Friday, July 7 2017
No sleeping in for us. We were up about 5:15 and on the road at 6:15, headed to Fayetteville. It was another wonderful sunrise. We stopped at Bojangles on the way out of town for a biscuit. Yep – not healthy but we were planning to ride 10 miles so that makes up for part of it. Right??
Nice drive with little traffic. There was one area on the side of the interstate that was filled with beautiful sunflowers. And then another filled with day lilies. Nice. We found the southern trail head for the Cape Fear River Trail without a problem. We weren’t the first in the parking lot. We got our bikes off the rack and hit the trail before 8:00. We wanted to get our ride in before the temperature got too high. The trail is a 5.3 mile paved rail trail through a wooded and marshy area. The trail was mostly shaded and flat but had enough hills to get a good workout. There were boardwalks and bridges and one covered bridge. Just as we started down the trail we road past a pretty deer. She didn’t seem at all afraid of us. It was a really nice ride and enough shade to make it comfortable. The Cape Fear trail is part of the East Coast Greenway, a series of bike trails that will eventually go from Maine to Key West. This was the first section of the EC Greenway we have ridden but hopefully it won’t be the last.
After completing our ride we went to the North Carolina Veterans Park and the Airborne and Special Operations Museum. Max was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville several times while in the army. There was no museum at that time. We picked up a brochure on the ASOM at the welcome center when we entered NC and since Max was in Special Ops we knew we wanted to see the museum. The exhibits focus on the history of the US Army Airborne and Special Operations units from World War II to the present. It was much larger than we expected and was very well done. The admission is free, with a donation requested and is well worth a visit if you are in the area.
After the museum we crossed the street to to the Freedom Memorial Park and found a geocache to mark our visit here. We then returned to Lumberton and spent the afternoon doing laundry. We had a nasty thunderstorm come through late in the afternoon but it gave us a really nice sunset. Nice bookends today. No plans for tomorrow yet but we will see.
RVing With a Purpose 