$10 Hamburgers and The Bullhole

A recent two-hour drive from Cary, N.C., to Salisbury, N.C.'s Morgan Ridge Railwalk Brewery and Eatery for lunch was well worth it, especially since Wednesday is $10 burger day, the price for a substantial and tasty hamburger and a side of homemade tater tots (with a hint of onion) or the true-to-their-word hand-cut potato wedges, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Appropriately, that was a mouthful!

This excursion was one of our day trips, taking back roads to see country side we've never seen and to visit interesting cross-roads, even if just to wave to no one in particular as we pass through. 

For those not in the know, Salisbury, home of Catawba and Livingstone colleges and Cheerwine, is one of several expanding municipalities along Interestate-85 and about an hour northeast of uptown Charlotte. We decided to take U.S. Highway 64 from Cary, around Pittsboro, through Siler City and Asheboro to I-85 South near Lexington. To beat the lunch crowd, if any, we drove the quickest route, I-85 to Salisbury.

Finding Morgan Ridge Railwalk Brewery and Eatery for the unknowing, even with Google Maps offering route instructions, is a bit difficult. The entrance is not on the street side of the address. It's on the backside of the building. We arrived about 11:15 that morning, pleasantly surprised at the COVID-19 required table layout and the entire staff wearing face masks. Overall, we give the brewery/eatery a positive grade for following protocol.

Morgan Ridge Railwalk Brewery and Eatery

The beer list included two IPAs: my choice of Hazy IPA, "a Juice Bomb and true Hazy IPA with a substantial, defined citrus finish" and which only comes in a 10-ounce Tulip glass because of its 7% AVB; Nancy's choice of Buffalohead IPA (American Session IPA), a "Medium Body, Citrus IPA with Bold Hop Flavor," just 5.5% ABV which came in a 16-ounce pint glass. We bought a pint glass with the brewery logo to add to our home collection. Both IPAs were very good and recommended for those who follow our lead and go there for lunch, dinner or just a beer.

Lunch had to be hamburgers. Nancy had the Bacon Cheddar Hamburger with lettuce, tomato and caramelized onions (instead of raw onion), cheddar cheese and bacon along with tater tots made from scratch in the kitchen. The onion flavor hint comes from onion salt in the potato mixture. I chose the Caramelized burger with lettuce, tomato, Bleu cheese and caramelized onions and the hand cut potato wedges which were more like french fries but a little meatier. We both requested medium rare burgers, wanting pink runny middles, and the kitchen obliged us for the most part. The edges were a bit over done; the middle was juicy pink. Overall the burgers were tasty-excellent, though could have been cooked a minute or two less.

This day-trip was not planned just for lunch in Salisbury. The main attraction was a visit to the Bullhole at RiverPark at Colleemee Falls on the south side of the South Yadkin River which serves as the border for Davie and Rowan counties. From Salisbury, we drove west on U.S. Highway 70 for a few miles and turned north on N.C. highway 801. We were about to cross the South Yadkin River when we realized we missed the turn to the park. After backtracking about half a mile, we found our way to the park entrance only to be informed by a sign the park is closed. I discovered the Bullhole in an article published recently in Our State magazine which also ran a story about Bullhole in 2010. 

1,000,000 square foot Cooleemee Cotton Mill

As it turns out the park has a Woodleaf, N.C. address but is associated more with Cooleemee, an old textile village that today has a mixture of well-to-do homes and those of poverty appearance. Cooleemee not exactly a major attraction, but it has a proud history. There's a plan to renovate the Cooleemee Cotton Mill on the North Yadkin River.

There was a quicker route home but with time on our hands, we took alternate directions back to Cary. For instance, we drove U.S. Highway 601 from Colleemee to Salisbury, entering the town on West Innes Street, taking us through Catawba College. Several students were checking into dorms. Many of the students, we noticed, were not wearing face masks. 

After weaving through Salisbury, we eventually found Bingle Ferry Road and headed east, crossing and saying goodbye to Interstate-85. We went through Craven, across portions of High Rock Lake which was formed by the damn for the Tuckertown Hydroelectric Power Plant, and into the unincorporated area of High Rock. Later we discovered there are some neat walking trails near the damn. We'll do that next time, if there's a next time.

We drove through Healing Springs and Denton, eventually arriving at familiar N.C. Highway 49, once a major route from Raleigh to Charlotte by way of Asheboro. Prior to turning onto U.S. Highway 64 in Asheboro to return to Cary, we drove into the Tot Hill Farm Golf Club area where there's a spectacular Mike Strantz designed golf course.

We were home by 4:00 p.m. after a 9:00 a.m. start. All in all, it was a good day. $10 hamburgers with lots of trimmings and good sides; driving to places unseen by our eyes; taking time away from the strain and stress of the coronavirus. Best of all, seven hours sitting beside my wife, enjoying the day.

To play or not to play football this fall, that's the ACC's pending question

Will there be ACC football this year?

According to Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford, we should know in the next few days, or at least by the end of July, if the ACC will conduct a full football season in 2020 with conference and non-conference games, if the ACC will have a football season without non-conference opposition, or, if the ACC will cancel football and all intercollegiate sports this fall.

