Thursday 2nd November – Tuesday 7th November
The 3rd week of our Epic Fall Road trip takes a bit of a different turn of pace. We started in the north of the country exploring the big Cities of the East Coast, and enjoying Halloween and Fall landscapes in New England, before heading inland to check out Niagra Falls and Chicago. A truly amazing but exhausting experience. For the next few days, we would be instead taking it much easier.
However, while the pace of our trip was slowing right down, we are going to up the pace of the blogs and whip through this in one blog post as we spent so much of the time just chilling and checking out bars and restaurants…it was more much more like a real vacation than the rips we usually take and had taken up until now.
Thursday 2nd November
On the first day, we rose nice and early, had our final complimentary breakfast at the Venteux restaurant in the Pendrt Chicago, and headed, by Uber out to O’Hare Airport. Here we boarded an American Airlines flight down to Charlotte where our North Carolina Adventure would start.
The flight was basic, but on time and fairly scenic as it whisked us 600 miles to the south. Landing in Charlotte Douglas we headed straight to the Rental desk to pick up our transport for the next week. Take-off was around 10 am and we landed at 1 pm just over 2 hours in the air (we lost an hour flying East)
We are avid petrolheads (well I am, Kate is less than interested in cars, to be honest) and like to rent something special for at least part of our trips. The main road sections of this trip were behind us and we had used very utilitarian transport for that. Out Mitsibili Oulandeer was great, it gave good mileage, was roomy, comfortable, and got us 1000 miles cross country with zero drama…but it wasn’t very exciting. For this part of the trip, we could be a little more extravagant. So for the first time, we actually decided to find out a little about the futuristic world of Electric Vehicles!
Rental Prices for EVs were coming out about the same as a Gas Vehicle, so we figured we would give on a while and used Hertz to rent ourselves a Tesla Model 3!
This was a bit of a gamble, as we were pretty unfamiliar with this part of the country and clueless about how to go about charging the darn thing, but wanted to give it a whirl. The Tesla came with around 85% charge and we headed out into the glorious Carolina sun in our slightly insane Tesla Model 3
The route took us a bit of an odd direction as we wanted to avoid tolls but we were soon zooming across the country through the south amazing countryside, through cotton fields and swamps as we bared down on the coast.
We had to stop about 3/4s of the way to charge up, but this was no issue as we needed to stop anyway for a coffee and to call out accommodation providers who had not yet provided us with check-in instructions. In much less time than grabbing a coffee and confirming our imminent arrival to our hosts, the car was charged and we hit the road once more.
It was around 5:30 we got to the outskirts of Wilmington, our home for the week and the sun was just setting. We checked into our Apartment, situated on Water Street right on the riverwalk, and caught the last of the glorious sunset.
We then headed out to try and find something to eat. Ending up in a cute little Brewery/Bar called Rebellion. We had a Giant PRetzel with beer cheese sauce and some amazing wings. We were warned the Hot Wings were really hot, and they were, but being an avid Chilli Head coped admirably with the heavy dose of Ghost Peppers!
After this, we called it a night. The Tesla was tucked up in the parking garage and we just chilled out in our large apartment overlooking the river and the USS Carolina.
Friday 3rd November
We woke late on Friday and both felt a sense of panic that we were not up and at’em as we usually were, but we had to calm ourselves down and accept, that this was not the same kind of pace as the last two weeks…we were aloud to relax!
So we had an easy morning and enjoyed our amazing apartment overlooking the riverwalk. Truly stunning!
When we finally headed out we didn’t have a huge amount of purpose and just went to explore Wilmington. We had last visited this cute little town last year as part of our EPIC East Coast 4th July Road Trip. It was a bit of a smash-and-grab and we both felt at the time we wanted to come back and take the location in at a more relaxed pace. So we tagged a week onto the end of this trip to just come and experience the lifestyle here.
Visiting in July was also a hellish experience weather-wise. It was boiling hot and humid like we had never experienced. In November we had glorious blue skies and warm, but not hot temps, it was perfect.
We headed out to find a few of the Filming locations we enjoyed last time, from Dawsons Creek and One Tree Hill amongst others, just taking the City in and enjoying the experience, which is rare for us as we rush to pack everything in.
After this, we headed over to Southport, a cute Oceanside town with some excellent restaurants and cute local shops. Again we visited last trip and it was scorching hot AND raining and we were pushed for time, so we headed back to really enjoy the place. We had a chilled lunch by the water and bought some local fish and shrimp from Potters Seafood (Dawson’s fans will surely recognize this place!), we headed to an amazing Christmas shop and took a nice walk by the water…all in all just chilling in the gorgeous weather.
