Historic Downtown Wilson is a neat place. For starters, It has free WiFi by Greenlight, the city-run fiber internet service, these fascinating wind-powered sculptures called Whirligigs. Icing on the cake? Four ChargePoint EV chargers, but three of them aren't on Plugshare! This has made Wilson an excellent place to visit in my little EV, and it provides a convenient stop to destinations east such as Greenville (which is where I was headed).
The first ChargePoint charger was located inside Centre Brick #1 Parking lot, hidden back behind the dumpsters. I circled the parking lot several times, passing the Whirligig Park, before I pulled in and found it. I pulled into Wilson around 2pm and quickly found out that I had arrived during the 'food sieta,' as Big Harold's Diner had closed for the day and neither 217 Brew Works nor Heroes Sports Oyster Bar and Grill opened until 4pm. The only place that was open was across from the Amtrak station, SaYum Jamacian Deli & Ice Cream Shop. But before I wandered over there, which is very close to one of the three ChargePoint chargers not listed on Plugshare, I took a look at all the Whirligigs in the Wilson Whirligig Park, formerly known to most ECU students as Acid Park. I highly suggest you look at my photo album from this trip to see the videos of the machines in action. These are truly neat sculptures, and I wonder how difficult it would be to turn them all into electricity generating wind-powered turbines. I seriously spent about an hour just walking around the Whirligig park taking photos and talking with a couple from Pennsylvania who stopped in on their way to Cary (quite the detour) because they saw the Whirligigs on Roadside America.
After playing tourist, and seeing that the local Brewpub didn't open till 4 (and was also very close to the Centre Brick parking lot I was charging in), I decided to head over to SaYum for lunch. The food was excellent and the ice cream a good size portion, all for very reasonable prices. After I got my bite to eat, I headed across the street to find the ChargePoint by the AmTrak station so that I could get it on Plugshare. It was easy enough to locate, and then I headed over to the Police Department to find their ChargePoint. I was really surprised that all of Wilson's chargers were 24/7 accessible and in FREE to park areas, with no restrictions at all. Each EV charger had the striped lines directly in front of it, and two spaced on either side with one marked (with a sign) as EV parking only. Sadly, it didn't say "while charging," but that's OK. I don't imagine there are more than a handful of Volts who use these machines on any kind of frequent basis, only two of the four chargers had ever shown a connection according to the ChargePoint app on my phone. I finally stopped in at the City of Wilson Customer Service Center to add a photo of the charger to the PlugShare entry, and update the network to ChargePoint.
With my mission complete, and enough charge to get to Greenville, I started to wander back towards my car. I cut across some parking lots and found myself on a side street looking in the window at Art at 123 Studio. I am a sucker for an art gallery, so I walked in and was greeted by the owner, Andrea, who introduced me to two other local artists (one just so happened to be Louis Small Jr). We chatted quite a bit about the little roadtrip adventure I was on, about my car, and about how the city of Wilson has become so progressive with it's fiber internet and now free public car chargers. I'd seen the advertising, but they all reminded me of the art expo happening next weekend, and asked me to come visit again. I assured them I would, as today's adventure was a proof of concept test drive as part of a larger plan I have to take my EV to the NC coast (specially to photograph Cape Lookout before it gets its LED upgrade).
I made it back to my car, unplugged it, took out my roof rails and continued east to Farmville. I met up at The Original Barber Shop in downtown with my buddies Logan & AJ (who live in Farmville) and my Raleigh neighbor Rich (who still owns a house in Greenville). All three of them happened to bump into each other at the same barbershop. Such is small town American life! We chit chatted and caught up, since I haven't seen Logan and AJ in quite a while, and the owner of the shop took a break to check out my little electric car. After Rich got his ears lowered, we drove to his house (a mere 8 miles away) and I plugged my car into a 120v outlet to top up before the boys met up with us at the house. Part of this trip was to help Rich evaluate his semi-kitchen tear down/remodel, since he needs to sell the place. Once Logan and AJ arrived, we agreed to eat at Crave Uptown Restaurant and Bar.
Coincidentally, this was the same venue that the Drag Review was to be held at. Crave is a unique space, half restaurant and half bar/dance floor, two separate spaces in one building. It's right next to the downtown parking deck, which has two AeroVironment-made Nissan branded EV chargers donated by the Nissan dealership. My little car had a big friend to charge with at the deck: a Tesla Model X from Virginia! We plugged in and settled in at Crave, which has some of the best home made bread I've had in a while. After dinner (which was 5 stars, by the way), we wandered over to The Sojourner and I spent more than half my trip budget on bracelets, an LGBT Rainbow Windsock, and a really cool Parrot totem made of stone. We finally wound up at Uptown Brewing Company for a beer, which was the last stop for AJ and Logan before they went home. After saying our goodbyes, Rich and I returned to Crave for yet another cocktail and to await the drag performance. Check out my album (link above) for all the photos from the 12+ performers, all previous pageant winners, that night. Greenville's drag scene is way better than Raleigh's (sorry, but it's true)! After the show ended, around 2am, my car was fully charged and we drove the 5-miles back to Rich's house for the night. I plugged back into the 120v outlet (we plugged in his Ford C-MAX Energi to recharge while we were gone), and went to sleep.
