We were in North Carolina for roughly five days total -- we arrived on a Thursday night and left on the Tuesday morning after Labor Day. I count the night of arrival and the morning of departure as one day because they were basically travel days and not a whole lot of time was spent doing proper vacationing.
On Sunday, Daisy had made plans for us -- the only real plans we'd had for the entire trip, in fact, when it comes to real "event things" we wanted to do while we were there -- we were scheduled to go on a dolphin-watching boat tour off the coast. This tour required you to book tickets in advance, and then drive down to Myrtle Beach to the location to where the boat launched from.
It's a decent hour's drive to Myrtle from where my parents are; it's not an awful drive, but it takes time. And this was Labor Day weekend, to boot. Traffic was nuts, and the dolphin-watching boats were booked solid. Thankfully, Daisy had gotten us our reservations/tickets a few days beforehand. We were told to dress for all weather as the boats went out rain or shine, and of course, if was very likely you'd get wet while on the boat itself, as you'd be out in the ocean for some time and...waves. Splashing. Winds. Etc.
Well, Sunday turned out to be an incredibly godawful hot day, with clear skies and a lot of blazing sun, and the temperature shot up quickly. I made sure to pack my sun hat with me -- a denim oversized bucket-hat I'd purchased down there last year -- and we slathered ourselves in sunscreen. The dolphin-watching tour was estimated to take about two hours, sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on how many times the boat would need to stop to look at dolphins. Etc. It was a very detailed experience with a full webpage full of notes and suggestions to follow for it.
Now, mind you, this is not the first time Daisy and I have gone on a boat trip for pleasure reasons -- we'd done the Lake Michigan boat tour from the Navy Pier in Chicago a couple of years ago, and earlier in the summer we had of course done the whale-watching tour in Nova Scotia. At this point, both of us know how this game is played. Boats are nothing new for us. And honestly, I wanted to see dolphins up close. The whale tour had left a lot to be desired, such as...the only whales we saw were like 30 yards away. Dolphins are everywhere, especially in the Carolinas, and they tend to travel in giant pods of large numbers.
So we drove down to Myrtle Beach -- not North Myrtle, but Myrtle proper -- and ventured down a number of sketchy looking back roads and side streets to get to the highway that would eventually take us to this port where these boats would launch from. There were so many people there. Daisy and I parked at least 1/4 mile away from the docks/restaurant/launch point and had to hoof it in the sun, get our tickets counted, and then...wait in a line of about 200 people that stretched waaaay back up towards where we parked.
I don't know what the boats' max capacities were -- there were two of them, the Sea Thunder and the Sea Screamer. Both of them were identical except for paint jobs, and I don't even remember which one we were on. They would disembark on opposite-ish schedules, so as one was coming back in, the other would go out, constantly exchanging great numbers of passengers. We had our pictures taken -- I guess this is a Coast Guard regulation in the event someone goes overboard -- and we were ushered onto the boat we'd been assigned...with, likely, about 50-60 other people. Yeah.
The boat seats were not comfortable. They were smaller than airline seats, by a lot, and were hard plastic, like stadium seats. Daisy and I are larger people, of course, and well...we both had a lot of trouble fitting into them. Daisy had to change her seating a number of times because it was so uncomfortable for her.
The boat took us out a very long, canal-like passage (with water so brown that it could have been Coca-Cola) and then out of a seawall and we were finally on the open ocean. The skipper gunned it, and we were shooting away from the mainland and into the seas.
And we saw....nothing.
About fifteen minutes after getting out into the ocean, the boat was approached by a few jet-skiers who told us that they'd seen a pod of about 100 dolphins or so going nuts about a mile from where we were. The skippers were like "okay, that's where we're headed then" and once again gunned it in that direction.
We got there...and we saw nothing.
We went out another few miles and made a big circle...and we saw nothing. Not a single dolphin. Not a single jumping fish or otherwise any signs of life. The coastline was a hazy blur far behind us, many miles away, and...we saw nothing.
The skipper turned the boat around and headed back towards shore. Apparently one of the (many) children on the tour saw a large sea turtle swimming near us. I did not see it.
An hour later, once we got back into the dock, the skipper let everyone know at that point that none of the tours had seen any dolphins all day, and that everyone who'd been on the trip would get a free voucher that never expired for another trip out to see dolphins -- they could use the voucher tomorrow, next year, or many years down the road, it didn't matter because, again, no expiration. Later, Daisy would confirm with me that she did receive it in her email, so I guess the next time we visit North Carolina we've got a "free" boat trip waiting on us.
By the time we got back to the car, we were both very hot and thirsty, and were hungry.