We headed back to Wilmington and realized we needed a charge on the Tesla. The navigation pointed to a Lowes Supermarket so we popped in there while the car charged up. This was quite an experience and the Shop had its own bar with amazing drinks offers. So after spending a fortune on groceries, we spent a bit more on a Wine and Beer flight!
This was apparently a really popular local hangout and we got chatting with locals about the town and why the heck we were here…especially in a weird local Supermarket bar. It was a lot of fun.
We then headed back to our apartment and I cooked up an Epic Potters Seafood feat as we watched the last of the sun’s color fade into darkness while we had a couple of drinks on the Balcony. A really fun relaxed day.
Saturday 4th November
Today was a really odd day and one where we actually parted ways to do different things. I grabbed a Fishing Rod and headed to the Pier for the day, While Kate headed off to do some EXTREME Celebrity Stalking.
Steve
I had planned to read out on a charter fishing boat to have a crack at what the Atlantic Ocean had to offer on this side of the Ocean. I have fished extensively on the other side of the Atlantic and things are quite different in these much warmer waters. However, the lateness of the season and the roughness of the seas meant that the last few boats running were not able to get out, so in instead I headed to the Johnnie Mercers Fishing Pier to spend the day fishing from the pier.
The weather was a little wilder over on the coast and I could see why the boats were stuck at the dock. The pier costs for $2 entry and rents fishing rods for only $8 a day including bait, tackle, and entry. Also, the Pier has a communal fishing license so you do not need one to fish from the pier which is a bonus as it’s a bit of a faff for visitors to acquire one, and certainly not worth the risk to not. so all in all for $8, I had a fun-filled day planned to try to snag a few fish from the pier.
There were a lot of people out on the pier and even finding a spot was challenging. The bait supplied was Shrimp, and I got quite a large pot free with the rental. However, the issue with shrimp is its lack of ability to stay on the hook. There were swarms of Pinfish down under the pier and on every cast, the bait lasted about 5-10 seconds max before the little fish had pilfered it from the hooks.
Every now and then a Bait thief would snag itself on the hook and you would land a small but feisty pinfish or two. It was not the most challenging sport but it was great fun and would be a brilliant way to introduce kids to fishing. I lost count at around 10 fish in and probably ended up with well over 20 fish in total. These small fish are full of bones and no good for the pot so they all went back unharmed.
Every now and then, I got the cast out far enough to avoid the pinfish and the bait would sit on the bottom for just a little longer, possibly attracting something larger. In the end, the best two fish I pulled up were a couple of small bluefish. These can be large, hard-fighting predatory fish, but these were just little juvenile snappers and again, they are so-so for eating so were returned unharmed.
I spent a good 5 hours down on the pier before making my way back to meet Kate at the apartment after she spent the day out stalking.
Kate
As a huge fan of both One Tree Hill and Dawsons Creek, Wilmington is a real DREAM location to Visit as the town is littered with icon locations from both TV Shows. Again Check out the link in the description for more info.
During our Stay, there were a series of events being held in the town, and Kate was heading over to one of these today. This was a book reading and meet and greet of one of Kate’s Favourite Stars of One Tree Hill, Hilary Burton.
We had already done a little Hillary Stalking earlier in the trip as we visited her Current hometown of Rhinebeck, so Kate was really excited to meet her today. Along with meeting a host of other Tree Hill fans and visiting the Tric Night Club used in the show.
Evening
After enjoying another stunning sunset from the balcony we headed out into the town for a night out in the bars and restaurants of the Old Town. We dined at a New Orleans-themed bar with sticky smoked ribs, Creole Chicken Gumbo, and of course Bingeits for dessert.
We then just grabbed a few drinks in the local bars on what was a fairly busy Saturday evening before retiring to our apartment for the night.
Sunday 5th November
Today was more of the same really, just enjoying the pleasant Wilmington area. We started off with a nice stroll around town picking out a few more filming locations, before grabbing a really nice Sunday brunch down by the river at the George on the Riverwalk.
The weather was really nice. It was a little chilly in the morning but by midday, the temperature was peaking around 75°f (24°c) so we decided to hit the beach!
