Investigated the Nascar meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina where they had a speedway race.It was the Coca cola 600 which I think means that they whizz round the track 600 times. Luckily we didn't have time for this. so we went to the Nascar Hall of fame which David found very interesting. There was a video about the history of Nascar which appears to be highly regulated stock-car racing. We learnt that impoverished people in the Appalachians took to selling moonshine to make money during the depression. They tended to deliver it at night and the cops would chase them. If they had a fast car, they could get away so they modified their cars to get more power out of them. After a while, they would compare cars by racing them as there wasn’t a lot of entertainment in the mountains and so Nascar was born.
In the late afternoon we headed for the mountains and stayed overnight at Boone, named for Daniel Boone. It was a lot cooler and quite different from the lowlands. There seemed to be a lot of folk from the big cities here – mostly genteel wealthy people and a lot of twee countrified stuff but very picturesque. Hope to take the scenic route to Virginia tomorrow.
We passed through a town called Blowing Rock. Not far from the town is a cliff where you can throw things over and the updraft brings them back. The posters feature a parent throwing a child over but I think the phenomenon is restricted to lighter objects. Tissue handkerchiefs and so on. Unfortunately, the area was closed when we passed through.
Just heard on the news that there was a shooting in uptown Charlotte last night. One guy killed and another wounded. Just near where we were this morning.
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