Dear friends and family,

The adventure across the country continues! I am happy to announce that in the week since my last update, I have crossed both the 1000 and 2000 mile marks into my trip. I have done much rambling, and I plan to do much more! The past week was a whirlwind of different sights and events without much of a narrative element to share, so here is a rundown of what I’ve seen:

Friday: I left Olivia and the O’Connel’s house in Virginia Beach in the morning and made way for Buxton, North Carolina, capital of the Outer Banks. But I took a somewhat circuitous route to see something special along the way:

Behold! 50% of all the lakes in Virginia, captured in one photograph!

One of the most unusual things I was forced to understand eventually acclimated to is that most states in the US have barely any lakes! This was a significant surprise to someone like me, who had ~15 lakes in just their township growing up, to say nothing of the uncountable many in the county at large. Among the lesser-laked states, Virginia has just two! One is an obscure mountain lake which has primarily spent the last 5 years being dried up, but the other is an actually significant lake in the Great Dismal Swamp, southwest of Norfolk. This, Lake Drummond, is around a mile in diameter, nearly circular, and has a significant average depth that I can’t be bothered to find on Wikipedia at this time of night. But most noteworthy of all is the color:

I am not exaggerating when I say the color of this water is “light french roast”, to a tee.

The lake’s deep brown color is due largely to tannins in the surrounding swamp peat dissolving into the lake water, making it remarkably clean despite its existence in dead center of a swamp. The Parks Service sign said this anyhow; not like I was going to test that without a couple of Swayer Squeezes lined up end-to-end!

The rest of the swamp was remarkably lonely and quiet; I know I was there during hours in which the rest of the world was working, but it was still extremely eerie seeing barely 2 other people in the 7 miles I drove into the middle of the swamp. I’m glad that I went in the middle of the day, or else I would have been far more creeped out at night (or worse; carried away forever by sanguinarian mosquitos)!

So, having seen 50% of all the lakes in Virginia, I returned to the coast and meandered down to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It was a lovely drive, and unusually for a Friday, the campground nearest to Cape Hatteras was nearly empty; I had the luxury of getting nearly an entire campground loop to myself:

Moonrise over the cape point campground. The Lyrid meteor shower that night was incredible, I saw close to a dozen shooting stars in an hour and a half.

I realized that the reason why more people weren’t at the campground was that NOAA was predicting a severe storm the very next day, and that the campground would be basically underwater by Saturday afternoon. I trust that my tent is waterproof on the bottom, but I didn’t really want to test this myself! So I decided to scrap my free day in Hatteras and make the big left turn the away from the Atlantic Coast and towards the Pacific.

Not without spending a quality morning on the coast though! After I broke camp I wandered around the Hatteras Point beach and found the famous lighthouse, as well as dozens of groups of people parked directly on the sand and fishing in the surf. And huh, interesting! They’re all wearing waders or rain boots despite the fact that the seawater is coming in over the tops when they bring the fish in. I wonder if that’s just the local flavor of if they do it for some practical reason while walking through the wa-

*BZZZZZZP*

I stepped on a jellyfish. I was walking in the calf-deep water near the shore and couldn’t see the jelly in the churned up water (not that I was paying adequate attention to where I was going anyways) and its stingers caught me on the side of my right foot.

I’m gonna spare the details, but friends, this sucked. A lot. Truly poisonous jellyfish are rare around the Outer Banks, but don’t let that diminish the fact that being stung by one feels like the sting of a dozen mud daubers with electrical engineering degrees. And that was the weirdest thing of all! The jellyfish sting legitimately felt like a zap from a high voltage wire. I guess Stephen Hillenburg was right in showing SpongeBob’s jellyfish as little electric creatures!

I got the barbs pulled out and my foot cleaned up with some vinegar (it takes the sting out – takes it out all at once), said “well that’s enough of that ridiculousness”, and promptly left the outer banks and her mischievous seawater for the foreseeable future. I made that great left turn, over Pamlico Sound and straight west for San Francisco.

Pictured: me, 6684 feet safer from the Jellyfish.

I beat feet for Asheville and spent several days there hiking and enjoying the higher parts of the Appalachians, including the highest peak in the whole mountain chain, Mount Mitchell (see above). In addition to the drive to the top of Mount Mitchell, I properly hiked Grandfather Mountain to the end and back. Grandfather mountain is commonly called “the Old Rag of North Carolina, but:

To be honest with you,

As someone who has bagged Old Rag over 10 times,

I found it a bit more challenging than Old Rag,

And a lot more rewarding!!!

What an incredibly beautiful hike! I highly recommend Grandfather Mountain, its rock scrambles, its icicles, its tippy ladders, and its stunning views the next time you are in Asheville.

Icicles is a point of fact by way: temps were dropping well into the 20s overnight, which is not something I wanted to deal with, so I spent most of my nights at the Bon Paul and Sharky Hostel in Asheville. It was an absolute treat! And money well spent, considering the cold and rain and ice most nights I was there:

Come on y’all who wouldn’t make this trade?

I met fascinating people while I was there: a bhuddist from Fairfax by way of Atlanta to meet a forest monk; a licensed psychologist with a side gig fixing furnaces and pipes and pumps at the hostel; a fellow just “hanging out and shooting the breeze” with an absolutely fascinating card game called Palace; these, and many, many more interesting people to boot! I highly recommend the BP&S hostel to anyone looking to spend a weekend in Asheville!

But time has continued to roll out before me, and it was about time that I rolled along with it too. I left Asheville Wednesday morning early afternoon and finally crossed the hump of the Appalachians into that old rollicking, forested country I know and love so well. It reminded me of home in a lot of ways, and I have more understanding for those uneducated rubes who refer to Kentucky and Tennessee as being part of the Midwest:

Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, and sunset over a Cumberland River Reservoir near Nashville.

I have understanding, yes, but not sympathy #FreshCoastBestCoast #GoOutsideAndTouchLakes

I think that’s all for now; it’s been an incredible week. I feel like I’ve been gone from home for longer, but I am more excited that so much of the trip is still ahead. I am one day past that campground now and I already know exactly what I’m going to write about first in my next update:

And, dear friends, it won’t be a subtle update either!

Stay well everyone,

Well wishes,

Evan