92. Transylvania County -- Brevard -- 3/22/08

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvania_County%2C_NC

"Tronn-sul-VON-ya!" I know what you're thinking. Dracula. No matter how much I look, I haven't been able to find him. But that's probably because Dracula isn't from NC. I know, bummer. He can't claim citizenship with the likes of Michael Jordan, Richard Petty, Andrew Johnson/Andrew Jackson/James K. Polk, Ava Gardner, Andy Griffith, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk or even Fantasia, Chris Daughtry or fellow courthouse chaser Kellie Pickler (see the Stanly County post). It would be really cool to have your own blood sucking vampire to keep those annoying friends away. You'll have to go to Romania to find the real Transylvanian Dracula. But he's probably not there, either (he's FAKE). Bats are cool, though.

Some of my best memories of nature in NC come from this seemingly out-of-the-way county in NC. It's known for having the most waterfalls in NC, including my and most everyone's favorite, Looking Glass Falls. I grew up coming to Black Mountain (Buncombe County) to visit my grandparents, and almost every time we came up, we would drive the Blue Ridge Parkway. The BRP is definitely one of my favorite places in NC (and yes, even in VA). The overlooks are amazing, the hiking is great, and the fact that every time I'm on it, I lose track of time. I still can't tell you how far time-wise it is from Black Mountain to the Pisgah Inn, and I've driven it a hundred times.

The BRP winds down and criss-crosses county lines for a while. In Transylvania County, after passing through 9 tunnels from Asheville, you come across the Pisgah Inn. In the dining room, you can eat and look out over the valley. It's awesome. You can also pick up the Mountains-to-Sea Trail nearby...one day I'm going to hike this (maybe).

Just past the Pisgah Inn, is Frying Pan Mountain, where you can hike up to the fire tower. I have great memories of doing this with my family and grandfather. This area is in the Pisgah National Forest. The Pisgah National Forest was land that the Vanderbilts sold to the state--$5/acre for 89,000 acres (now down to ~8,000 acres). The Vanderbilts built the Biltmore Estate near Asheville and created the first school of forestry in the US, which helped lead to the creation of the US Forest Service.

Then, after Frying Pan Mountain, you come across US 276. This is the road I tell everyone to drive. On it, you follow the Davidson River (tubing is popular here) past Sliding Rock (it's quite an adventure in cold water!) and Looking Glass Falls, as well as Pink Beds, and just crazy winding roads.

When you emerge from the forest, you end up in the county seat of Brevard.

When I did the western-most counties in NC with Brian and Benji, I asked Brian if we could grab Transylvania on the way back to the Triangle. He looked at me for a while, and just said, "No." If you find yourself in Brevard, you either purposely went there, or you're helplessly lost. It's definitely tucked into the mountains, but it's a beautiful town.

I saved this county specifically so that I could get a picture of a courthouse with my dad. My Mom's in the Buncombe County picture, and my brother's in the Alexander and Caldwell County pics. Somehow, my dad had gotten out of getting his picture taken. He didn't get out of it so easily this time! Our whole family packed into the car and we headed down the Parkway and 276 to our friend, Brevard, after stopping to see Looking Glass Falls.

I hadn't been to Brevard in a while. As an elementary schooler, my parents would drive down to Brevard Music Center and say, wouldn't it be great to come to music camp here when you learn how to play an instrument? I wasn't into band camp at 10, or camp at all. But then I ended up at ECU Band Camp when I go older. I mean, I play trombone and all, but I ain't all that. I've just heard Brevard Music kids are pretty darn good.

When we got to Brevard, my mom said, "Brevard and Brevard College are famous for its white squirrels." I thought she was joking. The moment we pulled up to the courthouse, what did we see? A white squirrel climbing all over my courthouse! I had seen an white squirrel once near Lake Norman, but an area "famous" for it? No way. Next to the courthouse was the White Squirrel Shoppe. On the other side of the courthouse is a gazebo with a white squirrel weather vane. Oh yes, they like their white squirrels here.

