The Outer Banks Adventure Trip continues to Durham, NC. May 2-3, 2025 and Travels home Day 6-7 (The Travel Lady)

 Day 6, Friday, May 2, Breakfast and lunch included

Two blueberry muffins, an omelet, and cranberry juice for breakfast at the hotel at 6 A.M. 

We finished packing and set our bags outside our room at 7:30 A.M., but we took our overnight bags with us. 

At 7:45, we departed for Durham, N.C.

Plymouth Welcome Center

We stopped at the Plymouth Welcome Center at 9:40 A.M. 

Around 12:15-12:30 P.M., Restroom break at Walmart, Durham, NC. 

Dinner at QShack, Durham, NC 

At 12:45 P.M., lunch at The Original Q Shack, where I ordered a BBQ Sandwich with Mac & Cheese, hushpuppies, and banana pudding. I had enough leftovers for dinner. 

At 1:45 P.M., we loaded onto the motorcoach and departed to meet our step-on guide, Brad, with Tobacco Roads Tours. 

Our first stop with our guide took us to the Homestead, Factory, and Museum of the Duke family.

We rode by Duke University and were given a brief history of the institution. 

Our last stop was the American Tobacco District. Here, we saw the Angus Barn Restaurant, the Lucky Strike water tower, the WUNC radio station, a miniature replica of the Factory, Duke Stadium, the Burts Bees logo (featuring bees), and the North Carolina Innovation Express. 

We stopped for dinner around 6 P.M., and Hubby and I ate our leftovers — a BBQ sandwich — from the Q Shack.

Restroom break at Loves at 7:07, Lambsburg, VA

We will arrive at our hotel, Hampton Inn Abington, VA, around nine. (only carry-on bags)

8589 6:58 Breakfast

8590 7:41 A.M. traveled to Corolla, NC 9548-9552

8591-8611 9:42 A.M. Plymouth Welcome Center Plymouth, NC 

8612-8613 12:39 P.M. Walmart Durham, NC 

8614-8615 12:50 P.M. Duke University Durham, NC

8616-8620 1:15 P.M. University Tower Durham, NC 

8621-8655 2:17 P.M. Duke Homestead and Museum Durham, NC 9557-9568

8656-8692 3:32 P.M. Duke University Durham, NC

8693-8773 3:41–4:32 P.M. Durham's American Tobacco District Durham, NC 9572-9600

8774 4:48 leave Durham, NC

8775 7:08 Loves Lambsburg, NC

8777 Receipts 

Day 7: Saturday, May 3: Breakfast and lunch included

For breakfast at Hampton Inn Abington, VA, I had scrambled eggs, gravy, biscuits, and bacon, accompanied by cranberry juice. Room 219 

Depart for home at 8:30 A.M. 

Around 9:30, we stop at Love's for a restroom break

At 10:00 A.M., we shopped at Yoder's Country Market. I bought some pepper jelly, a snack box of cheeses, and some sharp cheese. 

At 11:00 A.M., we depart for Myers Pumpkin Patch, where we learn about the farm's history. Everyone buys flowers and vegetable plants, and the whole bottom of the bus is filled with them. 

At 12:30 P.M., we depart for home. 

We stopped at Buc-ee's Crossville, TN.

Around 2 P.M., we stopped at Buc-ee's Crossville, TN, for a restroom break and to shop. 

Arrive at Lawrenceburg First Baptist Church around 4:45. 

Arrive at 5:45 at Walmart, Florence 

Came home, unloaded the car, ate a snack, and went to bed. 

8780-8789 Hampton Abington, VA 7:07–7:26 A.M.

8790-8791 9:26 Loves Bulls Gap, TN 

8792-8795 10:03 A.M. Yoders Country Market Mosheim, TN

8796-8803 10:55–12:49 P.M. Myers Farm Bulls Gap, TN

8804-8809 1:43–2:05 P.M. Buc ees Crossville, TN

Coach:
Starship Dream, Live, Journey, # AL-BATANI Prevost
Muscle Shoals, AL 

Catastrophic Events

The sermon today was about taking the path less traveled.  

Our minister quoted the last line in the Robert Frost poem. 

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry, I could not travel to both
And be one traveler, long I stood
I looked down as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then, took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and I wanted to wear it;
As for the passing, there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted whether I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It got me thinking about the places we had visited over the last few weeks and the strange events that have happened and are about to happen.
We ran across such things as the Black Patch Tobacco War of West Kentucky & Tennessee, Edgar Casey's "The Sleeping Prophet," The Sinkhole @ Corvette Museum Bowling Green, Earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake Union City, Ky., Total Eclipse Hopkinsville, Ky., and Sighting of Little Green Men Kelly, Ky IMPACT CRATER Cape Charles, Va.

