Depart: Edenton Town Docks 9:30
Arrive: Plymouth Town Docks 1:30
Distance: 14.5 nm
We had a dreary travel day today.
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| Departing Edenton |
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| On river to Plymouth |
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| Barge / Boat House |
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| Approaching Plymouth |
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| Paper Mill up river |
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| Town docks |
The town docks in Plymouth where we docked offered a tremendous challenge as we fought water movement trying to get into a slip. Unfortunately, we ended up docking twice. Clark saw the pump out device and decided we should pump out before docking.
We managed to get in and tie up. I wasn't sure how Clark would get off the boat to operate the pump, however, and when Clark looked down from the boat to the dock, he said, "It's a long way down isn't it!" He jumped. He still thinks he's a teenager.
He got everything set up and then discovered that the pump out would not work. If he held it in the water, he could see it sucking up water from the river. As soon as he tried to get it to suck from the boat, it failed. He gave up and managed to pull himself back up on board the boat.
Looking down at the docks, Clark decided he should examine them before selecting one for our use for the night. He jumped off the boat once more and went for a short stroll. He came back with one in particular in mind for us to target. We knew coming into the pump out slip that we had a big challenge ahead of us.
Clark stationed me on the stern of the boat to "be his eyes" as we backed into the dock. I was so confused by the number and positioning of the poles that we had to abort the approach to try again. Clark got us around to try again, and once more I failed to give him input fast enough for him to get into the slip.
As Clark set us up to try once more, a man ran up to help. Him just standing on the target dock helped tremendously to help distinguish which poles we needed to aim for and avoid. He shouted instructions advising us to loop lines around one of the poles to let the current swing us around and into the slip. That worked. He helped us get secure and then loped off back to his place of business.
After he left, it took us an additional 30 minutes to work the boat into a position close enough to the docks that I could get off. Unfortunately, when we finally had the boat close to the dock, the door where we get off the boat ended up positioned with a pole completely blocking the doorway. We fought for another 10 minutes trying to wiggle the boat forward enough to climb off past the pole.
Having eaten lunch on the boat before getting to town, we set off on our bicycles to look around. We only traveled one block before we came upon the man who had helped us dock. He will be opening a cafe in town in 3 weeks to be called the "Riverview Cafe and Artisan's Market". He invited us in to have a tour of his establishment-to-be. Lou, and his wife Jill, were very friendly and we sat and talked for quite a while before leaving to continue our bike tour of town.
We quickly found out that arriving in Plymouth on a Sunday is a bad idea - nothing was open and the streets were dead.
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| Downtown Plymouth |
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| Replica of Ironclad CSS Albemarle 3/8 scale |
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| Clark and I found this actual street sign a bit humorous |
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| Mural in town |
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| Older home on a back street |
4/15/2019
No boat travel.
Since we wanted to see the museums in town today, we walked instead of taking the bikes. Just a short way down the street we came to the Bearology Museum. This had been highly recommended to us by the owner of the future Riverview Cafe. We arrived just as they opened and had the full attention of the woman working there who regaled us with stories.
The black bear thrives in the North Carolina climate. A movement is underway to make the black bear North Carolina's state animal. Besides the black bear, the museum showed other wildlife found in the state.
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| Cute little mink |
Besides local wildlife, the museum contained displays of animals from the owner's travels and safaris.
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| Bongo skin used for bongo drums |
Our hopes of visiting the other museums in town were shot down when we learned that nothing else is open on a Monday. When we walked to the Civil War Museum to check on its status, we saw some men working on the CSS Albemarle replica. We walked over to talk to them and got all the ironclad history we could absorb.
The men working on painting the replica are reenactors and knew every detail of the battle that took place at Plymouth during the Civil War. We learned more than we probably would have in the museum!
Walking back to the boat, we thought about eating lunch at Stella's Cafe (the only place open) and decided to eat on board instead.
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| Gazebo at alternate (and probably preferable) town dock |
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| Downtown Plymouth Stella's Cafe (Clock with sign "time to eat") |
Since we had no place else to go in town, we thought about leaving. However, we hemmed and hawed so long that finally it made no sense to leave. We had wind, and I worried about getting off the dock given the hassle we had getting in.
Around 3:00 I suggested we bike to the local food store about 1.5 miles away. We grabbed our backpacks and took off to get provisions at the Piggly Wiggly. The store did not have everything I wanted, but it had enough to keep us going for a while.
We had no success with finding WiFi for blog updates at any of our recent stays. Plymouth was no different. Although they supposedly had WiFi, we could not get anything to work for us. We watched some television and called it a day.
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