Pooh Corner Drive in Raleigh, North Carolina!

Dear Mom,

If you ever decide to buy some investment property or move to Raleigh, North Carolina, this is the street that your new house should be on:


Love, Jessa

Labor Day Weekend at Atlantic Beach!

It's been a while since I've posted anything, I know, but there really hasn't been much to write about lately. It's been nice having a summer vacation despite the fact that I'm no longer in school, but surprisingly, I'm actually ready for my extended vacation to be over. I am feeling a little lost without any purpose in my life and am actually looking forward to being a productive member of society once again. I have applied to 5 jobs thus far, all related to media/communications in some small way. I know I could have a job right now as an office assistant at a law firm or insurance company if I really needed to, but thanks to the generosity of my cousins, I have a little time to be choosy and don't have to work at one of those boring places that doesn't really fit with my career plans. Therefore, I am attempting to find a job at which I might be able to gain useful knowledge and experience that will help me further my career in media/entertainment as I do hope to work in Hollywood again someday.

Anyway, enough about boring job stuff and on to more interesting topics, such as the beach! Thankfully, I chose to move to the other side of the country where there are still beaches just a few hours away, so I won't go into coastal withdrawal, just California withdrawal! True to form, my cousins kindly invited me to travel with them to Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, where friends of Tiahna's (my cousin Billy's wife, for those of you that don't know) family own a beach house and let them use it once a year. It's only a short walk down the street to the beach and is split into two units, one upper and one lower. I was lucky enough to get the whole lower unit to myself while my cousins and Tiahna's parents stayed upstairs.

The weather was gorgeous! Fortunately, while there was a storm inland of us, no hurricanes or tropical storms loomed and we were able to enjoy our time at the beach, worry-free! Speaking of that storm, I sat on the deck for over an hour the first night watching the most amazing lightning show I've ever seen! In the distance, just north of us, light constantly flashed and flickered from behind the huge storm clouds and jagged bolts streaked down to the earth below. I couldn't capture it a photo as my timing was always off, but I did manage to get some pretty good video footage, including an awesome lightning bolt toward the end of the video. Check it out!

I got a little ahead of myself in my excitement to talk about the lightning show, but don't worry, I'll start from the beginning. After a 3 hour car ride, we arrived at the beach early Saturday afternoon. We beat Tiahna's parents and decided to take a walk down to the beach to check things out. FYI: Strollers do not roll through sand. We took my cousins' dog Dylan with us as well and let him explore the waves and get over his slight fear of the water. After biting at the first few waves, thinking that they were coming toward him to attack him, he finally got used to the way the ocean works and enjoyed frolicking and getting wet!

Connor hung out in his stroller this time, so it's hard to tell what he thought, but I think he enjoyed himself as well. As usual, I wore my longest shorts and therefore got them soaking wet when I wandered a little too far into the water and got attacked by a wave myself! I think I enjoy going into the water with my clothes on, it's about as rebellious as I get! Crazy Jessa, breaking the rules!

After our walk, we met Tiahna's dad back at the house and decided to grab an early dinner at the Channel Marker restaurant, which sits right on the edge of the water, the water being the Bogue Sound, not the Atlantic Ocean, though. That's because Atlantic Beach is actually on a thin island off the coast separated by the Bogue Sound. I had some yummy shrimp panned in butter because you can't go to the beach without indulging in the seafood. Seafood is always best when had at the beach and the shrimp at the Channel Marker was no exception! Mmm, mmm, good!

The rest of the weekend followed much the same as the first night, marked by the yummy food we ate, as all good vacations usually are. The remainder of our time was spent resting, watching a little college football (! can't miss a USC football game, regardless of where I am!), playing in the Atlantic Ocean, relaxing in rocking chairs on the deck, and enjoying each other's company.

