The trip began with a little rolling countryside through farms and forests. We passed acre after acre of small tobacco plants, cotton fields, and corn fields with a lot of old houses and small villages thrown in passing through Warrenton, Essex,
Brinkleyville, Halifax, Crowell Crossroads, Scotland Neck, St. John, and Murfreesboro finding ourselves on one road named Flea Hill Road before we arrived at the Great Dismal State Park.When we drove into Halifax, we saw a sign for the annual Cattleman's Association
Beef dinners. As we were leaving town, we followed the signs to the agricultural center where a group of men were cooking and a group of women and young people were slicing, selling, and delivering. We enjoyed talking to them. They were cooking 2200 pounds of beef. We also got some good tips on the Outer Banks from one of the women. We tucked our boxed lunches into the back of the Escape and headed back toward the Great Dismal.We ate our lunch which was really good and tender overlooking the Gre
at Dismal Canal which used to be used for commerce. Now it is part of the intracoastal waterway. It is not a very wide canal, so its uses are limited. When the yellow flies decided they wanted to have me for lunch, we moved on down to the state park taking a nice hike on the boardwalk through the Great 
Dismal. The swamp got its name because it was so dense that the early settlers did not think anyone could survive there. George Washington, though, saw great economic hope in the swamp and purchased about four thousand acres of it. About sixty percent of the swamp is in northeast North Carolina; the other forty, Virginia.With the swamp behind us, we found HWY 158 once again and headed toward the ocean. We have decided that the Outer Banks is suffering from the blight of all coastal communities: over development. The ocean, however is still here and there are lighthouses to discover.
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