We had asked the parents that morning if they were planning to go see a friend of my dad, who had a band that was playing in Southport that night. They'd told us they were originally going to go, but had decided they weren't really feeling well enough to do so and were tired, so they didn't want to. That was fine with us; we told them we'd likely get something to eat on the way home then and not to worry about us, and that we'd be home for the evening before dark.
This to me was a pretty set plan -- as in, not something we would have expected to change. So, Daisy and I searched for some vegan or vegan-ish restaurants in Myrtle Beach, since we were deep in the heart of Myrtle already, and found an Indian/Mediterranean place we wanted to try, got the directions, and drove there.
By the time we were in the parking lot, we'd each gotten multiple missed calls and texts from my mother, saying they'd changed their mind and that they were going to go see the band play, and, could we be home by X time etc?
We could not be. We were well over an hour away from home, and were about to sit down for a meal. Even if we weren't, we would not have made it back home before they left.
We weighed our options. The carry-out/pickup on the restaurant's website advertised 15 minutes or something like that, and the place did not look busy. We figured we could eat, turn around and drive back home and get there eventually, even if we had to drive directly to the location ourselves and meet them there. Or, we could not eat and just turn around -- which wasn't really an option for either of us, we were both starving to the point where we were starting to get ill.
Either I or Daisy (I can't remember honestly) let them know we were eating and would be down there when we could. Of course, had we known they would be changing their minds and would want to go, we would've come straight home after the dolphin tour, showered, changed our clothes, and we could've looked somewhat presentable. We didn't have that option anymore. My dad responded that they'd leave a spare key for us if we wanted to stop at the house and do all of that stuff before we drove to join them, but I believe Daisy told them that we'd just meet them there.
So we went inside the restaurant, sat down, and got our menus...and it took the servers forty minutes before they even came to take our order. After the order was done, it took another forty minutes to get all of our food -- and they even forgot one of the dishes I'd ordered (we weren't charged for it, so eh).
We were mixed on the food -- I really liked a lot of the stuff I'd ordered, and Daisy hated most of the stuff she'd ordered. It was also ungodly expensive; the meal was something like $140 total. Was it worth that very high cost for a meal? No. Not at all. But I didn't think it was awful or anything like that. Again, overpriced, but not terrible for me.
Once the bill was paid, we were back in the Malibu and headed north, out of Myrtle Beach and back up to North Carolina once more. We'd plotted the GPS to the bar's area in Southport -- I just assumed that it would be a normal bar, like a neighborhood bar the same as most of the ones my dad's bands played in as I was growing up.
I was wrong.
Southport has a residential area, and then it has the historic "rich white people" area, and on the outside of that area is the "rich white people bars and restaurants on the water where white people come and eat and drink a lot and listen to white people music" area. Guess where the bar was?
It was a Sunday night on a holiday weekend in Southport, where nobody would have to work the next day because Labor Day. It was also supposed to be the last "nice weather" day for a solid week, as it was supposed to rain and storm from that point forward, including on the holiday. We just wanted to make an appearance as it was important to my parents, be included in something they'd asked us to be included in, etc.
Well, we tried.
The closest parking to this area was this time easily half a mile away from the venue, on some side streets with public parking next to a historical park/recreation area. Mind you, at this point Daisy and I were tired -- we'd been out all day, I'd been awake since around 6am, we'd already done a ton of walking and being out in the sun, and now we would be walking at least another mile (to the venue and then back, of course) to see my Dad's friend's band play.
Daisy plotted the GPS for walking to the location from where we parked, and we set off. As we approached the bar, it was very apparent which place we were headed to in a crowded on-the-ocean sea of strip-mall like restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops...because it was where the loud music was coming from.
We were literally 300 or so feet away from the bar when we ran into my parents, walking the opposite way -- having been there and already left.
We were not upset -- my dad's maladies were acting up and it was really bothering him to be upright and to stay there to watch the band, though they had for a few songs. They had kept up appearances, so to speak, just like we were trying to do with them. They went back to their vehicle to go home -- their vehicle which was considerably closer -- and we told them we'd be home eventually, we had to get back to the car and pick up a few small essentials from the local Walmart first (we were both out of bottled water and I was out of sugar-free energy drinks -- the things that kept me going while I was there).
The walk back to the car was beautiful, because it was literally along the coast. As in, there was a road and a bike path, an eight-foot wide area of sand, and then open ocean. The sun was setting. Most people were beginning to filter out of the bar areas and back to their own vehicles, or were otherwise out for an evening stroll. We took a number of photos of us together, including the one that will be used on this year's Christmas cards (more on this later) and finally got back to the car just as it was getting dark.
