We decided last weekend to drive down here. Azura wanted to see the beach in the daytime, and to look for shells. And I wanted my parents to get to know her better, so they would understand why we're getting married.

So she picked me up today from work, with our dog Dickens in the car, and headed for Wilmington, NC.

I've written about several trips, most of them to the mountains, or through them. Either I've made the trip to Wilmington too many times, or it really is as boring as I think. There's not much to see ("Look Ma! A Mo-bile Home!"), and getting out of Charlotte is pernicious posterior pain.

See, on my trips north and west, I had Interstates to travel on. I can go to Wilmington all-interstate, but it adds 1+ hours to the trip. No thanks, I'll just go 'straight'. And that means taking Highway 74. 74 is one of those old roads that meanders through small towns, and usually has long stretches of two lane highway with little nor no passing.

Now, in Charlotte, 74 is one of our busiest roads. And until this weekend, I didn't know a way around it that wasn't just down a smaller, less busy (but still backed up) Charlotte road.

We left my work at 4:15 (I got there early, eh?), but didn't get out of Charlotte 'metro area' until 5:15. And we hadn't even gotten to Monroe, which is a city a lot of Charlotte people live in (and thus has traffic all it's own.) But about the time we got to Monroe, I saw 485 is now intersecting 74. Interstate 485 is the new outer-loop that Charlotte is building. It runs from near my work, all the way around to 74. It's only one-fourth the way around Charlotte, but I bet it's lots faster. We'll try it the next time we go down.

After Monroe, you go through a few small towns, and see the last of the interesting scenery There's an old building, maybe a school house or a courthouse in Hamlet, NC. It burned down, and was never rebuilt. There's one spire easily three or four stories high. And then, as is typical for a southern country town, the whole thing was covered in kudzu. All in all, a really neat-looking place.

Then you are out of Hamlet, and you hit the highway portion of Highway 74. It's flat and boring. Nothing to see except flat roads, with trees up next to them. Maybe the trees block the mobile home park, maybe they don't. *yawn*.

It's really different than my trips to and through the mountains. There the trip--the actual travelling--had meaning. You could see the wonderful scenery as you went, or the driving was more interesting, with the curvy windy roads. Sure you were going somewhere, but the process of going was interesting. When you go to the beach, only the destination has meaning. I wish I could just teleport there, sometimes.

We finally made it to my parents house, and settled in. Typical of my mom's interesting morality, I had to sleep upstairs in a single bed, while Azura slept downstairs in a Queen bed. At least my bed was really dark, so I slept really well. I would have rather slept with Azura, but that's just a no-go proposition with Mom.

I didn't want to rock the boat, considering the news I want to tell them tomorrow, assuming all goes well.

Generic Joe's A Typical Male