The Duke of Durham

With some bagels in our bellies (my new breakfast favourite which is fast going to become the obese death of me), we waved goodbye to Washington and started the long drive south towards Virginia.


 Anyone who’s roadtripped can vouch for the cabin fever one starts to feel after sitting too long in one seat, so we planned to pit stop at the Shanandoah National Park, a corner of the Appalachian mountain peaks which stretch south-west down the coast.

That’s right Mum and Dad, we stopped to do some ‘hiking’ in America. Are you proud?

The Appalachians is Caitlin’s favourite mountain range and it isn’t difficult to see why. The range is beautiful and after the smoggy air of New York, my lungs didn’t know what hit them when they got a few breathes of brisk mountain air. We did a short hike along the Fox Hollow Trail – an easy half hour walk – which unfortunately didn’t result in seeing any wild life. I was particularly hopeful about seeing a black bear, but a few clouds of gnats were about the extent of it.

Lunch was an eclectic spread of leftover beef and noodle stir fry, hummus, strawberries and trail mix which we gobbled down in front of the look out before returning to the road. The next portion of the drive took us through Virginia and North Carolina where both The South environment and society started to rear its head. We stopped to ask directions at a pulled pork roadside restaurant, which had a pig on a spit cooking on the highway side.

In the late afternoon, we finally reached Durham – home of the Durham Bulls baseball team, Bull Durham the movie and Duke University. The Super 8 Motel was kind enough to charge us the same price for two double beds as they would one single, not that we were interested much in sleeping. We quickly donned our dinner best and headed out to The Fishmongerer, my first taste of Southern cuisine. My Fishmore Stew, a mix of ‘shrimp’ (prawns), ‘slaw’ (coleslaw), spiced potatoes and corn on the cob went down a real treat with the Woodchuck Cider I was happily introduced to.

Night time in Downtown Durham becomes the stomping ground of Duke University students and, this being the case, has a reasonable selection of alcoholic water holes. With school back in session, the clubs and pubs became overrun by students shortly after midnight and while we had the desire to stay out and potentially meet a doctor from Duke, a day of driving got the better of us and sent us home to sleep.

It seems I was denied seeing both black bears and boys in their natural habitat.

Ciao for now. xo