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Our State/July/Perfect Weekend/1,789 words Footloose in Southport By Ralph Grizzle The perfect weekend consists of fewer than 50 hours and only if you allow it to begin at noon Friday and stretch until midnight Sunday. The goal, for our purposes, is to visit a North Carolina place and to obtain the essence of that place between two revolutions of the clock. For those who are time-pressed or time-deprived, the perfect weekend is a desirable, and attainable, goal. I know. I have lived the perfect weekend. And you can too. The Plan Back in April, my wife and I chose Southport as the destination for our perfect weekend. We have always loved the small town at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Southport not only exudes charm but also provides just what we wanted from our weekend getaway: good seafood, a dose of history, some walking and a strong sense of the sea. Karen Spahr, executive director of the Southport/Oak Island Chamber of Commerce, assured us we could get all of this and more during our visit to Southport. To prepare us, she sent a media kit that highlighted the many activities available: golfing, boating, shopping and sportfishing, to name a few. But we knew the cardinal rule of the perfect weekend: less is more. So rather than try to wedge everything into just a handful of hours, we charted a less ambitious course. Our plan was to walk Southport's self-guided, one-mile, historical tour and seek out the best seafood we could find. That would be enough. Anything else that we decided to do would come as a bonus. Day 1, Getting Settled We pulled into Southport at 9 in the evening, hungry and tired from the seven-hour drive from Asheville. Ship's Chandler, famous locally for its hushpuppies, had already closed for the evening. Too late, we thought. We would have to settle for something from the hotel snack machine. But then we saw a light beckoning from Mr. P's down the street. Was dinner still being served? It was. Extending a warm welcome, our host seated us at a table that looked out on the Cape Fear River. Our waiter, Greg, suggested we begin with the house specialty, Oysters Beinville. Chef Stephen Phipps adds a few touches of his own to this classic New Orleans recipe. Beginning with fresh oysters, he tops them with a white sauce made from chopped shrimp, mushrooms and sherry. He then sprinkles grated Asiago cheese over the dish and bakes it until the cheese melts. The excellent appetizer was just the start to a fine dinner that included crab cakes for Marjorie, and for me, beef tenderloin topped with crab. Dinner for two, with appetizer, wine, dessert and tip ran just over $70. Mr. P's gets five stars in our book, as does The Pharmacy on East Moore Street. The house specialty there, Pharmacy Crab Cakes, combines three all-lump-meat crab cakes seasoned with capers, white pepper salt and green onion. The crab cakes, each wrapped in filo dough, are served on a bed of baby greens. Chive oil, reduced balsamic vinegar, and a mustard dressing are drizzled on the plate to create bright green, dark brown, and gold streams of color. It's the little touches that makes dining at The Pharmacy so special, says owner Kelli Menna, noting that herbs are organically grown and handpicked by the chef. Desserts are made each morning on premises. Prices compare to Mr. P's. After leaving Mr. P's, we checked into the Sea Captain Motor Lodge, a family-style hotel with a pool. Rooms for two start at $72 per night. While the Sea Captain was adequate for our short stay and perfect for families, those seeking a romantic getaway might knock on the door of the Brunswick Inn. The 7,000-square-foot, 16-room Federal-style mansion overlooks the Cape Fear. Accommodations include spacious bedrooms with fireplaces and views of the waterway. The $140 per night rate includes a queen bed, private bath, full breakfast and afternoon hors d'oeurves. (Time did not allow us to visit Lois Jane's Riverview Inn, where rooms begin at $100 per night.) Day 2, Setting Out We began the next morning with breakfast at The Sea Captain Restaurant, where standard Southern fare includes pancakes, eggs, grits, bacon, ham and sausage. But for something you can't get at home, try the "Shrimp, Gravy and Grits" ($6.50), which consists of a gravy sauce made from onions and shrimp, generously ladled over grits and served with toast. From the restaurant it was a short walk to the Southport Visitor Center, where we would begin the mile-long self-guided tour. We picked up a free pamphlet with tour highlights numbered and explained. We also grabbed a copy of The Pelican Post, a handy reference for Southport and Oak Island. Our first stop was the Indian Trail Tree. Cape Fear Indians bent the live oak sapling to point the way to tribal fishing grounds. That was 800 years ago. Today, in the spring and the fall, you can see clusters of fishing boats on a line either side of the tree, says Jim McKee, director of the Southport Visitor Center. The Indian Trail Tree, he says, still points the way to the best spot to hook dinner. From the Visitor Center, we walked to the Adkins-Ruark House (1890), where Robert Ruark spent many of his childhood summers in his grandfather's home. His book, The Old Man