Day 9, St Pauls, North Carolina

Day Nine - Had a bit of a sleep in due to our morning session only being about 45 minutes to St Pauls. Along the way through South Carolina we kept seeing all these billboards talking about a place South Of The Border, almost seemed like it was talking about somewhere in Mexico with all the Mexican style paraphernalia on the billboards.

Turns out it was a stop area just south of the North Carolina border and had a small theme park and tons of tourist style outlets in a total Mexican theme. She took some pics of the area and it was quite interesting so we stopped there for a while and did the tourist thing, shopped. Take a look at the pics.

With that out of the way we moved on towards St Pauls and the reunion with my RAAF mate that I had not seen since 1973, wow, now that is some reunion.

Enzo had this lovely country place surrounded by beautiful forests, such a gorgeous area. When we pulled into his driveway in the RV it took a minute or so and he came out the front door, looked just like he did back in the '70's, just a little older. It was so good seeing him as our mate-ship came to a very sudden end in 1973 after Enzo was involved in a car accident which left him seriously injured, he was in hospital for many months and discharged from the RAAF on medical grounds. I went on for the next 40 years not knowing what had happened to Enzo, and what state of health he was in. So therefore it was fantastic to see him well, and very successful in his chosen field.

A very successful author, professor of history and English, with a Masters Degree and imminent submission of a paper for his Phd. World travelled and speaking 7 languages. Wow, now that is success.

We headed off for lunch at a lovely local restaurant named the Cracker Barrel, and in somewhat southern hospitality we enjoyed a beautiful lunch and bounced around old memories of our RAAF apprentice days and some of the mischievous things we got up to that I had completely forgotten about.

After lunch Enzo took us on a tour of his area and the hamlet of St Pauls and district. Seeing the different areas of North Carolina and hearing the history behind the area was amazing. Enzo being a historian had some amazing information about the region from back in the pre-civil war years and then the demise of the area and loss of jobs when the tobacco industry wound up due to tobacco no longer being a viable labour reliant crop after the introduction of higher technology processes. The area became very much a retirement area with virtually no work and many people moved off to other areas.

We finished our day with the completion of the assembly of Enzo's new garden shed. He had been putting this together over a couple of weeks but many things were too difficult to complete with just one set of hands, so we knuckled down and got the roof on and finished off all the assembly of the shed. Karen came home with a smile on her face once she saw the completed shed and now stuff could be relocated from the house to the shed.

A quick spruce up and off to an hilarious evening at the local Outback Restaurant which is amazingly a massive hit with the locals being in love of all things Australian.

Our waitress Millie was just ecstatic that she was getting to look after a table of real Aussies, she said she had never got to serve Aussie cuisine to Aussie's. Enzo and I gave her a real hard time with some ridiculous Aussie humour and she lapped it up as she was the centre of attention from all the other staff having Aussies on her table.

Well a great day and so great knowing that Enzo is well and has succeeded so well in life and loves with a passion what he does, to some degree I'm a little envious.

Off to bed for a driving stint to the nations capital tomorrow, Washington DC.Read more