Wilmington, NC

We got a train from Savannah to Fayetteville, NC, where we hired a car to drive over to Wilmington. Wilmington is the home of both One Tree Hill & Dawsons Creek... But before I get into that, let me tell you about driving on the wrong side of the road!

Eeeek!

For some unknown reason it was decided that I should be the driver of our newly hired car. The car was a nice little Kia Rio (actually not a bad car to drive) however, not only was I driving on the wrong side of the road, but I was sitting on the wrong side of the car. This means that I was constantly trying to change gears with the wrong hand, and trying to look into mirrors where there were no mirrors. I also had to remind myself at every single turn that I would need to stay on the RIGHT. It’s like learning to drive all over again! (and to top it off it was pouring with rain on the way home- very isolated showers..we could tell when we were about to drive into it and then you can see the dry road ahead indicating that we would be out of the rain soon. We just don’t get rain like that in Melbourne!)

However, somehow, we managed to finally make it to Wilmington before dark. We went out for a lovely Mexican dinner and stocked up on fruit at the supermarket. We then decided to go for a stroll, at which point our feet were attacked by tiny little insects. It was painful. So we ran back to the car, and spent the rest of the night chilling out, playing card games.

The river court!!!!!

Today we saw the sights made famous on One Tree Hill (turns out most of the famous parts from Dawsons Creek- eg the creek, are filmed elsewhere). We walked down to the main area of Wilmington, which is along the river. This was the setting for many OTH events, such as Nathan & Haley’s first date, and the boat-burning thing. We then found out there was a little ferry that takes you to the other side of the river, where we found the river court!!! We had fun sitting in the bleachers (where Mouth & Jimmy used to commentate the games) and pretending to play b’ball on the court. All over the court there are messages from people who love OTH, and lots of quotes from OTH.

Then, after lunch, our first stop was the shop used as the CD Alley. It’s actually a joke shop. There was (what we thought was a) wax figure outside the door. I thought he looked creepily-real, and those things always creep me out.. And then right as we went up to the door he moved and said “I’ll get that for you!” and opened the door. Fiona screamed. I jumped a good foot into the air. Scary! We then saw where Karen’s Cafe was shot, and the bridge that Lucas walks along in the credits. It’s all within walking distance which is nice! Wilmington is actually a really nice town, even without the OTH stuff. Everyone’s still got the awesome Southern accents, and they’re all so friendly.

To avoid driving back in the dark, we came back to Fayetteville in the afternoon. However, there isn’t much to do in Fayetteville! It’s pretty..but there’s not much to do. So we had an early dinner and saw a movie- “Crazy, Stupid, Love”. It’s really really good- go see it! It’s still very hot. We’re praying for some breeze in Washington – after our 7-hour overnight train. Eeek.