Wednesday, August 25, 2010 – North Carolina Welcome Center

 

It was a cooler morning and quite cloudy; in fact, it looked like it might rain. It was a perfect day for a bicycle ride. At 10 am, we borrowed two of the Visitors Center’s loaner bikes and set off on the trail leading towards South Mills. Along the way, we tried to identify the trees, checked out the old granite markers along the path and canal and enjoyed the sights and smells of the forest. In South Mills, we stopped at a gas station / convenience store and found a small restaurant at the back. We were looking for a slice of pizza, but they only sold whole pizzas so we shared their lunch special – roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and a dinner roll. After a little exploring around town, we headed back up the bike path towards home.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
We stopped in at the Visitors’ Center to check the bikes back in. There Maureen bought a pair of small blue heron earrings to help her remember the Dismal Swamp. One of the docents offered to start a film about the Dismal Swamp that was actually six or seven news stories put together by a local reporter which turned out to be very informative and fun to watch. We learned that early European settlers had encountered a very different Great Dismal Swamp from the one we see today. In the late 1600s, the Dismal was a vast wetland, covering over a million acres. For centuries American Indians had used the swamp as hunting and fishing grounds but found the area too wet to live in. In the 1700’s, the Dismal Swamp Canal was conceived by politicians and entrepreneurs including George Washington as a way to transport the Atlantic white cedar and the shingles made from it out of the Dismal Swamp. Washington had hoped to drain the swamp and farm it but never truly succeeded; the money was in the trees. Work commenced on the 22-mile canal in 1793 and was completed in 1805, providing a sheltered route between Norfolk and the Pasquotank River and Elizabeth City.
 
 
 
 
When we were finished at the Visitors’ Center, we walked the quarter-mile nature trail and learned more about how to identify the local trees. Then, it was another walk across the canal over to the State Park where we spent some time in the Interpretive Center and on the boardwalk trail before the park closed.