Kinston, NC

From RV.com: Nearly one in 12 U.S. vehicle-owning households now owns an RV. That's nearly 7 million households–an increase of 7.8 percent during 1998-2001, according to the study. I won’t dispute that, but last night only four RVs were in this little jewel of a campsite sitting on the banks of the Neuse River in Eastern Carolina. I found a good thing. The question is do I keep it a secret or share it? Located on the sleepy banks of the Neuse the campground offers eight sites with water, electric and sewer and a small shower house situated on 55 acres featuring hiking trails, a nature center, planetarium, health and science museum. All this for a staggering price of $10.00 a night. Should I tell the world?

Come to the Neuseway Nature Center and Planetarium, Health and Science Museum and Campground of Kinston, North Carolina. By the way the museum, planetarium and the nature center are FREE. 403 W. Caswell Street, Kinston, NC 28501. 252-939-3302. Can't find a website.

I stopped in Wilson, NC for gas and wondered where I was going to spend the night. It took all day to travel across North Carolina through a corridor of color, a trip I have made a hundred times in my Jeep. The majestic mountains gave way to the Piedmont’s gentle rolling hills. In Raleigh I picked up 264 and began to wander into the coastal plains.

I use to live here, but I could not remember any campgrounds in the area. So after I filled the RV up with fuel, I checked the internet for campgrounds. When a campground in Kinston popped up I paused. Kinston? Really?

My memories of Kinston: a hot and humid, economically depressed town sitting in the middle of tobacco and cotton fields. Summer starts in March where blistering waves of heat dance on the distance horizons over the flat lands. Humidity hangs in the air as still as the Spanish moss hanging off the cypress long the Neuse. Water oaks and hickories cluster around old farmhouses, little islands in a sea of tobacco and cotton. In the deepest part of summer, nothing moves here except the fast ball of a young pitcher with the Kinston Indians trying to make it to The Show.

Kinston is the home of my best friend, Barbara Smith who grew up eating cucumber slices between two pieces of white bread bathed in mayo. I am not talking high-society finger sandwiches. I’m talking dirt roads where grasshoppers the size of hotdogs buzzed in the tall roadside grasses.
Walking down the road is a little girl with bare feet, stringy blonde hair, wearing a cotton dress and eating a bag of peanuts poured into bottle of Coke. For a Yankee, this was signature South.

It was after 5 pm when I pulled into the parking lot for the Nature Center. It was closed, but Bobby, the only paid employee was waiting for me to arrive. He checked me in, showed me the showers and told me how the Center was flooded in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd ran up the coast. (I sold my house in Greenville two weeks before the flood.) I took note of the electrical outlets placed on poles about six feet high. I doubt if I’d hang around the campground if the Neuse was in flood stage.

Next door, I met a couple who have been RVing full time (living out of their RV) for six years. They sold their farmhouse in Connecticut, told their kids to come get their stuff and took off in a motor home with two cats and two dogs. Presently, they have one cat and one dog, both adapting well to road life in a 36 foot Fleetwood complete with a couple of slides. Summers are spent traveling the country visiting Civil War sites and participating in reenactments. Winters are spent in Florida in a community of snowbirds from all over the US and Canada. Each winter sixty of them flock together to catch up and socialize.

I glanced up at their big RV and then looked over at my little SunRader. I wondered if I could live such a life. I have gone over 4000 miles, and have been on and off the road since July 29. Few things have gone as planned and my book tour fell apart. It doesn’t seem to matter to me. It has been a good experience; I am living my life with no regrets about setting out on the road. I’ve seen places I have never been, visited places where I have had good memories and met a bunch of nice people in bookstores, farmers markets, campgrounds, grocery stores, gas stations and restaurants.

I enjoy the evenings spent quietly writing in the confines of the RV. The rest of the world disappears behind the curtains as darkness settles around the little vehicle. With Diablo usually at my feet and Phoenix perched on the bed, I sit at the table writing in the warm glow of the RV’s lights. The only intrusion from the outside world is from the radio playing sappy love songs, generally Delilah’s radio show. I am alone, and comfortable.

Take The Tour

Someone told me about a trip to they took to Siberia. In one remote fishing village they found the people were proud and friendly. The residents insisted on showing the tourists whom arrived aboard a plush cruise ship their aquarium. The aquarium turned out to be a maze of metal tanks with fish cut out of cardboard. No real fish. The town was too poor to have a real aquarium, yet someone in town took the initiative to construct the attraction, which turned out to be more educational than first appeared.

At the Nature Center in Kinston there is a modest collection of stuffed and live animals found in the Carolina habitat. And there is a glass aquarium along with a very verbal cockatiel, a couple of huge diamondback rattlesnakes, a cute little owl and a couple of skates swimming in a shallow pool. Outside there is an elephant near the rock climbing wall.

In the planetarium, the young guide memorized the lines of his monologue which he delivered in a monotone drone. He showed us the North Star, the Big and Little Dippers, told the Native American legend of how the bear’s tail became short and explained the fuel system in the Saturn 5 rockets. He probably was born twenty years after we walked on the moon and all he knew about the moon program was what he saw in the movie Apollo 13, from which he showed a clip. It was free and it rained all day.