Day 15: Saturday, September 28, 2013

59 miles from Lanier’s Campground, Surf City, NC to Fort Fisher, Kure Beach, NC.  Hampstead, NC was celebrating their 50^th Spot Festival, the major fundraiser for the fire department.  We only had to detour about ½ mile to stop by.  We got there about 9:30 so things were only just getting started.  We had already bicycled 16 miles, so we were hungry of course.  We looked around and saw all of the usual vendors: funnel cakes, fried pickles, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. and wondered where the spot was.  As it turns out they were waiting for the oil to heat up and the spot wouldn’t be ready until 11:00.  Since we had so far to cycle, we didn’t want to wait that long.  We headed back to the other vendors and decided to split a pulled barbecue sandwich with the fixin’s. Since we were the first sale of the day, it took a bit of time for them to chop the meat.  As we were waiting we talked about our trip.  The woman was so impressed she gave us the sandwich on the house. Thanks Smokin’ Pitt Bar-B-Q!  Another 20 miles and we hit the center of Wilmington.  Of course we were hungry again so we had a triple grilled cheese at Chops Deli on Front Street.  Getting through Wilmington was much easier than we had anticipated, probably because the traffic was less on a Saturday.  Once we got past Wilmington, we were on back roads and made it to Fort Fisher pretty quickly.  Poor Donna lost the screws to one of her cages and her helmet is falling apart.  We pulled over in Snows Cut Park so she could take the cage off.  I wandered over to the edge of the park and was surprised to see a lovely view of Cape Fear River.  The ride into Kure Beach was beautiful as we came up over a hill and saw the ocean.  We will take tomorrow off to find a bike store so Donna can get what she needs and make a run to Costco. Hopefully, we’ll find those donuts!