On Sunday morning, we grabbed brunch at a buffet at a local joint called Shooters. All you can eat scrambled eggs and bacon, that's my idea of a good breakfast meal! I even tried some biscuit and gravy at the insistence of my cousin Billy and while I have yet to become a fan of that southern delicacy, at least I tried it. Now that our bellies were full, it was beach time! I know that breaks the rule of swimming after eating, but, hey, like I said before, I'm a rule breaker! After 3 walks along the shore between Wilmington and Atlantic Beach, I was ready to dunk my whole self into the big blue Atlantic Ocean, which is thankfully much warmer than the freezing waters of the Pacific, yet another reason to stay on the east coast for a while. There were some waves to jump over, which made things more fun, but once it calmed down, I got a little bored and decided to head in. We couldn't stay too long anyway since Connor decided to fall asleep in his stroller on the walk over and basically missed the whole beach experience. He's only 9 months old though so he's got plenty of beach weekends to look forward to when he can actually walk into the waves and swim in the ocean and build sandcastles. Until then, I guess I can cut him slack and let him sleep, especially when he's such a cute sleeping baby!

Having accomplished my goal of finally swimming in the Atlantic, we dried off and took a ride to check out the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, just a few minutes down the road from the beach house. I am definitely a much bigger fan of aquariums than zoos. Unlike zoos where the smells of the animals are unavoidable while wandering past their outdoor enclosures, the fishy smell of the sea creatures is thankfully contained behind the thick glass wall of their big water tanks. Connor seemed to enjoy all the fish, sharks, and jellyfish and it's always fun watching him watch the animals!

And he didn't even seem to mind when we put him in slightly precarious situations for the sake of a memorable photo! He's such a good sport!

As you can see, I had my fun too!

After the Aquarium, we headed back to the house where Tiahna's mom had now joined us for the rest of the weekend. With everyone present and accounted for, it was time for another yummy seafood dinner at a local fav called Amos Mosquitos - with a unique name like that, you just know it's going to be good! I stuck with my usual shrimp dinner, fried this time, but added fried scallops to the mix, which I had never had before. They were ok, but shrimp is still by far my #1 favorite. I experienced 3 other firsts: fried dill pickles (yum!), fried kalamari (which I think I've had before, but can't remember, so I counted it as a first, and possibly a last), and smores (of course I'd had them before, but never like this and never at a restaurant, very fun!) that we made ourselves using a little bunsen burner/candle/mini barbecue grill contraption to roast our marshmallows! I should have taken a picture of that thing...

I must say that I badly flunked at taking photos this weekend, perhaps I'm just a little camera'd out after all the hundreds of photos I took on my road trip. I didn't think about it at the time, but I'm sorry about it now. Oh well, at least I have the blog to preserve the memories in words if not images. I guess that means I'll have to write an extra long blog because I hear that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and I have a lot of pictures to make up for.

Following dinner, we went back to the house and meandered out onto the deck for some rocking chair relaxing and chit-chatting under the clear starry sky - another bonus about the less populated city of Raleigh and North Carolina in general is that I can see more stars than I even knew existed beyond the thick layer of smog in Los Angeles. There must be something blowing in the ocean breeze, poppy seeds or tryptophan or sleep-inducing sea salt, a combination of which causes me to fall asleep much earlier than usual, before midnight even, while at the beach because after an hour so of hanging out on the deck, I had become very sleepy, so I made my way downstairs to my unit and promptly passed out for the night. Ah, you gotta love beach vacations!

When I opened my eyes again, morning had dawned on Labor Day. You know what that means...yep, it was time for more food, this time at the Four Corners Diner down the street for some breakfast. I am not a huge fan of pancakes, preferring to stick with my usual eggs, bacon, and toast, but this weekend, I had been going all out and this morning had my second serving of pancakes in as many days, drenched with plenty of delicious maple syrup. Yum! Plus, it was right across the street from a store called Wings which has all kinds of souveneirs, so I was able to get a shot glass to add to my collection that represents my Labor Day weekend at Atlantic Beach.

