ON THE ROAD AGAIN

We dropped Evan off at school yesterday and were on our way again toward North Carolina.  There's some things to be said about living in a big city but traffic isn't oneI of them.  I don't think there is any rush hour or should I say it's always rush hour on the beltway around DC.  Although traffic was heavy it was moving and I didn't hear TOO many complaints from Gary.  After we got off the loop, we looked for a McDonald's for our traditional breakfast.  Make that traditional for Gary, modified for me.  I ordered the fruit parfait and let me tell you, it was great.  The strawberries and blueberries tasted very fresh and the added granola gave it the right amount of crunch.  It reminded me of the homemade parfait at a B&B we stayed at outside of Boston.  Yummy.

When we left Erick's, it was drizzling.  When we got into North Carolina, it was raining harder.  We stopped at Wendy's for lunch and ordered the spicy chicken off the value menu and getting senior drinks, along with a small chili, our lunch for two was around six bucks.  You can't beat that.  When we walked out of Wendy's, it had almost stopped raining, yeah!  I speak too soon ... it wasn't long before we were in a deluge.  Raining so hard that you could hardly see the tail-lights in front of you.  We went through several episodes of this and finally we saw some clearing.  We had planned on stopping at a couple of wineries but found that they were closed on Tuesday.  Because of the weather, we got to Winston-Salem a little later than we thought to do any sightseeing.  There was one place called Korner's Folly that sounded interesting.  It sounded a lot like the Winchester House in California, but after reading more about it, I found that it was also closed on Tuesday.  Strike three.  We decided to go to Hanes Mall which had over 200 stores.  It was supposed to be the largest mall between Atlanta and DC.  I thought surely I'd be able to find my PJ's.  I hit all the department stores, plus some specialty stores.  No luck.  I did see a couple of pair that would have fit the bill but one was pink and I already have a pink pair and the other had a paisley pattern which reminded me of Stephanie.  Wen she was little, she sayed that paisley looks like germs ... so I passed on those too.  Oh well, more shopping is planned for Gatlinburg.

Our mystery hotel was a Holiday Inn Express.  I alway choose a hotel with a rating of 3 or higher and have decided the rating is all about the towels in the bathroom, although my theory may be have been proved wrong because the towels at this HIE were nice and big and very fluffy.  The shower head in the bathroom was awesome too.  We had an early dinner, did a little more shopping to use up some of our dinner calories and went back to the room to turn in early.