Carolina Beach, North Carolina

Saturday morning, Adam and I took a two-hour ferry between Ocracoke and Cedar Island. Just as we were docking, we felt a sprinkle of rain, and by the time we started driving, it was coming down hard. We passed the island's one variety store, a few dozen trailers, sagging wooden houses and boarded up fish shacks. Within a few minutes, we were on a narrow road with a deep, dark bog on either side, no shoulder and no guardrail. It almost impossible to see, but there was no wayto pull over either.

Quickly, we realized that we had arrived in 'God's country'; there were massive churches every few hundred feet, some marked by digital marquees and all made from brick or stone with impressive steeples and manicured lawns. They stood in stark contrast to the area's obvious poverty; there were few schools or hospitals and communities consisted mainly of homegrown machine shops, dollar stores and tiny houses with broken screen doors. I grew up in a similar kind of place, a rural area of New Brunswick where residents give over a lot of their meager incomes to fund religious institutions.

As we drove along Highway 17, we also spotted banners hung from the chain-link fences lining the roads. Memorials, mementos, love letters to returning soldiers. "Welcome back to North Carolina. Where the beer is cold and your woman is hot." "Always under the same stars, finally under the same roof. Welcome home, Dad."

After several hours of driving, we pulled into Carolina Beach State Park, a beautiful forested area at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The park is famous for the carnivorous flytraps, but we couldn't find any, partly because poachers have gotten a lot of them this summer. We spotted a couple of ground skinks (tiny brown lizards marked by a bright white stripe), though, along with several white-tailed deer, baby blue crabs and a brown beetle the size of a ping pong ball!

Part of Sunday, we had to sacrifice to doing laundry, so we drove into Wilmington, what seemed like a small, nowheresville port city. But it had such verve! We ate lunch at Chops, an edgy, locally-owned deli that uses only Boar's Head meats and cheeses in their sandwiches. Afterward, Adam took our laundry to a gritty laundromat/bar with craft beer, free wi-fi and an impressive collection of bathroom stall graffiti. I, meanwhile, bopped around downtown Wilmington, which is hosts to a pretty decent-sized film and TV industry (including Dawson's Creek). We also stopped at the Louise Cameron Art Gallery on the edge of town and saw a show by Fritizi Huber, a Wilmington native who was raised in a circus family.

Back, at the campsite, we played a round of washerboard with our neighbours and then went to the beach one last time. Very excited about the last freeze-dried meal for a while, but sad it's our last chance to be in the ocean.