Battleships and sweat

Driving to Wilmington was no long haul, it only being a few hours away from my mansion in North Myrtle Beach, so I took my sweet time getting there and stopped any time I saw a sign pointing toward water. I hugged the coast and loopty looped my way through every beach town dotting the highway. Kure Beach and Carolina Beach were beautiful stops along the way. They are both tiny beach communities of a few hundred box shaped houses with elaborate porches in a multitude of candy colors. A whole candy store of cheerful four story beach rentals in every playful Easter egg shade of Sherwin Williams. If Easter eggs happened to be square.

I snuck into Wilmington through the back door of Wrightsville Beach, the main shared beachway used by most locals. My impression was such that instead of my usual one night stand with a city, I gave Wilmington a solid two days and nights. The first night at the luxurious local Motel6 I planned my attack on this small historical town. The next day would be filled with adventure and spectacle. I decided that instead of hitting the beach the next day I'd get a glimpse of the trendy downtown area.

Wilmington's versatile backdrop has long been used by the movie industry as an east coast Hollywood. With their own movie and television production studios and a constant barrage of visiting screen legends they've been touting themselves as "Wilmywood". The Wilmywood tour I found online guaranteed to titillate and would only take up a short hour and half of my time. I grabbed a cold coffee at the local coffeehouse, Port City Java, and waited patiently for my tour to wow me.

Let me preface this story a little by saying........it was hot that day. I'm a trooper though, so I bought a cold bottle of water and stood as still as possible, trying not to exert any extra energy that might make me sweat any more than I already was before we even got started. I did not realize this was a walking tour in the very downtown area I had already spent my sticky morning in. I'd already sweated near the battleship and dripped close to the entrance to the bar in Blue Velvet. I'd already lost half my body weight in water near the picnic table where something memorable (I don't recall what) happened during the third season of Dawson's Creek.
My tour guide seemed like a nice enough guy. I forgive his somewhat erroneous movie knowledge and his misuse of movie star names. I'm pretty sure Julia Roberts would argue the fact that it was indeed she who starred in Sleeping with the Enemy and not Julia Rogers. But she probably gets that all the time. I really did try my best to listen to this little guy go on and on about........something. But it was hot as blazes and he seemed to be the only person immune. Everyone else in the group was huddle under the one tiny tree we would pass, scurrying like vampires to the next morsel of shade. Or ducking into shops with air conditioning in the middle of his tirade about character actors or what it was like to meet the late Dennis Harper (Hopper). I slunk around the back of the small crowd and waited until we passed the street I knew my car was parked on and ditched like I was guilty of something.