Not only that, but they apparently like animals in Brevard in general. The yard of the courthouse has a sculpture of a red wolf (across the street from the Red Wolf Gallery...hmmm...a connection?) and a moose. And a canon. Oh, canon's aren't animals. The Transylvania County Humane Society operates a thrift store on the main drag, and one store front had REAL doggies in the window (it wasn't a pet store), and another non-pet store had a REAL cat in the window (sorry, no link for a song about cats in the window). So, you may not be able to find the REAL Dracula in Brevard in Transylvania, but you can find REAL animals and (fake ones). I think I need to go put Dracula in there somewhere...hmm...

It was really hard finding a spot to rest the camera to take a group shot. If you haven't noticed, over the course of the last bunch-or-so pictures, I've found it best to set the camera's timer and take a picture that way. So here, I had to settle for a road cone that was sitting in front of a store front door. It got a pretty artsy dark-person-bright-courthouse shot (except my mom, who can be seen in the sunlight). Hey, it counts...it's me in front of the courthouse!

The courthouse is the only one I've seen so far that is kinda similar to the one in Martin County. This courthouse has been through some renovations over the years, and looks pretty good, with nice landscaping. According to a plaque, the town helped to buy the clock on the belltower in 1984. There's even a time capsule buried on the properties. Towns get bonus points for having time capsules, and even MORE bonus points if they'll be opened in my lifetime. This one will be opened in 2076, which may be opened in my lifetime if I can almost be a centenarian.

The funniest thing about the courthouse is around back. There's a park in the small back parking lot that is very pretty and also small. It servess more like a quaint garden of the courthouse than a "park". Nonetheless, it's named Walker Park. As you enter the park from the courthouse, mind you, there's a sign that says, "Registered Sex Offenders are not allowed to enter into or on any public park, recreation facility, or child care facility owned by Transylvania County. Violators are subject to a fine of not less than $500 per offense and/or 30 days in jail." Sounds simple enough, and makes sense. However, if you walk back over to the courthouse, there's an area where people must be inclined to take smoke breaks. There's a sign there that reads, "No smoking in this area. Designated smoking area is WALKER PARK." So, in other words, if you are a registered sex offender, you're not allowed to smoke on the grounds of the courthouse at all. It sounds like there's an idea on how to cease the general public from smoking in public area somewhere in that paradox.

Another interesting tidbit about the courthouse is that there's a war monument. Charles, there's a war monument everywhere. You're right, intelligent one. But upon closer examination, there's a new section on it. Do you know what it is? No? Lemme tell you. We're used to seeing Vietnam, WWI, WWII, Korea, etc. Charlie Lane Bagwell was a Transylvania County resident who perished during the "Global War On Terror." I am very thankful for his service to our country, and I'm very sorry to hear of his loss. It's very humbling to know the reason for his death. The Civil War has many names, like The War Between the States and the War of Northern Aggression. What will we end up calling this current conflict the US is involved in? It'll be interesting to find out. WWI was known as the The Great War until WWII broke out. Hmm...

Downtown Brevard probably uses downtown buildings with window fronts better than any town in NC I've seen. Besides putting random animals in the windows, many places advertise well in them, and some even had TVs showing sporting events and stuff. It's really well done.

My dad used to stay with his grandmother on the main street with the courthouse growing up. That house used to sit where the Water Oak Suites now sits. He remembers looking through the blinds at the lights at the filling station across the street when he was in bed at night. The filling station is still there, but now it's being renovated into an adapted reuse building for something. My dad said he and my uncle would shoot rocks at bats with slingshots. He said he didn't hit any, but the bats would go after the rocks. Maybe my dad scared Dracula off? Crazy.

On the way to grab some dinner, we drove through Brevard College. It has a pretty cool stone wall around it. On one side of the driveway, I saw a bunch of white squirrels. On the other, a bunch of grey squirrels. I said, hey, we can't have discrimination in the squirrel world. But then I noticed that in fact, there were a good mix of squirrels on either side of the road. I like harmony.

We were all hungry for some Chinese food. So, we stopped at Twin Dragons. In Asheville, there's the Asiana Restaurant similar to this one. These Chinese places are ENORMOUS. They have Mongolian grills, sushi bars, and a HUGE bunch of dining rooms. It's Chinese food chaos. But I love it.

Here I am, in a Twin Dragons restaurant in the outskirts of Brevard, and I'm walking to the bathroom to wash my hands. All of a sudden, I hear, CHARLES?!?! I stopped to look, and I'll be darned if it's not two friends of mine from high school in Fayetteville that I haven't seen since 2001. Earlier in the day, my brother and I were playing disc golf in Black Mountain, and the person in front of Kirk and me happened to be one of Kirk's friends from NC State he hadn't seen in a few years. It was definitely crazy. Back to Nancy and Monica, they both have always been fun people, and we caught up. It was pretty awesome. This is why I love courthouse chasing.

After that, we headed back to Buncombe County to watch UNC beat Mount St. Mary's in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Tivo. It rocked.

91. Richmond County -- Rockingham -- 3/15/08

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_County%2C_North_Carolina

I hadn't crossed into Richmond County since the day of the Kelly Pickler Parade when I was with Laura doing the Stanly/Montgomery/Anson/Union/Mecklenburg loop back in the day. I remember thinking how sad it was to drive through a tip of a county and not chase its courthouse. But it was all good. Today, we were definitely gonna chase that courthouse down.

This entry is dedicated to my cousin's father, from Richmond County, who passed away last year.

First, though, Martin and I had to make some stops. Oh, and by the way, Rockingham, the city, is not in Rockingham, the county. It's fun to confuse people that way.

Our first stop was THE ROCK! North Carolina Motor Speedway is a former NASCAR track. I mean, people in NASCAR still use it, but it doesn't host any more races. It's also in movies, like Talladega Nights. I came to a race here with the UNC band. They had College Band Day at the Feb. 21, 2003 Subway 400, but the only two schools that showed up were ECU and UNC. We stood on the track and played intro music for the drivers, but it was so unorganized, it sounded terrible--if we could be heard at all. There weren't really any microphones that I remember, and the track, being a mile loop, really didn't help anyone to hear our music. Then, they randomly asked our two bands to play the National Anthem. But since schools don't really have the same National Anthem, we just let ECU do it. ECU's band, which was made up of anyone who felt like making the trip (like us), had a tough time playing the Anthem in the environment and lack of instrumentation. It was also extremely windy. For some reason, that didn't stop the paratroopers, who jumped from a plane. The poor paratroopers were tossed around like ragdolls in the air, with some not even landing in the speedway, one who landed HARD on an RV in the infield, and then fell off onto the ground, and one who landed HARD on the track probably 100 feet from me, and, what I learned later, broke his back (he wasn't paralyzed, thank goodness). Medics came in and had to help the injured paratroopers off the track, infield and parking lot. I remember standing there, amongst the failure of College Band Day and hailing paratroopers saying, "I bet someone lost a job over this." But we all got to walk through and slap hands with the drivers as they got in their cars. That was cool.

I had worked for a shipping center, similar to Mail Boxes, Etc., and shipped a lot of UPS stuff. The overnight envelopes at that time featured Dale Jarrett driving the 88 car. Since Dale Jarrett is from NC and is a Carolina fan (even though that's most of them) and I had to look at his face everyday on the UPS envelopes, I became a Jarrett fan. And guess what! On that blustery day in February, Dale Jarrett took home the checkered flag. That ROCKed my face off. Check out his victory...wasn't that awesome? NASCAR is extremely loud...you have to be there to believe it. Or, you can probably imagine it. Bring earplugs...seriously.

This time, however, there wasn't a race going on. It was sad. But at least the track's still used for testing and other racing. The big grassy parking areas with the 1970s painted steel signs were empty. But, we found another Geocache. We also drove around the track! The outside of the facility, that is. I went pretty fast, since there was no one anywhere. One of the gates was open to drive into the infield, and I thought about it, but the big sign that said ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING seemed to anticipate my curiosity and killed the cat. Instead, we drove up to the top of the track and peered in. It brought back the glory days of Dale Jarrett's stunning victory. Yessiree.

