The next Tuesday we went sailing with Gerry and Nancy Murphy on their beautiful double-ended sailboat. Due to light winds we didn’t make our destination of lunching at Oriental and instead had an enjoyable, several hour sail during the cool, perfectly sunny day. Following a short driving tour of New Bern, we had lunch in town then Jay discovered the birthplace of (drum roll please) -- PEPSI!!! It held mostly Pepsi logo memorabilia but it was a fun place to explore.
Jay standing in front of the home of Pepsi-Cola.
Nancy then insisted we visit Mitchell’s Hardware store. One would normally not think of a hardware store as being a “must see” feature of a town, but Mitchell’s is an exception. From 1898 when it began as a livery stable, it was in the same location and owned by the same family until 1987 when it was sold to the Taltons, long time residents of the County. The Taltons moved the store to a larger 1912 building across the street in 1988, preserving the integrity of the structure by retaining the tin ceilings, leaded glass and other historic architectural features. The store has anything you could desire and more. The worn, wooden, plank floor hasn’t seen a coat of varnish or wax for decades and is mostly covered with an assortment of display cases, tables with seasonal displays, and free-standing, floor to the 12’ high ceiling, shelving. Every inch of wall space is put to use with built-in painted wooden shelves and racks and hooks for retail items that hang. The more we wandered through the store, the more we thought of that we needed in the RV and, no surprise, they had most everything!! Chris even found unusual candelabras that sit atop wine bottles and bought one for the RV and one as a Christmas gift for Jessica. A few days later she returned, on another errand, to find potted salad greens and bought two. Even though she can’t putter around in a stationary garden like what is at home, she can at least have a portable one to satisfy her addiction. Go to this link to read the store brochure.
October being the howl-a-ween month that it is, New Bern hosted a Ghostwalk complete with tours of its historic 17th and 18th century homes, graveyard and a variety of plays and dialogues reminiscing about the goings on in New Bern during the Roaring 20s - its theme for the year. Gerry Murphy dressed up in a gangster outfit complete with black, pin-striped suit, dark shirt, white tie and topped with a Fedora and sporting a violin case reminiscent of the tommy gun days. His assignment was to “guard” a pristinely restored red, Stutz Bearcat Roadster that was stationed in front of the largest, most beautiful home in town. We strolled around town visiting several houses, the fire station museum, the cemetery, attended the stage presentations and in general had a wonderfully enjoyable evening. We were even invited to a post-Ghostwalk party at Gerry’s friend’s house.
Gerry Murphy with the Bear Cat.
The Bear Cat was parked in front of this gorgeous home.
The front entrance of the home shown above.
The stuffed bear represents the town of New Bern – New Bear.
A home that dates from the colonial days of New Bern.
Our original plan was to stay in the area for about two weeks but both of us had been plagued with slow and unruly computers. A troubleshooting session on Chris’ computer was more than it could take and it had a full-blown hardware crash six days into our visit. We agreed it was time for a complete upgrade and a new motherboard, CPU, power supply, memory and the brand new 64-bit version of Windows 7 was ordered. While waiting for the parts to arrive, we visited the 300 year old sleepy, seaport town of Beaufort. Both Jay and Chris had stopped there during their boating days voyaging to and from the Caribbean Islands and found that, although the town and anchorage hadn’t changed, the dock area had been substantially upgraded from a single, long bulkheaded gas dock to a sizable marina complete with at least a half-dozen floating piers hosting several 80-foot plus motor yachts. Historic tours were not offered on the Sunday we were there so, we entertained ourselves with a visit to the North Carolina Maritime Museum, strolled the streets and photographed some of the 200 year old sea captain’s homes and visited the Old Burying Ground an ancient graveyard whose mossy, lichen encrusted tombstones seemed to be randomly placed amongst the contorted trunks of the live oak that dotted the grounds.
An example of some of the large, captains homes that line the waterfront area.
A cute Beaufort home.
A view of the Old Burying Ground and its randomly spaced headstones.
Another view of the Old Burying Ground.
Another afternoon was spent at the Civil War fortress, Fort Macon, a beautifully restored five-sided, brick, stone and earthen fort containing 26 vaulted casements housing museum displays and re-creations of storage, dining and barracks rooms. For the first year of the Civil War, the fort was held by the Confederates until the Union General Burnside’s forces attacked it with an 11-hour rifled cannon barrage damaging it severely enough for the Confederates to surrender. Our plans to walk through the surrounding 385 acres of beach and forested park grounds were thwarted by yet another barrage of wind and rain and we beat a sodden retreat to the truck and returned home. Go to this link to see the Fort Macon State Park site.
We dodged the drops at Fort Macon and were rewarded with this rainbow.
The computer parts arrived and Chris spent a day tearing apart and rebuilding her system. Although it would at least boot, the old operating system was still in place and she continued to have problems related thereto until the software upgrade could be installed. Due to the volume of Windows 7 orders placed the same day as hers, Microsoft delayed shipping our copy forcing us to extend our stay at the Camp LeJeune campground. So, we continued visiting with friends and Cliff Vogelsberg graciously gave us a tour of the hanger where the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft squadron resided at the New River Marine Corps Air Station, where he works. He was very patient while we pelted him with questions about how the engines tilted, how many crew and size of payload it carried and how did the engines, wings, propellers and other parts fold together into a small enough space to be used on an aircraft carrier? It is a masterfully crafted engineering marvel and we are lucky to have such a versatile aircraft in our armed forces. Go to this link to view the aircraft at the station and get more details on the Osprey.
Friends we visited, Bryan and Linda Genez, in front of their beautiful, custom built home.
On Monday, November 2nd we trekked down to Wilmington, NC to lunch with Deese Thompson and Bill Caster, Coast Guard friends that Jay knew but didn’t serve with, and their wives Jeanne and Diane at a lovely waterfront restaurant. It was a fun visit and we also drove down the road where a young, 20 year old Jay lived in the area when he was stationed on the CG Cutter Mendota. On our way home we picked up the Windows 7 software and prepared for a Wednesday departure to Charleston, SC.
