Wawa is opening its first travel center in... North Carolina. Yes, we have questions too.

Back when the rest of the country only knew the word Wawa as a toddler’s request for water or a song by George Harrison, the people of Southeastern Pennsylvania were extolling the virtues of their local convenience store chain to anyone who would listen.

Sometimes though, the squeaky wheel doesn’t get the geese.

This month, Wawa is opening its first travel center, not in the fine commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but in North Carolina.

While not exactly killing the goose that laid the golden egg, Wawa is fowling its own nest a bit. The people of Pennsylvania travel, (yes, mostly to the Jersey Shore, but other places too!) and sometimes we’d like a hoagie on our journey instead of Roy Rogers, which apparently has a 17,000-year lease with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

North Carolina only got its first Wawa last summer and there are already 12 locations across the state, with another five planned by year’s end. In the next decade, Wawa expects to have 90 stores in North Carolina.

Since expanding to Florida in 2012, Wawa has nearly doubled its store count and now has more than 1,100 locations in 12 states and Washington.

As the chain has migrated across the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest with the airspeed velocity of unladed swallow, it was clear it wouldn’t remain our Shorti forever, but it’d still be nice to get the first dance.

A Wawa spokesperson did not answer questions about why the chain chose North Carolina for this prototype store or if Pennsylvania may ever get one.

The Philadelphia market has served as a testing ground for prototype Wawas in the past, from a tiny Wawa with a walk-up window at 16th and Chestnut Streets in Center City to an all-digital test store (a.k.a. “robot Wawa”) in University City.

The travel center, which opens Aug. 28, is along I-95 in Hope Mills, about seven miles outside of Fayetteville, on a street — I kid you not — called Chicken Foot Road.

At 8,397 square feet, the travel center is larger than typical Wawa stores (which average between 4,000 and 6,000 square feet), but smaller than the chain’s largest outpost, its 11,500-square-foot flagship store next to Independence Hall.

The travel center will feature six high-speed diesel fuel lanes and 20 passenger car fuel pumps, Wawa’s full food and beverage offerings (including hoagies, no subs), interior and exterior seating, a CAT weigh station, free tractor-trailer parking, bathrooms, and a relief area for pets because sometimes Wally Goose has business to take care of other than going around cutting ribbons.

No word yet though on whether North Carolinians will hold the door open for awkwardly long periods of time for their fellow Wawa customers, as is the way. (While I have you, I know door holding at Wawa is our thing, but if you are a tall person, do not hold the door open in such a way it forces us fun-size people to walk under your armpit. Especially in the summer. It takes things from polite to weird real quick.)

Wawa is offering fans a chance to attend a preview event at its new travel center by filling out an online form and sharing “standout stories” about their connections to Wawa.

For the opening day celebrations, along with free T-shirts and coffee, there will be a ceremonial “Honk” by Wally Goose and “some of the nation’s most popular big rig truckers,” according to a news release.

I’m not keyed in on the big rig scene, but I tell you what, if Large Marge were going to make an appearance, it’d be worth the trip.