We then went to Walmart, which was mostly abandoned for it being an evening on a holiday weekend, and picked up those few essentials we needed. We also found one of the new Beetlejuice Beetlejuice apple Fantas, which we tried and both liked (it remains to this day the only time I've seen one in person in a store), before returning home and winding down the rest of the night.
The next day was Monday -- Labor Day -- and our final full day in North Carolina. My mother told us that Gabriel Brothers -- known colloquially and in most fashions these days as Gabe's -- had opened stores down there.
I've talked about Gabe's before here, specifically referencing it in my stories about travel back home, as they are based and headquartered in my hometown of Morgantown, WV. They are a discount clothing and department store chain that dates back to the '60s, and was a huge part of my life growing up. They'd always had multiple locations in WV and PA, and a few in Ohio, but generally only in that small part of the tri-state area. Gabe's was my lifeblood growing up and remained so well into adulthood -- I still have clothing and items I purchased from Gabe's decades ago, some still in daily use and some that's traveled with me from location to location, state to state, apartment-to-apartment-to-house for almost my whole life. They were cheap, and because they were a discount store you had to carefully examine items that you purchased to make sure things like zippers worked, pockets weren't but out, stitching was normal, and there weren't holes in it....but as a kid, I was poor. Gabe's was where the poor people shopped in the 80s and 90s because it was cheap. I can't tell you the countless pairs of shoes I got for under $10 that I would wear for years until they fell apart. I can't tell you the number of $3 and $4 band/music/comic book t-shirts I bought there, or the number of $8 jeans and shorts I wore, or how many $6 gaudy Hawaiian shirts I owned in my college years that came directly from that store -- not to mention all of the food, DVDs, CDs, PC games, comic books, novels, greeting cards, cleaning/household/kitchen supplies, sunglasses, bedsheets, underwear, socks, swimming trunks, hoodies, gloves, and coats I got there over the years. It was my go-to store for almost anything I needed right up until I moved out of WV in 2006.
Well, in the past several years the store has expanded -- I know, a brick-and-mortar retail store expanding into new locations in the 2020s? Insane, right? -- and they have now built new locations in multiple states up and down the eastern seaboard and even as far west as Oklahoma and Missouri. One of those states, of course, was North Carolina -- in Wilmington.
I will state that the NC/SC locations were probably greatly influenced by the sheer number of West Virginian transplants who retired down there just like my parents did. My parents are far from being alone as WV natives down there -- there are a lot of people who have bought property in the southern coastal area of NC, including many people from Morgantown. It's somewhat bizarre to drive through Oak Island in the fall and see not one, but multiple WVU flags outside people's homes, or bumper stickers/car decals on vehicles, or people wearing WVU shirts (which we saw plenty of that Saturday we were there since it was gameday).
Because my mother told us about the one in Wilmington, and because she and I used to have such fun going to Gabe's when I was a kid, we made plans to drive up there that Monday, on Labor Day, and peruse the store. As an aside, Daisy has experienced the magic of a Gabe's store with me before -- she did when we were visiting my parents in 2017, in Morgantown -- though I don't remember if she actually got anything at that juncture. I recall that trip being somewhat disappointing myself, in fact.
My mother was lukewarm on the idea; she didn't know if she wanted to go, and didn't know if she would. I told her that was fine, we'd love to have her with us if she wanted to come, of course.
That morning, as expected and predicted, it was pouring rain. Rain like I haven't seen in a long time. Coastal rain is different than inland rain -- if you get enough of it, it floods out streets and culverts, because when you're already at sea level, there's nowhere else for water to go. It floods out sewers, parking lots, and any/all low-lying areas (my parents would experience more of this when, two weeks later, a tropical rainstorm blew in and dumped close to two feet of rain on them in a 24-hour period, and flooded out the community college where my mother worked). It's why all the houses down there are on stilts.
My mother decided against going with us, but Daisy and I decided to make a go of it anyway. It was the only chance we'd have to do it, and Daisy wanted to hit up the Sealevel Vegan Diner again while we were in Wilmington.
As an aside, and a wide aside at that -- one of my favorite movies of all time was filmed in Wilmington, and it's likely not one you'd ever guess. That movie is the 1986 Stephen King adaptation Maximum Overdrive, based on his short story "Trucks" from his first short story collection Night Shift. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's the movie where a mostly pre-fame Emilio Estevez and a group of people (including Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson) hole up inside a truck stop when machines all over the world come to life and begin attacking humans. If that still doesn't ring a bell, it's the movie with the giant evil Green Goblin-headed semi truck.
Good lord do I love this movie. I urge you to find it and watch it if you never have. It occasionally circulates through one streaming service or another.