The decision by the ACC Board of Directors, made up of the Presidents and Chancellors of the 15 league members, will be for financial or health reasons or both. The league is weighing health against money. Usually, money wins.

A schedule that includes non-conference games makes no financial sense. When tickets sales are high, when fans fill the stadiums, when concession stands have long lines, and when payment to non-conference opponents, especially those not from Power 5 leagues, is reasonable, playing non-conference games is an easy solution, a financial windfall.

With little revenue from the fans, with the spread of coronavirus not under control, allowing fans in the stadiums is a health risk no one should take. Keep the money in house. Do not play non-conference teams.

Current 2020 ACC football composite schedule

Which brings up the elephant not in the football conference but in the room. Notre Dame is a member of the ACC, but it is a football independent, though there are six ACC teams on the Fighting Irish schedule this fall. Swofford previously has said Notre Dame will be part of the solution because financially for the six teams, it is the right thing to do.

Notre Dame’s schedule now is short three games as Big Ten opponent Wisconsin and PAC-12 members Stanford and Southern Cal have been eliminated because those conferences have decided on a conference-only schedule. By including Notre Dame, the ACC could fill the voids.

A conference-only decision is an opportunity to bring—maybe force—Notre Dame into ACC football fulltime. Join or lose six games against ACC teams, a demand that would create a rift in the ACC-ND relationship.

Currently, the Irish are scheduled to play Clemson, Duke, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Wake Forest, three from each ACC division. To get to eight games, assign ND to the Atlantic Division, cancel the N.C. State-Boston College game, add them to Notre Dame’s schedule, to give all three-ND, NCSU, BC—eight conference games.

The league can complete a 12-game league schedule in several ways including, in some cases, playing two games against the same team, especially if it helps with travel expenses. For instance:

N.C. State could play Duke, North Carolina, and Wake Forest twice. Each are on the Wolfpack’s schedule once. Duke could play N.C. State, North Carolina, and Wake Forest twice each, all on Duke’s schedule once. That gives Duke and N.C. State three additional games, 11 total. Finding one more each should be easy. North Carolina and Wake Forest could schedule two games. They are not scheduled to meet this fall. Along with second games with N.C. State and Duke, UNC and Wake Forest would have 12 games.

The two major factors in creating and playing a conference only schedule are money and power. If there is no football this fall, there is no big paycheck for the ACC from ESPN, money that some ACC schools have already spent, betting on big paychecks to come. The "big paycheck" is approximately $26 million per ACC member. No one, not even the smartest ACC Athletics Director, considered a pandemic would alter finances.

Power is about the future of college athletics. The coronavirus has created a path for the Power 5 conferences—ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 (which says it will follow the ACC’s lead), PAC-12, and Southeastern—along with Notre Dame to either withdraw from the NCAA or create a super division in the NCAA with its own rules and regulations instead of abiding by the archaic structure of the NCAA. Surely, the commissioners of the Power 5 have already considered and talked about it.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a college football fan and would love to see college football this fall, but, all this said, my bet is on the third option, no ACC football, no ACC sports this fall. It may run over into winter and spring of 2021, at least until there is a vaccine for coronavirus.

Leaders of colleges/universities in the ACC and all over the country are concerned with their institutions' overall financial status and how to make up for losses this past spring and projected losses this fall. The 15 Presidents and Chancellors of the ACC are smarter than those who think no football this fall will be too costly. It may be more costly to play football in 2020.

Not having college football will be disappointing but players, coaches, and fans will get over it. Not having college football means a huge financial hit for athletics departments. But there is a bigger picture, a potentially costlier health issue that reaches far beyond stadiums. It's time to cancel the 2020 season and move on.

HELP WANTED: Need foxes and coyotes to wid yard of wascawwy wabbits

Rabbits are eating our flora

Where are foxes and coyotes when you need them? We do, sooner than later, before the rabbits destroy our green plants. Backyard hostas are quickly disappearing. Liriope in the front yard is under attack. Queen Anne's Lace was eaten in less than eight hours of planting. Jalapeño seedlings had a tough time developing to fruit bearing plants, though now recovering but slowly.

Damn rabbits! Those fury, four-legged hoppers have invaded our yard in a well developed area of Cary. No matter where, rabbits like to graze on good quality grass and young plants, usually for long periods of time (until we run them away), mainly at dawn and dusk, according to the Royal Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. With all due respect to the RSPCA, these rabbits are trespassing and causing damage to our yard so watch out! Fortunately for the rabbits, I'm not fast enough to catch them. Cruelty would be a misdemeanor in relation to my course of action.

Deer roam our neighborhood and enjoy the roses

We also have deer in our neighborhood. From our bedroom window we saw four deer chowing down on our neighbor's front yard rose bushes, not 10 feet from the street. After a while these beautiful animals, with full stomachs, strolled through the cul-de-sac and disappeared behind someone else's home.

