After a week...

I've been in North Carolina for a week or so. Honestly, I can't even remember how long. I'm so bored, time has kind of gone blank on me. I flew in on the 14th, so two weeks I guess. My project hasn't gotten going yet, we've just had a couple of meetings. Our job trailer was delivered on Tuesday of this week, so I was able to unload my truck finally. But we're apparently not getting power to it for another week. So I get another week of sleeping in a little :-). In the meantime, I do have a little bit of work to do, but nothing that will take up whole days. So I pretty much sleep till whenever, have some breakfast, go to the little gym at the apartments and walk or ride the bike for an hour, shower, and do nothing the rest of the day. Maybe around 7 pm I get motivated to do some work. It's a good work life I guess.

Other than that exciting bit of life, I have been exploring a little. I have been able to drive around Fort Bragg a little, it is a huge base. It's the home to the 82nd Airborne and the Special Operations Forces, which also requires soldiers to jump out of planes. So there are jump trainers everywhere. It's kind of cool to see. There's an 82nd Airborne museum in Fayetteville I've been told is a must visit, so I will probably head there this week sometime to kill time. But it is weird to be around Army uniforms all the time. At least in WA I could escape it, my house is nowhere near Fort Lewis. Here, I live 1/2 mile from the Base. There's no escaping it. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just a little to get used to.

In my wanderings around the area, it has been quite humbling, and a little scary, to see the couple of areas where entire swaths of land and houses are destroyed from a tornado outbreak here last April. Apparently the state of NC had 122 tornadoes in one day in April, and several of them were here. When driving into the main gate, you can see on either side of the road where a tornado passed through. When I was first out here, and didn't know why, I was thinking that those houses were looking pretty bad, and a little sad that there were tarps on the roofs and whatnot. Then I found out why. It's kind of scary to think of what did that. Then we found out a tornado also touched down right up the road from our job site. I just figured the trees were all askew from some construction company or something. No, they were blown all over the place. Crazy. I'm not a fan of thunderstorms, certainly not ones that have extra winds to them. And I live on the third floor of a three floor apartment complex. Should be a fun year...

So this weekend we had BEAUTIFUL weather. While my house is getting deluged in rain back in WA, I'm loving this 70 degrees and sunny stuff we're having here. Yesterday I was a lazy bum and didn't get myself together very quickly, so I decided to just go for a ride on the motorcycle. I found my "need to clear my head, go for a quick ride" route. It takes about an hour, and it's on some back roads with beautiful scenery. I also found a nice golf course that I'll probably hit up here pretty soon. I am super glad I brought the motorcycle with me, I can see going for some awesome rides while I'm here.

Today I was a little more energetic in getting up and going, so I headed to the coast. I decided to go down to Wilmington, which is about 2-1/2 hours southeast of me. Given it looked to be a long day of driving, I took the truck for this trip. I took the back roads so I could see the countryside. It was such a great drive. Kind of in reverse order of how I took these, I'll start with the finish line first. I ended up down along the Kure beach (said "curry"). So gorgeous!

I love how the sand kind of just does it's own art with the water:
Under the boardwalk:

It was so relaxing to sit and listen to the waves. What made it even better was the light breeze and the 72 degree temps. I have always said the east coast beaches are better than the west coast ones. This beach confirmed that thought. I'm totally looking into getting a rental there for some weekends while I'm out here, even if just for a night. So nice!

On the drive down, I took my time and stopped to look at some old houses. One of the reasons I was so excited to come back east for this project was the old structures. For some reason, the east has so many abandoned houses, and they are so awesome to look at. I love how they were built, and the fact that they are still standing, and that a lot of them are covered with trees, vines and other growth. I would love to know their stories. Unfortunately, most are either on someone's property, or still occupied. So I can't venture too close to those. But I did find a few that I stopped to get pics.

This one is an old school that was built in the late 1800's. There actually was a plaque for this, that's how I know that.
This house was right on the side of the road, so I pulled over and meandered around the property for a little while. I so wanted to go into the house and the outbuilding, but I know that's not the safest idea. There's no telling what critters are in there, or weird humans. Plus, it was obvious those structures were ready to drop. So I stayed outside. This is the one side that's not covered with trees and vines:
I'm guessing this was the front of the house. Though on the other side it appeared there was another main entrance, so who knows. But looking through the windows, it had some nice fireplaces and wood slat ceilings.

One of the things I love about the old houses is the wavy glass. I soooo wanted to steal some of these panes, but I was good... :-)
I loved this. Three different types of footing support: brick, CMU, and a chunk of wood. Whatever holds the house up, right?
It's cool to me to see how much construction has evolved over the years. Per building codes, air vents of some sort have to be installed along the perimeter of a crawl space. They are usually some sort of plastic or masonry deal that has holes in it. This house I found appeared to be ahead of the "building codes" times. The brick skirting for the crawl space had bricks missing every second brick or so for the vents. I was impressed.

This is the outbuilding, kind of a small barn:
I loved how they put the horizontal siding up over the diagonal sheathing, all 1x wood. Goes to show that good old fashioned wood does a lot better over time than all the convenient materials we have today. It was really fun to be able to look at this place up close. I passed a lot of other places that I could have gotten out and looked at, but figured I'd save them for future adventures. Plus, if I give it some time, I figure I can catch them in the spring when the overgrowth is green and more pretty. So looking forward to those drives!

On the drive home, we had a GORGEOUS sunset. I tried to get a pic as I was driving, that's why this one sucks. But you get the idea:
I scared the lady in the truck next to mine, her face was pretty funny. Anyway, I made it home with lots of plans for the next year. I want to hit the coast a few more times, and I have plenty of backroads to explore. I want to get a more comfortable seat, and some bags, for my motorcycle. I can see doing a lot of these trips on the bike. Should be pretty fun!!