Thursday, February 4, 2016

Let's Start This Road Trip!


My sister and I have wanted to do a road trip together for almost 25 years, but one thing or another (mainly parenting related) never made it possible. Sure, we took day trips and weekend adventures with our girls, but the two of us traveling across multiple states for a week-long adventure ~ that just never happened. This past summer, however, we were determined that now was the time and we scheduled a week in 2016. On January 29th we began our adventure to Charleston, SC to visit my daughter, who is the only one of our kids to live far away from us. We took two-and-a-half days to make the trip down so we could meander and shop along the way.

Our first stop was just two hours into our trip at a great shop called Hollo's PaperCraft in Brunswick, OH. They have rows and rows of paper, envelopes, craft supplies, and office supplies to explore. Here is just a sampling of things I found:


I made travel journals for our trip and many of the above items will make their way into them.  The rest of day 1 was mainly driving as we made our way through Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia to Greensboro, NC where we stayed the night.

Our first stop on day 2 was a wonderful shop called Betty's Creative Studio in Greensboro where we spent a few hours combing through paper and art supplies. Then on to Durham, NC where we spent the rest of our day. Our original plan was to go to a large flea market in Raleigh, but Durham turned out to be such a wonderful town that we stayed there all day. We bounced around to thrift, antique, and art stores. The Scrap Exchange was the best! A warehouse full of recycled items - everything from old books and magazines to old paint and paper.


Durham has done an incredible job of restoring and repurposing historical buildings and downtown districts. The area we stumbled on was the Central Park district.


There we found restaurants in restored auto dealers and old filling stations as well as the original Durham Bulls baseball stadium where the Kevin Costner movie, Bull Durham, was filmed. 




We chose to eat at "The Pit" for North Carolina barbeque.



Delicious Pulled Pork!
We will have to return to Durham someday. There is so much more to explore! Day 3 was a four hour drive down to Charleston .... but that begins a post for another day. :)








2 comments:

  1. Oh you were so close to me and I missed you! Sounds absolutely delightful!!!

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  2. Did you drive thru Charleston WV on your way to the other Charleston? :-) What a blessing to share a fun road trip with your sister! Looks like you visited some really neat places!
    Pamm

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