On the beach

I'm here on the lovely Crystal Coast of North Carolina. It's a funny place - not one I would recommend for a single traveler looking to meet new people. It's totally geared for families.

It's basically a really long island with about five distinct communities on it and there is still a remarkable amount of undeveloped land here. The beach is a straight shot and beautiful, about thirty miles long. You could walk the length of it if you're fit enough. There are few hotels however and even the chains are rather rundown and creepy. I'm at the Ramada and can watch the sea roll in from my bed but the place is sort of mildewed and in bad need of new carpeting and bathroom fixtures. Meanwhile, between the widely scattered hotels and throughout the island which I would guess is less than a mile wide are hundreds of huge expensive beach houses and fancy condos.

Folks seem to be rather religious here, there's a dozen Baptist type churches and only a half dozen bars. What struck me as the oddest however was listening to an anti-gay marriage ad on the radio as I was driving around, proclaiming that it was destroying the sanctity of hetero unions while passing the third gentlemen's club within ten miles featuring private exotic dancers. Weird.

It's off season of course, so the place is rather empty and a lot of the businesses are closed. The people who are here seem to be either younger couples with kids or retired couples. Fully half of the couples I've seen are older redneck guys with much younger (and overweight) wives. In fact, have never seen so many obese people in one place. I expect it's because the only thing they seem to serve in the entire state is fried food. I saw one woman sitting on the deck of one of those fancy condos that was so fat that from a distance I swear I thought she was some kind of stationary hot-air balloon. She was dressed in a hot pink outfit and until I saw her head, looking very tiny atop of that body, she didn't even look human. One wonders how she gets through a door.

It's been a good couple of days for me. I was looking for a quiet place to think by the sea and I'm blogging live from the beach here in the center of the main town in a very fancy and new building. At the other end of what they call the Boardwalk, which is about 2000 feet of wooden sidewalk in front of one of the public access beaches here is a filthy and rundown building housing the only bar where I stopped for a beer. I shared the space with a half dozen great big good ole local boys who were deeply involved in some gambling game that involved hundreds of dollars in twenties. It looked like one of them won about five hundred. There was a big sign inside warning you that you could drink on the beach but not on the boardwalk. Somehow I don't get the logic of that. They're contiguous but it's a little too wide to jump.

Really odd place but I'm amused enough. The only disappointment was the biscuits. I expected to get a decent one here, it being the south and all but there's none to be had, and if anyone tells you the fast food chain Bojangles has great ones, don't believe them. They're terrible.

Well the sun came back out and I have to leave tomorrow so I'm back off to the beach. I'll be back to regular blogging tomorrow night.