and The Boy, is an account of his boyhood years in Southport and is recommended reading for those making the trip to Southport. A few steps on, we passed the house where "Crimes of the Heart" was filmed in 1986, starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek. The self-guided tour gives visitors a bit of everything • history, Victorian architecture, nature and a stroll along the waterfront. And you are never much more than a block away from downtown, making it convenient to visit the local shops and the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport, where executive director Mary Strickland welcomed us. Mary and her staff have done a wonderful job preserving, and presenting, history. The museum's 12-station, self-guided tour begins with a 2,000-year-old fragment of a canoe used by the Cape Fear Indians. Mary's husband, Wayne, is responsible for a collection at one of the stations. He operates Scuba South Diving Company, which offers charters to dive sites. In 1987, Wayne discovered a shipwreck off the coast. The City of Houston was bound for Texas but foundered at deadly Frying Pan Shoals. Diving at the site, Wayne's been coming up with treasure for more than 10 years now. Much of it finds a home at the museum. A few blocks from the Maritime Museum is Fort Johnston, commissioned by the British in 1745. The U.S. Navy still uses the fort, which is the smallest working military installation in the United States. About all that remains is Garrison House, which serves as the residence of the commander and other officers at Sunny Point, a Naval depot a few miles north. (The fact that the fort serves as a barracks qualifies Fort Johnston as a working installation.) After leaving the fort, we found The Provision Company at the corner of Bay Street and Yacht Basin Drive. If you enjoy sitting out by the water to have lunch, as we do, this is the place. The specialty is steamed shrimp. If you're really hungry, order the special, popular among the locals for more than eight years: crab cake, a half pound of shrimp and cucumber salad for $12.95. For lighter fare, you can get smaller portions of shrimp alone or the popular grouper salad, which goes for $5.95. The same will buy you an order of conch fritters, made with imported Bahamian conch. (Although the locals recommended The Provision Company, and for good reason, up the street is The Shrimp House, which seemed to be just as popular when we walked by.) It was late afternoon when we finished our tour. We rested, then drove about 30 minutes to reach Oak Island's Blue Water Point, a marina, hotel and restaurant where we would have dinner with friends. We arrived early so that we could walk the beach. Blue Water Point is a wonderful place to watch the sunset, and the food was excellent. But if you're staying in Southport you may want to dine one night at Mr. P's and the other at The Pharmacy. Day 3, Homeward Bound Sunday morning we headed out of town by way of the Southport-Fort Fisher ferry. It was a beautiful morning as we ferried across the Cape Fear. Passengers are free to walk around the open deck during the 30-minute transit, and we did so, taking in the sun and sea air. From Fort Fisher, we drove to Wrightsville Beach, where we stopped for lunch on the pier at the Oceanic Restaurant. Seated at a covered table, we ordered the crab dip appetizer for $8.95 and the fried shrimp basket for $7.95, both among the Oceanic's most popular items. We sat on the pier for about an hour watching the waves crash on the beach. It was the perfect end to the perfect weekend. Reluctantly, we got in our car and headed for I-40, which would take us through the Piedmont back to the mountains. We had accomplished our goal, experiencing the best of a place at the bookends of the week. Sidebar: Seeing The Trees, Despite The Forest I've always liked Southport, but until this trip I never knew why. I learned by looking up. Southport sits in a live oak forest. The wide-crowned evergreen trees were cultivated as shade trees here and in other coastal regions of the southern United States. Anyone who has ever been to Charleston, South Carolina, has seen the live oak. Anyone who has ever sat under its branches on a hot summer's day has appreciated its branches. Southport's lives oaks differ from their cousins in Charleston, where the branches are often covered with Spanish Moss. In Southport, the branches are covered with resurrection ferns, remarkable plants with fronds that curl up and appear dead in prolonged dry weather. They unfurl and spring back to life in wet weather. Colonialists found the live oak to be durable. Lumber taken from the tree does not rot, according to Jim McKee, director of the Southport Visitor Center. The boards are strong and as hard as concrete. Live oaks, Jim says, were used in the construction of the U.S.S. Constitution, the post-Revolutionary War frigate that earned the moniker, Old Ironsides, because cannonballs bounced off of her. All these years later, tourists like me find the live oak simply to be lovely, fortifying Southport's natural beauty and enduring all time. |
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Grizzle, 28 Kenilworth Road, Asheville, North Carolina 28803 |
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