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/Moments13RS/web/legislative%20moment%2016.pdf
Black Patch Tobacco War 1904-1909
Before the Civil War, Kentucky was one of the wealthiest states in the union; after the war, it was one of the poorest. Big business came to Kentucky, eliminating competition, manipulating prices, and undermining control. The cost for dark tobacco was driven by extremely depressed prices for tobacco crops.

Night Riders destroyed tobacco plant beds, barns, and equipment, as well as whipped and sometimes murdered the opposition farmers. 
Night Riders also attacked agents and destroyed the property of the ATC, setting fire to tobacco warehouses in Trenton, Princeton, and Hopkinsville. 
Not even a dispatch of troops by Gov. A.E. Willson was able to subdue the acts of violent intimidation.

https://www.edgarcayce.org/edgar-cayce/his-life/
Edgar Casey "The Sleeping Prophet" 1877-1945 
Born 1877 in Christian County, Hopkinsville, Ky
Died 194,5 Virginia Beach, VA
The majority of Casey's readings deal with holistic health and the treatment of illness. 
Casey dealt with these five categories: Health-related information, Philosophy and reincarnation, dreams and dream interpretation, ESP and psychic Phenomena, Spiritual Growth, Meditation, and prayer.
Casey was a very spiritual man, and he vowed to read the Bible every year of his life. When he died in 1945, he had accomplished this task.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sinkhole-swallow-eight-cars-in-national-corvette-museum-in-kentucky/
The Sinkhole at Corvette Museum, Bowling GFebruary, 10bruary 10, 2016
Eight vintage Corvettes dropped into the abyss, six owned by the Museum.
Two on loan(1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil)
The other damaged cars were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette, and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette.

Bowling Green sits amid the state's largest karst region - the Western Pennyroyal area, where many of Kentucky's longest and deepest caves run underground. Karst displays distinctive surface features, including sinkholes.

https://rootsrated.com/stories/the-fascinating-story-behind-reelfoot-lake
Earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake, Union City, Ky, 1811-1812
When earthquakes shook across the American Southeast in late 1811 and the spring of 1812, the landscape along the New Madrid Fault (which runs parallel to the Mississippi River Valley) changed dramatically. These tremors could be felt as far away as Washington, D.C., and even, according to some reports, Quebec City—nearly 1,400 miles away. This area of western Tennessee was still the frontier, so few settlers lived there to serve as eyewitnesses to the change of scenery.
What we do know, though, is that vast swaths of land slid, and rivers literally changed course as a result of the seismic activity. Fallen trees formed massive logjams, sandbars shifted, and islands were created and subsequently demolished. Among the more significant changes, the quakes opened a great hole in the ground that would be the basin of Reelfoot Lake. After the earthquakes, the Mississippi River backed up on itself, filling in Reelfoot Lake and flooding the once-dense stands of bald cypress trees.

https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/kentucky/

Total solar eclipse over KAugust 21August 21, 2017

Kentucky experiences the longest eclipse duration, just over 2 minutes and 41 seconds. The civic boosters in the Hopkinsville area are advertising this spot as the very best place in America to see the eclipse. On August 21st, the town of Hopkinsville whimsically celebrates a purported alien encounter with a Little Green Men festival, so the world of solar eclipses and alien encounters will conflate in Hopkinsville on this day.

THE POINT WHERE THE SUN, MOON, AND EARTH LINE UP MOST PERFECTLY DURING THE ECLIPSE IS NEAR HOPKINSVILLE. THIS IS CALLED "THE POINT OF GREATEST ECLIPSE," AND THE ECLIPSE DURATION HERE IS WITHIN 0.2 SECONDS OF THE MAXIMUM IN ILLINOIS.

Siege of 'Little Green Men: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, August 21August 21, 1955

The Sutton farmhouse family encountered humanoid-like creatures. 

At about seven PM, Bill Ray Taylor(visiting the Sutton family) was drawing water from the well when he saw a bright streak in the sky that disappeared beyond the tree line. About an hour later, Taylor reported seeing a flying saucer. 

The family spotted a creature, ran inside, grabbed the shotgun, and started firing it at the beast. They shot one creature that was on the roof and one in a tree, and both floated to the ground. 

Either the creatures were impervious to gun blasts, or the men's aim was poor, since no creature was killed. The family piled into the car and drove to town, but no sign of the creatures or spaceship was found. 

The next day, the U.S. Air Force was involved, and the case was listed as unidentified (Clark 1998)

This being said, we are safe in no place on this earth. The path less taken will be the path I take.

The path of least resistance is generally the one taken.