I had originally thought that we would be leaving shortly after breakfast, but was glad that I was wrong. We decided to stick around a little longer and check out Fort Macon, which is located at the eastern point of the island and dates back to the early 1800s, around the War of 1812. I am becoming more interested in U.S. history, especially since I started planning my road trip, so this was a cool historic site to check off my long list of sights that I would like to see someday. To be honest, I always imagined a fort being more like a fortress or castle type structure, but instead, learned that this fort is more of a round-shaped, stone structure built somewhat below ground level and made to look like a hill so that from the outside it could not be easily located by the enemy. Despite it's unique architecture and appearance, there's not much to look at or explore other than lots of empty stone rooms and only a few cannons left on display on the premises. I think Fort Macon would have been cooler all the cannons that used to line the exterior and interior rings of the structure still remained in place, but perhaps the cannons were no longer there or in tact when the fort was closed or they were taken off the fort to be preserved and displayed in a museum, and I guess I can't fault historians and military officials for that. Fortunately, they left at least one cannon at the top of the fort so I could get a cool photo op out of it!

Fort Macon marked our last stop at the beach. We said goodbye to Tiahna's parents, piled in the car and headed home. However, we did take a little detour from our original route. Tiahna knew that I wanted to take a car ferry and had missed my chance while I was in Wilmington, so she drove a little out of the way so we could ride one that afternoon. We drove onto a ferry boat, the Floyd J. Lupton Ferry, to be exact, at Cherry Branch, NC and floated across a small part of the Pamlico Sound to Minnesott Beach.

After the fun ferry ride, which everyone enjoyed, including Dylan, we made our way back toward the highway, passing through New Bern along the way, home of my favorite author, Nicholas Sparks (whose new novel, "The Lucky One," is finally releasing on September 30, yay!), and yet another reason to love living in North Carolina and a great excuse for a day trip someday soon to explore the place where the brilliant author gets his inspiration.

And that concludes my fun and relaxing Labor Day Weekend at Atlantic Beach! Hopefully, I'll have more fun times to write about soon, and, if I'm really lucky, I'll have a new job and/or apartment to write about, too! As always, stay tuned!

Wilmington, NC - Coast to Coast!

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. I think now that the trip is finally over, I’m just in need of time to process it all and figure out what my next step is. At the moment, I am still staying with my very generous cousins, Billy, Tiahna, and Connor, as I research jobs in Raleigh and contemplate the direction in which to take my career. I figure I’m already out here on the east coast so I might as well give living here a try and see what happens. Worst case scenario it doesn’t work out and I head back west to California. The big risk and adventure of taking a road trip by myself sure paid off big time, so I might as well take another risk and try living 3,000 miles away from home, especially since I do have family nearby, which I’m hoping helps with the homesickness I’m likely to feel down the road.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to blog about my two-day trip to Wilmington, which took place July 27-28 and thus a blog is long overdue! I headed out from Raleigh around 11am on Sunday the 27th. It was a reasonable two hour trip to Wilmington and I had planned on arriving in plenty of time for the first activity of the day: a tour of the EUE/Screen Gems Studio, the largest studio facility east of Hollywood and where the CW films their hit television show, “One Tree Hill.”

I had mixed feelings about my trip to Wilmington because I had put a lot of pressure on myself to like the place, which would make a potential move there much easier as I had contemplated before and during my road trip about attempting to get a production job on “One Tree Hill” or on another production filming in the area. I think I had certain expectations of the place because of the fact that there is a big studio in town and films are constantly in production there, with celebrity actors, etc. I thought it would be a smaller version of Hollywood in some respect, and it wasn’t that at all. It’s very much a small historic coastal city with lots of toursists passing through and staying in the large houses on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean and a small population, probably just enough to run all the different businesses in town. Don’t get me wrong, there is civilization in Wilmington – there’s Target, Walmart, Kohl’s, Best Buy, and even a mall. I could live there if I wanted to, no problem in that respect. The studio is basically just another business in town, it doesn’t have that Hollywood/LA feel in the least. And right now “One Tree Hill” is the only production filming at the studio so the likelihood of being able to get a production job right away wasn’t very likely, especially since there are already lots of people who work in production and have established contacts in town that I would be competing with for one of the limited jobs available were a new film to start production in the immediate future. Thus, for now, I have decided to forgo my initial plans to live in Wilmington and will attempt to look for some kind of entertainment-related job in Raleigh, where I have family to fall back on and stay with during my search and I don’t feel completely isolated and alone.