We drove over to the Wrightsville beach area near Crystal Pier, another Dawsons Creek Filming Location, and just spent a few hours soaking in the last of the Summer Sun. This felt pretty odd in Late Fall and a stark contrast to the snow we had just left in Chicago. The sea was still warm enough to swim and the locals had hit the beach in numbers with several beach parties going on and lots of folks out surfing.
It was a really enjoyable afternoon just relaxing on the and before we headed back for one of our few organized activities.
For Dinner we grilled up a huge lump of steak we had bought from Lowes and served that with the last of the Local Shrimp we got from Potters Seafood, with a side of Avacado Salad and macaroni Salad. It’s great to have a location where we can cook as we spend so much time on the road we are usually restricted to eating out.
For the evening we wanted to do a Ghost tour and had booked with Haunted Wilmington to head out into the night to look for Spirits.
We have a full review of this Tour here where we go into detail of the walk, but in short, it was a great night. Our host was fantastic and regaled us with various tales of things that go bump in the night. However unfortunately and not unexpectedly, we didn’t get to see any ghosts and even after trawling our photos with a fine-toothed comb, could not spot anything too out of the ordinary…apart from this shot at the window of a house that had homed a lot of children who perished in the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1919…Probably just the light right?
Monday 6th November
Once more, we had very little planned for the day, as we said this was a much more relaxed part of the trip. It was the last full day of this trip so we really sowed things down even more. After a long lazy morning we headed out in the Tesla for a bit of a drive and to see some of the countryside, heading to Green Swamp Preserve.
Here we hoped to hunt out some of our favorite plants, Venus Fly Traps. We had never seen these in the wild and were really excited to find them out in the swamps. The area was actually really dry for a Swamp, the Fall had been pretty dry after the summer rains had subsided and the ground was pretty firm, it can obviously get pretty boggy in the woods here.
We found heaps of fly traps hidden under the foliage along with Pitcher Plants and Sun Dews. I have been fascinated by carnivorous plants all my life and it was amazing to actually see them growing in the wild. We were a little disappointed there were no Aligaotrs in the ponds and had not actually seen any all trip, even at the Alligator reserve where we saw them last trip! We still had one shot at seeing them later though.
After a steady hour-long hike along the trail and then back to the parking lot, we hopped in the Tesla and then back towards Wilmington. We stopped along the way to charge up and hit a few liquor stores for gifts to take back home.
Back in Downtown Wilmington, we spent the afternoon down by the river, we caught the Taxi boat across to the USS North Carolina, after all, we had spent so much of this trip staring at her. We did not go aboard as we had been on Battleships before, and instead just spent some time walking around the vessel.
The Waters around the Hulking Great Battleship are great spots to see gators, but once again we were thwarted on this trip and they kept themselves hidden. It’s a pretty long walk around the vessel, and we just took our time enjoying the late Fall sunshine.
Back on the other side, we were aware our time in Wilmington was coming to a close. We had one final sunset on the balcony with a few drinks, before hitting the town for a final meal. This time returning to Hell’s Kitchen for Burgers, A Caesar Wrap, and some Nachos. The bar was pretty lively with Monday night drinks specials and a weird gambling/bingo-style game going on. We had a quick go and won on our first try, only to re-invest and lose everything (it was only a $1 stake)
Overall a fun night, with great food and cheap drinks. But we headed back to our apartment to reluctantly check out tomorrow and head on back to the Big Apple.
Tuesday 7th November
We rose bright and early in order to head back to New York. We had a 4ish hour’s drive back to Charlotte and had to get the Tesla Back fully charged. This is a little more of an issue than just stopping at the nearest gas station as you need to charge it up (20-30mins) nearby and then get it back to the drop-off without depleting the battery too much. We all know a full tank of gas had 50-70 miles of range before it starts showing on the gauge, but with an electric car, the second you start driving it the % goes down.
So this was a little stressful as the charging rates are pretty horrendous. We actually had to stop twice on the trip, as the battery just wasn’t going to get us to the airport Supercharger. So it’s a bit more faff but overall it’s not a big problem and we had great fun renting an EV for our trip.
At Charlotte Airport we were lucky enough to have access to the Centurian Lounge. This is a perk of our Amex and something we really enjoy. We really didn’t expect a lounge at Charlotte, there wasn’t even a lunge at O’hare. so we were grateful for some nice food and a couple of drinks before boarding the flight back up to La Guardia.
Day 15 – Chicago – Bus Tour – Sky Deck – Navy Pier – River Cruise
Day 22 – Virgin Atlantic Upper Class – New York to LAX >>>