Chesapeake Bay impact crater

The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide that impacted the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 ± 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" or marine impact craters and the largest known impact crater in the U.S.

Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay.

Until 1983, no one suspected the existence of a large impact crater buried beneath the lower part of the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding peninsulas. The first hint was a 20 cm (8 in)-thick layer of ejecta that turned up in a drilling core taken off Atlantic City, New Jersey, far to the north. The layer contained fused glass beads called tektites and shocked quartz grains that are unmistakable signs of a bolide impact.

In 1993, data from oil exploration revealed the extent of the crater.

2016 June 19, Sunday, Singing River Statue of Muscle Shoals 🎶🎶🎶🎶

Legend of the Singing River
The Yuchi and other early inhabitants living along the banks of the mighty Tennessee River held the legend of a Spirit Woman who lived in the river. She protected and sang to them. When the river was angry, she sang loudly. When the river was peaceful, she sang softly and sweetly, sometimes humming a comforting lullaby. Some say that all they heard was the high waters' mighty rush and roar over the mussel shoals, or at other times, the calm, low waters babbling through the river rocks. Others say she is real and can still be seen in the early morning mist, hovering over the waters, just as she did those many years ago. In her honor, they called it the Singing River, and in her honor, we named these sculptures the Singing River Sculptures.

Singing River Statue of Muscle Shoals

Singing River Statue of Muscle Shoals 

The World-Changing Muscle Shoals Music
From the 20th century to the present, artists, musicians, songwriters, and music-industry professionals from the Muscle Shoals area have helped shape the world's expansive music heritage. Few styles of music were untouched by Muscle Shoals, and local contributions have been made in all areas of the complex music industry, including production, recording engineering, songwriting, music publishing, and various positions within the music business.

Many of the world's most outstanding performers began their ascent to stardom in Muscle Shoals, and artists, such as Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, and Bob Seger, along with many others, quickly created a legacy that earned the area the title, "Hit Recording Capitol of the World."

The area grew as a music center by drawing together people of all races and religions. In the 1960s, despite the segregation of the races enforced outside the studios, great soul classics were being created within the studios, with each musician contributing their innate musical talent. The collaborations created some of the most widely loved music of the 20th century, including Steal Away, Mustang Sally, Tell Mama, Patches, Respect Yourself, and many others.

The warning issued in Arthur Alexander's "You Better Move On" caught the attention of the Rolling Stones. The Beatles heard Alexander's song, "Anna," and each band acknowledged their respect for Alexander and his writing by recording their own versions of his songs on their first albums.

The songwriting tradition continues as one of the strongest facets of Muscle Shoals music, with area songwriters penning songs such as I Loved Her First, I Swear, 

The heart and soul of Muscle Shoals' music have always been the players and singers. Four members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section were immortalized in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, Sweet Home Alabama. The lyric, "Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers, and they've been known to pick a song or two," honors Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett, David Hood, and Roger Hawkins, studio musicians who produced and played on hundreds of hits recorded at area studios from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s.

Muscle Shoals and Its Contribution to This Golden Era
Muscle Shoals bestowed much more than its name on the world-famous "Muscle Shoals sound."

The city served as the birthplace for early breakthroughs in the local music industry and later provided a home base for some of the area's top studios. The first commercial recording to emerge from Muscle Shoals — the Bobby Denton single, A Fallen Star — was produced by James Joiner in the Second Street studios of WLAY Radio in 1957. Four years later, in an old candy-and-tobacco warehouse on Wilson Dam Road, aspiring producer Rick Hall joined forces with bellhop-turned-singer Arthur Alexander to cut Muscle Shoals' first national hit, the Southern Soul anthem, You Better Move On. In the wake of that success, Hall built FAME Recording Studios on Avalon Avenue in 1962. Artists ranging from Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Etta James to Duane Allman, the Osmonds, and Bobby Gentry later recorded there. From 1970 to 1985, Muscle Shoals became known as "The Hit Recording Capital of the World" as FAME and Al Cartee's Music Mill, Steve Moore's East Avalon, and Terry Woodford and Clayton Ivey's Wishbone Studios generated hits by Clarence Carter, Hank Williams Jr., the group Hot, George Jones, the Forester Sisters, Mac McAnally, Shenandoah, and many others. In 2011, Hall received the American Music Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2014, he was honored with the Grammy Trustees Award for his significant contributions to the recording industry.

The City of Muscle Shoals, Alabama
David Bradford, Mayor
Audwin Pierre McGee, Sculptor
Historical commentary by Terry Pace, Dick Cooper, David Anderson, and Bill Matthews.

