North Carolina, Virginia, & West Virginia

We arrived in North Carolina and our routine visit to a Welcome Center recommended some attractions, including the U.S. National Whitewater Center, which got our attention. This facility—near Charlotte, the state's largest city—features the world's largest artificial whitewater river and is used as an official Olympic Training Center. We tried rafting, the rope course, boulder climbing, and rock climbing, which were all fun:

Overview of the facitily.

Artificial river, this one was the competition grade part of the river, class III and IV rapids.

Our raft. Notice the guide in the back, trying to pull one of us who bounced out of the raft and was in the water.

The artificial river had a "moving sidewalk" to bring rafts from the bottom to the top of the river. We rode it 4 times for 4 descents.

Rope courses, which we had to complete quickly in order to make it to our appointment with white water rafting.

Access to the rope courses.

Bouldering.

The Whitewater Center was the only attraction we visited in North Carolina. We have a schedule to keep so we had to hurry! So we drove to Virginia, only stopping at the Big Walker Lookout, a tower from which one can see presumably 5 states (Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina) however there was no guide and no explanation so it was impossible for us to tell what we we were looking at on the horizon:

Big Walker Lookout tower. It is even more rickety than it looked.

Climbing the tower. The owner's dog really liked our company and followed us all the way to the top, carrying his favorite stick.

View of our RV from the top :)

Top of the tower.

Lauren was scared to stand near the railing since the tower was creaking and swaying in the wind :)

Crossing Virginia was very quick, about 1 hour. We then ended up in West Virginia where we spent the night in an RV camp in Lewisburg where it was below freezing, and thus they did not have water service (fortunately our fresh water tank in the RV was full). Why Lewisburg? Because we toured the nearby Lost World Caverns. This involved a lot of crawling and rolling on mud and slippery rocks in confined spaces:

Our group.

They called this hole "the drain"—barely big enough to descend into it. At least 2 persons in our group couldn't fit.

This was a tough passage where we all tried to avoid touching the water. Inevitably, all of us eventually fell in and got soaked.

Selfie with one of our guides.

Before: clean.

After: dirty.

Next day we camped near Fayetteville and stopped to admire the New River Gorge Bridge:

The bridge is the third longest single-span arch bridge in the world.

Looks like we are taking a pic in front of a green screen, ha.

So far we have driven 5031 miles / 8097 km:

Next destination: Indiana!

Georgia & South Carolina

We are now at mile 4572 / kilometer 7358 in our trip.

We decided to visit Savannah, Georgia on our way up the east coast. We did a trolley tour of the downtown historic district and saw some grand old homes that were surrounding beautiful parks every few blocks.

Armstrong House.

I loved the verandas.

Cathedral of St. John.

Stopped for lunch at The Olde Pink House and had some fried green tomatoes. Kinda overpriced, but still tasty.

This is the house where Juiliette Gordon Low (founder of the Girl Scouts) grew up.

Live Oak Trees covered in Spanish Moss.

Chippewa Square is the place where Forrest Gump was waiting at the bus stop with his box of chocolates. 

This is a still from the movie. The bench and bus platform were added just for the movie the movie. 

Forsyth Park.

We then drove further north to visit Charleston, South Carolina. We ended up taking a walking tour around the downtown historic district. It was interesting to learn that a lot of the peninsula that is now Charleston is landfill (~40%). It is also on a fault line, so some of the multi-million dollar houses near the tip of the peninsula are starting to sink a bit into the ground!

Church and courthouses.

In the 1800s, a slaves uprising was foiled; but the event scared the residents so some protected their property, for example this one added a security fence.

This is called a Charleston Single House, a long and narrow style house where the door that opens to the street actually only gives you access to the porch. All of these style houses were built with the porches facing the breeze.

Our tour group.

Marc liked this house because its street number was "0," which makes sense in programming where counting schemes start from 0.

Old remnant of the city wall.

One of the more famous streets with the multi-colored houses. Our tour guide was emphatic that there was no interesting story behind why these houses were these colors. But we did learn that nothing on the exterior of a house could be changed. Not a shutter, paint color, or add anything. If you wanted to replace a pane of glass, you would have to buy a matching old antique glass!

We also visited the Nathaniel Russell House, which was a historic home that our tour guide recommended. It was interesting to see, but overpriced tour in my opinion.

Formal dining room with bright teal walls.

Loved this staircase.

The formal sitting room, where you can only access the balcony by climbing out of the windows :)

At the end of the day we drove out of Charleston and camped near Lake Wateree. Next stop: North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia!