Carolina Beach, Wilmington, NC

Wow,  we drive really fast, and in the wrong direction (east and north),  what are we, lost?    Just kidding,  here is a post from a couple months ago, I had collected some pictures and thoughts, so I'll put it out there now still.

   In early December,  we made our way down the east coast through Wilmington NC.

We camped at Carolina Beach State Park for 4 nights.  The sites are all primitive and it was pretty deserted when we visited, maybe half a dozen other campers there. 
After a couple days, I carried water from a nearby spigot with the 5 gal solar shower bag instead of moving to fill up, and ran the generator a couple times.   We could hike or ride our bikes out to a small library to get connected.   

  

Our site was on a dead end section near Snow's Cut on the Intracoastal Waterway.  We could walk out the back of our site to see the waterway, and there is a marina on the waterway at the other end of the park.

We checked out downtown Wilmington.

I had to take of shot of this, in one of the tourist trap shops.  If this is for you, you know it.

The Secret Garden

The wharf area.  Lyle Lovett was there in full grin.

Right across the river is the battleship, we drove over to look around and kill a little time.  A couple of 53s were flying over too.

We had gotten in touch with Erik Hemingway from The Family Adventure Podcast, and we met up for the afternoon and evening.  We have listened to their podcast and it was one of the few that our whole family could get into.  (Compared to the sailing podocasts I've listened to, "sure, pack yourself on a sailboat and go off the edge of the world." 59 degrees North, The Sailing Podcast, Furled Sails).  Those are all good, but after a couple weekend sailing trips, we've found we're not a fully 100% sailing family.  The camper is nice because it will only sink when we hit mud, otherwise pavement is pretty solid, and everyone is pretty confident about not sinking.  Maybe we'll get back to a boat though...

The Hemingways traveled for 3 years on a sailboat around the Med, back to the east coast, and settled in Wilmington.  Erik showed us a couple of their current rental remodeling projects, they look great and Wilmington seems like a happening spot, they should work out well.

The gates at the state park are closed after dark, when we got back from visiting the Hemingways we parked in the shopping center and hiked through the woods.  Elliot had his tablet and having GPS was helpful, it was easy to get turned around.


Here in Wilmington, (and also later in Savanna) there are numerous civil war monuments.
This year there have been protests and public movement to remove confederate monuments and symbols in the south.  Most were targeted at clearly significant and oppressive symbols;  the flag, jefferson davis statues, etc. 

I propose that it's important to remember history, I don't want to see all these historical monuments erased.  We agree that slavery, oppression, discrimination are poor choices and are not to be tolerated.  If we don't remember the past, will we gloss over and ignore similar issues where they come up again in some different shade.  I think we need to remember those on both sides who served or sacrificed, which is what many of these monuments do.  So I hope they stand for a long time still.  Remember all those who were caught up in the tide of war, so we might recognize a similar tide and stand up against it.

The plaque reads:
Confederates blend your recollections
let memory wave its bright reflections
let love revive life's ashen embers
for love is life since love remembers