North Carolina: Going to Durham
I have tossed the idea around in my head for years that each state is somehow distinguishable from the one next to it. I don't know if this is romantic fantasy or not, but when I crossed into North Carolina, it smelled new. Piney, smokey, different than any place I'd been before. I'd never quite figured out what North Carolina was supposed to be like—a touch of the south, a touch of the Pacific Northwest—but it slowly unravelled itself to me as I drove north into a long, lingering, golden-pink sunset that lasted for a long, long time.
My route was such that I wasn't sure until the morning I left Charleston exactly what parts of North Carolina I would try to see. As it turned out, I let fate decide for me—Lalitree, the only person I seem to know in North Carolina, said she was free for dinner that night, so I routed myself up to Durham by way of a long slow drive up the Atlantic coast in South Carolina. I took a break in Myrtle Beach State Park, napping to the sound of a little girl using a metal detector on the sand. I waded far into the ocean and felt as happy as I had at any time on the whole trip.
Durham was dark when I reached it, a mystery of woodsy charm and strip mall blight. Lalitree gave me a little driving tour after our stop at a seemingly characteristic North Carolina indie-rocker tavern. (My view of almonds, by the way, is forever changed.) I visited with her at her house for awhile, came close to kidnapping amazing cat Gretzky, and then hit the road again to get a head start on my last big drive through state No. 50: West Virginia.
I spent the night in Winston-Salem at a Microtel, a chain I love, tipped off to me by the Coctails more than a decade ago. Microtel gives you a tiny, awesome little room, mostly clean, and certainly more comfortable than Motel Six. All the rooms have weird window-seats, which mean you could stow a third adult there, or your kid, or all your suitcases. They all also have free long distance and WiFi, and if you pay more than $50 you've done something horribly, horribly wrong. Microtel was lovely to me and in the morning I drove around Winston-Salem, had a cup of the local hippie coffee brew, and admired the oddly serene, jubilantly spring surroundings.
North Carolina would be the last state where I saw everything happy and in bloom, and if I have to wait a week or two in Toronto before I get to double-dip my spring experiences for the year, I guess I will, but right now, at home, where it's cold, I already ache for these trees and all their promise.