After I dropped Michelle and Mariel at home in Fayetteville, I spent the night at my favorite free place.
A free spot for the night and then a hot breakfast in the morning. And, no, I didn’t take the photo. It was STILL raining!
I got to Charlotte and found my home for my time there. The Elmore RV Park is a unique experience. It is located behind a used car lot and the residents are a mixture of permanent, long stay and short term folks. As it is in an older park, it has older, mature trees. I love trees! The site I was given was kind of awkward to get into. As I stood there puzzling about how to approach the task, a neighbor offered to do it for me. I readily accepted. I love it when the I get parked with no passes!
My main major reason for visiting Charlotte, other than the fact that I had never been there, was to visit a friend and former student. My former students are the closest I’ll ever come to having kids.
It’s so good to see them all grown up and getting on in life. Married, even!
I really enjoyed our visit. And, Melissa didn’t seem at all upset about what I did to her mailbox.
She said that they had just gotten permission from the HOA to replace it. She even sent me a photo of the new mailbox. It did look a lot sturdier and much more classy!
The rainy weather continued during much of my visit. But, I had excellent television reception and wifi was included in the park fee. After all the driving I had done, it felt good just to hang out.
I stopped in to a craft brewery just a little ways from the trailer park for dinner one night in the NoDa neighborhood. NoDa stands for North Davidson. It’s a gritty up-and-coming arts district.
I had house made smoked sausage and potato pierogi with caramelized onions and beer mustard.
I also indulged in blundus biere, which was a Belgian blonde ale. According to the description, it has a complex flavor with notes of bread, clove and orange, with a soft and fluffy sweetness.
Who writes this stuff?
But, it was good. Almost as good a Bud Light.
I also took myself to a movie. Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks. If anyone asks, I highly recommend it.
I must admit that I was a little put off by the array of port-o-potties stationed just outside the entrance.
I guess the theater was undergoing some renovations. The theater I was in was great, though. It even had reclining seats!
The weather was very wet. I originally had only planned to stay three days, but the forecast was so dismal, I decided to extend my stay a couple of days. It turned out that a week was the same cost as five days, so I stayed for the week.
With the miserable weather, I wasn’t too eager to do anything. I did pry myself out of the RV park to go visit the President James K. Polk State Historic Site. Although he made his political mark in Tennessee, he was born in Mecklenburg County, just outside Charlotte. This park is part of the land that his family owned when he lived there.
As you might well imagine, the log cabin and outbuildings that were there when he was born in 1795 had long since ceased to exist. However, soon after his death in 1849, a visitor to the farm recorded the the buildings that were there. At least, that is what the guide said. She told us that they moved buildings that were representative of what would have been there.
This is what the Polk’s would have lived in. The part of the house on the right was the main room. To the left was the girls’ room. The boys slept in the loft upstairs.
This is the kitchen. Since fires were so devastating, kitchens were frequently in separate buildings. Slaves lived in the loft.
I asked the guide if the building were in the same locations as the original. She told me that this was part of the farm, but the buildings were originally by the creek across the road.
At the end of the tour, she invited us to stroll over to look at the family graveyard. I examined it. The plaque by the graveyard said that these graves were moved here when they put in a road somewhere. It wasn’t clear to me whose graves these were.
Well, that seems kind of logical. I visited a birthplace that wasn’t to see buildings that didn’t have any direct relationship to Polk and a graveyard with the remains of random folks.
By then end of my week at Elmore RV Park, the rain had finally eased up a bit. I hitched up and pulled out of town. Next stop, South Carolina!