Nothing like milking a story

I remembered my camera today and so I can now give the final part of the Wilmington adventure. I can just imagine your joy!

In the afternoon we went back to the beach to sleep off the drive the night before.


Seriously, how beautiful?!

We ate pizza on the beach and played a little Farkle before starting the drive back.

The first part of the journey was a boat. A bit like Portaferry-Strangford, it was quicker to get the boat.


Also pretty!

We left the beach at about 7.30pm to start the mammoth drive home. No, really. It was a seven hour drive back to the lake. The journey was ok. There was, however, a moment coming up to Charlotte, which is about half way, where we got slightly off piste.

Megann, chief navigator, was talking on her phone and we passed the sign for an interstate we needed to get on. But me, being Miss Know-It All 2006 and not wanting to disturb Megann on her call, remembered that we had passed a sign for the same interstate after we had come off it on the way there, so therefore, I decided, we would come to another point where we should take this interstate.

So driving, driving, driving and no sign. Then we see the bright lights of downtown Charlotte, which looks very pretty. Both of us commented on the lights of the skyscapers and how cool they were. We carried on getting closer and closer.

Tina: I really don't remember seeing this on the way there...I suppose it was behind us though!

Actually Tina you didn't see the bright lights of the big city because you didn't come this way!

If you've ever driven on interstates in America you'll know that when another interstate or road meets it they generally just swing shot you onto it .There's none of this roundabout-bridge-where-you-can-turn-around that we tend to get on motorways at home. So coming off the road we were on, stopping and getting onto the right road was going to be slightly harder. We saw signs for other interstates that would take us to South Carolina and goodness knows where else, but if we took them we might not be able to get off and get turned around easily.

This was a situation when just a little bit of luck is all you need. We got it! We got an exit onto a Charlotte street where we could stop (and laugh for a good five minutes!), consulted the map, worked out a new route, found the new interstate, and when we hit major traffic (at midnight!) somehow we were in the lane that continued to travel at 40mph passed all the other parked cars.

Ok, so maybe we got more than a little bit of luck.