Road Trip Part 2

Oh there’s more… so on Saturday morning, we went back to the State Park for a guided Carnivorous Plant Hike. Who knew that Venus flytraps are native only to an area that encompasses a 75 mile radius from Wilmington, NC? I must say, those little suckers are a lot smaller than you expect them to be! (As the guide said, “It’s definitely no Little Shop of Horrors”). In addition to the Venus flytrap, we also got to see bladderworts, sundews, and pitcher plants. (If you zoom in on the page, I drew four white circles around the Venus flytrap mouths in this picture. {For those who don't know how to zoom, click on the "Page" button in the upper right corner and you should see the zoom options}).

After the guided trek, we decided to venture out on our own to Sugarloaf, a monstrous sand dune with great history and geological significance. Let me be the first to tell you that hiking in North Carolina is definitely not like any hiking or forest like experience you’ve ever had in the Midwest. A few things to note:




1. The only things that climb these trees are lizards – no fluffy-tailed squirrels in sight.









2. The trails themselves are sand, not dirt. Have you ever tried hiking three miles in sand? It’s more difficult than you might imagine – especially when most of it ends up inside your shoes!






3. The pinecones in this place are huge! I kept wishing they were pineapples instead of pinecones…










4. Slightly dorky to note, (but interesting for a person who teaches a unit on plants), the deciduous trees in the forest either have a waxy coat of the leaves, or the leaves grow perpendicular to the ground in order to decrease the amount of surface area facing the sun. It might be hard to see, but the turkey oak fans its leaves out like this so that the sun doesn’t dry up all of its stored water.

On Sunday morning, we got up at five to go watch the sunrise over the Atlantic. We were planning on riding our bikes over the bridge to Carolina Beach, but then we realized it was thundering - which turned out quite well for me since I had been having horrific nightmares about riding my bike over a copperhead on a dark road, thanks to an interesting lady who felt it necessary to tell us about all of the snakes she had seen in our campsite. (I say interesting because she also told us about this stray cat that she somehow trapped earlier in the week because it had the neck of a broken pickle jar caught around its neck. Apparently she saved the feline's life - but she definitely was the catalyst for my nightmares!)

Anyway, the most unfortunate part of the story, as you might have guessed by now, is that due to the passing storm, and hence great cloud cover, there was no sunrise to be seen. Sadly, then, this is my best "sunrise" picture.

However, we did find the silver lining of the (many) clouds. Since we had the truck instead of our bikes, we decided to travel farther south to Fort Fisher, which we learned was the last Confederate stronghold in the South. While there, we were able to check out many of the outdoor displays that contained battleship pieces retrieved from the nearby waters. Most impressive were the anchors - they were absolutely monstrous!

We finished up our time at Carolina Beach with breakfast at Kate's Pancake House. Scrambled eggs with spinach and mushrooms for me; the "Big Breakfast" (pancakes, waffles, French toast, two poached eggs, and turkey sausage) for Chris. Satiated and armed with the energy to take down the tent, we gathered our things and returned to Winston-Salem (this time in less than four hours), very pleased with our first NC road trip experience.