We then got ANOTHER Geocache.

Then, we headed to Hamlet. Hamlet is the birthplace of John Coltrane, who was awesome. When I was in San Francisco, I went to the St. John Coltrane Church. That was pretty awesome. The Bishop came in in his robes and a tenor saxophone and said, "Let us come to the presence of the Lord," and a jam session broke out. The people in the congregation are encouraged to play instruments, and we would sing Psalms to the tune of A Love Supreme (or listen here) and other Coltrane pieces. My friend and I served lunch to the hungry after the service, which they do every week. You're right, this has nothing to do with Hamlet, NC directly.

But, in our local Hamlet, Martin and I visited the National Railroad Museum. It reopened about 3 years ago. The website is really old. The same people that moved Cape Hatteras Lighthouse picked the station up, turned it 180 degrees, and dropped it on the other side of the track(s). I've never seen so many railroad tracks and crossings in my life. The museum is in the Amtrak station, and had been in the middle of about a thousand tracks on either side. Ok, not really that many. But it was (and is) crazy. They were starting to lock up the museum (2 hours early) when we got there, but the guy was nice enough to give us a personal tour! Both Moore and Richmond County folks went out of their way to be nice. We were the only visitors all day, he said (though I noticed one more person in the guest book). They still haven't moved all the artifacts back in yet, so there wasn't much in there. But there was a Model T and the most amazing train set I had ever seen. They created a scale model of the town of Hamlet from the 1930s as a train set, with a few million dollars worth of pieces. Absolutely incredible.

Martin and I talked to a lady on the board of directors of the museum for a long time. She gave us a lot of good info on Hamlet and the station. Hamlet is still a major train hub to this day.

Hamlet is also one of those towns where the tracks separate the rich from the poor. It's a night/day difference.

Martin and I then hung out by the train tracks and watched the trains go by. Well, except the one we were watching, which sat there. The conductor and some guy in a car were hanging out. Then, finally, the conductor got back on his train and moved it. It was a very long train. Then we watched more trains. If you want to watch trains, Hamlet is the place to do it. If you haven't figured it out, trains are important to Hamlet, and they're everywhere.

FINALLY, we drove to Rockingham, the county seat. It was raining in torrents when we got there, which limited our walking and experiencing the town. Downtown Rockingham noticeably sits on a hill. At the bottom of the hill lies...a noticeable bypass. And what does that mean to many small towns? Yup, a downtown that has seen better days. But, despite many empty store fronts, there weren't TOO many, and the downtown was very clean. Downtown Rockingham has a big R.W. Goodman Co. furniture store across from the courthouse. It's taken up tons of space left by other places, so it's HUGE. And it brings back memories of a time before me, back when Dale Jarrett was just starting out, of furniture stores with big store fronts. Very nice. I noticed a sign in the window of Ken Goodman running for school board. Something tells me he's related to the furniture people. Good luck!

I was fascinated by the area near the courthouse called Harrington Square. "Town Square" areas, yes, in the shape of a square (I wrote this following sentence before reading the Wikipedia article!), are usually around something like a courthouse or something else. Here, it's a block away from the courthouse, and two sides have (probably) been demolished. There are two banks, and RBC Centura and a BB&T over there now, not in the square. It's an interesting Town Square. There is a fountain in the middle, boarded up due to probably the winter and the drought, as well as the Confederate monument and a Time Capsule! The Time Capsule is to be opened in 2084, Rockingham's 300th anniversary. I hope to come to the opening!

I actually did this out of order. We went to the Courthouse before going to Harrington Square. We took the picture--in the rain--and then went for our walk around--in the rain. Martin and I HAD to experience downtown Rockingham. The courthouse has a water (drinking) fountain in front of it. One of the things I still can't explain, is the prevalence of drinking fountains in front of courthouses! For every Confederate Monument, there's a drinking fountain. It's just crazy. Some are dedicated by groups of people, some have doggie drinking areas, and some have horsey drinking areas. I think it's really funny. Also, we noticed a crazy owl balloon hanging from the railing on one side of the courthouse. I'd never seen that before on a courthouse, or really anywhere. I guess it's keeping the birds off. But it's still crazy.

