In which Sid and Doris just drive and and drive and drive to reach Nags Head, North Carolina on the Atlantic coast.
Waking up in Boone we look at our planned route to New Jersey and are not inspired by the idea of going along the ridge of the Appalachians to Roanoke and Harrisburg. It all looks a bit same-y and no way to finish an epic journey. We also have to pay attention to Hurricane Ida that is making its way from New Orleans to New York along our original route. But if we go due east and use main roads we could get to the other shining sea. Sid and Doris are re-energised and we fire up the JGG.
When we have said we are taking an old car across America people have said ‘You’ll be fine if you stay off the Interstates.’ The Ford will go along quite happily at 65mph, trucks will come past but they mean no harm. The roads are only really frenetic where the Interstate goes around a large city, where it is also the ring road which means a lot of splits and merges. We can be making almost twice yesterday’s average speed. There are no traffic lights which are the bane of American driving.
Soon after 10.00 we are fuelled and on the main road, ducking under the Blue Ridge Parkway’s elegant bridges and starting the long descent out of the hills, heading for some solid mile harvesting. All you and we will see can be spied from the car. Doris has some fine pictures of the trucks coming by although for the true experience you will need to hold the screen up next to your left eye while making BIG TRUCK NOISES vrrrrRRRR and wobbling your chair slightly uncontrollably from side to side.
Doris takes a turn on the Interstate and then Sid finds a convenient suburban street just off an Interstate junction to swap back into the driver’s seat. The picture needs no caption, it could have been in the original publicity.
Sid observes that there seem to be a lot of towns in America called Attraction. Oddly the signs to ATTRACTION always come after signs to FOOD, LODGING and GAS…
But then the US road system does like using words where the UK system uses pictograms. We see helpful signs such as FENDER BENDER MOVE VEHICLE FROM ROAD and BRIDGE ICES BEFORE ROAD (this is present on all bridges that cross rivers, making you wonder a bit about the US road designers’ opinion of the average American’s short term memory).
Other signs along the roadside provide a mild diversion too.
Back to the journey.
The wooded rolling countryside gradually flattens out and gives way to farmland and then the pine trees that always indicate sandy soil. And suddenly we start to see brick-built houses, which are really the first ones we’ve noticed on this trip.
By 3.30 we are off the end of the Interstate and still heading east through Williamston, Jamesville and Plymouth. Now we are in flatlands and heading for the big Alligator River and Outer Banks bridge crossings with gulls and pelicans hanging in the air over the causeway across Pamlico Sound (remember to read Terry Darlington’s book on travelling here in a canal boat and then think what sheer folly it would be to bring a canal boat onto this enormous body of water.
We get into the Surf Side Hotel at Nag’s Head at around 5.30. Though we are a bit barmy those 380 miles were fairly unstressful.
Sid and Doris’s Epic Journey from Eugene Oregon, to Pacific Grove across middle America to the Atlantic in North Carolina in the Peckham-procured and prepared Ford Country Squire: it is done. 4500 miles. High paw.