Elmer Fudd

Except for a major undertaking of capturing the rabbits and relocating them, which would not eliminate the rabbits, we must depend on nature to dispose of, as Elmer Fudd would say, the "wascawwy wabbits." He would also exclaim: "Kill the Wabbits! Kill the Wabbits!" According to the Joy of Animals, rabbits are prey animals with a wide range of predators such as snakes, eagles, hawks, owls, foxes, coyotes, and raccoons. FYI: Mamma rabbits stay away from their new borns to distract the snakes, eagles, hawks, owls, foxes, raccoons, and coyotes so the babies will grow up to reproduce and send more off-spring into our yard to eat the hostas and liriope.

Eagle eyes its prey
before swooping
for rabbit lunch

A few weeks ago, a baby rabbit was hopping along in our front yard when an eagle, perched on our sidewalk lantern, took flight, swooped down, grabbed the small rabbit by the neck, and flew away to enjoy dinner. It was a majestic, beautiful thing!

Foxes prey on rabbits and other small livestock such as guinea pigs and chickens and will also eat various fruits but not garden veggies, according to the Humane Society; Coyotes enjoy (eat) rabbits, rodents, deer, insects, livestock and poultry as well as berries and watermelons, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

So we think our best solution to naturally rid us of the rabbits is with foxes and coyotes. Anyone have one or two to lend? To quote Elmer Fudd, "Shhh. Be vewy vewy quite. I'm hunting wabbits."

A ride in the country: Cary to Danville

Have you ever been to Milton, North Carolina? How about Semora, Concord (not that Concord; the other one), or Olive Hill? Have you driven through Caldwell, Hurdle Mills, Prospect Hill, or Hightowers. How about Gatewood? Until recently, we may have, but we didn't take notice.

These are small towns/crossroads in North Carolina's Orange, Person and Caswell counties, places my wife, Nancy, and I recently passed through, in a blink of an eye, as we took a drive Sunday from Cary to Danville, Virginia, and back, all within a matter of hours. It was a road trip of desperate need.

The coronavirus asks us for ways to pass the time without going crazy. There's golf and grocery shopping and golf and reading and binge watching anything that looks interesting but may not be. There's power walks and golf and being creative in the kitchen and golf and writing. And house chores and yard work. All things we did before COVID-19; all that seem a little boring today. So road trips to places we've never frequented or may have but don't recall have become important.

So, Sunday morning, Nancy completed her daily power walk; I washed two cars and vacuumed the house carpet. While enjoying a light lunch instead of watching the 10 a.m. service of Cary's First United Methodist Church, instead of waiting for the 11 a.m. Sunday School ZOOM class to begin, Nancy made a declaration: "Let's get out of here. Let's go for a drive. Somewhere we haven't been, north of here?" It was not a request to do something different than what's become usual; it was a demand performance.

With the most recent N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles road map, we decided to drive to Danville, not to do anything special there but to make the drive special. Four-lane U.S. highways, N.C. toll roads and Interstate-85 got to Guess Road on the north side of Durham. No need to waste good driving time with local traffic to Guess Road which is also N.C. Highway 157.

We drove from Durham County into Orange County and through Caldwell. We drove the speed limit or slower, discovering the surroundings, impressive homes to some run-down dwellings. In the middle of somewhere, what do those in the mansions do for a living nearby; in the same place, how do those in the worn our structures live? We crossed into Person County and drove through Hurdle Mills and into deserted uptown historic Roxboro where nothing was open. We circled the town square, finding monuments for natives killed in the Civil War, the World Wars and the Korean War.

We traveled northwest on N.C. Highway 57 out of Roxboro, passing through Concord on one side of the Hyco Lake and through Semora on the other side. In each of those towns and crossroads there was no place to stop to look around, to discover. Entering Milton, a town just a few yards short of the North Carolina-Virginia border, I thought, "This looks interesting." But, we didn't stop. Maybe, one day, if we're ever through there again, we'll pull over for the five minute tour.

Pavilion at 2 Witches Winery & Brewing, Danville VA

When we travel like this, the subject of craft breweries is on tap. So, an internet search offered Danville's 2 Witches Winery & Brewing on Trade Street on the north side of the Dan River, and Ballad Brewing in a renovated tobacco auction house on Craghead Street in the historical part of Danville.

Interior of Ballad Brewing, Danville VA

At 2 Witches, there is a pavilion for live music and plenty of places to sit outside, even in the heat, and enjoy a craft beer. We chose an IPA which was just "okay" but not spectacular. Our memory of 2 Witches will include bad music and lots of people not wearing masks but hugging each other. We found a seat on the porch away from everyone, drank our beer and headed to Ballad which happened to be on our way home. It would be easy to say no one was at Ballad because, really, there was literally so one else there except for two bartenders. Ballard has an expansive main room, the tobacco auction house. The Balladeer IPI was tasty.

The trip home was through familiar territory, southbound on N.C. 86 to Hillsborough with a stop at a Bojangles for a large order of french fries. Using Interstate 40, N.C. 751 and U.S. 64 we made our way home with a stop at Nancy's mother's home in Chapel Hill to say hello and water her flowers and plants.

In all it was about a 5-6 hour road trip. Was it good for us? Absolutely. We recommend roadside sightseeing, especially at slower speeds with no specific timetable, destination or route. We're planning another, destination to be decided.