Anyway, now that I’ve explained my current feelings and life status, let me get back to the studio tour. I made it to town in plenty of time for the 2pm tour, which really should have been called the “One Tree Hill” set tour, because that’s exactly what it was. We had the opportunity to walk through four working sets of the show, which was pretty cool, especially since I do watch the show and the scenery was somewhat familiar to me. Since I was looking for a potential job at the studio, I had hoped for a more overall tour of the facility, but I was still pleased with what I got to see. The four sets we toured were Nathan and Hailey’s house, Brooke and Peyton’s house, Tree Hill High (including the lockers/hallway, the basketball locker room, and Hailey’s classroom – the same classroom that was used for every classroom scene in the history of the show), and Peyton’s office and recording studio. Another thing that obviously would have made it better would have been cast sightings, but since it was Sunday, they weren’t filming. I did see Peyton’s old car, the Comet, in the studio parking lot though, which was cool as well.

In fact, that’s the only thing I have a picture of from the tour because unfortunately photography wasn’t allowed on the lot.

After the studio tour, I drove to the historic district of downtown Wilmington. It was extremely hot there. The town is on a river, and very close to the ocean, so I was hoping for a nice cool breeze, but no such luck. I was already there though so I endured the heat and walked around by the river and wandered in some of the cute little shops nearby. I really wanted to get ice cream, but I knew I was just hot and thirsty and it was getting close to dinnertime, so I held off and settled for an ice cold water bottle, instead. The area was actually already somewhat familiar to me because both “Dawson’s Creek” and “One Tree Hill” have filmed along the River Walk and the historic district, which is right where I walked and I love knowing that! Even though I was really hungry, especially since all I had for lunch was a frappuccino and coffee cake, I had to drive across town to the beach and finally put my toes in the cool water of the Atlantic Ocean. So that’s what I did! It was getting close to sunset so I also thought it would be neat to see the sun set over the water while I was there and then, of course, I remembered that on the east coast, the sun doesn’t set over the water, so I just enjoyed walking along the beach with the sun at back instead. It was actually very windy by the beach, which had I known that, I would have gone to the beach first and stayed a little cooler rather than sweating downtown, but now I know for next time. I collected a few pretty colored seashells as mementos of having finally made it all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and completing my coast to coast journey! What a ride!

After the sun set, I headed back into town to check into my hotel, The Baymont Inn, and finally grab some dinner! I chose an O’Charley’s because I hadn’t been to one of those yet on my trip. I treated myself to a yummy shrimp pasta dinner, a fancy alcoholic beverage with my favorite liquor of choice, Midori, and a slice of key lime pie for dessert. Mmm, mmm, I’m salivating just thinking about it!

The next day, I slept in a bit as usual, checked out the hotel, and ate a juicy burger at a Ruby Tuesday down the road. Then I headed across the bridge over the river to the USS North Carolina, a historic World War II battleship that has since been docked back in its home state and turned into a museum. What made this site particularly interesting to me was that my dad sent me photos of him and his parents visiting the USS North Carolina 35 years ago! After seeing the photos, I decided to attempt to duplicate them while I was exploring the ship. With the help of some kind individuals, I was able to do a fairly decent job. See for yourself!

