We
stayed at Forest Lake Thousand Trails in North Carolina for a week.
It was a nice campground and we had a great spot but this place is
really in the middle of NOWHERE. It would be a lot of fun in the
summer but it was pretty dead this time of year. So different from
the days in Florida!
One
place the kids and I did find to visit was Mrs. Hanes Moravian Cookie
Factory. It is a small mail order company with over 50,000
customers. They do most of their business during the Christmas
season but have clients that order regularly throughout the rest of
the year. The factory is still family owned and they began selling
their cookies to neighbors, something like a hundred years ago.
We
arrived there for our own personal FREE tour. We watched them
cutting all of their cookies by hand and then traveled to each of
their processing rooms where the guide explained all of their steps.
At each
station, we were given cookies to taste. There were ginger,
butterscotch, sugar, lemon, chocolate and black walnut. They were
all pretty good and they are super thin. Very easy to just eat them
up like Pringles! We brought home the chocolate and the lemon. The
chocolate would be awesome to crumble on ice cream.
While
watching TV one evening, we saw an interview regarding an opera on
the life of Galileo being performed at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro and so we decided to check it out.
And
since we got there a little early, we were able to walk around and
check out the beautiful campus.
My
opinion of the Galileo opera: either this one stunk or I am really
not a fan of opera. Maybe it would have been better if it were in
another language that way I wouldn't know what they were saying???
It was like they took a written paragraph and just sang it, not like
music lyrics are usually done. I really hated it :( Greg said he
would have enjoyed it more if it had been a play. I totally agree!
Interestingly, Jacob actually kind of liked it! Perhaps he is just
more refined than us ;)
For our
weekend outing, we drove an hour to Morrow Mountain State Park. We
had a picnic lunch and did a couple of short hikes.
The kids
earned their Jr. Ranger Badge too. They had to interview one of the
Rangers, which was fun because he took us back to his office, showed
us a couple of their local artifacts, and really just had a nice
informative chat with us.
That's
really all of our excitement for the area. Greg and Jacob did a
little fishing but didn't catch anything. Jordan went to
gymnastics. We ate some North Carolina BBQ at a restaurant called
Tarheel Q (it was seriously filthy) and weren't impressed.
I know
there are better places to visit in North Carolina but this just happens to be where our Thousand Trails Campground location is. But I should also add that while there was not much to do, the area was very pretty. I enjoyed driving along the hilly and winding
roads when we were out and about.
From
here, we are headed to Chesapeake Bay, VA.
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