land of the pine! (ii)

BTW, the name of this post comes from this song, which nomey-nick linked to me when he found out i was going to NC:



Anyway, after I took pics of Duke Gardens I pretty much retired to my hotel to sit around dazed for a few hours. I hit the sack around 8pm and slept solidly til half past 6am Friday, upon which I got up feeling at once refreshed and discombobulated, and headed off to meetings and shit.

I was done with business around 2-3pm, and my flight didn't leave until 7:30. So I decided to drive around a little bit and have a look at Durham and the surrounding countryside.

This is basically the beginning of the "downtown" area of Durham. It was pretty much a college town -- it's got everything you'd expect in a college town, except there's about one of each. One Whole Foods, one sandwich bar, one chinese restaurant, etc.



Notice your one chinese restaurant on the left, there. And here's your one "tall" building:



This is the "swanky" part of town. BTW, this town is literally just one street (main street, appropriately enough) -- maybe a mile or so of shops and restaurants, and that's it. This pic was taken about two blocks from the chinese restaurant:



They had a very impressive, huge county courthouse though!



This similarly impressive, huge building is a church:



And that church pretty much marked the end of "downtown" too. I took a left there and headed out toward a tiny town I found on the map. The round trip from Duke to that town (Creedmoor) to RDU airport would take about an hour, which I thought would be perfect, cuz it'd give me time to snap a few pics and not be late for my flight.

On my way out of Durham, I drove through some nice suburbs. This house just smacks of southern architecture to me:



-- though interestingly, the architecture in NC was kinda equal parts "southern" and "eastern".

I saw this at the end of a cul-de-sac:



The license plate proudly announces it's a 1966 mustang. Aw, yeah.

From there, I headed out on a highway to Creedmoor. There's a lot of water in NC -- random lakes and ponds and rivers and streams everywhere. I crossed a huge lake heading to Creedmoor, and pulled off a small access road to snap some pics. This is probably the best of the lot:



There wasn't a soul in sight. There was an eagle, though, but he flew off when he saw me pointing my cellphonecam at him.

On the other side of the lake, the highway dwindled down to this:



You can really see the pines in that pic. Those pines basically cover all of NC that wasn't otherwise developed. I love the little mailbox, too :]

A little later I found this big house out in the woods:



There was also this gated community full of sprawling country mcmansions, but they didn't actually look that good on camera so I left that out, too.

A little past the big houses, we started to get into honest-to-god farmland. I was so amazed at this -- it was like something out of a "pastoral america" calendar. The day I got to Duke was actually overcast and gloomy, but the day I left was utterly gorgeous. California skies are big, but so are North Carolina skies:



That's the main house, I think, with some animal sheds nearby. A little ways down the road was this other farm:





I just can't get over how ... rural and farmlike that looks. The farmhouse! The sheds! The rundown barns and the golden wildgrass! It's pretty much exactly what I picture when I think of a small-time farm.

Eee.

Anyway, a little later on I found the tiny town of Creedmoor, which is literally like... two blocks by one block. This is pretty much it:



And this is the town church. Southern Baptist, baby!



Look at the color of that sky :]

From there on out, I headed back toward the airport. This was a different highway, which arrowed straight through the pines. It was an unbelievably beautiful drive, but when I tried to take a picture of the pine-lined road, the contrast was all wonky and the ground was too dark. This is the best I could do in a moving vehicle:



-- you can sorta see how up ahead, the pines thicken up again. We passed over the lake again, too, and it was absolutely gorgeous with the sun shining off the water, but I couldn't get a picture because I was driving :[

Eventually I made it back to RDU. For such a tiny, tiny place, RDU was astoundingly huge. The cellphone cam doesn't capture depth very well, but I swear the check-in terminal was the size of the international terminal at SFO.



Inside, the terminal stretched forever in both directions. This is a view down the entire length of it, taken at one end:



Unfortunately it's too blurry to see just how FAR AWAY the far end is, but trust me, it was like... a billion miles. Along that distance was all manner of shops and stores. There was a used bookstore in there. There were a bunch of semi-nice restaurants, and there was a Borders. A BORDERS, in an airport.

That's pretty much the last pic I took, though. From there on out I got on a plane to DC, then another plane from DC to SF. Good trip!