Apex to Southport, NC
Trip #1
Along the Cape Fear River
November 7 - 11, 2004
150 miles
This trip is what started me thinking about riding all the way across the U.S. By the time Bill and I had finished
this little trip, I was committed to biking all the way across America some how and by some route.
Bill and Steve, the ferryman,at the End of the Day on the Cape Fear River
Bill and I had talked on and off for more than a month about taking some time for a short trip. As we talked, various options, including biking, came up. I can't remember why we ended up biking or biking here. But I do remembered that I heard about a bike route along the Cape Fear River many years ago, which had sounded interesting to me even back then. I can't remember how I found information on this "North Carolina Bike Highway" but I do remember finding a North Carolina Department of Transportation phone number and a very nice lady mailed me the route map the day I talked with her.
So this is where it all started.. or re-started.
Note: Since this was the first "official" leg of my Bike Across America trip, or at least it became the
first leg of my bike
across the country, my documentation, as you will see, was just starting to take form. This bike trek
across the country
is also a graphics project for me - i.e. I am going to learn about graphics,
websites, etc. as I bike. (It won't be until trip #14 that I actually get my website
up in a rudimentary form. So hopefully you
will see the graphics, and details improve, as well as the photography, as I make my way across the country.)
This trip had two great aspects.
First, Bill is a wonderful and generous friend and a great traveller. We
didn't quite have the logistics figured out on how to get back and forth between bike and car. And while
we had some options,
each day Bill volunteered to bike a litle and then bike back
to retrieve the car. It didn't mean he didn't ride as far as I did. As I remember, he would
ride half way and then turn around, while I got to ride on. Many, many thanks, Bill. I'll carry
your baggage and buy your beer on every
subsequent trip we take together!
Second, It was interesting to start in an old piedmont North Carolina farm town, now suburb of
Raleigh, and work our way south into
sandier and sandier country, then pine country (too soggy or sandy for farming??)
to Wilimington, to the Carolina coast,
to the great little bayside town of Southport. I remember traffic, then farmland, then cotton fields, then the Civil
War Battlefield of Alverasboro, then sweet potatoes, sandy pine woods - almost
unpopulated, spanish moss and cyprus, the big city of
Wilmington, and finally Southport which included a great walkabout and eat about.
Linda O.arranged for a friend of hers to pick the bikes and us up from Southport and drive us back to Raleigh, which did not prove necessary.
Last Update: May 19 2006