The self-guided tour not only gives visitors access to the top deck, but allows visitors to delve deep into the body of the ship, traveling through a maze of doorways and hallways and cabins to the point where you have no idea where you actually are within the ship. Fortunately, they have lots of yellow arrows to direct you and let you know you’re going the right way! It was another hot day and it was even hotter below deck. Luckily, they’ve added air conditioners at several points along the tour, but even they didn’t help much in the stuffy heat of the ship’s interior. About ¾ of the way through the tour, I was practically running past the yellow arrows to get back to the top and make my way to the cold air conditioned gift shop!

Today, I decided that after two days walking around in the ridiculous heat, I had definitely earned that ice cream, so I stopped in the historic district for a refreshing raspberry sorbet at Kilwin’s Chocolate and Ice Cream. Well worth it! While enjoying my sorbet, I walked around town a little more and stumbled upon a mini Statue of Liberty near the courthouse.

I love the Statue of Liberty, such a classic symbol of America and finding this one in Wilmington was quite fitting for the finale of my American road trip!

Once I finished my ice cream and returned to my car, I couldn’t resist driving back to the beach for one more toe touch of the Atlantic! The weather and the water was much cooler today, a welcome change from the previous weather during my Wilmington stay, but I still put my toes in the water one more time! While at the beach, I managed to find yet another famous filming location – the pier featured in the opening credits of “Dawson’s Creek!” At least, I’m pretty sure it is, and if it’s not, I don’t want to know! As I headed back into town one last time, I decided to drive through part of UNC Wilmington's campus, yet another "Dawson's Creek" filming location, They used one of the buildings as the exterior for Capeside High School. Speaking of “Dawson’s Creek,” the lyrics of the theme song sung by Paula Cole sum up how I was feeling during this trip, and still feel today: “I don’t want to wait/For our lives to be over/I want to know right now/What will it be.” I really do just want to know what my life will be, it would make things so much easier for me right now!

The last stop on my Wilmington trip was the Fort Fisher Ferry terminal. They have the kind of ferry on which you can drive your car and take it across the bay of water to Southport. This was actually pretty far out of way when heading back to Raleigh, but I thought it would be something new and different since I’ve never driven a car onto a boat before! However, I had the timing a few minutes off because I didn’t factor in the 20 mile per hour two lane beach roads that I had to take to get to the ferry terminal. I missed the ferry by a minute or two. The gates were closed, but the ferry was still at the dock. I was so mad! I just wanted to act out a movie scene montage where I drive my car right through the gates, through the parking lot, and continue right off the dock, flying through the air, and miraculously landing on the ferry before it got too far away from the dock! But instead I drove to the end of the road and watched the ferry float away, then turned around and headed back to Wilmington and eventually to Raleigh, where I still am, struggling, contemplating, stressing, relaxing, hanging out, researching, thinking, playing, meditating, etc.

And that pretty much concludes the "road trip" portion of my blog. It's been an unblelievably amazing journey! I'd say I'm at a loss of words, but clearly this blog proves otherwise!

I'll continue to update it from time to time, hopefully more often than I have been as of late. Maybe I'll make it a goal of posting something at least once a week, even if it's just a short message to say hi to everyone! Now you all just have to bug me about it and hold me to it! Until next time...

TGIF!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!

I know I said the blogs would be minimal, but my cousin Connor is just too cute not to photograph and record video! See below for some examples!

But first...today was another mellow day. I know it seems like I've been on vacation for 3 weeks, but the trip wasn't really a vacation for me. It was tons of fun, but it was hard work too. So now I finally get to sleep in and veg on the couch if I want to, thanks to my very generous hosts, Billy and Tiahna! And don't worry, I'm not alone all day when I'm vegging, I've got lots of friends: KC, Sunny, and Sammy (their 3 cats), and my new pal Dylan! He's not much of a conversationalist, but he's a great listener!

Today, I actually got off the couch to go have lunch with Tiahna at good ole Cracker Barrel and have some girl time, which was nice.

