Our travels on Friday were easy and quick, after a crazy night of rain and wind. Wind is the one thing that really bothers me when I’m trying to sleep (I can sleep through anything…but windstorms keep me awake!), so it was a restless night. Fortunately it was just a couple of hours to our next campground near Fayetteville, NC. We have a pull-through site, so it was particularly easy to get parked and setup – didn’t even have to disconnect the car to pull in! We have a really nice location within the park, with lots of pine trees around us (although the trees are less important this time of year vs. in the summer!)

On Saturday, we drove north to Chapel Hill; there was a Jazz Festival on the University of North Carolina (UNC) campus, so we enjoyed a concert by the UNC jazz band – such talented young people! I saw something new – face masks with flaps that allowed those playing brass instruments to keep their mask on in between, and simply lift the flap to start playing. Ahhh, life with COVID.

We didn’t see a lot of the campus because it was pretty windy and not great for walking around, but it seemed really nice. We learned it is the oldest public university in the nation, chartered in 1789, and the only public institution to confer degrees before 1800.

We had dinner in town near campus, and then needed to stop at a grocery store. Wegmans, our Rochester-based favorite, has a few locations in that area, so we headed to the Cary location. Always feels like home in a Wegmans! And it especially felt like home to see this after we checked out – the sign above this display said “Hometown Teams”, and the Bills had the most prominent placement. Not the Carolina Panthers. Not any of the local NCAA favorites…but the Buffalo Bills. Love it!

In our first few weeks of this trip, we’ve learned a few things about “winter camping” that I’ll summarize here…

• The floor in the RV gets REALLY cold. Clearly, there’s no insulation below it, and the cold air just permeates the surface. So, very warm socks or slippers are a necessity! Barefoot is not an option like it is in the summer months. And we bought a small area rug to add to our other rugs, to use in front of the couch. Helps a lot!
• You have to keep a close eye on overnight temperature forecasts – it has dropped below freezing several nights of our trip, and the water line could freeze if left connected to the spigot. So, we’ve had to keep the freshwater tank full and disconnect the water line on several occasions. Our freshwater tank came equipped with heating blankets, so those help ensure the water in that tank is safe from freezing! We’ve seen all kinds of creative solutions from other campers – small, insulated wooden houses that go over the spigot, insulation around the spigot & hose, etc.
• The ‘basement storage’ areas of the RV do not get as cold as the outdoor temperature, we’ve learned, so we fortunately don’t have to worry about items in there freezing (we probably would if it got down to 10 or 20 degrees, but fortunately, NC nights haven’t been quite that chilly!)
• A space heater is a necessity. The furnace does a decent job, but it’s pretty noisy, so it’s nice to have the space heater running and directing heat right at us. Barring any electrical issues (but who would have those?!?!?), it’s been running a LOT! We do have to turn it off to run the hair dryer…the two don’t seem to play nicely together, and we’d like to avoid frying any fuses or outlets!
• It’s amazing how many people are camping this time of year. Granted we’re in NC, not NY, but the campgrounds have been surprisingly full…and largely with what seem to be long-term stays. If the license plates were all from northern states, we’d be less surprised, but many are from states further south than here. We are guessing some are in the area for temporary work (e.g. traveling nurses, construction workers, etc.)

This campground has about 35 cottages, and they are really fancy! Fully equipped with a kitchen, bathroom, TV, linens, etc. Basically mini hotel rooms. Great option for people who like to camp but don’t want to own an RV! Or for people who have to stay somewhere for an extended period of time – these are much less expensive than a hotel or Airbnb.

On Tuesday, we headed into Fayetteville, which is home to Fort Bragg, one of the largest military installations in the world. There are over 54,000 military personnel…so the city of Fayetteville is really an extension of Fort Bragg, and very military-focused. We checked out the “Airborne & Special Operations Museum” which tells the history of these groups from 1940 to current day. The earliest missions include D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, all the way through until the War on Terror. There was an overwhelming amount of information and it honestly wasn’t all that well organized, but we did learn quite a bit and the displays were well done.

From there, we drove past “Market House”, one of the more famous & historic buildings in Fayetteville, and tried to head to another one of the local sights, but ended up stuck at a railroad crossing for about 20 minutes before we bailed and returned to the campground. The train just kept going back and forth…not making any real progress…and there was no apparent way to circumvent it…oh well. We’ll try again later in the week.

Wednesday was a trip to Durham, NC, just over an hour north of the campground. It’s one of the three cities in the “Research Triangle” (along with Raleigh and Chapel Hill), and home to Duke University. Duke was originally founded by Methodists and Quakers in 1838 as Trinity College; it moved to Durham in 1892, and was renamed in 1924 for the Duke family who made their fortune on tobacco and energy.

Our first stop on the Duke campus was the Nasher Museum of Art; they have a small but diverse collection including stained glass, artifacts from 12^th century Italy, and more.

From there, we went to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. While this isn’t the best time of year to enjoy gardens, this place was simply amazing…even more so when you consider that it’s on a college campus. We focused on the “Historic Gardens”, but there’s also a Garden of Native Plants and an Asiatic Arboretum – would love to return in the Spring to enjoy all of the gardens in full bloom! We did catch a few early bloomers – some daffodils and a magnolia tree. So nice to see signs of Spring instead of snow, snow, snow, and more snow. Anyway, the Historic Gardens feature terrace gardens which were dedicated in 1939…the rest of the gardens evolved from there. It was such an interesting mix of plants, from palm trees to arborvitae to succulents. And there’s a large koi pond with lots of fish!

The gardens provided a scenic pathway to Duke’s West Campus and the Duke Chapel. What a gorgeous campus! Apparently, students sometimes call it “the Gothic Wonderland” thanks to the architectural style which is actually called “Collegiate Gothic”. We walked through part of the main quad and to the chapel, built in the early 1930s.

From Duke, we went to the “American Tobacco Campus” in downtown Durham. This was the heart of the tobacco industry in Durham for many years, and once that industry shut down, it was re-purposed into a mixed-use site, with office space, restaurants, banquet facilities, the Durham Performing Arts Center, and the Durham Bulls stadium (recall the 1988 movie, “Bull Durham”, with Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon). Really cool example of adaptive re-use!

Downtown Durham, which is nicknamed “the Bull City”, has a huge bronze bull in the main square, and a very interesting 60s-era hotel across from it, “Unscripted”. Love that this hasn’t been remodeled into an ultra-modern mess! It’s so much more interesting than the 70s-era Marriott across the block!

On Thursday, we decided to visit Fort Bragg. Civilians are able to enter once they get a visitor pass, which required a driver’s license and background check via social security number. We both passed (!), so we were able to drive around. It’s simply massive (251 square miles). Most of the buildings are unimpressive…bunker-like and utilitarian; definitely not architecturally significant. But the sheer size of it made it worth driving through. It opened in 1918 as Camp Bragg, an artillery training ground. Interestingly, it will be renamed soon, given that it is currently named for a Confederate soldier.

We made a 2^nd attempt to visit some of the other sights in downtown Fayetteville, and once again, we were thwarted by a train. Unbelievable. Apparently trains just sit on the tracks in Fayetteville every afternoon (maybe every morning, too…we just haven’t encountered that!). Definitely makes it a less tourist-friendly city! Not sure if we’ll go for a third attempt or not…stay tuned!