This Adventure Called Retirement

Prolog – this is the first attempt at a blog and we are going to fumble through the first few days I’m sure. That said, we will attempt to capture the essence of our travels and hopefully make it fun to read.

We left our home in Nags Head at about 9:30am, having packed our minivan with everything we could think we would need for this multi-week adventure. It was a sunny but cool morning and we had our coffee to give us a warm start.

North Carolina is a looong state. We spent most of the first day crossing from east to west. We stopped in Greensboro for a picnic lunch and chose to visit the Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield Memorial. What an interesting stop! This is the location from the Revolutionary War where the colonial force of 4500 militia including some regulars under Major General Nathaniel Greene engaged the British Army force of 2100 under General Cornwallis in 1881 along the Great Salisbury Road (now New Garden Road). Cornwallis believed if he could secure control of the Carolinas he would be able to get the Colonials to submit and end the war. Nathaniel Greene aligned his men in three successive fronts along the road with the militia in the first and second line and the regulars in the third. This tactic proved fatal for the British troops and they lost 25% of their men. However, when additional British troops arrived on the scene, Nathaniel Greene prudently withdrew, resulting in a nominal victory for the British. However this battle and the high losses caused Cornwallis to decide to move his operations north into Virginia which resulted in his becoming trapped at Yorktown and forced to surrender to Washington.

After our lunch and walk through the battlefield we returned to the road. Our trip continued west on I-40 through Ashville and the devastation from Hurricane Helene was still visible in places. I-40 was completely washed out in places by the Hurricane west of Ashville along the Pigeon River and only recently reopened in January with one lane each direction. It was an interesting drive. We crossed the Smoky Mountains into Tennessee and finished the day in Knoxville.