Rachel and I will have been married twenty-five years this November. November in Ohio is not beach weather, so Rachel asked to celebrate in a warmer part of the year. A family member has a beach house on Oak Island, North Carolina, and we turned that into a week-long road trip with a night in West Virginia at each end.
The first surprise came on I-77 south of Dover, when a semi appeared to be driving straight at us in our lane. It was being towed backward. Rachel took its picture anyway.
Our first real stop was Salt Fork State Park, because Salt Fork takes Bigfoot seriously. There is a life-size one inside the visitor center and a crouching statue outside. Rachel posed with both. The lake beach was mostly a construction zone, but the walk out to it had pumpkin vines and a butterfly the size of a card table. Lunch was at the Cracker Barrel in Cambridge, which turned out to be the first of two.
We crossed the Ohio River at Marietta under a Welcome to West Virginia sign and stopped at the welcome center, which has a bronze statue of a highway flagger. Somewhere past Charleston, the Turnpike travel plaza sold us a pint of pumpkin butter. We picked hotels in West Virginia for one reason: they had a pool. The Holiday Inn & Suites in Beckley came through, along with a Bigfoot pedestrian crossing sign nearby. Two Bigfoots in one day.
The next morning we spent a while at Tamarack Marketplace in Beckley, a showcase for West Virginia art and craft with a roofline that looks like a row of paper party hats. Outside there is an Almost Heaven swing, so of course we sat in it. The art walk included a steel tree called Bentwood, priced at $22,000. We left it there. Rachel did get a pressed penny, which is the real reason we stop anywhere.
The West Virginia tourist center in Princeton had a shop where we bought a fused-glass Christmas tree ornament. Then came the East River Mountain Tunnel, Virginia’s welcome center with its giant LOVE letters, and the Big Walker Mountain Tunnel.
I-77 drops off the Blue Ridge at Fancy Gap, and the view opens up all at once. At the North Carolina visitor center near Randleman, a Richard Petty No. 43 panel hangs under a sign that says Yes, It’s Real!, so Rachel pointed at it for proof. After Subway in Lumberton and a long run down Green Swamp Road, we reached Oak Island around seven and had The Pepperoni Grill delivered.
The beach house week settled into a rhythm fast. Breakfast at Eggs Up Grill in Southport (twice). Walmart runs for supplies. Dinner delivered each night, from places like Bar-B-Que House, Southport Smoke House, and Burrito Shak. We also found a Hobby Lobby in Southport that felt twice the size of ours at home. It is a newer 52,000-square-foot store, so we were not imagining it. A surf shop with a giant octopus on the porch and a marsh walkway on Oak Island rounded out the first couple of days.
One day was for South Carolina, mostly so we could check another state off our list. We made it official around the Tanger Outlets in Myrtle Beach: the Beef Jerky Experience, the Candy Barrel, and a LEGO resale shop called Bricks & Minifigs, where we looked at everything and bought nothing. The Welcome to North Carolina sign on the way back was more of a welcome back. Lunch was at Duffer’s Bar & Grill.
For the Oak Island Lighthouse, we wore matching shirts that read “America Turns 250, Our Love Turns 25, 1776-2001-2026.” It seemed like the right place for them. The lighthouse is a plain concrete tower in three bands of color, and it was closed, so there was no climb. We settled for selfies at the base, a Happy Birthday America banner about North Carolina’s lighthouses, and prickly pear cactus growing in the dunes, which I did not expect on a North Carolina beach. A gazebo in the dunes flew a flag that said “Pro American, Anti-Trump.” It was one of the few political messages we saw all week, and one we both agree with.
The beach below the lighthouse was dotted with taped-off sea turtle nests. Later that day, a sign on a pier explained what to do if you hook a sea turtle.
The same afternoon we drove down to Holden Beach for The Beach Mart, whose sign reads “Happy as a Seagull with a French Fry! I Must Be at The Beach Mart.” It had a penny machine, so Rachel was happy too. Pelicans flew in formation over the Holden Beach pier while we took a windblown selfie underneath it.
That evening we paid to walk the Ocean Crest Pier on Oak Island. Rachel went partway out, playing Pokémon GO, and decided that was far enough. I walked to the end and back. The sky was dark and dramatic, dozens of pelicans flew past in long lines, and a willet and a sandpiper worked the edge of the surf. The warm weather Rachel asked for came with a lot of clouds, but they made for better pictures.
On Thursday we drove up through Wilmington to Fort Fisher State Historic Site, where the Civil War earthworks are still there as a row of grass-covered mounds. There is a reproduction cannon named Loud Paul with its own fundraising thermometer. The Friends of Fort Fisher shop sold Rachel a book for her pressed pennies.
Back on the beach that evening, I spent several tries lining up a picture of Rachel pinching a seagull. The first one missed. The second one worked.
We headed home Friday. Rachel spotted that Andre the Giant’s historical marker was near Ellerbe. We stopped at a rest area that was a surprising distance from the freeway and was the only rest area all trip with posted operating hours. The sign at the Pilot Mountain overlook had a doodle on it that looked a lot like the Mothman. After Bigfoot twice, a third cryptid felt right. We stayed in Beckley again, at a Microtel chosen, again, for the pool.
On the last day we drove over Charleston’s blue and gold bridges, and Rachel looked up why they are painted that way. We had lunch at the Cracker Barrel in Mineral Wells, bookending the trip with Cracker Barrels. Near Canton, the power lines are held up by structures shaped like football goal posts, which is about as Canton as it gets.
We came home with jerky, candy, pumpkin butter, a book of pressed pennies, and two Christmas ornaments that will remind us of this trip every December. Twenty-five years is a long time. I would take another twenty-five if they look like this.