If we hadn't had enough of the rain, as we were driving out of Richmond County, we made a quick stop at McKinney Lake National Fish Hatchery. The sign said it was closed, but the gate was open, so we drove in. I've been to fish hatcheries before, but this one was ENORMOUS. There were lagoons that went on forever. We jumped out, took goofy pictures with the sign, and headed back on the road, to listen to UNC beat Clemson in the ACC Tournament. Huzzah!

Martin and I stopped in Sanford (Lee County) to eat some pizza at La Dolce Vita. Good pizza. As I was coming out of the bathroom there, I opened the door, and an elderly woman walked SMACK into the edge of the door. She didn't seem to happy. I don't know how she did it. I had the door open for like 2 seconds before she ran into it. Poor lady. If you're reading this, I apologize again!

Then we made it, safe and sound, back to Orange County. What a day!

90. Moore County -- Carthage -- 3/15/08

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County%2C_NC

All of a sudden, it became March 2008. How did that happen? Well, all that means is that it's time for more Courthouse Chasing excitement! And boy, did we get some this time. I dedicate this entry to Seth and Amos, who have lived in Moore County.

I had the urge to do some chasing, so I started calling folks to go. Between the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament and UNC Spring Break, it was hard to find anyone to go. However, there was one trooper who could make it: Martin.

Despite how much Martin wanted to visit Martin County due to his name (ok, it wasn't a LOT, but he mentioned it), I told him we were headed almost due south to pick up Moore and Richmond Counties. Martin likes local history and stuff too, so we decided that we'd make a day out of this journey and visit the House in the Horseshoe in Moore County and the National Railroad Museum in Richmond. We did our research the night before, and we were off the next morning.

While driving through rural Chatham County, Martin said, "Hey, why don't we check out the Devil's Tramping Ground [while we drive down NC 902]?" I said, "Awesome! Let's do it!" But we realized neither of us knew how to get there. But we knew we were headed the right direction, which we were, but we turned off before we would have gotten there. One day, I'm going back to the DTG.

So, we crossed into Moore County. Even though I grew up in Fayetteville, I didn't spend much time in this adjoining county. If you look at a map, Moore County touches Cumberland County with about 1.5 miles of itself. I'm fascinated by little stems of counties and states. For example, one day I'm going to go to the Kentucky Bend. I read in a book that the border between Moore and Harnett Counties was originally along a line of trees with two and/or three axe marks in them. This way of making borders happened a lot, but this one is close to my heart. I still think some rich land owner owned all the property and refused to be incorporated into an adjacent county...the books don't say that stuff. I remember one of the first times I drove into Moore County from Cumberland on Vass Rd. (NC 690) and thought how special I was to be on the only road in the world that crosses that border.

My first real memory of Moore County was when I worked at the 1999 US Open Golf Tournament at Pinehurst #2. I worked a concession stand, selling beer at age 16 while eating hot dogs and serving customers at the same time (in the food industry, those are both no-nos). But, once again, I remember thinking how special I was to be at the US Open breaking food industry no-nos. I saw Payne Stewart play his last tournament before his untimely plane crash (he won the tournament), as well as Tiger Woods and watched what was going to be Jack Nicklaus's last ever US Open putt...until he played again the next year.

On the bus to the US Open from Hoke County, the sign read, "Welcome to Moore County, home of the 1999 US Open." On the way back to Hoke County from Moore, the sign read, "Welcome to Hoke County, home of the NC Turkey Festival." I thought that was funny. I love NC.

Also, in high school, my physics teacher owned a gym in Aberdeen (in Moore County). He would give us extra credit to drive out to his gym and climb on his climbing wall. I did that a few times. Our high school marching band also played in the band competition at Union Pines High School.

