RTP-area local music and culture

[Chris Calloway <ifoufo AT yahoo.com>]

--- Philip Hammond <xlate AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have a friend who's visiting the Triangle to do
> research on kudzu, and 
> he's looking for suggestions on where to find large
> patches of it. This 
> afternoon we found a couple of small patches (on
> Dairyland Road and Damascus 
> Church Road), but he was hoping to find really large
> areas of growth. Does 
> anybody out there have any suggestions?
> Thanks,
> Phil 

There's a road which used to be US Hwy 421 between
Goldston and Sanford (going from Chatham to Lee
Counties). It runs parallel and a few miles to the
west of the current US 421. In places, it is called
"Old 421." Basically, find your way to the center of
Goldston and head southeast out of town on the main
drag. The road parallels train tracks all the way
through Gulf, NC. It goes near Bonlee and Bear Creek
along the way.

On this road, the kudzu is so thick on either side for
miles that it crawls up the power lines and jumps
across the road to the other side. You can practically
drive through tunnels of kudzu in places where the
road goes through some old quarries to the northwest
of Gulf. The quarries were open pits mined for clay to
make pipes. Kudzu is the only thing that will grow
there now. It's way spooky. It looks like the backdrop
for some gothic redneck horror story. East of Gulf,
where the operational quarries are today, the
landscape becomes flat and grassy again.

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