The Sportsman's Pier has been sold
to accommodate the condo-coast, and it will be torn
down in June, so come see it one more time if it is a
childhood memory of fishing from piers. The Triple S
is already gone and the last one standing is the
Oceanana, which you have to pay to walk out on.
(Something "kind funny" that my husband and I did that
was insane. We went out on the pier during a
hurricane, before it got shut down and walked out to
the end. We would see the waves coming in on the pier
next to us. The water would go down to sand level adn
then crest just below the wooden slats of the pier.
These were enormous waves, and I am not exaggerating.
My Keds were wet from the spray coming up through the
slats. THe pier groaned and strained against each
wave and we got so scared that we ran back the last
couple of hundred feet. This was in the dark of night
with those roaring waves and the shaking pier beneath
us. The next morning, we saw in the paper the pier we
had been watching from the pier we were on. The whole
middle of it was just gone. Pier for about 200 yards,
and then nothing, and then a little island of Pier at
the end. We were young and foolish, and probably
paart of the problem of why Piers pay such massive
insurance. But wow, did I learn to appreciate
sailors.
About three years after that, I got to board the Nina
replica, of the Columbus ships fame. The combination
of memories of watching those swells and boarding that
tiny tiny boat made the scene in "The Perfect Storm",
where they are vertical on the side of a wave,
absolutely terrifying.
Our mountains are old, like Pangea old, theorized to
have formed when the continents crashed together, and
so they flow and drape across the ridge. One of the
most popular destinations in NC is Grandfather
Mountain along the top of the Blue Ridge Parkway. And
then there is Cherokee, the first leg of the Trail of
Tears to Oklahoma.
This is a very cool state, as I am sure all the others
are as well. (But ours is the colest!)
E
Elizabeth Priddy
Beaufort, NC - USA
http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
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Nanci Mansfield on tue 23 may 06
Elizabeth, I love your NC 'history'. I live here too, closer to Grandfather Mountain. Truth is, I miss the Rockies and colorado but know I will never leave here.
Several years ago I put my 18 year old daughter on the Mimi, another sailboat of dubious history, in Beaufort. They putted, not sailed, up the intra coastal waterway to MA where they spent a long time in dry dock where the cast and crew were building the new Crows Nest bar for the Perfect Storm. Oh, the stories she told; the adventures she had! Several months later I once again drove to Beaufort to retrieve her.
I am still here in these molehill mountains and don't envy those in the Cascades a bit.
Nanci
Elizabeth Priddy wrote:
Well, out west, what NC calls mountains we call
foothills. I guess it
is all in your perspective.
Rick in Tacoma, WA
------------------------------------
The Research Triangle is a high tech industrial base
in NC made of Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. It is
the home of the RDU airport and is in the part of NC
called the "Piedmont", ot "foot-hills".
NC is flat and at about Sea Level, a town near me, for
about three hours of driving from the shore. and then
it gets kind of loose waving hills over the Piedmont
(another three hours), and then you get to the low
mountains that Tony visited, and then you get to the
blue ridge mountains, those misty blue/purple
beautiful elevations that the world got to see in the
old TV show, "the Waltons". Different state, same
mountains as Tennessee, virginia, Georgia, etc.
So it takes about nine hours to get from one side to
the other in NC and in that nine hours, you cross snow
capped mountains, the Piedmont, and the flat plains to
get to the sea, at a place called the Graveyard of the
Atlantic.
Diversity is the name of the game here in terms of
geographics.
I can only imagine a place where it is the same for
hours and hours of driving. Here, you just stay on
I40 long enough and you are bound to find an area you
like.
I actually like the flat area of the eastern Piedmont,
where I grew up, in tobacco country, which is rapidly
becoming an eastern industrial base like the Triangle
as people quit tobacco here and start growing it
overseas where the regs and lawsuits aren't such an
issue.
I have worked every leg of tobacco, even hand looping
leaves onto tobacco sticks. I set up grading bundles
with my mother. As mush as cigarettes stink, fresh
cured tobacco coming out of he barn smells like
heaven, like the aroma of a fresh cut cigar before you
light it and ruin it.
I miss the Piedmont.
But yesterday, I got to stop and let Logan watch
cattle egrets eating worms by the side of the road on
the way to the gym. So if I moved, I guess I would
miss the egrets and the salt marsh.
And for other NC lovers, the piers at Atlantic Beach
are coming down. The Sportsman's Pier has been sold
to accommodate the condo-coast, and it will be torn
down in June, so come see it one more time if it is a
childhood memory of fishing from piers. The Triple S
is already gone and the last one standing is the
Oceanana, which you have to pay to walk out on.
(Something "kind funny" that my husband and I did that
was insane. We went out on the pier during a
hurricane, before it got shut down and walked out to
the end. We would see the waves coming in on the pier
next to us. The water would go down to sand level adn
then crest just below the wooden slats of the pier.
These were enormous waves, and I am not exaggerating.
My Keds were wet from the spray coming up through the
slats. THe pier groaned and strained against each
wave and we got so scared that we ran back the last
couple of hundred feet. This was in the dark of night
with those roaring waves and the shaking pier beneath
us. The next morning, we saw in the paper the pier we
had been watching from the pier we were on. The whole
middle of it was just gone. Pier for about 200 yards,
and then nothing, and then a little island of Pier at
the end. We were young and foolish, and probably
paart of the problem of why Piers pay such massive
insurance. But wow, did I learn to appreciate
sailors.
About three years after that, I got to board the Nina
replica, of the Columbus ships fame. The combination
of memories of watching those swells and boarding that
tiny tiny boat made the scene in "The Perfect Storm",
where they are vertical on the side of a wave,
absolutely terrifying.
Our mountains are old, like Pangea old, theorized to
have formed when the continents crashed together, and
so they flow and drape across the ridge. One of the
most popular destinations in NC is Grandfather
Mountain along the top of the Blue Ridge Parkway. And
then there is Cherokee, the first leg of the Trail of
Tears to Oklahoma.
This is a very cool state, as I am sure all the others
are as well. (But ours is the colest!)
E
Elizabeth Priddy
Beaufort, NC - USA
http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
__________________________________________________
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