More of North Carolina

After leaving Merchants Millpond, we were without reservations for about four days.  We bought a portable solar panel a while back and had it delivered to a Home Depot up in Chesapeake, VA to help us out with energy while at Merchants, but with the shade of the trees and a bad sun day here and there, hookups were looking good.  I had originally planned on staying at Pettigrew State Park, which the kids were digging because we just read the Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs chapter in The Prisoner of Azkaban.  But alas, no hookups.  And worse, no dump.  Merchants had no dump station, either, so the need to dump was real.  We try to use the bathhouses as much as possible, but a week without a dump station and you've got seven people....I'm just gonna put it out there, state parks need dump stations!  At any rate, I still wanted to see Pettigrew, and there's a fish hatchery between Merchants and Pettigrew, so we set off.  

Our first stop at Edenton National Fish Hatchery was the aquarium, where we got to see these alligators hanging out under the heat lamp.  There were a few tanks with some pretty cool fish to check out before we headed to the hatching shed.                

We got to check out the eggs.  They do a daily egg collection, which take about five days to hatch.  So they've also got a huge tank filled with itty bitty little fish.  Their outdoor ponds were mostly empty, preparing for the summer season.

The hatchery also has a nice little boardwalk.  After talking to the biologist about the shad and which rivers get stocked with what (and checking out the dead fish floating in one of the tanks), we headed out.                    

Next stop was Pettigrew State Park.  It's a nice park, small, just 13 campsites.  But with no electric and no dump station (the latter really being the limiting factor for us), we leaned heavily towards not camping.  The deer flies sealed the deal.  Deer flies love me, and I hate them.  But this tree was right out front at the picnic tables.  The kids loved climbing through it.  G even went inside it to get a picture looking up the tree.                                  

There's also a hike out to an historical farm/plantation.  It's got the slave quarters, a formal garden, less formal garden, a couple of goats are there, and a visitors' center (that was closed every Monday--the day we were there!). The kids enjoyed walking around and reading the signs.  We looked in all the windows we could at the main house. Impressive!  And the kids loved that there were enough seats at the dining table to fit all of us and more comfortably!  If you find yourself on the east coast of North Carolina, look into this park.  It was a nifty little stop!