Titusville Trip Day Two | Bella Rossa Fabrica

Day Two

I headed back to Core Coffee in Norfolk. The staff is very nice and pulled a good pour. My car sure didn’t enjoy the cobbled street; even in comfort mode, I had to keep it to about 2 miles per hour. My next destination was going to be the Outer Banks. To keep me off the highway and on the roads I wanted to follow, I set the GPS in the car to take me to a place called Lizard Land. I had no intentions of visiting the place; it was just a point to steer towards. I was past it before I saw it; however, I needed to make a pit stop (see my previous adventure as to why), so I pulled into a McDonald’s (actually just a McD’s counter in a gas station). I then turned around to check out Lizard Land; it was just a house and a shabby one at that.

From there I headed out to the Outer Banks and drove all the way north to the town of Corolla, NC. A sign stated that the paved road ended ahead; it wasn’t lying, as the road turned into sand about 20 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. The next sign said all-wheel drive vehicles only on the beach. My car is all-wheel drive, but there was no way in hell it could navigate that beach. The Outer Banks, north of the bridge, is a giant sandbar with a couple trillion dollars’ worth of beach houses sitting in gated communities. So it was a pretty drive, but it is 22 miles long, and it was an hour up and an hour back. This burned up most of the morning and a piece of the afternoon

Cure Coffee

Because time was running short, once again I had to skip the drive down to Cape Hatteras. I did have time to visit the First in Flight National Monument in Kitty Hawk. The woman at the gate said $10.00 to enter so I said, “If there are restrooms, I’ll pay.” There are restrooms, so I went in. I took a 20-minute walk in a large windy field with a large monument on top of a giant sand dune. I left the Outer Banks around 3:00 PM with hopes of getting an espresso before The Coffee Company in Richlands, NC, closed at 7:00 PM. I set the GPS to take me to Goose Creek State Park in Washington, NC. I never made it there because about 7 miles before I reached there, I hit road construction, so I headed for the Coffee Company.

I made it to The Coffee Company at 6:50 PM, and it was still open. I couldn’t find my glasses, which made no sense because I hadn’t left the car for hours. I looked everywhere, and nothing; it was time to panic because I wouldn’t be able to read for the rest of the trip. Finally, I adjusted the driver’s seat higher and found them wedged under it. I walked into the shop and ordered an espresso, but I only saw paper cups. I asked if they had porcelain cups and offered to get one of mine from the car. Instead the girl went into the back room and came back with an espresso cup. After she poured a double, she sniffed the cup and made a face. She asked me to smell it and tell what was wrong. I took a sniff and said it might be a little acidic. She offered to pull another, but I told her if it was bad, it was the beans and not the pull, so I downed it in one go. She looked at me with a startled look and asked, “How did you do that? You’re crazy!” I smiled and said, “I guess you never met a true coffee junkie before.” I asked her name, and it is Allie, and I took a snapshot of her and hit the road again.

My last stop of the day was dinner at Marrakesh in Jacksonville, NC. I got the falafel and hummus combo. It was incredibly good, and I ate all I could but couldn’t finish the pitas. I asked Valerie, my waitress, where the owners came from. She told me that they are Palestinians from Jerusalem and they opened the restaurant in 2007. I asked her if she thought the pitas would still be good in the morning, and she said she brings them home all the time, so I wrapped them up to eat with my eggs in the morning.

I’m not sure which I saw more of in NC, Trump yard signs or churches. For the previous day and a half, I had been driving by fields with a crop that I didn’t recognize. I finally figured it out; it was cotton, duh.