Then I went to see the new X-Files movie, which I was somewhat disappointed with to be honest. I like the UFO, supernatural, unexplained aspects of the X-Files mythology and this movie was much more about explainable science and what was more like a strange, but plausible FBI case as opposed to the usual, crazy, pretty out there X-Files cases from the series and first movie. There were some fairly decent moments between Mulder and Scully which was nice to see since I really liked their on-screen chemistry, but other than that, I was bummed and disappointed. Oh well, I had to see it for myself and now I have.

After the movie, I headed over to Dick and Terrie's, my adopted McDowell relatives, for some refreshing Coca Cola and good conversation. They always have the best stories! I hope I meet as many interesting people in my life as they've known. They should really write a book about it all, I'd buy it!

And finally, I went home to have some Connor time! We played and giggled and had lots of fun! We're clearly BFFs!

When it was time to settle down for the night, Billy and Connor had some quality father/son time vegging on the couch and watching some TV.

Then it was nite nite time!

Connor!

Ok, I know I just said yesterday that you wouldn't hear from me right away, but I couldn't resist posting a few new pics.

First, here is a pic of the present my mom sent with my dad for me to open while I was alone on the road again.

It's a Wall-E puzzle! My mom and I went and saw the movie together just before I left and loved it! I have even been carrying around a Wall-E card in my wallet, like a little piece of her is always with me. Awww! Love you mom!

Today, I went to my cousin Connor's day school where he goes and plays with his friends while his mom and dad are at boring old work. He's definitely got the better end of the deal! We had lots of fun playing with toys and crawling all over the place! He's teething so he's often busy chewing on something!

We even had a nice game of catch - check out the video (sorry it's sideways, I didn't think about it at the time and don't have the right program to correct it)!

I may be a little partial, but isn't he so cute!!!

Day Twenty Four, Blogging Break

So I'm finally here in Raleigh/Wake Forest, North Carolina, spending some time w/ my cousins Billy, Tiahna, and little Connor as well as my other "relatives," Dick and Terrie!

Now that I've finally landed for a bit, I'll be taking a well-deserved break from traveling and, therefore, will be taking a break from blogging as well. I know that makes some of you sad, but don't worry, if something exciting happens, you'll here about, I promise!

Tah tah for now!

Day Twenty-Three, Carolina-bound!

I got up really early this morning, well early for me being 8am, so that I could leave when Ashley left for work this morning. Today was just a driving day and I didn't really have a set plan in terms of where I was going to end up tonight. I just figured I'd drive on the 85N until I got tired of driving and was ready to relax for the remainder of the day.

I didn't have any destinations for the day in terms of fun things to do or see. As fun as it's been seeing all these random things along the way, I think I'm a little tired of driving and stopping and spending all day on the road. I think I'm more in the mode now of just getting to the next town or city and doing a little something while I'm there. However, I do like to make a few pit stops along the way still to get out of the car for a few minutes. Luckily, I was driving through some new states today and stopping at all each visitor center along the highway to take photos in front of the welcome to a new state signs provided the perfect momentary driving breaks along the way.

And that was pretty much the extent of my excitement for the day. I stopped for lunch at Fuddruckers in South Carolina so I could say I spent time there and didn't just drive through. And because I'd gotten up so early this morning, I ended up taking a nap after I checked into the Microtel in Concord, North Carolina, which is about 2 and a half hours away from Wake Forest.

I'm so excited to finally be in North Carolina! Now I have pretty much fulfilled all the goals of my road trip, with the exception of visiting the coastal town of Wilmington, NC, which I hope to take an overnight trip to later this week. For now, I just want to go hang out at my cousins' and play with Connor and just take a little rest for a few days. I think I'm much more exhausted from this 3-week, 24 day roller coaster ride I've been on! I've had a blast and it's been an amazing ride, but I think it's time to get off and take a break for a bit, get some rest and replenish my energy and figure out what my next step should be. I had this idea that I might want to stay on the east coast in North Carolina for a few months and try living in a new place for a while, but now that I'm finally here, I feel more uncertain than ever, which is why I'm grateful that I have family close in North Carolina to stay with for an indefinite amount of time while I figure things out! Thank you! See you tomorrow!