A Living Magazine - Day 242 - Homecoming - Kannapolis to Salisbury

It was pretty warm when I woke up and already light, about 7:45 a.m. The tarp/fly was dry. I packed up and headed out...

The brook.

The dry spot.

So cool to get a picture of each sunrise and sunset.

This is a church. Surely folks, there must be better places to worship God.

The headless wallker.

This sign fooled me. I almost thought I'd made it to Salisbury,

but instead found myself in China Grove.

Again, as often happens, I caught sight of the welcome sign after I'd walked through the town...

I didn't realize I'd be making a few trips in and out of town on this particular stretch of road. In the next photo you'll see the street going off to the right. Whenever the highway splits like this and I haven't studied the map enough, I know that it's about to merge with an interstate (85 in this case). I'd missed an exit of some kind.

So, I turned around and when I had pivoted completely, I saw a little brown puff of feathers right next to the edge of the highway. I see dead birds all the time, but this one was standing. It was a female wren. Usually a very skittish bird, most wrens would do anything to not be in contact with humans. I gently picked her up and noticed that her right eye was closed, but her left eye opened occasionally and looked around. Obviously she had been hit. But her neck was not broken and her feet clasped onto my fingers under her...

I was amazed at how warm she was in my hand. She seemed to have no problem with me holding her for the half mile back into China Grove where I stopped at a Subway to ask how I could continue on 29 without using the interstate. I put the bird in the grass on top of a small hill. She tried to cling onto my finger, perhaps enjoying the extra heat...

I went into Subway and two nice young ladies directed me to walk back up the road to that onramp area, but to take the next exit. That would bring me back to 29. They were very helpful. I walked back out to say goodbye to the bird. She looked peaceful there in the warming sunlight. I couldn't take her with me, and I had the strong suspicion she would recover. I hope she did. I followed the instructions and ended up back on 29, closer to downtown China Grove...

Two welcome signs in one day!

Yep.

Interesting.

Something I also see often is abandoned factories and warehouses. This one was gigantic. It was for sale; probably pretty cheap too...

Minimum security prison.

These two houses and land were right next to each other. Prospective buyers?

Just call Chuck, He'll set ya up!

Finally, the long-awaited city of Salisbury!...

It occurred to me that this would be the time in history to scoop up some of these old relics.

Given twenty more years, could be worth some serious dough.

This part of town was pretty barren looking. But you can't judge a town by its outskirts.

I just wanted to find an internet hotspot. I hadn't looked at the map well enough (as we saw earlier with my having to take that exit in China Grove). I hadn't been online for well over 24 hours. So, I had no idea where anything was here. I just figured I'd keep walking and should run into a McDonald's or something.

When I'd made it downtown, everything changed. This was a nice little prosperous place. There were lots of old restored buildings, steepled churches, brick bell towers, and small trendy businesses. On a whim I took a side street and saw a building that looked like a library. They can sometimes be differentiated (even without glasses) by the combination of an old building with a new building attached. Sure enough, it was...

Taken outside the library.

I worked for a while there. It was a nice library; three floors with a large spiral staircase. I've been to a hell of a lot of libraries in the last year, and I'd rank this as one of the nicer, being in the mid-range, size-wise. Good, fast Wi-Fi. I was hungry by late afternoon and saw on Google Maps that down Iness Avenue there were a whole bunch of restaurants, with a China Buffet at the end, and a large green area that might be a possible sleep spot...

Evening tracks.

When I entered the restaurant area of town, I began to wonder if I really needed all that Asian food again. I'd been to a lot of buffets lately, and even though they are a good deal, they can be slightly more than just a small McDonald's meal, and more food than I really need. 

Walking by McDonald's I saw that they had a Big Mac meal for $5.25. Usually those meals run up to $7.00. So spending half as much as I would at the buffet appealed to me. I hadn't had a hamburger since before getting to Charlotte (where I ate nothing but salad bars). Why not? What could possibly go wrong? Ha!

I went in, bought my meal, and got online. I never get Big Macs, so I wasn't really used to the taste. It wasn't bad, but seemed a little different. No problems so far. It was time to leave and continue on to find the sleep spot, beyond the Interstate 85 overpass. But as soon as I got to right before the overpass, I noticed a very small stand of trees to my left. They were evergreens and perfectly spaced to have a small area inside in which to put the tent up. I nonchalantly worked my way off the sidewalk and around back, where I found a little passageway in.

It was a great spot. Except for the noise of traffic all around me (it was surrounded on three sides by roads, with the highway crossing just beyond and above it all), it was certainly shielded and dark enough to conceal the tent, even perhaps into the daylight. It was a good thing too, as I would discover...

An attempted picture without a flash. These trees were a bit different than other trees I'd seen.

I didn't know what they were until I wrote this. They are Japanese Cedars.

Tight fit, but just right.

There were two sources of light above me...

A streetlight.

The moon. 

I was quite happy with this find. I slipped into the tent and fell asleep peacefully and quickly. I had no idea what a terrible night I was about to have.

Salisbury Sleep Spot