Monday, December 4, 2017

December 3-4, 2017 New Bern, North Carolina

Started out cloudy today. We decided to take the historic Trolley tour of New Bern today. Then the sun came out, mid 60's and lovely.

We were the only people who showed up so we got a private tour. It was interesting, but more details than we would ever remember. John with Alice our tour guide at the Cedar Cemetery.  We are in the oldest section. The trolley is on the other side of the arch. The arch is made out of rock that is made out of compacted shells from when this area was a seabed. It absorbs water when it rains. There is a story that if the arch rains on you when you come through it you will be the next person to die. I love the spanish moss. 

Beautiful old headstones.  Town is full of cool older buildings. These are two of the huge ornate historic  houses we saw. Don't remember what kind they are.

A couple more. The green one is a 4 square-it has 4 rooms up stairs and 4 rooms downstairs.  Don't know the others. 

Yellow fall ginkgo leaves in front of another. After the bus tour we toured the gardens at Tryon Palace. The hedges are made of yaupon holly which is a native evergreen shrub here. I am sure the garden looks much better when things are blooming, but it was pretty cool now.


Another shot of the hedges and the fountain and a gazebo in another part of the garden.


Sweet smelling flowers, maybe citrus, yaupon holly berries, rosemary blossom, some kind of fruit tree blossoms. They were trained into a grape vine kind of shape in the kitchen garden. The trolley for our tour. These other hedges are in a garden across the street. 


The front and back of Tryon Palace. It was originally built in 1770 by Governor Tryon. He was one of the British rulers before the revolution. It later became the capital of North Carolina before it moved to Raleigh. It burned down in 1778. It was rebuilt from 1952-59 from the original blueprints on the original site. They had to move 50 houses, I-70 and the bridge over the Trent River to build there. Some doorways and gates from Tryon Palace. The yellow over the fence is from a church yard in town.

We were going to move on to another area today but decided since it was 65 and sunny today and supposed to rain the rest of the week that we would spend another day here and play outside. We boated  Upper Broad Creek today-a lovely black water cypress swamp. This cypress tree still has some of it's fall needles, most of them have now dropped theirs.  We stopped at the Latham/Whitehurst state park on the way for a stroll on their boardwalk. The hardwood forest there still has most of their fall leaves. 


The day and colors were phenomenal. 


More fall colors. 


My photos are probably getting a bit boring since they are all the same swampy photos, but I just love the colors. John paddling under a red tree.


I was getting into the reflections in John's wake. This black water saturates the colors and looks so good. 

The boardwalk at Latham/Whitehurst park, poison ivy growing on a stump in the middle of the river, ferns on a log we had to duck under and seed pods. 


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