Make no mistake, the movie is not great. It has a great premise and a soundtrack by AC/DC, though (it's their compilation album Who Made Who). Well, I did some digging, and found out that the purpose-built truckstop for the movie was built on the opposite side of the river in Wilmington and is now a storage facility of some sort -- we legit drove by the filming location(s) multiple times while we were there. Mind you, the movie was filmed in 1985 and the area is way different now, but I still thought this was wildly fun to find out.
Anyway.
So we drove up to Gabe's in Wilmington not knowing what we'd find there -- if it would be a small, crappy little store full of disappointing things or a sprawling behemoth of a place. My parents had been there before and said that it was relatively new -- as in, since the pandemic. That gave me hope. We also had to be mindful of what we purchased, as well; we both only had carry-on luggage. I myself had only brought my backpack as my entire goal was to pack lightly. Daisy had only her small suitcase with her, because it's not like we were on a weeks-long trip like we were to and from Canada. Anything we wanted to get we'd have to be able to fit into those bags -- and keep in mind, I'd already purchased a large, bulky hoodie on this trip.. My dad had told us that he'd be happy to ship a box of stuff to us if necessary, but we didn't want him to have to do that -- especially not while he was fighting off several different ailments.
The store was a sprawling behemoth of a place -- likely the largest and best/most well-stocked Gabe's I'd ever been inside.
Oh dear. This was a problem.
Throughout the entire time we were in the store -- which was so large that I could not see the other end of it and/or see where Daisy was about 80% of the time we were in there -- it was raining and storming so hard that I could barely hear the store's radio. The power flickered slightly at least once as well. I very quickly lost Daisy in the aisles and rows because there was just so many things I could have walked out of that store with that day. Most of these things, I decided against picking up, and it hurt me not to. I ended up getting a few small items, with the largest of them being a pair of Ecko Chuck-Taylor-style black high-tops with flames painted on them...for $6. New. Do I have any idea when I'll wear them? No, but I needed them.
Over the course of an hour or two, Daisy found a few things, like some leggings and some vegan candy -- but I will tell you that if we had our large suitcases with us, we both likely would have spent hundreds of dollars in that store. There were so many things we wanted but just didn't have the room for. Gabe's will now be an absolute must-visit stop on all future trips down there to visit my parents.
Unfortunately, however, the Sealevel Vegan Diner was closed for the holiday.
Upon returning home, my parents seemed...distant? Aloof? I don't know how to really describe it. I'd noticed this as a trend while we were there from the beginning this time around, but had mostly brushed it off because I knew my dad hadn't been feeling great. However, it was never more apparent than on that day -- just...malaise in both of them that I couldn't place. If my kids were visiting me, I'd be excited to see them and spend time with them while they were there. My parents were excited when we booked the trip, but once we actually got there, well...it seemed like a lot of that excitement had been greatly muted. Last year, my mother talked to Daisy for multiple hours on end. I also sat on the porch and hung out with my dad and the dogs for hours on end. This time around it was as if we'd already done that and there was simply nothing left to say, and we were just people in the house.
To be fair, my mother and I did have a very long sit-down conversation with me that was greatly intimate -- about our lives and where we were in them -- within a day or two of us arriving. I got a great sense of fear from her; fear for her own health as well as my dad's, fear of the future, and fear for both of us given our ages, levels of fatness (oh, because you'd best believe that came up again), stations in life, and finances. I assured her that we were fine and are still relatively healthy, neither of us are gaining weight, and that if our finances weren't stable we wouldn't have been able to afford the trip. This seemed to put her mostly at ease, but this was the only conversation of that sort we had during my entire time there, and even it felt really out of place and sort of disconnected. I wasn't sure what to make of it overall.
We understood, at least, that my dad's health was likely overshadowing our visit. He wasn't exactly feeling his best to put it mildly, and the cascade effect of that running down through my mother and to us was part of what made our interactions all seem so very stilted and muted. Not once, not once did either of my parents comment on the fact that both of us had oddly colored hair -- my parents have never seen either of us with dyed hair before. I tried to get them to say something on it, too -- I told them the colors we'd likely try next, gave them the details of what it took to do it and make the colors stay in the hair, etc. Nothing. I don't know if they were both purposely biting their tongues or they just didn't know what to say, or if it didn't faze them at all. When I accidentally dyed their guest towels lavender (because I accidentally washed them with our tie-dyes) my mother didn't care -- she just noted "we never use those towels anyway" when I apologized profusely. Ten years ago she would've lost her mind.
It was just weird. Like, not pod-people weird, but the entire vibe of our interactions with my parents while we were there was definitely off. Even now, a month later, I can't really put my finger on what it was. I noticed that my mother seemed to be drinking far less than usual, but that alone doesn't seem to explain it in any sort of satisfactory way, so both Daisy and I just rolled with it, I guess.
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