Ok, back to the recent trip. We stopped at the House in the Horseshoe, which is a really old house. You should read the article. Welcome back from reading the article! Martin and I walked into the gift shop where you're supposed to begin the tour. No one was there! We wandered around for a while, and decided to walk up to the house. There's a little museum in an old tobacco-like barn, so we watched a reenactment of the stand-off. We walked out, and the dude on the lawn tractor drove up to us and asked if we wanted a tour. He was the only one working that day, and we were his first visitors all day. He gave us a personal tour, which was pretty cool, and joked around with him a lot. It's amazing to think people 200 years ago were just as ridiculous as people today. Mr. Alston, the Whig, didn't have many friends, and this Fanning guy, a Tory, went EVERYWHERE around NC causing trouble. Every time Alston turned around, there was Fanning giving him a hard time. They both escaped from things a lot. I asked the dude where the slave quarters went, since I like knowing about what REALLY happened on plantations. Some people think plantations are "great!" and especially down south, we like to name gated communities and gated towns like St. James Plantation with the name "plantation." I think that's kinda sick, because for the 5 people LOVING their plantation, there were 50 more people that loathed it (i.e., slaves). The dude said that they were all torn down at the beginning of the 1900s because it wasn't a historical building yet, and the person living there tore down everything that was dilapidated. Makes sense.

We grabbed a quick Geocache, and we were off.

If you didn't know already, Pinehurst, Southern Pines, Whispering Pines, Pinebluff nor any other "Pine" city created in order to lure people off the passing trains into a piney health resort, is the county seat. Carthage is! That's right--you learned about it in school. Carthage has been around for a long time, dominating the Mediterranean region...oh wait...that's in Tunisia. Wrong Carthage. Carthage, NC is a bit younger than that. Carthage is also know for its Buggy Festival.

We found the courthouses (yes, two here, right next to each other), and snapped some quick pictures. I'm wearing my 2008 Chapel Hill/Carrboro CROP Hunger Walk shirt with a Hawaiian shirt on it for fun. The courthouses seemed to fit the stereotype of pretty, older courthouse, with a newer, "modern 60s/70s feel" courthouse to replace it. If you go to the front of the new courthouse, there's a WWI memorial with canons around it, which I thought was interesting...it's not a Civil War monument! We're standing at the "back" of the old courthouse.

We started walking around to the front of the courthouse, and we noticed...SLOT CARS! Martin and I thought that was rad. So we walked inside. We were the only ones in here (noticing a trend?), and we spoke to the owner forever. He was a really great guy. He just wanted to have a place to race slot cars, and there wasn't anywhere around. Also, he didn't like how many slot car places charge $24 an hour and some you have to buy a car first. He only charges $5 PER DAY! It's just enough to pay the rent and utilities with a little to take home. He even encouraged us to play for free. So the three of us raced around the track for a good long time, even when our cars would fly off the track and slam into the track walls. Man, it was fun. I gave him 5 bucks anyway, because he was awesome. He said many of the local politicians, judges, etc., come in to play on their breaks sometimes. Richard Petty and other racers have even come in and signed autographs for people. He has pictures of these folks on the walls. When you're in Carthage, check out the slot car place! He told us to go get something to eat at Court Coffee next door.

So we did.

Meatball subs and salad for a 5 bucks. Awesome. We talked to the lady working in there for a good long while (and the really nice guy who commented on my UNC sweatshirt). We weren't the only ones in here this time--there were some bikers (motorcycles) from Fayetteville in there...I knew they weren't from there (Moore Countiers have a very strong accent), and the bikers eating sounded...like me! That was one of the few times I could actually pick out a "Fayetteville" accent. There isn't much of one, but you can hear it when you place someone born and bred in Fayetteville next to someone from Moore County. The lady working in the restaurant, Martin and I talked about John Edwards for a while, because she was from Robbins. John Edwards grew up in Robbins, NC, in Moore County. Now, he lives in Chapel Hill. Apparently, there's a sign in Robbins that mentions the fact that he grew up there, and his house is "off to the right and 3 houses down." We wanted to go see it, but Richmond County awaited.