Rick Hall and Duane Allman

FAME Studio at 601 E. Avalon Avenue (Photo furnished by FAME)

James Joiner and Bobby Denton at WLAY Radio 

Muscle Shoals City sign proclaiming it the Hit Recording Capital of the World (Photo furnished by FAME)

Wishbone Studios (Photo furnished by Terry Woodford)

East Avalon Studios (Photo furnished by Dick Cooper)

FAME Studio at the old Candy and Tobacco Warehouse (Photo furnished by FAME)

🍀🍀🍀We were lucky growing up!!!

We were very lucky growing up when it came to visiting grandparents because both our grandparents' maternal and paternal grandparents lived within blocks of each other. 

Neither were rich in material things but both were loaded in love. 

Our maternal grandmother was a great cook and one of my favorite sweets was her Sweet Potato Kisses.

Years later, when I had a home of my own, I ask her for the Sweet Potato receipt.

You take a small potato boil it with the jacket on and cook until done.

Peel the potato mash it up and roll it out. 

Add powder sugar and peanut butter to the center. 

Take all ingredients and roll them into a ball and slice them into pieces.

Our maternal grandmother was also handy with a needle and thread.

Money was always tight at my maternal grandparents so, she made do with what she had.

She made everything she gave us for Christmas and birthdays. I remember one Christmas she made us sock monkeys and rag dolls.  

My memories of the tree she decorated at Christmas still bring a smile to my face. 

Her Christmas tree would light up any room with her bubbling lights, angel hair, icicles, stringed popcorn, and tiny trinkets.

Our maternal grandfather loved to smoke Prince Albert Tobacco.

We would watch as he took out those white papers and pour Prince Albert Tobacco inside and then he would roll them tightly, licking to seal the tobacco inside.

We would gladly walk to the store to buy him a can of  Prince Albert Tobacco because he always gave us a nickel for candy. 

On a hot day, we might use that nickel to buy a coke, a popsicle, or even a candy bar. 

Our maternal grandparent's yard was covered with white clover, weeds, and buttercups(in the spring).

We very seldom wore shoes when we were out of school. 

I remember one summer stomping around in the grass and having a good time when I stomped right onto a bee. 

I started to cry holding my foot when my grandfather came outside to see what was wrong.

He went back inside grabbed his tobacco, and a glass of water, and came back outside.

He placed me in his lap and began to make a cake with his Prince Albert tobacco which he placed on my foot. 

One of our maternal grandfather's pet peeves was the grandkids climbing up in his trees. 

He kept the limbs trimmed so, we could not reach them. 

Our maternal grandfather loves to tell scary stories about Bloody Bones. 

He would have you set on the edge of your seat, and all of a sudden he would say, "GOT YOU"!!

Our maternal grandfather grew a variety of fruit trees which we enjoyed eating. 

He would say, if you swallow any seeds, you would grow into a tree. 

We spit out every seed. 

Our maternal grandparents never had any indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse and the water came from an outside faucet. 
They never owned an automobile so they never learned to drive. 

My Maternal Grandmother rode to church with Mr. Ulman and I attended church with her many times. 

At Church, we sang old hymns while someone played the piano and someone else played an accord.

In our Sunday School Class we learned about Daniel being put in the Lion's Den for praying, Noah’s Ark, Jonah, the whale, and Jonah's disobedience to God. 

One Sunday night after services as we were riding home, the passenger door flew open, and out onto the pavement flew my cousin. 

We both had fallen asleep on the ride home and were leaning on the door. 

Our Aunt Willie lived on Penny Lane in Huntsville. 

She worked at Red Stone Arsenal.

Our dad would take the entire family to spend the day at Willies. 

Our maternal great-grandparents lived in Town Creek. 

Our maternal grandparents would take the train from Sheffield to Town Creek to visit her family.

Our dad took them several times.

Our great grandparents lived in an Old Military Dining Car.

On one end of the trailer was a large round table, encircled with bench seating. Many soldiers had dined at this table. 

A sofa, fold-out bed, a chair, and a coal heater stood in the middle of the trailer. 

Food was cooked in the kitchen area which was located at the opposite end of the trailer. 
They got their water from a well and they use an outhouse.

Since their home was so small we were sent outside to play, sometime grand-paw would come outside to play with us.

He said I can show you how to catch a worm that he called a Chicken Choker. 

He said, get a straw, poke the straw into a small hole, and wiggle the straw into a worm the worm will catch hold and you can pull him out of the ground.

It Worked!!!

I looked up the meaning of Chicken Choker. 

It is a long yellowish color worm with humps on it back 6 legs a hard head, brown with two-inch pinchers that would catch hold of the straw.

Chicken Chokers are larvae of tiger beetles that ambush predators of other insects, lying in wait in their burrows with their heads flush with the surface of the soil.  

It is said that chickens do more harm to the larvae(Chicken Chokers) than the grubs.