On Friday, we headed to the last of the “Research Triangle” cities, Raleigh…also the capital of North Carolina. Our first stop was a fabulous garden and nursery, Juniper Level Botanic Garden, that is only open to the public eight weekends each year, and we happened to catch one of those weekends! We weren’t sure what to expect, especially in late February, but we were VERY surprised at how large and robust these gardens are. They had a partial sun garden, shade garden, and full sun garden, and a lot of what they do there is research and plant sales…but their gardens are beautifully done and include a huge variety of plants. We really enjoyed the “crevice gardens” – very unique! We wandered around for about an hour and I took tons of photos because it was just so photogenic!

It was a gorgeous day, so we headed north to William B. Umstead State Park. We did an easy 1.2-mile hike out to some really cool “log art”, a 25-foot long fallen red oak tree that has been transformed by some very creative people with a chainsaw. The details are pretty amazing in the birds, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, etc. The park and its trails were really nice, too – glad we checked it out!

We drove through downtown Raleigh, saw the state capitol building, and enjoyed the Oakwood Historic District which is North Carolina’s largest intact 19^th-centure residential neighborhood. There was a huge variety of architectural styles, from Victorian to Craftsman, and some beautiful colors. Fun drive!

We stopped for dinner on the way back to the campground at a restaurant called “Buffalo Brothers”. We didn’t think much of the name, until afterwards when I read that it’s a regional chain started by two brothers from Buffalo, NY. Of course, chicken wings were prominent on the menu (although we didn’t try them!)

It rained ALL DAY on Sunday…so it was a good day to work on our taxes (I guess that proves this is NOT a vacation…who does their taxes while on vacation?!?) and then head to the gym in the afternoon. Because of the rain, we did not attempt to go anywhere in downtown Fayetteville on our last day, but we did see the flashing red lights at a railroad crossing as we drove past…of course.

Monday brought us to our fourth campground, in Linwood which is south of Greensboro and north of Charlotte. Our site is huge and there are tons of trees – really nice place! I guess we’ve progressed to a more hilly part of NC…the walks I was taking at our previous campgrounds averaged an elevation gain of about six feet according to my Apple Watch. Here in Linwood, it was 101-foot elevation gain!

On Tuesday, we traveled about 45 minutes to Asheboro, NC to visit the North Carolina Zoo. It is massive and requires an incredible amount of walking up and down hills, but that’s because the animal habitats are mostly very large and spread out. It’s a wonderful zoo – one of the best we’ve been to – and they have a fantastic variety of animals and are setup for easy viewing. Most of the animals were pretty active so we were able to see quite a bit. Plus, being a Tuesday, it wasn’t very crowded…a definite plus!

Today marks one month since we left home…so our trip is more than half over (25 days to go…it’s flying by!). The thing I miss most is our dishwasher. I really do not enjoy washing all the dishes every night (so the rare occasions when we eat out are a REAL treat!), but hey, I guess that’s a small price to pay to get away from the winter weather and see so many fun things here in North Carolina! Our Planet Fitness plan has been working really well – we’ve been going to the gym two or three times each week, and have been comparing and ranking the five different locations we’ve been to. Overall, they’ve all been pretty nice. We are finding that we end up at the grocery store about three times a week…we just don’t have room to store much, plus we need fresh fruit every few days. We’ve seen them all at this point…Publix, Food Lion, Aldi, WalMart (and that one Wegmans in Cary)…also interesting to compare the differences with those! So we keep pretty darn busy…haven’t had much time yet to just sit around…I guess I better work on that!