Mini road trip: Licking my chops

[jtbell]

This weekend, I'm on a road trip to a coin/stamp show in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm actually staying next door in Cary, which I was once told is an acronym for "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees."

My first stop on the way here on Friday was a sort of "bucket list" item. I had never visited South Carolina's only Indian (Native American) reservation, the Catawba reservation near Rock Hill, because it's significantly out of the way from the routes that I use for my regular day-trips to Charlotte NC. I chose my route to Raleigh specifically to include it.

The Catawba Cultural Center has exhibits about Catawba history and culture, and a gift shop with crafts by Catawba artists.

A trail leads down to the nearby Catawba River, about a mile, but I didn't try it because of heat and humidity. I'll keep it in mind for next fall, when I may be passing that way again.

.

 

[mcastillo356]

Hi, @jtbell, I've enjoyed specially this mini road trip.

The fourth pot in the photo, the one with the four tubes on the sides, I suppose, how is it ment to use?
Wild cat depicted reminds me of the Iberian lynx. Is it also among the endangered felines, in America?

Greetings!

 

[jtbell]

The fourth pot in the photo, the one with the four tubes on the sides, I suppose, how is it ment to use?

Luckily I remember some of the description from the display. it's a "peace pipe", intended to be smoked by the participants to a peace treaty (maybe other agreements also). Each person uses a different mouthpiece (tube).

Wild cat depicted reminds me of the Iberian lynx. Is it also among the endangered felines, in America?

Here we have the bobcat (red lynx or lynx rufus). It appears not to be endangered, except maybe in some local areas, as with other wildlife near urban areas.

I'll post more pictures from other stops over the next few days. I had long driving days to and from Raleigh (Friday and Sunday).

 

[berkeman]

it's a "peace pipe", intended to be smoked by the participants to a peace treaty (maybe other agreements also). Each person uses a different mouthpiece (tube).

Yes, they were a very careful and sanitary people, especially during the Covid pandemic.

Oh wait...

 

[jtbell]

Yes, they were a very careful and sanitary people,

Or maybe the idea was for everybody to smoke at the same time, getting up close and personal!

 

[jtbell]

My second stop on Friday was at the train station in Hamlet NC. This was once a major junction of the Seaboard Air Line, which is now part of CSX. Amtrak's Silver Star stops here on its way between New York and Miami, via Raleigh NC and Columbia SC.

The track next to us is the N/S route used by Amtrak. The E/W track crossing in front of us runs from the coast at Wilmington NC to Atlanta GA and Birmingham AL, passing a couple hundred meters from my house along the way. Also note on the map, the station at Catawba SC, not far from the reservation that I visited earlier in the day.

The Amtrak station wasn't open because its trains stop here late at night and very early in the morning. One wing of the building houses a museum which was open.

It has a large model of the station and yard/shop areas in the SAL's heyday during the early to mid 1900s. It shows four N/S and two E/W tracks passing the station.

There's another railroad museum a couple of blocks away, the "National Railroad Museum and Hall of Fame", but it closed at 4pm, right about the time I arrived in town. Next trip, maybe.

 

[berkeman]

The track next to us is the N/S route used by Amtrak. The E/W track crossing in front of us

How do crossing tracks like that work? It looks like there's a discontinuity in the left-right track...?

 

[jtbell]

The rails need to have gaps to accommodate the flanges of wheels crossing them perpendicularly. A Google search led me to a closeup of this exact crossing:

There's a lot of extra steel to withstand the pounding these crossings get.

 

[jtbell]

Heading north from Hamlet, highway US-1 parallels the CSX/Amtrak line. About 30 miles along, I came to Aberdeen.

Amtrak doesn't stop here. The station is now a museum which is currently open only by appointment. A few years ago, i.e. before Covid, it had regular opening hours and I was able to visit it then.

Two shortline railroads meet CSX here: the Aberdeen & Rockfish which runs east to Fayetteville, and the Aberdeen Carolina & Western which runs west to Charlotte.

This was my last stop before Raleigh.

 

[jtbell]

On Saturday I drove over to the North Carolina state fairgrounds in Raleigh for the main goal of this trip.

This was the Raleigh Coin Club's big annual event, bigger than most stamp shows I've been to, except for the big national one put on by the American Philatelic Society every summer. Here there were also about a half dozen stamp and postcard dealers, some of whom I'm familiar with from stamp shows in the region.

The "educational exhibits" included coins from the Danish West Indies, which became the US Virgin Islands in 1917.

The Reed Gold Mine state historic site near Charlotte, which I showed you all a couple of months ago, had a guy demonstrating how to pan for gold. I suspect this was his vehicle in the parking lot:

 

[jtbell]

A couple of weeks ago I showed you a replica of the cabin where President Andrew Johnson was born:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/mini-road-trip-top-of-the-east.1052935/post-6902954

After I left the coin show on Saturday, I drove into Raleigh to see the original cabin.

It's in the Mordecai Historic Park, in a residential neighborhood just north of downtown. The park's centerpiece is the Mordecai House, originally built in 1785 and enlarged in the 1820s. Its original owner sold part of his 5000-acre plantation for founding the city of Raleigh.

The park also contains several smaller buildings including the Johnson birthplace, moved there from other sites in Raleigh, to form a sort of historical village.

One can enter the buildings only on a guided tour. I arrived too late for that. Even the visitor center and its exhibits were closing up just as I arrived.

So I walked around the park a bit and then left for my last stop of the day.

 

[jtbell]

Now you'll see the inspiration for the thread title.

I drove to a dot on the map, outside Raleigh, because of its name and some Googling.

A local business has gained some fame because of a cable TV series: Lizard Lick Towing (2011-2014):