Driving northeast out of Chapel Hill on a gorgeous spring day headed towards Northampton County, the sun was out after days of gloomy skies and rain, I had a cup of coffee in hand, and Tom Petty was on Pandora singing Runnin’ Down a Dream with lyrics seemingly created for this moment. It was looking like a good day.

This would be my first solo county trip and that suited me fine. I enjoy my own company and I was looking forward to the solitude.

My first destination was a folk art creation I’d read about in the News & Observer a few days earlier, a structure of fossils and relics built over the course of many years by a fellow named Q.J. Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson, who died in 1997, spent most of his life in the woods of Northampton and Halifax counties, digging and collecting, and the result was what he called the Occoneechee Trapper’s Lodge, a building that is now for sale, along with the Stephenson home, for $32,000. I found the lodge right on the road and although I couldn’t go inside, I was able to walk all around, peer through the windows, and admire the passion, artistry, and sense of whimsy that created it.

After checking out Mr. Stephenson’s work of natural wonders, I headed east to next-door Hertford County, hoping to ride Parker’s Ferry, one of three cable ferries left in North Carolina. A cable ferry is guided by a steel cable stretched across a river, in this case the Meherrin (I pretty much lifted the previous sentence straight out of Wikipedia because I don’t understand or really care how a cable ferry works, I was just interested to see an ancient means of transportation still in use). After a long drive down a deserted, wooded road, I arrived at the ferry only to discover it was closed. No one was around but I took the chance to walk out onto the ferry and picture myself and my Honda being pulled across the scenic river, getting a pretty good sense of what it would have been like had it been up and running.

On the surface, there isn’t much to see in northeastern North Carolina. The land is flat, the population is dwindling, towns are small, and money appears to be scarce. Thankfully there have always been people like Q.J. Stephenson in this world who dig deep and show the rest of us that treasures can be found in unexpected places. It isn’t so much what you see but what you experience that gives this part of the state its flavor. Driving through counties where roads have names like Preacher Joe, the cashier at the gas station called me “baby,” and no one hesitated to pull over to the side of the road as a funeral procession passed, it was the journey itself that made the trip worthwhile just as much as where I was heading.

May 7, 2016, Counties #28 and 29 – Northampton and Hertford