North Carolina Part 2: Disaster!

We headed from Colorado to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, which was a 36 hour drive in total. We decided we would try for the Coastal State Fish of North Carolina since I had failed to catch a Brook Trout on our first trip.

We drove in shifts, Daniel driving from 3pm when we left Colorado until about midnight, when I picked up and drove through the night to the middle of Missouri. Daniel then drove through the day across Tennessee, and bad traffic in Nashville held us up quite a bit. I took a turn, and we arrived in the Outer Banks at 4am the next morning. We spent a few days fishing there, and caught no Redfish - only a few small rays. Local fishing reports had very low numbers of Redfish coming in, and so we decided to go further South in search of slightly warmer weather.

We were heading south towards Wilmington, Daniel was driving, and was attempting to pass a semi truck. As he began merging into the left lane, a car had sped up into his blind spot. Realizing this at the last second, he had to swerve back into the right lane, straight into the back of the truck. There was no damage to truck or driver, but the minivan was totaled. Luckily we were both unhurt, if not a bit shaken up. Our car was towed to a shop, and when we asked them if we could still sleep in our totaled van, they took pity on us and bought us a room at the Red Roof Inn for the night. My dad drove down and picked us up next day. We cleaned out the car, and headed back home after a very discouraging and largely unsuccessful leg of the trip.

We had left two states incomplete, something we had not had to do. We were forced to head back early after the snow pushed us out of the West. We had nothing we could do besides plan out the next part of our trip and keep going. With 18 of the biggest states left including hard to reach Alaska and Hawaii, and it being already April now, we were starting to worry that we would not finish in time before college started in August.