I've never been a beach person - nor much of a water person for that matter - there are only lakes and rivers in the land-locked Prairies scoured out of the ground by the glacial action of the last ice age and the meltwaters of the Rocky Mountains .
But, I think I could be... Place name links like Carolina Beach, NC go to Wikipedia. Place name links like Carolina Beach use the local tourism or government website.
| 2012.10.28 |
Coltrane, Drawers, and Racin' |
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We stop for the night in High Point, NC , the "Furniture Capital of the World." High Point is also the childhood home of John Coltrane , and there's an 8-foot bronze statue in his honour.
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The kiosk has a number of buttons on the far right that play audio (spoken and musical) about various parts of Coltrane's life. There's also an exhibit of Coltrane artifacts in the local museum but it wasn't open on Sunday. |
| Jazzed up from Coltrane, we headed down the street to the World's Largest Chest of Drawers. |
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20 feet tall, built in
the 1920s, and
renovated in 1996. | |
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The 2 socks are
homage to the hosiery industry. | |
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That is one big chest! | |
After our brief tour around High Point, off we went north into Virginia to Martinsville Speedway.
| Martinsville is a half-mile track with long straightaways, often described as a "paperclip" layout, seating 63,000. |
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I took well over 100 shots, but as I learned from my Bristol visit, cars going around an oval don't make for good action shots unless they're crashing into each other. So I have a few here, but focused mostly on pit-stop shots, which show some sense of action. To see race shots, see my Bristol blog - they look pretty much the same.
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| After winning the previous day's Trucks race from the back of the pack, Denny Hamlin was foiled by a broken post on his master cutoff switch. D'oh! | |
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And one final
race shot... |
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Jimmie Johnson takes the checkered flag after leading most of the race | |
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does the customary | |
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post-race burnout | |
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thanks his pit crew | |
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and heads to the | |
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winner's podium | |
This was TFS's first NASCAR race, and she humoured me by thoroughly enjoying it, even the antics of the two Jeff Gordon fans who sat in front of us drinking beers and waving their guy along. The weather was better than we expected - I wore my Bristol Motor Speedway t-shirt for most of the race in the warm October sun.
After the race, she (actually Apple's 2nd choice for driving routes home) treated me to a drive through the hilly and winding backroads of south-central Virginia and north-central North Carolina , in the dark, through places we still don't quite understand, and Durham, NC , until we finally got on the I-40 back to the beach.
Quite the busy day! |
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